I hesitated for a long time before telling this story. It happened in 2022, at my house in Chroy Changvar, just a few months before I left Cambodia for France. An Australian woman had contacted me. She came regularly to the country to raise funds for a school in Kampong Cham, and she wanted to sit for a ceremony. My wife assisted.The first cup did little. We sat in silence, waiting. Then, without warning, the woman began to speak — but not in her own voice. The sound was low, guttural, and menacing. The language was unfamiliar, yet it stirred something in me, like echoes from Lovecraft stories I had read as a teenager. I let it unfold. We took a second cup. My wife declined this time, a choice that soon proved wise.The medicine rose quickly in me, too quickly. I sat in lotus position as the room began to dissolve. A pool of shifting psychedelic color spread across the floor, and I felt myself melting into it — not metaphorically, but physically, like butter under a merciless sun. Across from me, the woman spoke again. The same voice. The same language. But now it was sharper, more deliberate, almost hostile. It felt as though something inside her had turned toward me. The sounds twisted through the air like spirals, carrying a threat I could not ignore. Fear crept in — not only for myself, but also for my wife and my son, asleep upstairs. I wondered what I had invited into my home, and what I had agreed to face without preparation. I held on. Barely.Then, as it often happens, the threshold passed. The mirror shattered. The flow state arrived, and the real work began. At that same moment, the woman fell silent. She collapsed onto her side, moaning softly, chanting sporadically beautiful harmonies, utterly opposite to the menacing tone she had carried before. It was day and night. I no longer felt separate from her. Whatever moved through her, I felt it too. A presence — the medicine itself — seemed to ask me a question: Do you want to feel what it was like to be a foetus in your mother’s womb? I said yes. What followed was a surge of energy so pure it was almost unbearable. I turned my head toward my client. My wife was kneeling beside her, gently comforting her. And then they appeared. From the woman’s body emerged a cloud of tiny luminous beings — golden, flickering, alive. They rose like a swarm of delicate butterflies. Then something happened that erased the line between vision and reality. My wife, who was definitely not under the influence of the brew at this very moment, turned to me, eyes wide. “What is that?” she asked. “Do you see it?” She pointed at the flock of luminous creatures floating in the middle of the room above us now. “I see it,” I said, forcing calm into my voice. “It’s okay.” It was not okay, but I didin't want her to panick. The beings gathered to my right, forming a shimmering cluster. They were small, humanoid, winged tinker Bells, dozens of them. I remembered my training: when faced with unknown entities : ask them to disclose their identity. “Who are you?” I said. They hovered, almost playfully. “We are sex fairies,” they answered. I barely had time to process that before something even stranger happened. I turned my head to the left. Elon Musk (yes "The Billionnaire" Elon Musk, not "some" Elon Musk) was standing there. Calm and casual. As if this were entirely normal. “It’s fine,” he said. “Send them to me.” There was no room left for doubt or disbelief. Only action. I picked up my clear quartz crystal and held it out. “Use this,” I told the fairies. “It’s a portal. Go.” The swarm responded instantly. One by one, then all at once, they streamed into the crystal and vanished. Silence fell. When I looked back, Elon Musk was gone.
In his famous experimental short film The Perfect Human (1968), Jørgen Leth — whom I was fortunate enough to meet in Phnom Penh at Meta House — says: “Today, too, I experienced something. I hope to understand it in a few days.”So far, I cannot explain what happened that night. The only thing I am sure of is that I did exactly what needed to be done. The woman was fine the next day and expressed deep gratitude. She also added an extra hundred dollar note to the amount we had agreed upon as if she felt guilty for what she had put us through. She told me that she relived her birth. The only thing I know, is that something was retrieved that did not belong in her. Shamanic art is often described as the recollection of soul fragments, and I fully agree with that. But we tend to forget that before reclaiming lost soul parts, we must first clear out what does not belong within us, so that there is room for those lost parts to feel drawn back home.