Ariadne and Dionysus.

Foreword.

The Greek legends, as we know them from Homer, Hesiod, and other ancient sources, have their origins in the Bronze Age about the time of the thirteenth century B.C., which is when many scholars think something resembling the Trojan War may have taken place. The biblical Abraham may be of the same period. It was a time when the concept of Earth as the great Mother-Goddess, immanent in all things as all things were in Her, was being replaced throughout the region by the idea of an external Sky God, probably introduced by the marauding nom- adic tribes coming down from the north. At the same time, and for the same reasons, the principle of matriarchy was being replaced by patriarchy. The transformation was slow and spor- adic but eventually complete, at least on the surface.

The legends, repeated by story-tellers for centuries before they were written down, probably with many deviations from the original, were meant to be pleasing to men. It has been my object to imagine the same events from the point of view of the women concerned. To this end I have added "fictional" material of my own. The more familiar version of the story of Ariadne and Dionysus is that she married him after being abandoned by Theseus. Dionysus was either man or god, as with many of the old myth- ical characters. I have imagined that she gave birth to him. Some may complain of the way I tell it, but after so long a time, who knows? In all the legends there are different known versions. Myth is constantly being re-interpreted in the light of contemporary attitudes. We use the present to re-imagine the past. What matters in this story is that the essence of mysticism, inherent in the idea of the Earth-Goddess, was not lost but preserved through Dionysus, then Orpheus and the semi-secret Orphic religion which involved a mental attitude of self-denial and seriousness in religious matters, requiring ethics of a high standard. We can ignore the crudities of practice which, as in most religions, went with it. Its ideal was accepted by Plato, later revived by the neo-platonists both pagan and christian, and reappears today.

Prologue.

Of Ariadne, priestess of the Earth, first princess, then annointed queen of Crete - how she for love of Theseus broke the faith; how he abandoned her upon the rocks at Dia, some call Naxos; how she died so disillusioned and deceived in love but in her death gave spirit to a son some say by Theseus, others by the grace and holy breath of the impregnant Earth, whom I named Dionysus; how he came to keep alive within our secret hearts the knowledge that abides - my story tells.

For Ariadne's body I lament. Her spirit went wherever spirits go, drawn back into the matrix of desire.

I, Nysa, her most intimate and maid, lost love, lost sister and lost counterpart, lay coral on her eyes to keep them closed.

What Theseus wanted, Theseus now possessed - the crown of Crete. He had no parting grief at leaving her abandoned on the rocks, while she in trusting sleep, quite unaware, dreamed of the baby she was soon to bear. He sailed away to Attica, his home, where on his father's death, which must be soon, he would be king of Attica and Crete. Tables are turned. Once Crete ruled Attica, now Attica rules Crete and a new God makes Goddess Earth his wife, subservient, like a wild plant translanted by the roots to flower but palely in captivity. Her realm, de-natured and de-spirited, endures the mis-use of humanity.

By leaving Knossos and her island Crete my Ariadne forfeited the right to matrilinear inheritance - such was the law - so Theseus took the crown, usurped it, you might say, but legally.

I'd warned her what this meant, not for herself alone, but for the breaking of the faith. Possessed by love, she took no heed of me. She gave away her country to a man, now her priestesses must give way to priests. She offered up herself and lost her life - an unintended sacrificial act that had its end in Dionysus' birth.

And so she lay, in palor of cold death, as beautiful as ever in her life, wrapped in her pure white coronation robe, her long-legged body on the black goat-skins, her yellow tresses covering her breasts and on her brow the bridal coronet of golden vine-leaves made by Daedalus, the master craftsman, artist, and a sage. So I have laid her out, as best I can.

I take her orphaned babe as my own son to rear him safely in a secret cave high on the hill that later bears my name, Nysa, the lame one, as I give the boy the name of Dionysus, the lame god - which in a mortal form he surely is - so he shall bear the name of me myself.

He's beautiful to look at, like the dawn, this sunny child of night. I keep him hid, since Theseus, if he learns the boy survives, will see in him a claimant to the crown and make some plan to do away with him.

Lame in one foot, and also lame in mind - as there are some who say - so much there is I cannot understand by thinking it, but I can feel, oh yes, how I can feel and how I sense the fundamental truths for which there are no words, and so no thoughts. Faith is of feeling, that I surely know, while thinking is a questioner of faith.

Oh sing a dirge for Ariadne dead! But sing a paean for her living son born for a messenger of love and joy!

Was she divine? I like to think she was. In any case custom would have it so through sacred matrilinear descent. And what of Dionysus, born of her? Was he the God mythology has made or just a man demented by the truth and by the loss of faith in Goddess Earth? My reason hesitates, my heart believes he was for his brief life the Goddess' son, born as a man but with the Goddess' heart, caring, compassionate, with a delight eternal as eternal energy. So long ago, but clear as present day.

1.

Oh Ariadne, oh my heart of hearts! Oh measure of the fatal self-deceit that is the price of living consciousness! I have not ceased to miss you all these years. There have been other joys, but none surpassed our love, as shadows only serve to mark the measure of the light's intensity.

I can still see you as you proudly walked, your golden hair long and luxuriant, wavy, yet coarse and somehow animal, your feet set firmly, flatly on the ground, your robe that clung to each long calf and thigh, your hanging arms unswinging, head held high, your movement always slow, deliberate, taller than I, a daughter of the Earth - and that is better than remembering your body as you died, de-spirited and drained of blood from helpless hemorrhage.

Did I say died? Her people worshipped her as mortal avatar of Goddess Moon, the Great Earth Spirit's daughter in the sky - who in her phases, youth, maturity, then lessening into the dark of night, as strong in winter when the sun is weak what time the seed-corn rests in buried jars in readiness for semination day - gives life, gives growth, gives death and then rebirth into the risks and raptures, tragedies and triumphs that result from our own deeds or from the accidents of time and space that we experience, deserved or not.

A story started that she hung herself, wishing to terminate her mortal life and go back to the garden of pre-birth. Not true of course, but I encouraged it the while I had my Dionysus hid. So widely was this fantasy believed that farmers hung her effigy on trees hoping thereby that her divinity would bring the crops to great fertility - a logic which I never understood, but strange the ways of superstitious minds.

Incarnate mortal, mortally she died of mortal ill, and in her mortal death she bore the son who in his turn would die to undergo his metamorphosis and out of darkness then appear again as mediator between life and death.

In my recall time plays so little part. I have no sense ever of hurrying although I know I very often must, to dress her, braid her hair, so often late for some occasion of the ritual - the ritual that is no more observed, but her and Dionysus' memory lives on, in secret, in the mystery.

2.

First Minos, as we called the king, was dead, slain not in ritual but in cold blood before his eight-year's reign was due to end, by one man who personified the new, imposing its possession on the old.

Then Pasiphae too, the queen, was dead, died in her bed of poison that she took, died of herself, in her own bed, of shame, of outrage at the Greek god's dominance - or so it was announced. It's all the same. Then Ariadne, both her parents dead, was queen. Now she, deceived by man, is dead, but is dead only in her fleshly form. Daughter she never had. The line is dead. Death is the deal of human ignorance, the misdirected devilry of men.

Time was, I've heard it said, the women killed some of their sons at birth, and of the rest those who weren't sacrificed in ritual might grow to slay their fathers in their turn. From tribal memory men feared their sons, and now and then a rumor still is heard of boys put out as soon as they are born - not actually killed, but left to die. So it was done to Paris, prince of Troy, or so they say of him, but he survived to be the ruin of his father's house. I think this does not often happen now, old savage customs come to be foregone.

We are all mortal in our destiny, but Ariadne's son was not man-sired, my Dionysus - yes I call him mine - conceived of deity, keeper of souls, inspiring music, lord of life and death, dispenser of the magic of the dance, provider of transcendent ecstasy, having beneath his skin a woman's heart, mortally died, relived immortally.

The Goddess is eternal, here and now. All is of Her, as She is everything no matter how the vanity of men is satisfied by worshipping the sun, and Dionysus is her consciousness.

First let me tell you how things were for us, of how we lived, before the horrors came with joy in living Earth denied to us, then I will tell of how things are to be before the joy returns, not in a short symbolic ecstasy but as reality.

Life is no circle, solid like a stone, that has neither beginning nor an end, for we have had, so we believe, a start from self-creation of the Goddess Earth. Life is a living coil that springs ahead towards the reach of endless mystery, a flexible, ever expanding ring. The space within the ring is holiness. The ring contains the wonder of the Earth, shows as a halo round the sacred Moon, receives into itself the rod of life, crowns the queen's head in hallowed majesty, expands, contracts, and draws into itself the vibrant child of our humanity. And if the Spirit is eternity, and all of life is in the here and now, aa we believe, yet it is very far beyond the scope of our imagining, as we cannot deny our birth and death.

We women have a certain sentiment of our relation to the natural in the enactment of recurring life that satisfies our need to feel ourselves within the stream of the eternal spring that joins our wombs to the Great Womb of Her whose breath and being are not only land but sea and sky and everything therein. We fully understand the part men play so the Great Spirit may come into us and in nine moons cause babies to be born, grown in the mother's body, flesh and blood. Without such entry we are unfulfilled. It comes from this that women do so much to draw men in the web of their embrace.

And if you ask, how can I say such things when love for Ariadne meant so much that I had no desire for any man - I have to say, please hear my story out. I sometimes have to mix the general in metaphor with the particular. If the day comes when we no longer feel our close connection to the source of life and can no longer draw our strength from it, there will be agitation in our minds.

Only in my old age can I describe in words this deep affection of our hearts, not something we can think, but how we feel without perhaps consciously knowing it. What comes into my mind I say aloud, so Josan tells me. Bringing out the breeze, he calls it. He's a patient man, Josan.

I have no fear of persecution now. What matters more is that the world should know what I, a woman, know. Then I can die.

3.

Sun shines or does not shine

Great Mother Universal Earth soft, hard, gay, dull, controls our lives

Her random breathing may bring killing cold or cruel heat or drought or flood

Between extremes She grants her grace in clement continuity for our prosperity

Great Mother sends her clouds across the sun or veils her daughter ever-growing ever-dying Moon

For what our lives provide we thank the Earth receiving all that comes treading the dance of life

Our sacred queen Mortal and yet divine is our connection to the All of which we are component entities

She counterparts the goddess in the sky the face of mystery the principle of life

So she performs the holy rituals reminding us that as the world is ours, we are the world

Spring always comes babies are born fall comes and people die

Growth waits another birth like sacred trees Our roots are in the dark domain of Earth

The wonder womb where life begins and is reborn like bud-burst at the winter’s end

Life will go on so long as we keep step with nature’s dance follow the way of faith

As Earth is woman so are women made to create life nourish and nurture it

Earth is all life and life is us spirit-given by the mystery

4.

One half-moon past the time when dark and light share their dominion, when all acclaim the safe reprise of fresh, emergent growth, and in due gratitude for this deliverance perform full ritual before the stone - the great round stone in somewhat human form, center of worship for the Goddess Earth - we take our food and wine, a rolled up mat for lying on, to spend the day beside a mountain stream, the two of us, myself and Ariadne, arm in arm, two maidens on the edge of puberty, unmindful of the future and the past as time flows by in happy turbulence while we lie on the bank without a care, a pair united in the mystery.

As there was chaos once, so we are told, a swirling cloud of vapors infinite from which the Goddess Earth transformed Herself by her own will, so out of emptiness abiding love brings order to our joy. Out of the foetal safety of the night a day is born. If only we could see, precoded, what is presently to come.

It is the true perfection of a day. The soft spring sun draws color everywhere - poppies, anenomes, upreaching asphodels, blue iris and the tender hues of green; small flies in clouds with wings diaphonous, all dancing to the rhythm of their hope, later to drop their eggs, then fade away, of no more use for nature's balancing; fish, feeding, dimple on the water's face; birds, nesting, carry grasses in their beaks; snipe overhead, in steep dives whirring wings while far below their mates are brooding eggs well hidden in the marshy pasturage.

Sweet scent of herbs and soil warmed by the sun that throws a dappled light through leafing buds, our feet unsandled and our heads on moss we are caressed by the warm breath of air that stirs our senses to a new desire. Released by wine, we kiss, and kiss again.

Out of a fissure in the rock a snake emerges, long tongue flickering, new skin all bright and shining now the old is cast.

The stream runs gaily with the melted snow descending from the highest mountain tops, now rushing through the rocks, sun-sparkled, white, now slowing at the entry to a pool, foam-flecked and smooth, in dark obscurity dammed by a fallen tree, clouded with silt - only this muddy water stains the spring, purest of seasons. Later, maggots come to chew the leaves, and canker on the stems.

With all the magic tension of the day we both begin to feel a nervousness, a movement in the womb, a nameless need, a coming change, we know not what unease, our former joy mixed with anxiety, the growing-pain of a new consciousness. So must the form within the chrysalis feel change within itself, an unknown change to self-awareness coming when the case from inner pressure opens to release emergent beauty out of crudity so we can say to nature, "Here we are, endowed with grace and sensuality, freedom to fly, regenerate and die!"

We have a deep and different desire, an urgent craving, inexplicable. We notice how our breasts are rounding out, and how our nipples harden to the touch, and how the hair is grown between our legs. We try each other's body, privately, and wonder at the feeling so aroused.

How long, oh Mother Goddess, must we wait to burst the cage of our captivity and end the isolation of our hearts? Oh immaterial Mother who hast made our human form, our minds better than beasts' with words to formulate our conscious thought, and made us capable of love - grant soon the coming change we feel but cannot know, and, Goddess, please, do not deny us love.

From earliest memory we were a pair, Nysa and Ariadne. Everywhere she went, I went - princess of sacred blood and country girl. My mother was the nurse who cared for Ariadne as a babe. As I was born only a week before, as measured by the phasing of the Moon, I was her foster-sister, she was mine. We suckled the same breast. From infancy we played, and shared a bed. Purest of pure, the meaning of her name. Nysa means lame, as lame I was from birth, with no great harm. My greater handicap was lowly birth when I was in the circle of the court closed in with its materiality.

As we lie by the stream, and time flows by transmuting future into muddy past, the ring of love that has encircled us to keep out any thought of what must be, safe-guarding our absorption in ourselves, is penetrated by the very force of the impending crisis in our lives and we come to discussion of it all without our wanting, or intending it.

What spirits from without, surrounding us, invisible, will guide our destinies? What future draws us up, or drags us down?

5.

