A slender young woman with pale skin and autumnal hair lit a candle in a dark room. Nude, she shivered and lit four more candles. She walked around the five candles three times counterclockwise. As she did so, she whispered a Beltane rhyme.
Dance life skyclad,
Open to stars,
Their light your child,
Their dark your scars.
Jump the fire
Dark to dark
Goddess forever
Life’s a spark
She put two of the candles on a table to her left. She put another two candles on a shelf to her right. The last candle she placed on the mantle in front of her. It represented a bonfire seen from afar.
She stood for a moment on the warm hearth stone gazing into the remains of the fire. Embers glowed through cracks and crevices in the layer of ash coating them. It reminded her of lava flows seen from high above. A thought of floating and flying quickened her pulse.
Pressing her palms together, she walked between the candles three times. Facing the candle on the mantle, she clapped thrice, turned three times widdershins, and said, “Hail Beltainne, Hail Selanna, Hail Goddesses All.”
Going to a cupboard, she took out her scrying bowl, a black stone bowl incised with runes and sigils. Fetching a pitcher of water, she picked up her athame and made an infinity sign in the air.
She poured water into the scrying bowl. Slipping the knife into the water, she stirred thrice widdershins. “Bless my eyes that I may see what light in water shows to me. Light in water on stone.”
Setting aside the athame, she stood poised over the bowl. Her hands hovered near the bowl’s rim, palms facing each other. She concentrated on her chi. Soon she felt it between her hands. She tilted her palms to guide the energy into the water. Ripples lessened.
A faint blue glow suffused the water in the scrying bowl. Her gaze focused. She watched as shades became shapes.
She gasped.
She saw herself reflected deep in the bowl. She saw herself old, a balding withered hag with wisps of white hair sprouting randomly, a shriveled crone with leathery skin, warts, and snaggled yellow teeth. Only the sparkle in the eyes and the lines beneath the face looked familiar, but she knew it was herself, aged.
She did not want to grow so ungracefully old. Was this a warning? She had always thought of herself as lithe and pretty. Surely her face would not be ravaged by a life of meditation, love, and devotion to doing kindness.
What did it mean that she saw this?
The young woman caressed her body for reassurance. She laughed, knowing how silly it was for her to worry about what she had not yet conjured by the actions she took, the things she did, and the responses she had to the world. This was mere dread and it was a joke, so she laughed.
The old woman in the water smiled. Her face glowed with love and life’s joys. It transformed her from repellent to wondrous when she too laughed.
The young woman kissed a finger tip, then touched the water.
Ripples scattered the vision.
“So mote it be,” the woman said. “Blessed be thee and thine.”
She put out three of the five candles by clapping her hands to startle away their flames. The other two candles she placed on a low table. Sitting on a couch, she reclined, and let her fingertips trace patterns on her naked flesh until she felt a flush of urgency.
She found her core and wandered the garden, seeking fruit. She touched her labia, parted them with gentle fingers, and stroked her clitoris, making small circles as pleasure radiated through her. Soon she had swollen more, engorged and slippery, wanting something to squeeze.
Taking up her besom stick, already slick with olive oil and honey, she slipped it into herself. Slowly in, slower out, slow the pace increased in rhythms tidal and deep. She sighed, head thrown back, golden red hair draped on her shoulders and tickling her left breast, her nipple pert.
All the while she saw inward vistas of night sky, the land rolling below as she first floated on breezes, then flew with renewed freedom and liberty, her motions swift as thought, her flight of fancy on a plane unseen by most. She flashed the moon, swept the stars.
She rode the broomstick surrogate well and tidal pool ripples gave way to a crash of surf, a tsunami of release into her own infinity. She gushed colors, sounds, sensations, tastes, thoughts. All arises from spirit. All is One, No Separation.
Her body convulsed with ecstatic oneness even as she came back into her body, her night flight done, her mind home again, her spirit left elevated.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Standing, she waved out the candles and put them away in the dark room. She took her scrying bowl and besom stick to the sink and cleaned them. She put them away.
She went to bed to dream of May Day poles, frolics, and festivities.
The Goddess no doubt smiled.
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Fools chase moths in the dark, grabbing at nothing. The wise light a candle and let the moths flock.
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867 words including title
Gene Stewart
Tue 1 May 2012
12:37
Bellevue, NE, USA