End of our girlhood now was imminent, and then fresh features of experience, all the demands of puberty to meet - she was the royal heir and must conform to the requirements of the ritual, and I her friend, equal to her in love, be forced to take the station of my rank born as I was to a most humble caste.

Already Ariadne looked two ways. She loved me as a sister, certainly. She'd liked to visit with my family and, until recently, saw nothing strange about the contrast in the way they lived, but now she had begun to look ahead to when she would be wearing finer clothes, and jewelry, and take her proper place as the queen's daughter in the courtly life. Already she had friends who looked at me askance, not fitted for their company, and I becoming ever more aware of our relationship's impending rift.

I was too proud to let her know my fear of giving up an easy life with her to go back to the squalor of the farm. I loved my family with all my heart, but not so much that I should live with them.

I sensed this day might really be the last of all our many happy girlhood days. She too was in a thoughtful mood. She said, "Look at the water, how it hurries by, born of the springs of Earth, and holy rain, and snow that whitens the cold mountain tops destined to dance its careless way to sea, as vital to our lives as is our blood."

"It is the blood of Earth, and shed for us so we can bear the passing flux of time."

"We see rain forming to the sky as cloud, wetly to fall on us and fill the ponds, to soak the ground, and stiffen up the stems of growing corn. Does it go round and round? Come and return? Die into Earth or Sea as we must do, but always come again?"

"All we know is, without it we can't live to wonder what's to come, or where it goes."

"Are our tomorrows all our yesterdays? I scoop this water in my hollow hand, hold it, or drink it, have it for a while, then it is gone - into eternity?"

"Alway to come again. Is it not so with us? We spend our mortal days, aware of them, between our birth and death, but still we can't remember any life we had before."

"We are still young. There must be more to learn."

"Yes," I agreed, thinking of how things were, and how such talk to my own family would be a waste of time. "Life is," they'd say, "The Goddess is. That's all we need to know."

After we'd eaten, drunk, and kissed, we lay our arms around each other, breast to breast and heart to heart, breathing each other's breath. The sound of water wrapped us in its waves, and like the cloak of night covered our sleep. The grip of time was loosened, and I dreamed.

A shaft of sun came piercing through the dome of billowing cloud, to lay its light on me. I saw that from between two rounded rocks the waters of the river spurted forth. The rocks became the body of a man with naked thighs, the sun became his eyes. I opened out my legs and into me, a sink-hole in the ground. the water came. The water was a blade, a hunter's spear that cut between my legs and entered me and filled me up, and made me big with life, heavy, and heavier than I could bear for joy of it, excrutiating pain of an unbearable desire, wave after wave of shuddering. I felt I had to burst and let the life rush out. Oh ecstasy! Oh pain of such unsatisfied desire! Before the life-force reft my raptured limbs I woke. My legs were wet, and it was blood. My time had come. I was a woman now.

Still Ariadne slept. I wakened her. She said, "The Moon is young, now is the time, and soon it will be me. How does it feel?"

"I had this dream" - I told her how it was, described, as best I could, the joy and pain, the wonderment that I experienced, the longing, the fulfilment almost there when I awoke to find my "moon" had come.

So grave she looked. "more than a change, I think, within ourselves, the force of destiny. At least we have enjoyed this one last day, the last that we may have as two young girls unfettered by the fears of womanhood. Now comes reality, and you know what."

"I know it, dread it, but it has to be. No more your equal, take me as your maid. One moment in my dream I was the Earth, taking the flood of time into Herself, creating life within Her wider womb. But I am just a country girl, though blessed now by the sacred flow of blood, the sign that as a woman I can make a life."

"Can it be worth it, when we count the cost of taking on responsibility? So carefree once, what will become of us?"

"Tell me that I can stay with you as slave sooner than never be beside you more when on initiation you receive, as priestess of the Moon, divinity."

"Nothing shall come between us, I do swear. As maid, you will be no less intimate for what remains to me of privacy. I also will be made a sort of slave to the requirements of the protocol. My freedom circumscribed, that may be worst. You'll be my eyes, my window to the world. For me, imprisoned in nobility, you'll be the visitor. When I am weak you'll strengthen me and stiffen my resolve. Though I am born of regal ancestry I know the vigor of your country stock. I know you have a better sense than me. Would I could wed you, have you for a mate - what children would be born to both of us! Don't ever leave me, that I beg of you, whatever circumstance may intervene. My darling Nysa!" And she held me close.

The stream flowed on in treeleaf-filtered light, unhurried, dappled, deep; or glittering in timeless torrent through the random rocks. Before we left, we bathed. She drew me in, reluctant first, clothed only in the rags of innocence. Over the stony bed we waded till the water reached our thighs and then sat down. We watched the water stain, washing the blood from me, the magic blood, with little curls of color spreading out and dissipating in the water's flow. But it was cold, and soon we left the pool and dried ourselves, and dressed, ready to go.

The birdsong in the trees was louder now as nature called a chorus for the close of my first life, a fanfare for the next.

I had been warned what I would have to do to keep the stain from showing on my gown. That done, and hand in hand, we wandered home, I feeling that the Moon possessed me now, and I must make a monthly offering.

6.

"My mother told me," Ariadne said, "that what the man puts into us is like a stem of barley, soft and small in spring, then hard and upward-thrusting to the sky, shedding its leaves, and ripening its seed, then limp, empty, and withered come the fall. It gives them a bad feeling, so she says, of their impermanence, as if to mate is to experience foretaste of death, reminding them of their mortality. It makes men jealous of our greater strength, although they may not know it consciously. Also they dream that women come at night, in some dark layer of a secret life, to lie on them, and draw their substance out. She says they have an enmity for us which will endure until they put us down and manage to impose their will on us so that we must accept their mastery. What saves us is their fear of Goddess Earth. When they can make us into goddesses which they control, obedient to them, then and then only will they feel secure."

I think that Pasiphae never loved, perhaps, a man, as Ariadne would.

She stopped, and thought, and said, "Ah, men! might it be possible to have a child without a man?"

"Not as I understand."

She seemed then to withdraw. We spoke no more as slowly we went homeward in the dusk. I'd often wonder at her swings of mood, as if her heart contended with herself. How would it be when she must take a man? It had to be, and when she did it seemed her love was stronger than her prejudice.

We knew about the cycle of the Moon. Next morning Ariadne said to me, "It's come. No more the carefree days, we’re women now. For that strange privilege we have to pay?"

"We have to feel the inconvenience inherent in the grace of womanhood."

"Perhaps it's better to be born a man."

In saying that she disappointed me. Of course we had been told what to expect - the crucial moment in a young girl's life when at the New Moon blood would start to flow out of our bodies at the very place babies should later come - the sacred flow the Goddess gives, though no one quite knows why, and later when the Moon is round we'd feel within ourselves the deep expectancy and know that we were ready for a man who with expanded strength would open us and let the Goddess' spirit enter in. But then, ah men! as Ariadane said. Better we were all born androgynous! Why did She have to make us as we are, in separate bodies, male and female each, so splitting our reality in two when She is one and indivisible. It seems we are condemned to difference, and difference means struggle to survive. Yet I believed there was a hope for us, given the Goddess' self-creating dance, might there not be a birth without a man?

Messy it was, this bleeding of the "Moon", but older women told us what to do. It was supposed to be the evidence of woman's spiritual union with Earth, as manifested by the Moon.

But why, oh why, this difference of sex? Give men some of our femininity, and us some of their masculinity and we might overcome the rivalry. It all seemed very strange, but I have found that when there's something hard to understand people accept it, and don't wonder why. A thought comes to me - one must first give birth to one's own self, as individual, but always to the whole incorporate.

One thing I knew, I did not want a man. My love for Ariadne was enough, not less, but even more as woman now. The roughness and the ugliness of men, their vulgar habits, their indifference to women's feelings - all affronted me. The concentration of my interest was in the things that only women do, and in the thoughts that only women think, and in the senses only women sense.

Men, I supposed, being so long repressed, from birth dependent on their mother's breast, as fathers with a smaller role in life, having no womb in tune with the One Womb, with the one Spirit not identified, blaming us women that we too much claim the womb and spirit only to ourselves, welcome the power and glory of the Sun which they perceive as suited to themselves distinct from Earth's dark femininity. The hardening of their sex instrument betokens their aggression. It is said some women envy this of them. Not me!

Fretted by the constraints of family their very nature makes them wanderers, to hunt, to whore, to war - alone, in bands - men gotten by the sun, belligerent, acquisitive, cruel and quarrelsome, eager to show themselves superior.

Where we are gentle, so they must be rough. Where they are rough they must be strong enough. Where they are strong they must also be brave. Where they are brave they must be dominant, and in pursuit of it, ready to die. Where we are life-creating they destroy, even to the destruction of us all, encouraged in their new way by the God. So, faith forsaken, they no longer hear the truth within their inmost ear, or see within the wisdom of an inward eye. Rootless, their restless feet trample the Earth, homeless at heart repudiate the home.

Perhaps if I had lusted for a man I might have seen it in another way. There is a myth suggests there was a time when male and female were identical. No one can say what made us separate. We women have to make the best of men.

What’s in a house Where woman rules? her roots, not mine grow down in deep of earth let her remain tied by her birth and do not cut the cord I’ll wander free Wherever pleases me And follow the sun Who is my lord

So sang the common man A song of liberty And little knew Until too late How the new order Of the turning world Would tie his labor To the land A serf or else Conscripted to the power play Of war – so little gained In victory, and in defeat Either to die Or be enslaved

7.

I see how wandering people need a god with no relation to a sense of place, not broadly based upon the ground itself but as an image of those attitudes in which men see themselves as dominant. Never for them the motherhood of Earth.

For us who loved the land, living so close, divinity was in the things we knew, the trees, the rocks, the rivers and the hills, the birds and animals who shared with us the Spirit's radiation out of Earth.

We women have our own view of the world, the men have theirs. A woman is, man does, as with our bodies how can this not be? She can be rightly proud to be an "is", the all-containing base and bed of life. Man's Goddess-given purpose is to buzz, a self-important pollen-bearing bee, into the precinct of the nectary.

Oh Goddess, why? Why are we made like this? You gave birth to the Sun, as separate, now strong, now weak, now overbearing us and now deserting us, so must our men, born as your sons, also burn us as suns, or disassociate from our distress?

Friction between the sexes is intense. I see it every time that I go home. Some daughters put their fathers first. Not me! I cannot do but take my mother's side.

There was a time when men were glad enough to work, or hunt, or play among themselves, retelling stories of their escapades, wrestling, or making other tests of stength, not needing any woman's company. They did their thing, as women did their own. At the Great Moon a change came over them. Whether the women somehow let them sense their readiness, and stimulated them as heifers seem to stimulate a bull, or if the Moon Herself affected them was something no one tried to understand but took for granted as the way things were.

Once mating done, the men withdrew themselves. Sometimes they stayed, and bedded with their mates until a child was born, but then no more until the mother finished suckling it when once again Moon's magic flow would come.

As women brought forth life, and made the home, the house was theirs, and so the first-born girl inherited her mother's property. The land was common to the villagers who took from it according to their work, but no one went without, and no one lacked in time of sickness or of accident. The very young and very old were sure of having care from the community.

The women had by custom worked the land. With hunting less important than it was, as much a sport for them as anything, men started to take part in husbandry and more and more opposed the women's will. Still they preferred to keep themselves apart, away from women and young families. Men needed men for their own company, it seemed the way most natural to be. The women too preferred it to be so.

So long as kept apart, we managed well. The women ran the homes in their own way until the men began to interfere.

I tell you this so you may understand the fundamental changes there have been between my childhood and the present day.

8.

Before the palace gates there was a space marked out by lines in an intricate way designed by Daedalus, master of crafts, for ritual, but later used for play, its inner meaning lost and leached away by feelings focused only on the day.

It was, so Ariadne told me she was taught, the complicated pattern for a dance in which each individual must join with strictly measured steps the greater dance of Earth and Sky, connecting each to each and all to the enfolding universe. Some say the floor is laid out to reveal a semblance of the Goddess' sacred womb, the fetal membranes round the unborn child and birth canal - that's something I don't know.

How Daedalus could know the mystic plan was something he himself would never say. Perhaps he was inspired from long ago with some forgotten memory of mind. Only when Dionysus was a man were some forgotten truths revealed again.

I see so clearly now, in my old age. The usage had become degenerate, an artificial play of formal steps, all feeling numbed, and hollow in the heart,

The village dance, of which you'll later hear, brought to the dancers utmost ecstasy in the experience of deeper life and sensing of connection with the Whole. The court dance was a matter of control, with steps of meaningless formality. I danced them both, and knew the difference.

As Ariadne's maid I lived at court, but now and then I saw my family, coarse-clad by contrast, lacking many things taken for granted by the richer folk. They knew no leisure, and their endless work followed the unrelenting turn of days.

From ages far beyond our knowing them, dimly remembered from the stories told, awareness of the unity of Earth had entered all the doings of the day as everything must follow Her design whether or not in mortal consciousness. About the time that I was born, it seems, Her influence, as being all in all, was weakened in the minds of many men who saw in Her the base of women's rule which they were coming strongly to resent, so when they joined together in the dance - the rhythmic measure of the pulse of life - most found in it a nice frivolity and felt no inspiration from within. So were the men made ready for the God.

Perhaps we should have kept the offering of human blood poured for the hungry heart of the Great Mother of the Universe. Then would the solemn rite of sacrifice have strengthened in men's minds a sense of awe most needful for the maintenance of faith. Blood, like the rain, runs down into the ground. So we returned the life received from Earth. But no, it could not be. Earth gives us life, as Dionysus says, and it is not for us in any way to shorten it, And yet, and yet - I sense an irony.

How did I get the wisdom that I have? Did Ariadne at her death bequeath to me whatever I would need to raise her son, destined for his divinity? or did the Goddess put it into me as She put milk into my breasts to feed Her chosen son his infant nourishment?

9.

Now Ariadne had her private rooms within the royal court - the common name for which was "labyrinth", after the sign, the labrus or the double-sided axe, the emblem of the born and dying Moon, two sickles, back to back, in ritual used by the priestesses for sacrifice. The meaning of the sign was taught to us, its understanding was vestigial.

From having been expanded every year in measure as the Cretan wealth enlarged, the palace plan - a maze of little rooms with passages that twisted here and there and roundabout upon themselves again in loops to feed back to their starting point - was so complex, the ways so very dark, that one who did not know them might be lost, unable to discover the way out. Hence Ariadne's thread, as you shall hear, its usage of a temporal intent, but everlasting in signifance, for better understanding of the mind.

The palace pattern and the dancing-floor matched in intricacy the many lanes meandered round the scattered inland farms.

The king was always called Minos, which means the creature of the Moon, who married him by proxy in the person of the queen. She was dependant on his manliness to enter her and let the Spirit in, creating in her womb new progeny, and, most importantly, a new princess. The queen, when her first son was of an age to raise the rod of masculinity, might choose to marry him, husband and son, through her divinity a mortal god but in all things subservient to her. At least that's how it was supposed to be. Queen Pasiphae lacked the strength of will, and lacked the backing of the councillors, to keep the present Minos in his place, so he’d assumed the power more and more with the encouragement of many men. To put this right was Ariadne's hope - a vanity, as I shall come to tell.

Crete at this time had prospered mightily. The northern seas were open to her ships. Trade was the tool that made her powerful. The more the power gained, the more the men took the control of secular affairs.

The surplus sons made sailors for the ships and soldiers to enforce Crete's primacy. exacting tribute from the isles around and from the mainland up to Attica. For this Crete undertook to maintain law and order, keeping pirates off the sea.

Bull-baiting was a popular event. Brought annually from the subject states as tribute to the Cretan overlord, young men and maids were rigorously trained to act their part as if it were a dance. Seizing the sharpened horns of savage bulls bred for the purpose of this spectacle, these skilled performers thrilled the audience with graceful leaps over the bulls' long backs. Stronger the bull, greater the risk of it, and all too often there were accidents and then the dance became a dance of death which was what many watchers waited for. The sight of fresh blood, red and running blood roused them to frenzy in the worst of ways.

Bulls had a special place in ritual, as being thought the strongest animal but weaker than the female principle. For most men was the meaning more and more obscure, forgotten, or misunderstood, but dimly sensed as not to be ignored, affecting fundamentally their lives and of bad consequence if not observed.

That is the way it was explained to me. Bulls had for long been used in sacrifice as representing men - it followed then men must themselves be bulls in ritual. The king being a bull, the queen herself must also have the semblance of a cow, wearing the smaller pair of crescent horns which by their shape honor the growing Moon.

The bull was indispensable for life, mighty and potent, just as is the Sun, but as the Sun is weak in wintertime, lest he seem stronger than his mother Earth, so must the bull in his full prime be felled lest of his own brute force he come to feel the dominance of his male attribute.

In the same way it had to be made clear man's muscle gave them no inherent right to greater part in the society. The role of women was superior. Such was the meaning of the dance with bulls, both sacred rite and public spectacle which showed the interplay of life and death, of male and female principle, of youth and age, in which the dancers, virgin girls, or young men dressed as representing girls, with skill and courage overcame the might of the great bull and took his strength away. All men were well aware how a bull-calf, castrated, would become a docile ox easy to manage, tamed, obedient, giving its strength to pull a cart or plough. Men feared to lose their own virility from women always dancing on their backs. But mostly they ignored the metaphor in their enjoyment of the spectacle, felt the orgasmic tension of the dance and the cathartic climax when they saw the bull's gold-painted horn tear into flesh, saw spattered blood, fruit-juice of violence, run down the breast of cruel destiny. In such brutality was beauty seen. Of course a bull that overcame the dance and drew a virgin's blood must then be killed.

Traditions notwithstanding, there was change, not revolution but a steady drift. Women were slowly losing dominance. Men left religion to priestesses and honored the succession of the queen, but largely undertook affairs of state. Uneasy equilibrium prevailed. Queen Pasiphae more and more withdrew and occupied herself in ritual of steadily decreased significance. If Ariadne wanted to restore the queen's authority, little she knew how she would give up all to please a man.

I doubted at the time if she had will enough to change the way things had become. I questioned everything except the Earth, the living Earth and Goddess of my heart, but Ariadne was quite different, accepting each sensation as it came. I saw how she reacted to the bull when we together went to watch the dance - her parted lips, her high expectancy, reacting to the offering blood stained red upon the body of a girl with an excitement that seemed surely sexual.

10.

Heart of my heart, my Ariadne dear must be initiated to the role of priestess, wear the sacerdotal dress, learn how to speak the words and how to hold the sacred snakes that signified the bond to the divinity whose Spirit gave us breath. She would be titled Sacred of the Moon, daughter divine, endowed with holiness.

Her mother Pasiphae was the queen, "All Shining One, reflected from the Moon", title that Ariadne soon would have by the hereditary law of Crete. Her mother, old, was ready to retire. Then Ariadne must select for king the ablest man to be executive and run the day to day affairs of state during the Great Year of one hundred Moons which signified in fact an eight-year term as reckoned by the watchers of the sky. How they could work it out I do not know - for my part I was glad enough to take for granted all such complicated stuff.

The queen was representative of She who gave us life and permeated all with the Great Spirit, only visible reflected from the Moon, whose triple terms of birth and life and death - but only death the while in darkness she renewed herself - had meaning for us in so many ways.

All this was Ariadne taught, and I, as her companion, could learn the same. I asked her, "Do we really need to know all this? Why do they comlicate it so? We have our Mother Earth, Her daughter Moon, we love them and believe that they love us. All we need do is keep to nature's way as common people do, humble ourselves to the divinity. We do new things and somehow this brings bad into the world. Out of the random working of the Earth humans impose an order not so good, unreal, false, and based on fantasy."

When Ariadne answered, from her voice I sensed a change was coming over her.

"Nysa, I might agree with what you say but I am not as other people are. I will be queen and priestess of the Moon. The Goddess Earth is our religion. Religion must have a discipline, a formal frame to hold the people's hearts where they experience the mystery. I can already feel myself divine. When I am in the mood I am possessed, I have no weight, and no solidity, I float on air, and I can feel myself so strangely free and incorporeal. Through ritual we let the people share the sense of bliss. It is my sacred role to realize my new divinity so I can free the people from their fears. The holy rituals have been designed to make us feel connected to the Earth, to feel in close communion with Her and everything that does comprise Her world, sharing the mystical experience, a state of being, knowing in ourselves the smallness implicated in the whole. As mortal, Nysa, you can be with me, talk with me, touch me as you use to do, but when the Spirit moves me, touch me not."

Did she pretend? No, she was serious, and I must say I was in awe of her.

But Ariadne had not finished yet. I think she needed to profess herself, and I was still her chosen confidante.

"The Goddess is in all of us, we know, but more so in my mother and myself. No man will dare to do me any harm. The Goddess is incarnate in the queen. The king governs the land on her behalf, and to ensure the fruiting of the crops must yearly die, but not himself be killed. That custom, as you know, is obsolete as being much too inconvenient, so a young bull is slaughtered in his place."

Did she mistake the outer forms of faith for the reality, blind to the truth within?

"So long," I said, "as we do not forget that ritual is only a technique to foster faith, and not the faith itself."

But she ignored me, and went on to say, "There is one thing I want to change. The king had come to have too much authority. He uses it to organize our men into a fighting force, with many ships to carry out attacks across the sea, exacting tribute from the weaker states, and to our men this seems the normal thing. As long ago they banded for the hunt their quarry now is human like themselves. They're made that way, which does not mean it's right. I'd turn aggresion into our defence. If war-games they will play, let it be thus. We must be able to defend ourselves. Trade makes us rich, and we can trade in peace more gainfully. I have to choose a king whom I can keep under my strict control."

What irony, in view of what transpired! I did adore and worship my princess. Her smile had charm to conquer anyone. Her frown made her look sad, but frightened none, and if at times she took it out on me in sudden anger, I could live with it. She looked the part of daughter of the Moon, Moonlike not in the shaping of her face but in the palor of her radiance. Like the white fragrant flower that opens out at evening, then fades at next day's dawn, she seemed a creature of the star-lit night, and never went unshaded in the sun so changed in her divine expectancy.

I little thought she had the fatal flaw that made her heart a hostage to desire. Women by woman are betrayed to men.

The queen is getting old The Minos sleeps most of the time The princess Ariadne is still young So we can manage her We noblemen of Crete Who make Crete prosperous The time has come for change We have the strength We only need the will

11.

I stayed with Ariadne all the time she was prepared for her initiate and taught the complicated rituals - of esoteric meaning beyond memory preserving truths no longer understood within the mind, but speaking to the heart - which would assert her new-come womanhood. Priestess, princess, and mortally divine, heiress apparent to the throne of Crete.

She took her duties very seriously, changed from the careless girl that she had been, and I was proud to be so close to her.

The Moon's maturity ordained the day, her bleeding finished and her womb disposed for her great role as the progenitress of Cretan life's certain continuance.

I readied Ariadne carefully, painted her face and breasts as was decreed by custom carried on from long ago; arranged her hair in the appointed style held by a string of pearls high on her head to show her white neck slim and delicate; perfumed her body with an oil of musk and then embraced her, holding back my tears, the last kiss of two lovers who must part, their equal bond of friendship disallowed. From then on I must be her handmaiden.

She was to stand beneath the sacred tree, a giant plane, older than memory, its stem a link between the Earth and Sky, its vital roots, through which the tree drew stength, deep in the dark, unseen, unknowable. From the outreaching branches hung small fruits as if the limbs were our Earth Mother's arms raised out to bless us with fertility.

It was that day which comes from time to time when Sun and Moon cohabit in the sky - The Moon who can restore us in the dark, who regulates our time, our age, and all the seasons of recurring life and death; the Sun, who lights us with a fiery disc, whose summer heat can kill without the rain which the Earth Goddess sends us when She will, whose winter fading is the weakening male. We are these things. We live them day to day. Their beauty saves the sadness of decay. That's why I have to tell you how it was, and if so much of what was then has gone deep down into a sink-hole of the past it is no doubt only to reappear after a sojourn in the dark of Earth.

Oh most momentous day! The Moon is full with future life the fiery sun rides high we dance we priestesses and prostitutes in honor of the Earth we dance we cannot otherwise we dance to feel the spirit in our hearts and wombs our lives are short our work is hard we dance to know divinity and as we dance we share the Goddess' ecstasy

12.

At one side was the queen and all her court, with nobles in their coronation robes, while at the other, on a rising slope where they could better see, the common crowd gathered from all of Crete this special day.

We lighted fires for aromatic smoke to make us open to divinity, put awe of mystery within our minds. Later the smell would be of roasted flesh, The day would end with a great free-for-all. The poorer folk but seldom tasted meat, which was a luxury for holy days.

As Ariadne neared the Tree of Life where a priestess, to make the sacrifice, was waiting with the double-headed axe, a rhythmic beating of the drums rolled out to make a throbbing tension-raising sound.

What I remember with most clarity after so many years of life gone by, which part of that long day lies uppermost within the tomb of what no longer is: the snorting bull strains at the holding ropes; the king comes forward with the golden ring that Ariadne henceforth has to wear as token of her marriage to the bull upon whose back she is then raised to sit astride, his living strength between her thighs to show his place in their short union; the queen takes off her cow-horned coronet and to a roll of drums and clash of gongs sets it with care on Ariadne's head - a moment's silence, then a rumbling sound as all the gathering prostate themselves in presence of this new epiphany.

The order of events I quite forget - the long-stemmed poppy-seeds I hand to her which she then holds up as a magic sign; the doves, released above her cow-horned head to hover white against the bright blue sky then soaring free into infinity; the snakes - I hated them, hated the pit where they were fed and kept ready for use, but Ariadne had no fear of them - that she let fall from her outstretching hands onto the ground beside the Tree of Life to enter Earth through holes among the roots.

But the main image from my inner mind - the great white bull, recipient of death, life's medium, collapses to the ground as blood spurts steaming from the axe-cut throat into the consecrated golden bowl. I hear as yesterday his groan of shame; I see again his slowly dying fall, male strength made subject to the maiden rule.

Next came the token rite of swallowing the blood and body offered by the bull.

We eat this meat the power and the glory of Earth we drink this blood of everlasting life

Our predecessors used to drink the blood and eat the flesh torn from the sacrifice still steaming with the energy of life, but that proved too revolting to the taste causing the throat to gag it up again, so much more sensitive had we become, so much less savage than our ancestry, and now, for blood's seminal potency does Ariadne drink dark wine as surrogate, and for the body eat a barley-cake.

The blood is poured into the hallowed ground around the roots of the wide-spreading tree to offer the Great Goddess energy. Why we should do this does not make much sense, as all life's energy must come from her. So magical the power of mystery, so ready are we to transcend ourselves out of the body to the spirit world, we can believe what is irrational.

As I stood close behind her in the rites I sensed the spirit incarnate in her. She stood proudly erect, with on her face the look of one possessed by deity, not seeing, at the same time seeing all; untouchable, but touching all of us; fearless, with freedom to remove all fear if we without reserve had faith in her.

To close the rites she must address the crowd, the congregation waiting on her words -

"I, mortal avatar of Goddess Moon daughter of Earth bring you continued life and the recurring seasons of the year

I bring you birth as once the Sun was born to be an independant child but ever part of Her who is forever All

I am all woman I am Earth I am the womb of life as you and I are We

I give you many births which are a sharing out among humanity of all-creating motherhood

Within me in my heart the seeds of life in darkness wait

Unique and separate disseminated parts of what is all as all is one

I am eternal present without future without past I am eternity

All must return to me where is no pain, no fear, no sickness, hunger, thirst, but everlasting happiness."

Her voice inspired, commanding every ear. She held her bare arms upward to the sky and all believed the Goddess spoke in her. The people loudly cheered, adoring her.

The priestesses in chorus made response with the respectful words of ritual -

"Thou who art come to be the most divine and radiant emanation from the Moon oh holy, holy, holy, thou who art the voice of Goddess Earth Great Mother who decides our destiny oh grant us daily life Eternal Spirit holy, holy, holy, Thou who art in all in whom all is send us fertility power to procreate spare us from storm and fire and flood famine and pestilence oh Thou who art all life and afterlife help us oh help us we humbly beseech oh holy, holy, holy!"

And afterwards they said among themselves, This Ariadne, she is something else... regard her beauty and the way she stands, how her eyes shine and yet seem not to see, how her eyes see and yet seem not to look. Truly she is the Goddess incarnate.

13.

If there could be a crowning every day to hold hearts open to the mystery there might not be the falling out of grace, the loss of reverence for all of Earth, the lack of that exquisite sense of bliss which comes from feeling wrapped in the warm cloak of unity, of life's infinity. On that one night at least, many went home with a fresh sense of their identity.

At what point was my mistress made divine? Supposedly the setting of the horns as emblem of the Goddess of the Moon, but I'd felt that the spirit came before, at sun-up, when she wakened to the day, rose out of darkness with a radiance of inner life more potent than the Sun. She looked toward the east,and the first ray struck light upon her, entering her womb. That dawning was her primal intercourse, her holy Earth-bud burst into display.

She never knew, except it was with me, the joyful sharing of a union with mortal flesh in mutual desire, the bonding of two people with the One we call the Earth, with all our need for love enlivened in the Goddess' orgasm.

And on that day the spirit wedded her. I sensed how she absorbed the mystery, reborn into a new reality as the Moon-priestess of the Cretan cult, and in myself I felt a certain change given of my proximity to her whose body I was privileged to touch, to wash, to clothe, and in humility to love, honor, and gratefully obey.

That night she was exhausted bodily. She was remote as I prepared her bed. She hardly spoke. I sensed an aura then as of a dense, illuminated daze, and afterglow of spiritual light.

She deeply slept. I know - I lay awake. Next day she said, "They liked me, did they not?"

"They more than liked you. You appeared to them as living testimony of their faith."

"Is it not passing marvellous, Nysa, to be a princess chosen for the Moon? And you, my handmaiden, can somewhat share the pleasure of my new pre-eminence. Oh I am happy, happy to be me!"

She was her normal, worldly self again. I never could foresee how she would be - untouchable, enwrapt, ethereal, or in her mortal sensuality, which last soon seemed more frequent than the first.

In some ways she and I were still close friends, but also she, in her new consciousness, was princess, deity, and queen to be, for when she wed her mother would withdraw. How easily she entered this new life, how hard for me so to adapt myself. She had no doubt of her ability. Really she played no role, she was herself. Body and spirit coalesced in her in a good balance, as it seemed to me, but I was wrong, which I was soon to know.

She treated all as her inferiors and I, in public, had to act her slave although in private we were different. She took great pride in her appearance now. I only, as her single confidante, knew that behind her brilliant facade there coursed the heartstream of a mortal girl. The dignity of her divinity, which she was always able to uphold, brought her a general respect and awe. I only knew her as she really was, could speak, in private, from equality, though sometimes, if I disagreed with her, she would remind me sharply of my place. The king, her father, took no interest. The queen, now she had given her the horns, left Ariadne to her own designs, gave no advice, and claimed no influence.

I'd see how she would go at fullest Moon to climb up on the stone and proudly stand - there was no sacrilege in doing so - raising her arms and looking to the sky. Clear Moonlight then would shine upon her face, upon her womb, upon her swelling breasts as if she, like the Tree rooted in Earth and open to the sky through her own self channeled the flow of sensuality and spiritual energy of joy, her joy to be alive and glorious, the love and passion of her being she.

A dark day made her petulant and dull. The sun delighted her, she loved the sun, but never let it light upon her face, a paler skin being a sign of rank. The concept of a male god in the sky, to me offensive, was not so to her for his association with the sun.

I wondered, as I watched, at what I saw to be an affirmation of her wish to satisfy her heart and body both, the claim of spirit and the carnal claim of womanhood, the calling of her womb, and as I looked I knew it was not me she wanted now. She waited for a man who, like the Sun, would come to penetrate her heart and body with virility.

I saw in her three forces that opposed - the power of spirit fed by mystery, the power of might and money that she now since her initiation had acquired, and then the power felt by all of us, the primal urge of flesh to join with flesh which may or may not have to do with love since it had come to be its own reward no longer only for creating life.

I say this now, when all too many years have filtered downward through my memory into the abyss of the past, to leave a residue of odds and ends of fact. I now have thoughts I never could have then, not having then had the capacity of conscious mind to make it possible. Just how experience has come to me to make me as I am I want to tell.

14.

After a feast there was the story-man with histories that we had heard before but always liked to listen to again and wonder at their meaning, even if we sometimes doubted at the truth of them.

One tale related how, not long ago, our forbears in their fear and ignornce fashioned of bronze a great bull-headed man and fed him, in a fire between his legs, a sacrifice of maidens and young men, thinking thereby to feed the force of life. To hear such things gave us a certain pride that we were not so savage any more. We'd tell it to the children for a threat to frighten them into obedience - "..or else we'll feed you to the minotaur!"

What I myself most liked to listen to: the story of the birthing of our Earth out of the Goddess' own chaotic self when all her swirling vapors coalesced into the order of the land and sea, and then the spin-off which became the Sun, the source of variable light and heat. Thus the Great Goddess made life possible and breathed her spirit into living forms. To give all life the same regard for time as measured by the rhythm of her heart she had her daughter circulate the sky reflecting us the mystical display of the Earth Mother's spiritual light.

Dependent on Her love we worship her not as a person but as the One Force, the only force uniting all our world, maintaining our connection to the whole.

All other concepts of divinity are nothing more than aspects of Herself, beginning, being, future without end and all contained in an eternal now, with no embodiment except in us.

Because we needed something for our eyes to contemplate, and for our hands to touch, something on which to concentrate our minds, she sent us from the sky a rounded stone to be the center of all ritual, a solid symbol of divinity.

Many there are who call the Sun a God having more power than the Goddess Earth. Those who believe this myth are mostly men. They say the Sun is male, but they are wrong. It's true we tend to to talk about Earth's son; The Sun is neither female nor a male, the Sun is both, the Sun is epicene, spun from the Goddess to enable life, woman in man, and within woman man.

Now that the men assume the role of priests they like to stress all difference of sex and make male attributions everywhere epitomized in strength and dominance. We women have inferiority wherever men can make that seem to be.

In my old age I am outraged to hear the stories promulgated by the priests, mere theological expedients to keep the people bonded to a law by which they must obey the ruling class, their faith engendered not by what they feel but what priests tell them that they must believe.

Living in touch with Earth we have no need of priestly doctrine when we simply know the breath and heartbeat of the Goddess Earth as we call Her who has no boundary, nor shape nor form, unlimited by time. We keep this private knowledge to ourselves. If we forget that each is every one, as worthy of respect; that any life is just as sacred as the queen's once was, then enters evil in our intellect, a sickness, manifesting greed and fear.

15.

Most of the women serving at the shrine must, as a duty, prostitute themselves, pretend to be a goddess to the men for whom it as a most religious rite, the holiness of mating with the Moon. And for the women it was good, they too, well-trained to be ten-minute goddesses or even sometimes bridal for a night, felt themselves taken with the Spirit's grace, transcended out of their mortality into a foresight of the afterlife. When done within the sanctified surround the act of mating was a sacrament preceded by a rite of cleanliness that made both mind and body purified.

All well-born girls must take their turn at it, but not the country maids who wed at once, and bred at once, upon their puberty. As princess, Ariadne was exempt.

From sacred union few babes were born. There was a special herbal which they took to guard against unwanted pegnancy.

As for myself, I felt my body mine and not to be defiled by any man. The spirit dwelt in me without all that; to be with Ariadne was enough. How easily it seemed to come to her that I was at the same time equal friend but also slave. Easy enough for her, to royal manner born; for me it was something with which I never came to terms but must adapt to, the best way I could. In private we were ever as we were - well, no, not really as we were - she might dismiss me any time if I presumed too much. I had to watch my words. To criticize was always dangerous. I kept her well informed of what went on, how common, poor, and also rich folk felt - all that her isolation kept from her. From courtly life there was no more escape, the way there'd been before her crowning day. as once, in secret, carefully disguised as country girls, we'd bluffed the palace guards and joined some young folk whom I'd known from home. We ate the magic mushroom and went mad with ecstasy, forbidden though it was, reserved for special ceremonial rites and even then denied to commoners. (This was the case till Dionysus came to tell about the mushroom's proper use.) On this occasion, so beside myself, weightless within a wonderful new world, in maze of mind I mated with a boy. I hardly knew what happened at the time, with afterward a mixed-up memory of ecstasy, of being out of mind, of something bad, and something that was good. I never knew what Ariadne did. She never told me, and I never asked,

The something good was latent in my mind connected to the feeling I had known that day we'd lain so close beside the stream. Mere thought of it would turn my nipples hard so that I touched myself, and fantasized - not of a man, but of the breasts and thighs of Ariadne - oh my secret dream! - my mistress now, but still my only love.

I watched her growing interest in men. So be it, she would have to take a man. Her early fervor in the priestesss' role I saw diminish as the moons went by. Taking for granted her divinity she carried out her duties at the shrine efficiently enough to satisfy those who observed. I only was aware how her performance lacked in piety. I ventured once, while putting on her gown, to talk of our connection to the Earth, and wished that people understood it more.

"Oh that," she said, "is not the point. The point is to perpetuate a sense of awe to make their lot in life acceptable and guarantee obedience to me."

This attitude of hers was something new but I refused to let it bother me. For all my awkward role, these were good days for the most part, but fated not to last.

16.

There is a story how a woman once while walking with the man who was her mate picked from the tree of life a ripened fruit, looked at the seed within, and learned from it the knowledge of her sexuality, became aware of how there sprung in her the blood uprising from the heart of Earth, the source of life which made her separate from her companion. She told the man, who was afraid, for he then realized there was a place deep in the dark of her where he himself could never penetrate, as is the Sun, for all his majesty, unable to intrude into the Night. Out of this fear came his compulsive need to master her with muscularity. Such ancient stories have to make some sense.

There came a change in woman's functioning which happened gradually, over time, then suddenly burst into consciousness. Coition was no more the blind response to an instinctive urge at certain times responsive to the Moon, but came to be something for its own sake desirable without regard for procreative need, either - and the distinction is profound - as the expression of requited love of from the need to satisfy a lust no longer limited to oestral days.

With wealth came leisure, and with leisure pride, possessiveness, conceit and vanity. The men were more and more in charge of things. Then women found that sexuality was something they could use to modify and even tame the manners of the men.

Scented with musk and clothed for coquetry, pursuit of beauty had priority. Imported fashions, cottons, colored silks made costumes to show off their shapeliness. Arousal of the passions of the men became a game, mating now felt as fun by many who had leisure to enjoy.

As a result a man had to protect his right over the woman of his choice and came to think of her as property. A woman must be sure to please her man as the provider of her luxury, so she would do her best to keep him keen which also meant attracting other men who, though they had their mate, often felt free to bed with other women if they could.

Some women knew it gave them influence, were ready to confer or to withold their favors. Though their public dominance grew less, their private power gained from it.

With eyes wide-painted like a heifer's eyes, hair curled in ringlets and their breasts held high by new-invented stiffened bodices, the women of the court showed themselves off in frills and flounces, flirted with the men who, to attract their favor, gave then gifts.

Women now knew the herbs that they could use to interrupt the Goddess' gift of life, and this contributed to loss of faith in their connection to the All of Earth and so a separation from themselves.

I'm speaking only of the privileged. Long years have passed, and still the country folk, the poor, the humble, and the dispossessed have not attained the same development, or decadence might be a better word. Forgive me I'm too censorious.

Ariadne, as you may suppose, had men enough who hoped to marry her. Some of their presents she'd pass on to me, as well as clothes, and even jewelry, always insisting I must look my best. I was at risk. Men thought I was fair game, a country girl, to take advantage of. I had to learn the way to fend them off without incurring their dislike of me.

Compared to Ariadne I could hardly shine. She was so fair when all of us were dark. her slim hands tapered to their finger-tips when ours were thick, and blunted at the nails. Her style of beauty was the paradigm which other women tried to emulate, lacing tight corsets round their thicker waists to force the figure she by nature had.

I asked her once, "How come you have fair hair? Her answer was sublime - "Am I not born to be a goddess? Goddesses are fair."

"Your mother and your father both are dark."

"Who knows who was my father really."

Her duty was to choose a man, or else agree whatever choice was made for her. We dreaded this. So long as possible she would put off deciding on a man. Minos the king was glad enough for that.

Some men soon tired of court society, and these were they who ventured in the ships and spread the fame of Crete across the seas, increased her wealth as they enlarged her trade - designs of pottery and metal-work, fashions of dress that were thought civilized. In great demand was wine we made from grapes together with the roots of vines to grow, once brought to us in trade from far away.

17.

The fleet made ever longer voyages and was for longer time away from home. As yet no other country threatened Crete, so there was no defence against attack.

One night there was a ring around the Moon, a sign of rain to come, a blessed boon for our dry summertime, to stiffen up the stems of corn and fill the ears with seed. The air was pregnant with expectancy. Rain-dances started up spontaneously throughout the farms and country villages.

Came little rain, but something else befell. Next day, and all our ships away at sea far to the west extending our frontier, three fighting ships sailed in from Attica. Their tribute was now due, but why three ships? Why all the fighting men? Uneasiness, sure but indefinite, came over us. The first to come ashore, striding the surf, was Theseus as we later knew his name, a man of obvious authority, well-built and very beautiful to see but with a stern and somewhat angry look. He was the son and heir of old Aegeus, ruler of Athens and of Attica. Seeing his ships, we wished our fleet was there instead of chasing pirates in the west.

Behind him came the tribute we were due - the seven each of maidens and young men for training in the baiting of the bulls, and when we saw them we were reassured as no doubt he intended us to be.

How foul the name of Theseus stinks, to me believer in my Mother Goddess Earth and in my mistress, mortal avatar of the Moon Goddess, glory of the sky. I'll hate his memory until I die which as it happens, is a good long time. Dear Dionysus told me not to hate another person, but what do I hate? I have this thought, that if the spirit leaves and yet the body lives, what is there left? An ugly sort of thing, compassionless... and I am sure Theseus is such a case - if he is still alive - vain-glorious, contemptous of all authority - besides his own - of deeply held belief and ancient faith, heedless of mystery but hiding it behind an outer face of confidence and manliness enough that with his looks he seemed himself a god.

He came of that nomadic stock, the tribe we'd heard about, that not so long before had come down from the north, a heartless land that reached away beyond imagining, uncultivated, rumor had it, dark, peopled by beasts and men who lived like beasts, with summers cool and winters killing cold, where woman was no better than a slave and made to live like any animal. They settled in the land that we call Greece, imposing on the luckless people there new ways, new laws, and a male deity who was for them the one and only God whom they associated with the sun. They paid some service to the Goddess Earth but saw her as their God's obedient wife, though with due dignity - and that was more than they accorded women as a whole. Male strength and their tradition made it so, although, we'd heard, the climate and the ways of those they overran did soften them. They must have thought they'd reached a paradise compared to where they'd ever been before, a land their jealous god had promised them, a tribe He favored over other tribes.

The worst thing was, as I have understood since Dionysus made it all so clear, we lost the Goddess as the metaphor and focus of the unifying whole. The people of the land were dispossessed not only of their independent means but of their spiritual heritage. The local people had to make pretence of their submission to the foreign god, keeping the secret of their true belief, but in the end what shows is what succeeds and so it was the widening gap between the new sophistication of the rich and the primeval knowledge of the poor resulted in the blurring of the truth between true nature and its counterfeit.

There always had been some anxiety that there might come a challenge from the Greeks to overthrow our own supremacy. Now, looking back, I can see there were men among us who within their private minds waited to welcome any outside aid in the assertion of male dominance, for which they'd sell their country to the Greeks and trade their souls for the short benefit.

We gentlemen of Crete made prosperous by trade welcome the Attic prince Theseus an admirable man who brings good news of the one Mighty God creator of the earth who lives in heaven somewhere in the sky a god for men whom we must fear and live according to his law which he makes known in his own way if there is such a deity as Goddess Earth she is his wife bound to obedience so long as we believe and daily worship him he'll give us what we want delivering to us those who deny his majesty and when we die if we have done his will we'll join him in his heaven's happiness.

18.

This Theseus claimed to come in friendliness - oh yes, he was a master of deceit who gave no hint of any bad intent. He greeted Minos as one must a king, with courtesy but false humility; he knelt to Pasiphae as the queen, offered his sword in token of respect for her regality, but showed no sign that he acknowledged her divinity. Perhaps not many people noticed this.

My Ariadne he set out to charm, playing upon her latent vanity. Oh, I mistrusted from the very first the man's sincerity - don't ask me why!

Was my reaction only jealousy? For all we'd told each other about men I had to witness Ariadne fall in love. What did she see in him? I understood she saw a prepossessing man of will, brash, brutal, crude, and strongly masculine, a shining man, a hero to her eyes, the representative of something new, some future, fuller life, and vigorous, promising change, a change desirable, a fresh untailored cloth within a house of remnants from an age of decadence, a tonic to the tedium of Crete.

My perfect Ariadne was thus flawed in that she'd give up everything for love as she perceived this stirring of her womb, a light of lust in which she saw not him but, blinded by her incandescent urge, a hero of her own imagining. Used as she was to getting her own way she took for granted he would fall for her.

Oh my sad heart! sad hearts of everyone! What have we done to lose the innocence the Goddess' nature once afforded us?

Oh weep for Ariadne's peace of mind when her rash love destroyed her confidence! She sensed no evil in the ways of men in this new change that had come over her, but such a blind, one-sided love as hers - not that she yet knew its one-sidedness - could only ever lead to suffering.

She'd only loved me, as I realized, until the man she might love came along, and then for love she gave up everything. The mortal in her overcame the force of her divine responsibility. Her spirit was from Earth; her body fell; immortal Earth, mortal her earthiness!

I felt the loss not only for myself but for the people and their ruptured faith, and with lost faith the loss of happiness. Where once the Goddess' spirit gave them joy and comfort in their lives' uncertainty, but when denied left emptiness of heart, the Greek god gave them a new sense of guilt.

She let this man delude her of his love. How come? What sudden urgency? This was no proper love, although she thought it so. He had misled her with his craftiness. Why did she fall? Had I so failed her then? Her once pure heart empoisoned by the pride of her position - nothing then denied to her insistence weakening the strength of her divinity- might that be so? How else account for her aberrant act- Heart's hunger for the food of fleshly love as uncontrolled as cancer in the womb feeding on what is not its proper fare determined by invisible complaint?

Love is a recent concept of the mind, as separate from lust - made possible only by leisure in the daily lives of those more privileged than heretofore. At first we had no word for such a thing, mixed as it was with awe at our own birth out of the living womb of Goddess Earth that had no context of carnality.

We deeply felt, but did not formulate ideas for which there were as yet no words, and without words could not communicate. Having no questions, we did not dispute. Religion was a word we did not need, we were it, as it habited in us - when I say us I mean as women are - we only felt, and what we felt we knew, having no reason then to talk of it.

But now all the self-confidence is gone. With doubt comes so much self-examining. Men introduced their god, and with their god a need to organize, and to explain, indoctrinate - for which they needed words. Words seeded disagreement in the world. What once was natural, and from within, was now external, supernatural, taught by the priests who, in their arrogance, professed to tell us what we should believe.

We've had our own priestesses, to be sure, but they were there only to celebrate what we all knew to be the only truth, the pure simplicity, the real thing, the Spirit which the Goddess gives to us, eternal light, which, though it may be dark, is never stopped from burning in our hearts.

Mortals crave bliss. According to the priests the new god promised bliss, but in return for blind obedience. From this derived the priestly power. Keen to please the king they made up laws acceptable to men, and then, to give them authenticity, pretended that they were the words of God.

There was no need of such theology. We kept our Goddess-worship secretly. We loved her in our hearts, and had no need to demonstrate our faith in any way. The priests, unable to suppress the truth, decided to incorporate our faith as part, but less important, of their own. We knew this later. Then, our hearts were numb till Dionysus made us feel again.

You ask, how did the golden bloom of Crete get plucked into the Grecian buttonhole? I'lll tell you how. I'll tell of our despair...

Oh all pervasiveand inclusive Earth creating out of death renascent life canst even Thou pardon apostasy? Oh suffering Spirit wilt thou stay within our hearts whose words and deeds deny Thine own identity? Oh gentle dove of peace and happiness remain with us. Oh do not fly away back to the mist of thy chaotic origin and leave us dead of love even toward ourselves.

19.

Theseus it was who plucked the flower of Crete. His self-esteem was total, unrestrained by any judgement of the inner mind. He came, he looked, and what he wanted took, aided by Cretans gotten prosperous who fretted under a queen's dominance, as little as was left of it beyond the customary forms of ritual and matrilinear inheritance. For their own selfish benefit these men supported Theseus, planned and carried out a palace revolution - traitors they, both to their country and the realm of Earth - and Ariadne tacitly concurred.

I was bewildered. Can a heart be false? A heart as pure as hers? The heart is truth and by our faith the heart is given us to guide us through diversions of the mind as in the dance of the intricate steps that we performed in honor of the Earth, triumphing over false appearances. Or so I had believed. Was I so wrong?

I tried to talk. "My mistress, oh my love, what change is this that makes you go against your people, your divinity, and both your mortal and eternal mothers? Though I have no right to say it to you, please consider that it cannot be your heart that's telling you to feel the way you do, more like a hunger or a panting thirst some aberatiom of your real self that temporarily excludes the truth as passing clouds cut off the Moon from us, the inner light without which things go wrong and evil comes to turn us upside down."

She said, "I kmow exactly what I do. I love this man. I mean to marry him. It is my right. You don't know what it is to love as I do now. Such love is true, and so it must be right. I know it must."

"Can you be sure? How can you trust this man? Does he love you as much? One-sided love is not the real thing. How can you tell? His god is man-imagined, not instinct. He sets himself above all womanhood, and, I believe, by getting you for wife he really means to get control of Crete. For that one purpose he'll pretend to love, and win you with his fire and flattery. His reputation is not good, you know. We've heard of him, and things that he has done. Once married, you may find him different, expecting you to be his underling. That's how the Greeks...."

She interrupted me. "Nysa, remember whom you're talking to. Do not presume too far. Only because of our past friendship, and your loyalty, can I put up with you. I understand, you don't know what it is to love a man, some freak of birthing makes the way you are, incapable of what is natural, corroded by envy's acidity. Leave me alone, and mind your own affairs."

That I should not know what is natural! She, a betrayer of the sacred Earth! Brought close to weeping by her cruel words, and with a choking throat, I answered her.

"But my affairs are yours, and all I have. For our dear Goddess' sake, listen to me, and for the sake of all that we have been..." - my voice broke so that I could hardly speak - "to one another, all we've ever felt...."

"A handmaiden is all you are to me."

"A handmaiden who loves her mistress so she must speak frankly when she fears for her."

And Ariadne may have felt some guilt for suddenly an anger broke in her such as I'd never seen, or could have thought she had in her. She was possessed. Red in the face, she seized her looking-plate of burnished bronze, and would have struck at me if I'd stayed near enough. In starting tears I said,"Forgive me, I meant only well. From now on I shall keep my proper place. I'm sorry to have angered you. I'll go, and come back later when we've both calmed down."

I never brought the subject up again. I saw it was no use. Whatever else, I had to keep a close relationship. If I was right, she'd need me in due time when she saw Theseus' insincerity as I was sure she would. My love for her, suffer as my heart must, meant loyalty. Perhaps in all the tension there may be between two people, one must always be thr weaker of the two, and have the pain.

I had to watch in wretched agony the way things went,and all as I foresaw. She did whatever Theseus told her to as though she were the victim of a spell which made her happy in his mastery, enjoying such surrender of herself.

One night, first having seen to it the guards were drugged, she led him to the Minos' room where the old king lay snoring on his couch - left Theseus there, knowing what he would do.

She took a thread such as was used in dance to teach the novices their proper steps, and to be sure her lover not get lost among the labyrinthine passages unwound it, as she went, for him to feel and follow in the dark. He humored her, not needing it, and thanked her for her help. At this point he did anything he could to reinforce her love and make her his, and only I could see what he was at. Even her mother seemed to be deceived. She too admired this prince from Attica, not being clever at the best of times, always susceptible to handsome men.

At dawn, as planned, the Grecian fighting men came from their camp beside the ships of war and seized the palace gates. Minos was dead. Theseus had cut his throat while he still slept and taken for himself the golden crown he needed to be set on his own head at his annointing as the King of Crete and husband to the priestess of the Moon. Queen Pasiphae should have been his wife while she still lived. Theseus rejected this, flouting tradition. and nobody dared to put themselves at risk opposing him.

Those men of Crete who took part in the plot Theseus appointed to the government to do whatever was his policy. The rest is history, down canyons of irrevocable descent. No good for Crete would come of it. Without delay and with a minimum of ritual Theseus took Ariadne for his wife. Only in one thing did she counter him, insisting that I should remain with her.

Impatient as he was to change our ways from an allegiance to the Goddess Earth, with all the ceremonial involved, to worship of his god - which signified in practice doing what he, Theseus, willed - he understood it was as yet too soon. Needing acceptance by the populace he had a sense of what was possible.

The marriage service, though somewhat abridged, was carried out in the accustomed way. She wore the sacred cow-horns on her head - the crown he'd later throw into the sea as an obscenity to his god's eyes. I noticed that the symbol of the cow might now be taken as subservience, foreshadowing the new male mastery. So symbols take their meaning from the time.

He crowned himself as bull-king for the day. The marriage made, all he desired was his when Ariadane's dowry brought him Crete. He'd forge upon the anvil of his will the fetters that would bind Crete to the God, to him, and to the feudal rule of Greece.

"I, Theseus, tell you this, you men of Crete assembled here today to hear your king I tell you this:

I bring new order to tbis world of yours this world of worthy men so listen to your king -

Too long, too long you've let the Earth rule you, this woman Earth, the time has come for you to learn the truth

I tell you this you gentlemen of Crete too long have you allowed women to rule your ways to lead you by the nose like nose-ringed bulls with blunted horns

Too long, too long you've yielded primacy according to some primitive belief

Through the good will and wisdom of the God so long as you obey the laws he gives through me you may control the Earth to your own benefit women and birds and beasts fishes and all the wealth that Earth produces - all at your command

I tell you this there are new ways to build, to grow, new ways to live which you will learn from me the prince and future King of Attica

The Earth is ours and all that therein is so long as we believe our God's omnipotence

I tell you this you gentlemen of Crete your queen is now my wife and in due time a time that I'll ordain she will produce from the strong seed of my most royal loin a prince, an heir, a man chosen by God to rule when I am gone in the meantime when I am absent I shall choose a governor

Regard your womenfolk as servants to your will you are the masters now!"

20.

Theseus was much admired, mostly by men who saw in him a way to better life - not knowing how he played them all for fools - and by those women who were taken with his handsome looks and overbearing ways as if they'd had enough of being on top and had a taste to try the passive role of sweet docility and servitude, in bondage free from all initiative, protected in their homes, for which the price was sexual and mental slavery which certain women found enjoyable. But many of them, hearing his harangue, lowered their heads, in silence and in fear.

His chief support came from among the rich who saw in him protection for their wealth against the envy of the many poor. They wanted someone stronger than they'd had, who, more than Minos, would uphold the right to do much better than a neighbor might and never mind it being just or not.

When Theseus spoke, his words, like summer wind out of the cooling north, shivered the leaves of their responsive and delighted foliage. His frown resembled thunder in the sky from which they ran for shelter to his will; his seldom smile softened all prejudice, though there some who doubted, like myself.

For those who wanted a strong leadership, the quality that makes men feel secure, it seemed as if destiny brought him there, or if not destiny, then this new God.

What with the failing faith in Goddess Earth, a greater safety was the gift he bore. They wanted something more discernable, a being they could see in their minds' eyes, a lord and master fashioned like a man but never visible, someone supreme, his law incontravertible and clear which, when obeyed, might bring them happiness if not at once then in an afterlife; when disobeyed would bring due punishment. Theseus on earth, and his god in the sky.

Some of us wondered what it really meant, and felt that in our silence safety lay.

We men of Crete who work the land for food make ships and sail the seas build houses measure time by phases of the moon

We men of Crete who fill with our hot flow the women's wombs who by their magic make the babies come but not without the intercourse of our enablement

We men of Crete so long in womens' eyes inferior to them we wonder now can it be true what this man says this leader of the Greeks who leads us now can it be true this god he talks about who lives up in the sky?

Can it be true that he created land and sea and sky mad the first man and woman out of man?

Can it be true that He alone will punish or reward? that nature's rage the storms we dread floods frost and drought all issue from the hand of this great deity in anger terrible in pleasure kind and loving us if we believe or punishing if we do not?

Must we believe obey bow down? King Theseus tells us that we must he tells us that this God is father to us all

He tells us being male is to be lord over the family as he is lord over the universe

He says man is superior to what we have assumed to be our basis and our origin the Mother of the Earth

Are we to be masters now? We like the thought of it we like this Grecian God can we believe and worship him so he is kind to us?

It seems a good idea!

21.

And Ariadne seemed content at first. A fine addition to the royal rooms gave her a comfort and convenience far greater than she ever knew before. He gave her silks, scents, ointments, jewelry, all things to keep her happy day by day and take her mind of what was going on.

He censored, as it were, her company. No one came near her presence who opposed his and the God's complete authority. His spies had ears within the palace walls, within the houses, in the market-place, and I myself must take care what I said. I always knew that he mistrusted me. I lived in fear of being sent away however Ariadne might protest.

I have to say that also I enjoyed the benefits of life he granted her. With extra servants, all I had to do was the most private of my mistress' needs and keep her company throughout the day, but I despaired to see her attitude, her new neglect of spiritual dues. She seemed uncaring of her country's good, accepting with complacency the way so many were converted to the God.

To think that she once said to me, "Nysa, I'll have the rich give treasure to the shrine for sharing out among the needy poor." This good idea of hers had become known and it had helped make Theseus popular when he made clear he would have none of it.

Now she behaved as if there were this God, with Goddess Earth become his willing wife, no doubt seeing the Goddess as herself.

"We must move on, Nysa, go with the times. These Greeks are more developed than we are in farming, fishing, building, quality of daily life and in religion."

"How do you know?" I aked.

"He tells me so."

A fundamental change was taking place. My Ariadne, smitten as she was, seemed not to notice it. She hung upon his words as humbly as a puppy hangs upon the master's heel, heedless of kicks. So blinded by the fever of her love, a rough word only made her feel at fault.

She liked to sing, while I accompanied her upon the lyre which I played well enough, but I could not enjoy her song of love:

"By day or night when sky is clear there is a light low down toward the edge of all we know sometimes near the rising Moon seldom the same place twice or even not at all brightest at dawn or dusk as dusk is dawn of night we call this bright light love and hang on it all our desire."

22.

Theseus! Ambition was the driving force that superceded Ariadne's need. He'd never make her happy. When she woke from her enchantment she must find it so. Oh how I hated him! And hated her for her stupidity - almost, but no, I had to love her. How she treated me was somewhat similar, it seemed, to how he treated her - and yet so different.

Once she complained to him. But only once. He took her by the shoulders, shook her hard, and said in a loud voice for all to hear, "Never dispute what I command or do. Obey me as is proper for a wife. Accept the fact that I am always right. Enjoy the life-style that I'm giving you. As I'm your master, I am not unkind, subject yourself completely to my will as is the law between a man and wife and you'll find pleasure in the peace of mind."

He stared hard at her. With wide open eyes she was a flower to his shining sun, a heifer to the bull, so eager to enjoy submission to the man. He was her lord, and her belief in his authority brought her a very pleasurable pain, an addict to the sense of slavery.

Then something happened that aroused in me suspicion of her not being satisfied in the most urgent of her body's needs. One afternoon - he never there by day - she says, "I'm lonely, Nysa, come to me." She motions me beside her on the couch where she lies langorous, to take a rest, a time when entry to her private room was disallowed to anyone but me. The day is hot. She wears a flimsy gown through which her body shows. Her golden hair is loosed, and spread in waves about her face. Shining with lustrous light her painted lips parted a little, moist, and sensuous. I am possessed by rising of desire. I sit beside her, then she draws me down and puts her mouth to mine. Hard. Carnally. "Take off your gown," she says, and opens hers so our two bodies lie in nakedness each upon each, and at the contact each is overtaken with a frenzied urge that cannot be denied. I see her eyes, no longer dull, are pale with urgency. Our breasts meet first, the nipples rising hard with such reaction to the touch that sets our bodies heaving with intense desire. Our breath comes fast. The odor of her flesh intoxicates me. Now our arms and legs are intertwined. Such need comes into us that we caress each other in our privacy in mindless, throbbing, frenzied ecstasy on, on, unbearable until release - an overwhelming, shuddering release - all chaos gone and order reassumed.

The sweat is running down between my breasts. My heated heart chilled with a draught of guilt as Ariadne reasserts herself - "No, no, never again, it cannot be. I am the mortal goddess, you my maid. Keep you your place,and I must keep my mind."

"I love you, Ariadne, till I die. Deny me that, I might as well be dead." Reacting from what we have felt, I weep. She turns away, and will not answer me.

I thought I understood, but could not say - Theseus excited her desire at night, discharged himself, left her unsatisfied.

"I need to wash," she said, "I stink of sweat and of the odors of our love." And I, her slave again, fetched water from the well.

Some nights, along the avenue of time, I'd touch myself and fancy it was she, or when I stood up close to comb her hair my breasts would harden as they touched her back.

A man had entered me on that mad night when we escaped the confine of the court and ate the magic mushroom. None the less I felt myself intact, inviolate. Only had Ariadne come within the flower of my femininity.

23.

Queen Pasiphae, tired of state affairs, and, it was said, bereft of memory, infirm of body, ailing in her mind, professing outrage at King Minos' death but not exactly grieving for his loss, was glad enough to shut herself away with no society but serving maids; gave Ariadne all authority, however superficial, of the state. Theseus, who now held all the real power, wielded through her the warrant of the law.

Theseus decreed a temple to be built to glorify the God who as the Sun created Earth for man's monopoly. No one against it dared say anything, their conscience silenced by their cowardice. Most women, you may very well suppose, were horrified at what was going on, astonished at the shift in paradigm as suddenly they lost authority. They worshipped Goddess Earth in secrecy along with a minority of men whose hearts held steadfast to the older faith.

The fleet came back, but if any there were who hoped it would mean Theseus' overthrow they were deceived. The changes he enforced were pleasing to the men, who saw in him the champion of their rights, and, what was more, deliverer from woman's overrule.

They readily converted to the God, and, as they wanted wives to be for them henceforth more servile and obedient, so they approved the Goddess Earth's new role as ready consort to a greater God.

Theseus was shrewd enough to leave alone the ritual and customs, but made clear that over all the God was paramount. If anyone was heard to disagree - which people were encouraged to report - measures were carried out to silence them.

The country folk as yet were hardly touched, and anyway had no time for a god quite unconnected to the living Earth, but Theseus' arm would reach to them in time.

So what did Ariadne see in it? Still blinded by her love, she hardly knew. Her mother died, and she professed to mourn. In public she conducted proper rites attending to her mother's funeral.

That the new order let the ritual, the ancient ritual, be still observed only until Theseus was in control of minds and matter beyond challenging was something Ariadne would not see.

"Robe me in white today," she'd say, "as best befits the priestess of the Moon. It is important that the people see the spiritual power of the Earth that through the means of my divinity may bless them and their children after them through time without beginning, without end."

Whatever she might think, the foreign ways were slowly undercutting native roots, stunting the growth of love and happiness. Though people lived much as they always had, a fear of the unknown now haunted them. Yes, there were dangers in the wilderness, but we'd accepted them as part of life. Now nature, so the men of God declared, was something to be tamed and overcome since what was wild was contrary to God. Theseus had said, "We can control the earth through our God's will. All you have ever done is let the wild earth have control of you."

On hearing this, I'd thought, so it should be as we are part of Earth and happy so. Theseus the Greek, you are too proud by far, and all who think like you. This attitude dos not conduce to easiness of mind. You'd fight the Earth, and think to conquer Her? Within your own heart will She punish you as worms within the apple rot the core.

He'd said, in one of his heightened harangues to people gathered in the market place, "Come on, you Cretans, now the time is here to move ahead. The future is for us to fashion as we will, so follow me as I follow the God who guides our way. It's time for change that only I can make. Prosperity for all is possible. You're too set in your ways. What's here and now is past and done. The future is for us. The future is for those who follow God. Trust me, your king. Look forward, follow me, A new world order! One great God with us! One people now! One leader, and one faith!

And many people cheered. Not all, but most. That's how it was. He took the people in. Most of the men, and many women too, were so deceived by his false promises. No more content with a divinity which was too abstract and too ill-defined, which gave no guidance to their destiny, the new God seemed more suited to their needs. They had no thought for what they were to lose - the comfort of the all-embracing Earth, the being part of Her, the Here, the Now. From this time on anxiety would grow. fear flourish, guilt invade their hearts. In bondage to the future they must live in constant discontent with present time.

A woman is a womb, Theseus averred, and what's a womb if not man's tool for birth, a weapon, as in war, of policy. But I thought no, Theseus has got it wrong. The womb is woman, man is but the tool, the key woman must use to unlock life.

24.

My Ariadne spent much time alone. I served her faithfully. It was not long before I sensed that something was amiss. I'd see her when she thought no one was there, her lovely face shadowed with worrying.

The distance that had come between us two after her wedding now was narrowing, though I must still be careful what I said, and so kept my suspicion to myself.

At last she could contain herself no more. The overburden of her heart broke out and spilled in tearful and confiding words -

"He comes but rarely to me. When he does he takes it out and spurts it on the ground."

"I can guess why. It's obvious to me. He fears that if you have a female child the people may acclaim her as the heir and reaffirm their faith in Goddess Earth. His plans, both for himself and his new God, will be confused. When he is confident that his rule is established well enough he'll have you bear his child..."

"There's something else..." She hesitated here, but in her heart the royal pride had little more restraint - "I have to tell. Whom can I tell but you? My Nysa, only you will understand. Remember when we once were of one mind and tuned our heart-beat to the Earth Herself? Those were good days, when we were innnocent. No secrets then. I have a secret now that I cannot keep from you any more."

"I know it, and how wouldn't I, your maid? I'm quite aware that you have missed your moon, in fact more moons than one, and you must know how anxious I have been. It hardly seems, in point of time, it can be Theseus' child, added to what you've told me that he does."

"I don't know what is happening to me. Oh Nysa dear, what's to become of me?" Restraint all gone, an orgasm of words and both of us in tears. I said to her, "Trust me, you know you can, and tell me all."

"What can I say? What more is there to tell? Oh pity me, that I so lost my faith! Oh Goddess dear, I need your strength again, to feel your Spirit pulsing in my veins. I know this God to be of man's design and meaningless. Only give me a sign to show me what it is I have to do."

"If you ask me, I'll tell you what it is you have to do.."

"Ah, no!" "Get rid of it. I'll get the proper herbs for you to take. We must make haste before it is too late."

"Nysa, how can I make you understand? no mortal man has given me this child."

"No man? What do you mean? One of those nights we sneaked away into the countryside with sprigs of lemon-blossom in our hair, we ate the mushroom and were mad of it - but no, that can't be it, too long ago, And since - come on, it must be Theseus' child."

"Please understand. This is the Goddess' child, seeded in me by Her to be Herself incarnate here, among us, in the world, to see the beauty, smell the bluebells, hear the running brooks, dance in the dews of dawn and wash Her sacred body in the stream of passing life that is Her purity - and then explain it all to all the world. Don't ask me how I know. I ask myself exactly when her shaft of golden light entranced my chosen womb. The child is Hers, is She Herself. I must give birth to it."

What should I understand? A miracle? I wasn't sure if I should humor her. If it were true, what then? How would this play with Theseus when he knew, as he soon must? These thoughts and others whirled around my mind.

"We must be calm, consider carefully. One thing we can be sure of, certainly - if this child that you bear is what you say, the Goddess will let no harm come to it."

We held together, both of us afraid. At least she trusted me, and understood that I was right when I had angered her. Then suddenly I knew that it was true, as if it was revealed to my own heart and I too was engaged by the divine. I looked at her with a new reverence.

"I'm frightened of him, Nysa, terrified. Don't say you told me so, but you were right. Why did I never listen to you then? His face that was once soft, I thought with love, is now so hard. He can be violent. His courtship had the colors of the sun. Now that he has me he is something else.

"You he will never harm, he would not dare, but I can't say he might not kill the chlld."

"The Goddess child? You think that's possible? Can evil overcome inherent good? Promise me this, Nysa. When it is born pretend it was born dead, take it away and hide it somewhere till I send you word."

"I promise. Only keep me close to you. From one day to the next I have the fear that he will tell you to send me away."

"I'll wear such gowns as keep my swelling hid so he won't know until it is too late for him to force me to get rid of it."

"Whatever happens, you are still the queen, protected by the people's love for you. That's something even Theseus can't ignore. Things will come right somehow, I know they will. The Goddess will protect you and her child."

"Remember how we used to say the stream would wash away our past?"

"And then we said how it was circular, as clouds bring back the water from the sea."

"How long to wait before our days of innocence come back! Now Nysa, take this broidered robe away. Its gaudiness revolts me. Put me on something more suited to my present state, something of purity, something of blue, the blue that comes at dawn without a cloud before the sun casts shadow on the land. Why me, when I have faltered in the faith?"

"Because you are annointed in Her name. She brings you back to be Her chosen one. We cannot understand the magical and subtle working of divinity. You seem so certain. Has there been a sign? Something above the ordinary day? A blowing of the leaves against the wind? A voice that comes from where there is no mouth?"

"The sign is that I know so certainly, and from the very first moon that I missed. But who'd believe me, Nysa? Only you."

This knowledge, or belief - who can say which? - gave her great a certain strength. Her daily mood would still be volatile, and difficult. She knew she had to take the greatest care with Theseus, so as not to anger him. As pregnant women have a special look of inner knowing, she had doubly so. If Theseus noticed, in his self-conceit he saw it as a sign of loving him. She tried to seem to be her former self, compliant to her husband and his god, distant to me, ever to my distress. She played her role of Theseus' loving wife, in public followed ritual with grace.

25.

One day we took a walk beside the sea gathering shells to use for ornaments. The crickets were as ever clamorous among the olives and the cypresses. The sea, more calm than usual, sent waves that whispered a sweet solace to the land. The sea! What hidden force beneath its face! The force that sometimes broke upon the land, wrecked ships, drowned sailors with the wind an ally. So had Theseus come to us, all surface smile, hiding behind the mask what strange destructive force of energy.

And we must try to mask anxiety with faces outwardly appearing calm.

At times I wished Theseus would learn the truth and get it over with. Of course he'd think she'd lain, before her wedding, with a man. What could he do? He needed her as wife.

For my part I had banished any doubt, waiting the birth with a bewildered awe.

I'd hoped that Ariadne was released from her infatuation's slavery, freed finally from malign influence as if some magic spell was keeping her from clarity of mind. She was not blind as once she had been blind; he was no more transfigured into an ideal guise, but Ariadne said, "The trouble is I love him still. I hope and must believe that by my true love I can alter him. In my submission he can feel secure so that he may no longer have the need to hide the real affection that he has lest he should seem to lack in mastery. It means so much to leaders such as he. He may be a good father, don't you think?"

What could I say? She was not ready yet for anyone to say bad words against this man. Not me, not anyone, not yet. She might herself dispraise his character but that was her prerogative alone. As for the raising of the child when born - we neither dared to think so far ahead.

"Why me?" She said again. "Why me to be the chosen vessel for this sacred wine?"

All is not well since Theseus came our sacred queen performs the rituals with empty eyes that once did shine with her divinity she does what must be done to show our gratitude for life in Earth without conviction oh beloved queen do not forsake us now women of Crete

But suddenly she has the secret look of passion in her heart the Goddess lives in her all may be well hope is not dead.

26.

Then one day without warning Theseus said "The time has come to start the voyage back before the advent of the autumn storms. And you," he said to Ariadne, "you prepare. Make all arrangements now. We sail at the first rising of the next new moon."

She answered with complete bewilderment, "I go from Crete? They will not let me leave."

"And who are they, to cross what I command? You are my wife. Where I go, you go too."

We'd never even dreamed of such a thing. Her face, first flushed, became a deathly pale as if she'd shed her blood in sacrifice. Then as the meaning choked her conscious mind she stared at him with horror in her eyes and with an effort said, "I cannot go. The Goddess' birthing is a special day when I preside over the ritual of thanks for continuity of life. The people will expect me to be here."

As if one single day could mean so much when she'd be gone for who could say how long. I saw she had not fully understood the consequence of being Theseus' wife.

He answered, and his voice was cold and calm, "Forget all that. Your deity must do as the God wishes. Just as you, my wife, must do as I wish. There'll be changes made while you're away, as I have ordered them. Your nobles and your merchants all agree."

"They all agree?"

"A good majority, to whom I'm giving all authority to strip the wealth from any who dissent and will not bow down to the mighty God. This wealth they'll take to share among themselves, a motive good enough to make them keen to stamp out all resistance to my rule. My deputy who came with me from Greece will be the governor while I'm away. We have recruited fighting men enough to keep the frightened people in their place."

"But why..."

"But nothing. There's no argument."

"My lord, as I do love you, hear me out. I do entreat you, try to understand. The Goddess Moon vests her divinity in me. Do you deny the deity?"

"No. I respect your Goddess Earth, as I respect her daughter mirrored in the Moon. but these are local, lesser deities. I don't agree with some there are who say our God allows no other deities...."

I thought, Theseus, no one denies your strength but only I see your hypocrisy.

"..but I believe He is the Mighty One with power over Earth and Sea and Sky as he of His own breath created them. Black thunder is his rage. When lightning strikes it is the God who strikes with fiery spear. "Fear me," he says, "or I will punish you." My will is His. To Him I must submit, and so must lesser deities submit. I kneel, and ask his guidance every day. By such submission, in return for it, so long as we are steadfast in our faith all nature is in our dominion. Your Goddess is the Earth, the Earth is his, so is the Goddess His. It follows then your ritual has no significance. You'll see. When we come back again to Crete, whenever that may be, to crown the son that I will presently place in your womb for you to bring, according to God's will, into the world as prince and heir to me, you'll find the temple I have ordered built with Attic priests and a new ritual - but to preserve the peace I have decreed a lesser temple for your Goddess Earth His consort here, His queen, His underling, as you, my Ariadne, are to me. If you do love me, then do as I say.

Somehow he had avoided to this day the crucial question of divinity, what she believed, what he. Since marrying she had been so sequestered in the court, and if she asked of rumor she had heard he'd laugh at her with customary scorn. Then she believed him, as she wanted to. Thus she had stifled questions of the heart, determined not to find impediments or causes to prevent the happiness she thought there must eventually be. She rarely saw him in the hours of day, and would do nothing to disrupt the night, ever in hope of what she thought was right.

But now the truth was out, the ugly truth that he had scorn for all that she believed.

She looked at me, a look of agony. What was there I cculd say to comfort her? Theseus behaved as if I was not there, just as he always did. I was a slave, in his opinion, as such ignored. He'd take more notice of a hunting dog. Oh Ariadne mine! I understood the terrible dilemma you were in, your role as priestess, mortally divine, by custom yours, now without power-base, how would the people ever understand, the poor and simple people of the land, and you no longer there for ritual and to personify their deity, the core of faith they needed for their lives - yet how could she be parted from this man?

I said, "If your good mother could be here, instead of grief you would have her advice."

"She's better gone. Any advice from her would be no good. I've little mind to grieve. Having the Goddess' child within my womb takes up all the emotion that I have."

She said she loved him. Was it really love or should I use some other coarser word for what had made her helpless to his will? I knew her strength of sensuality, the body's urge that overbore her sense and made her suffer his indifference, his constant lack of any kindliness since that bad day he need no longer woo, having his Cretan queen securely wed. The worst of it, she held herself to blame, not understanding, but supposing it be so.

Theseus was queer. Like many of his race love as a concept was not known to him. He talked of loving God, but that was fear. Our Goddess meant for us the real love, the freedom of equality, no fear, no mastery, and unashamed delight.

Men of the northern tribe knew none of this, it was not part of their religion. Possession was their thing. By having her, he took possession of the whole of Crete, in legal form and so without a fight.

Could Ariadne have refused to go, if she'd had will enough? What was the use? As wife or prisoner he'd take her off. His will was paramount. The ships were launched and loaded from the treasury with gold - as king, by Cretan law he had the right, supported by his puppet government. He could make people think the way he thought, hate when he hated, tremble at his rage laugh to his laugh, be gladdened by his praise. The worst of it was how they echoed him, the merchants and the wealthy men of Crete. When he harangued them, as he often did, they hung upon his words. Might was now right.

"You are the chosen ones," he cried, "of God. The land is yours to do with what you will, only to me as your just overlord you must pay tribute. Nothing very much, and anyway you'll get it from the poor by any means it suits you to employ. The poor are born that way. The rate they breed they are expendable. Show them your scorn for their estate, and make them worshipful not only of the God, but of yourselves."

It followed that the fear of being poor, of loosing their possesions, and thereby losing their comfort and security, made certain their conversion to the God and made them work the harder to be rich, and richer, never mind who came out worst.

Whenever one becomes so much attached to anything, as to someone one loves, it seems one must experience the fear as in my case I always feared the loss of Ariadne's close companionship.

Not sensible of Ariadne's tears - from wounded pride and loss of dignity - Theseus said what she could and could not take. Her ceremonial dress, and not much else. "You will have female slaves enough in Greece," he said to her.

"Nysa must come," she said.

After a fearful pause he said, "All right, but no one else. There's little room on board. You need not worry, once I'm home again you'll have the clothes and comforts you desire, with jewelry, and a queen's precedence above all other women in the land."

Sometimes he spoke as if he cared for her within the limit of his capability. His hard voice softened when he spoke of home and she consoled herself with the vain hope, as vain I felt it was, that in his home he'd have more time for her and prove his love. Illusion's veil still misted over her occluding her from all reality. How cculd he love her, he who knew not love? And even if he did, such inequality as bonding her to him left him unbound,

Had she put out of mind her pregnancy, or did the dreadful secret gnaw at her, the secret knowledge like a prisoner hidden within the darkness of her womb? The subject was forbad. She silenced me whenever I might try to talk of it. She had to tell him sometime. Why delay? She had to make him think that it was his, this child that she'd determined was divine.

By Cretan law, if she should leave the realm, this queen bee kept a captive in the hive, she forfeited the matriarchal rite by which her daughter would become the queen. No doubt Theseus was well apprised of this. I knew, of course, that he alone would say who should succeed him on the throne of Crete or as his surrogate before his death, so he must have a son before too long. Queens mattered nothing now. Goodbye to queens and all pretensions to divinity, of use only to make the king a son. The God required no mortal avatar. The common people might adore the Moon, that superstition was at least allowed, but there would be no mortal deity, no one to help personify their faith. Not until Dionysus came along.

Can it be true our queen is leaving us? What can it mean? She goes, we are betrayed, we women, now that men have all control what will become of us? Weep for us women, weep!

27.

"What shall I wear on board the ship?" She asked. And when we come to Greece? I must look good." Like a pathetic child in plaint anxiety her reason gave way to her vanity.

"Don't worry, I shall pack you all you need. Leave it to me. Yes, I heard what he said about not taking much. I'll manage it." She had long since forgotten how she'd talked of what she ought to wear, as one who bore within her blessed womb the Goddess' child.

Oh my dear mistress! Acme of my love! To look at her, no one would know how sick she was from what she treasured in herself, sick from the secret she had still to tell, sick from the swelling bosom of the sea, and I, from empathy, felt sick with her. But also, in myself, I was afraid.

Neither of us had ever left the land. The day was dark, and dark the glassy sea, dark as obsidian, dull mirroring of my foreboding mind. We watched the wharf - where Theseus' deputy, the governor, stood with the new-appointed ministers and other dignitaries of the state - drifting away. It seemed that they left us, not we who left the land. There was no wind, only a rhythmic swelling of the waves - enough to cause a nausea in us - and soon the oars plunged in the sea's broad breast whose milk broke out in foaming energy. As our sharp prow cleft in the unseen depth so my thoughts cleft into my fearing heart.

Truly I sensed the Goddess in the sea. Would she have pity on our weaknesses, the injuries to Her divinity? Would She know how our hearts were true to her, and keep us safe? Or would She storm and rage and cast our ship upon the deadly rocks or draw us down into the drowny deep? We knew Her capable of violence; although we never doubted of Her love. Of course She must not be so humanized, but how explain, if not in mortal words? The Goddess is a wave, infinity, a force, a universe of particles, a drop of water and the total sea, a speck of dirt and all the land there is, the queen of one great universal swarm where every bee is of Her energy born of the eggs that only She can lay. And always the loved Mother of our hearts.

Was Ariadne pregnant of Her breath? So much of life is not to be explained. "Tell him it's his", I said, "without delay."

She knew she must, but kept postponing it. When dressing her, I saw the thickening. How long before Theseus would notice it? He little lay with her, on the pretence of being tired with so much to be done before we sailed. She claimed her modesty and always was in bed before he came, her body hidden by the covering, the body I had once fondly caressed but now touched only as became her maid or - oh desire repressed! - as her masseuse. I hoped that they would have to sleep apart when we made camp at night upon the land.

How could a man be so indifferent to her allure, as Theseus seemed to be? It's true I'd heard he had unhealthy tastes, that more than anything he liked small girls. I knew not to believe all that I heard. There may have been some truth in it. Perhaps some shadow cast upon his self-acclaim - that he feared his surrender in the act of intercourse, with loss of self-control, so sought release where he could dominate.

I'd thought of asking Daedalus' advice - the artist who had made her diadem which she now carried with her on the ship. (She left behind, safe in the treasury, the cow-horned head-dress, property of Crete with its great ritual significance.) Of all the men with whom I'd had contact Daedalus was the one I trusted most, and whose advice might be worth while, perhaps because I sensed that, artist, he alone not from his mind but from a deeper well might draw some understanding of it all and counsel me for Ariadne's sake.

She might be furious if she found out. Did I dare risk the lashing of her tongue? Even one night in discord hurt me so - no sleep, and in the morning awkwardness. To love and not be sure of being loved!. Her angry tone of voice could make me sad and sick at heart. Such agony of mind caused me to fear her even as I loved. How wonderful the faith in Goddess Earth that I was sure of being loved by Her, so sure that I could love her without fear. Her immaterial spirit when it takes a mortal form, in the incarnate state, must with the flesh assume its weakneses. Would it be so with Ariadne's child? Were we foredomed to such uncertainty as would, with all the stress, unreason us?

Well, in the end I talked with Daedalus. Much good it did my mistress or myself. I had misjudged him. He might make a crown with artistry, design intricately the footsteps of a dance, or fashion clay to such a likeness of the living form it seemed about to move, yet what I asked he had no answer for but foolish words that showed he feared the new authority, being interested only in himself and his survival in the coming change. But he was old, and hardened in his mind. I know it now - the old may not be wise. Though longer living means you know the more, it also may be a distorting glass for the pure vision we receive at birth, if the accumulated facts that we collect are not related to a basic truth, and without this all learning is a lie.

28.

Theseus knew how to calculate the nights of Moonlessness before She reappeared - or rather, he had someone tell him how, a sort of priest, a student of the stars, who also taught the proper offices due to the worship of the northern God. This man was constantly at Theseus' side advising him of his religion. I don't think Theseus really had much taste for faith in any form, but saw its use for his ambition's certain furtherance. He'd shrewdly calculated everything. To kill the Minos, marry the princess was close enough to old accustomed ways for him to be acceptable to Crete, and then on the queen's death - could we be sure that it was natural? - his royal bride became the queen and he was king of Crete. The title Minos he declined to take. It all worked out according to his plan. Crete was now subject to the Attic state whither he now returned, taking his bride. She was a hostage to her country's fate. The common folk, who loved her, must accept, suffer without revolt, the new regime, but for his part he dared not do her harm - so Ariadne thought, I not so sure. In any case it was a clever coup, the bloodless subjugation of a state by cunning craft, and not by force of arms.

Our first night out we saw the slender Moon, so beautiful, so tender, and so strong. Before the selfish sun sank down to die beyond the far horizon of our hope, leaving an afterglow of royal flush, our ship was rowed into an island bay well sheltered from the heaving of the waves. Released from nausea, and thankfully, we set our feet upon firm land again and walked to where wild olives fringed the sea, and fragrant lilies blossomed in the sand. The crew set tents for us beside a stream. Some made a fire, while others netted fish. Theseus went inland, carrying a spear.

The sky had cleared, and close beside the Moon the lonely star of evening called Love shone brilliantly. How did we come to name this bright star Love? A maiden's fantasy! How often we had watched this point of light low in the sky, alone, then brightening as darkness folded us in robes of night This single early light, that heralded the time for lying down, infected us with fever of desire's imagining.

"Nysa," my mistress said, "he loves me still. All that appears to be indifference is just his way, with so much on his mind. His hardness hides, you know, a kindly heart. Dear Nysa, brush my hair until it shines and lay me out my most seductive gown. When he is ready he will come to me, and I must look my best, to pleasure him."

What could I say? "You have to tell him now," was what I said.

"I will, I promise you, but not tonight. Tonight he'll come to me with gentle voice and soft caressing hands, relaxed and loving as he used to be before our wedding day. Give me this night, the first away from the constraints of court. and all the work that he has had to do which made him tense and tired every night. Tomorrow I will tell him I'm with child, his child, his royal heir. He need not know the Goddess breathed her spirit into me. Dear Nysa, wish we well with him, or else what will become of me?"

I wished her well. The next day trouble came. She, further on in carrying than we had thought she was, began to bleed. She called for me at once, soon after dawn. Theseus, already up, had with some men gone huntng after meat.

Appearing calmer than I felt, I said, "Stay lying down, if we're to save the child. I'll have to find the proper herbs for you to take and keep the baby in your womb. As soon as Theseus is come back to camp I have to tell him what is going on."

29.

"Do you remember, Nysa, that last day we spent together by the riverside, the day you had your Moon-blood the first time?"

"Remember? How could I forget that day?"

"We slept. You had a dream, and told it me. I also dreamed, that you and I were one and of our union a child began.

"You never told me."

"No. I don't know why. It was dream, and yet was not a dream. A shaft of gentle light shone into me, a secret light within my secret womb. You know how close we were that afternoon, how close we lay upon the breast of Earth, with water running, birdsong, and sweet air, as if we were the world, the world was us, we kissed and hugged as lovers kiss and hug. Then came this light, this tender, kindly light. I felt at once it was a miracle, that at that moment I was singled out by the Great Goddess, chosen to bring forth a divine prince to give our people faith."

"A prince, you're sure? I would have thought princess."

"Most certainly a prince. You'll see it born. Only a man can move the people now to bring their hearts back to their Mother's heart."

"You never said."

"It was too personal. The strange thing is, quite soon I had forgotten what I dreamed, and only recently remembered it."

"I do recall you seemed preoccupied as we walked home that night. Silent you were, withdrawn and quite unlike your normal self. I asked you what it was. You would not say. I thought you sad, as also I was sad to know our age of innocence was done, and then I grieved that this was the first time you shut me from the secrets of your heart."

"But you were wrong in thinking I was sad. Promise me, Nysa, set my mind at rest, if anything should go amiss with me you'll take the child and raise him as your own, but don't conceal from him his parentage - by parentage I mean divinity. Promise me, Nysa, swear upon your heart."

"I swear, but such a thing's not going to be. If he's divine, he'll know it soon enough."

"Oh Nysa, am I going to lose my child?"

"If, as you say, the child is no man's child but quickened in you by the holy breath then surely you won't lose it. But lie still. Don't even think that you can go from here for several days, whatever he may say. Soon as the hunters come down from the hill I'll go to him, and say what's happening. All he need know is, you are carrying, that you have had some bleeding which might mean that you will lose the child if you don't rest. He'll have to wait and see what comes of it. No doubt it's all that heaving yesterday has brought the bleeding on. Try to be calm."

"He will be furious he was not told. I doubt he'll care if I do lose the child. It's more than likely he'd be glad of it."

"I'll say you only waited to be sure.'

"That's too much straining his credulity. It's true he is not ready for a child. If he had looked at me as men must look at women whom they love, he must have seen. I know it now. His loving was pretence. Last night he didn't even glance at me, he just lay down and went to sleep at once. I am no wife to him. I am a crown. You tried to tell me, and I silenced you. But Nysa, dearest, how can I explain?"

"Say you were shy."

"I'll say he frightens me. It's true enough.Because I loved him well I could not bear that he should be displeased. I doubt he'll be deceived the child is his. If he can't figure it, that priest of his can count the moons, and he's no friend to me. How can I say the Goddess entered me? He might accept the God. I won't say that! I hear his voice. Go quickly, Nysa, go and get it over with. We'll know the worst! We have to hope the prospect of a child may rouse some instinct for paternity."

My love for Ariadne made me brave. As he ignored me, I had never yet spoken with him, but now the time had come. For Ariadne's sake I'd take the risk that he might strike me down or throw me out. I saw him standing there, his bow in hand and at his feet some beast that he had killed.

He looked at me askance as I began - "My mistress, sir, is carrying your child. That she has not yet told you only shows she feared, knowing your will, to anger you. Only humility has held her back..."

He looked hard at me then. Was it concern, anger, or disbelief that made him frown, darkening his handsome forehead as I spoke? ..."now, brought on by the rolling of the ship, she fears to lose the child before it's due. This morning she has passed a lot of blood. She bids me tell you this, to give you time to change your plans. She must not move today, tomorrow neither, nor for several days."

At first I looked behind him to the sea, dark, ominous, and unreliable, taking its grayness from the sky above, its turmoil from the trouble in my heart. I nerved myself to look at him direct. I stared him in the face. He looked at me with cold gray eyes, the way all Greeks regarded common Cretans whom they saw as though nature made them inferior. Without emotion, and without a word he strode across to Ariadne's tent and when he got there turned, and called to me, "Get all your mistress' stuff out of the ship," then pulled away the flap and went inside.

30.

He kept himself so carefully controlled that neither Ariadne nor myself knew what he thought. Did he accept the child? It seemed he did. At least he did not say it could not be. Did he seem pleased at all? Not that he showed it, and he never asked why he had not been told. It was as if it made no difference. It might have been a stomach-ache for all the care he showed. His face was empty of his private mind as a pond's surface mirroring the light conceals whatever life there is beneath.

He did ask when the baby would be born. We couldn't say for sure. We made a guess - when holy spirit fecundates a girl who knows how long the carrying will be? - a half-moon hence, perhaps, or more or less.

He only grunted when we told him this. After a day or to it seemed all right for Ariadne to get up again. She bled no more. Her womb no longer hurt. So by the time the Moon had grown Her full, the weather fair, sea calm, we sailed again on the long voyage towards Attica. Each night there was an island where we camped to clean ourselves, to eat and drink and sleep. Sometimes the wind was helpful, sometimes not. Mostly the crew must row while Theseus steered or took an oar to give a man a rest. Sometimes he stood beside the mast and gazed afar with an impenetrable face. He had some sort of shelter rigged for us who were the only women on the ship. At night-time Ariadne had a tent where I would go to her when darkness fell, while Theseus lay down with the other men.

I said to Ariadne, "Look, the way he laughs and jokes with them, but not with you."

"He condescends to them. You watch his face. The laughter's in his teeth, not in his eyes."

He asked again when to expect the birth. "We carry on. There can be no delay. The time of equal days and nights is near, there may be storms, and we have far to go."

One day, that tenseful time before a change in the calm weather that had favored us, when heads may ache and tempers may be short, he said - and there was anger in his voice - "I'll have it put away, you realize, your brat by God knows who. You don't suppose I'm such a fool as to be taken in? Do you imagine I could think it mine? What do you take me for? An imbecile? That I should be so dumb! A damaged wife! I'd have to call your father for redress but that I have already done for him. Were you by chance a temple prostitute?"

For the first time she answered back to him. "What if I was? That is a holy act, something that any well-born woman does in honor of the Goddess'gift of life. You harm my child, see what the Goddess does! She'll send such storms as you have never seen."

"Your Goddess? Bah! I don't believe in her. She has no way to do me any harm. She's but a myth. Can she control the wind or send a storm, or stop the needful rain or cause the frost to cut the autumn growth or kill the lambs in spring? Or send the hail that splits the grapes before we harvest them? Only the God above can do such things. What you have done, women are killed for less. Only because you are the Queen of Crete must I forbear from the due punishment my priest will say the God demands of me. He does not understand the politics."

"Say what you will, do what you will, I know one thing - the Goddess will allow no harm to come to this I carry, which is Hers. What's more, if any harm should come to me, the cow-horns will adorn another brow and you'll no longer be the King of Crete. So watch your step. I too know politics."

"That's what you think? Just wait a moment here."

Much as I liked her brave, defiant mood, I knew that it would make no difference.

He came back with the cow-horns in his hand, and Ariadne paled to see them there.

"You thought them safely in the treasury? Have you not learned who has authority, at whose command the treasury is locked or unlocked? Mine! And did you really think that I'd leave such a thing behind in Crete, this potent symbol for their simple minds? Symbol of nothing but the dead and gone! The cow no longer dominates the bull. He has the bigger horns, the greater strength, no longer held in check by ritual. That matriarchal nonsense is no more. Such as remains of it will be stamped out, I've given orders that it shall be so. This coronet has no importance now, safely removed from Crete. Here, put it on. How cute you look in it!"

How bitter was his sarcasm.

"Remember I'm divine." She gave no sign of being afraid of him. "I loved you once. You've forfeited my love with cruelty, and arrogance, and pride. I was enchanted, now I've broken free, free aa the Goddess' avatar must be."

And he, surprised by her response, went on - "You call yourself divine - that's blasphemy! My priest is right, there is no God but God. This coronet's obscene!" As one might throw a bowl of slops he threw it in the sea. Instead of sinking as it should have done, it floated till the white arm of the sea received it in the Goddess' mystery.

All Ariadne found to say - "You wait!" Controlled, but I could see her breathing hard. Remembering, she said, "There is a sign - perhaps you slept so well you did not see - high in the sky a light that leaves a trail. Ask of your priest what he thinks that can mean. I know. It means a child is to be born who is the Goddess' son conceived in me."

I froze in fear, at hearing what she said. If he believed, the child would never live. Oh Ariadne, why be such a fool to talk to him like that. But as it was he gave no sign he paid much heed to her. though with his guarded face one could not tell.

I knew then what it was I had to do. Dead on arrival, into this sad world. So would I say, and hide the child away.

31.

We stopped at a small island by the name of Dia - Naxos, as it was later called - a place of rocks and goats and coarse domain, of mountains dark with trees that held their leaves through winter-time - though there were slopes high up open and fit for summer grazing-land - with people poor as ever I had seen although the valleys with their running streams looked fair enough to make them prosperous.

The trees grew down to rocks along the shore, and there we camped. For all the sultry heat we lit a fire to keep mosquitos off and guard against the threat of savage beasts marauding from the forest in the night.

We saw no other ships beside our one - only a few small boats with hulls of hide which served for fishing on the coastal edge. The island natives watched, and bartered us some goatsmilk cheeses, fresh-baked cakes, and fruit.

I cut some leaves and grass to make a bed in a small sandy cleft between two rocks, and over it we rigged the deerskin tent.

The sun sank from the sky without display, in silence, slowly, almost furtively. As darkness spread, there, sure enough, the sign, the trailing light, the Goddess' sign to us. We took great heart from this. The Moon was down, which made the light shine brighter in the sky. Theseus looked up at it, said nothing, shrugged. Wrapping his cloak about him, he lay down - to sleep? No, he won't sleep so well, I thought, not even he can well ignore that sign. The crew don't like it, that is obvious. Whether from our own Goddess or his God, he'll worry what it means. Where is his priest, interpreter of signs sent by the God? In bed already? That is something strange - perhaps they looked at it last night, and talked, and made their minds up what it meant for them.

I had to sleep outside my mistress' tent, there was not room for both of us within, so narrow was the space between the rocks, but first we sat and watched the spangled web. We whispered so that no one else could hear. "Sometimes," she said, "I fancy that it's we who turn, and not the movement of the sky."

"Why not? If Goddess Earth can turn Herself... how we perceive it makes no difference."

"I wish you could lie close to me tonight, but there is hardly room enough for me. I may not sleep. It makes my body ache. The way I am I must lie on my back." She lay more easily than I. She slept.

When I had lain awake too long a time I had to move away to urinate. The sky was brilliant, with points of light patterned as always, with this nearer star that seemed to travel with a trail behind but did not move, although it seemed to me to have a new position in the sky since I had seen it in the night before.

The air had gotten cold. I clutched my robe more tightly round the shudder of my breasts. I crept along the rocks to find a place to watch the sea and listen to the night. The splendid Moon had risen since the dusk. laying her train across a restless sea. The forest canopy reflected Her, a skin of light over the flesh of dark. Darkness Her realm, womb of my spirit's birth.

The trailing star might have been shed from Her as if She'd born Herself a child of night as once by day Her Mother bore the Sun.

The air was heavy with the breath of Earth, the flapping of the waves against the rocks playful and soft, leaves whispering when stirred by puffs of air, a night-bird's lonesome cry.

Then voices - Theseus' voice, another man's, his priest astrologer, whom I heard say, "Just as you barred the snakes from ritual as representing evil in the land, bar her from life."

"No, that I cannot do."

"She and her cult are insults to the God. She is a woman, and she is of earth, chthonic, out of darkness, and opposed to the design our God has for his world."

"I'll work it out. I need to stay a day, the ship has some repairing to be done."

"Stay one more day, and then before the dawn while she and her familiar are asleep, for God's sake go, that is the only way if you won't have her dead as I advise."

"Kill her I cannot, nor risk waiting here. I must get back while the good weather holds. This fateful star foretells something unknown."

"The sign is ominous. It's better she were dead."

The sign is joy, I thought. Then Theseus said, "This godless island! Never would I come to such a place but that my faithless wife must have somewhere to drop her cursed child. I leave her here, what trouble can she make? She has no ship to get away to Crete."

"But if a ship does come..."

"Improbable. Way off the normal navigation route. Some pirates? They'd know what to do with her. She'd never make it back. In any case my hold on Crete is strong enough by now."

"She'll have this child, a claimant to the throne."

"That's finished with. I am their savior. Women are servants now. The men of Crete who have the power and the influence are all converted to our Mighty God. I have some honor, and she is my wife. I won't hear any more of killing her."

"Leave orders for the infant to be killed or at the very least put out to die."

"Who is the father, I would like to know."

"Remember that your duty is to God. You must not risk a danger to the faith. Leave men behind to do what must be done. How many can you spare?"

"I might leave two."

"Three would be better still. With three there will be one who won't relent, and keep the other two up to the mark."

"Not killed, but yes, put out, perchance to die. That's what I'll do. And now to get some rest. We must be up betimes to hunt some meat."

Cramped as I was, I waited long enough for them to go to sleep before I moved. What divine impulse caused me to be there so I could overhear and learn his plan? Should I tell Ariadne? Should I not? Better for her to rest in ignorance and so avoid the scene that she might make, to bring on what incalculable end. Let them be gone from here! Twere better so. Good riddance to our Goddess' enemies, and might She raise the seas to founder them!

Above my head the trailing star shone bright; around the Moon, a veil of misty cloud.

A king and queen he from the north a savage place so we have heard sun-worshippers and she from Crete a people more like us but rich and powerful

Why are they here few strangers come a rocky coast and no good harborage unless for shelter from a storm or some strange happening

The king's men frighten us so rough and arrogant the queen keeps to her tent due any day to birth she is divine a mortal form of Goddess Moon so we have heard why is she here with this rude company?

What strange behavior! They kneel down to a god and dare not look directly at the sun we hope they won't stay long we hope they leave in peace we lie awake for fear of them.

32.

Theseus had gone to hunt before we woke. Later I saw him coming from the dark domain beneath the trees' dense foliage. Woods frightened me. To go through them at dusk as sometimes on a visit to my home was like a journey through a realm of fear. If there was evil, that was where it was.

In order to relate my memories I may use words that have a double sense. When I say dark, I mean that time of growth, of rest, of change, of inner life - the half of our experience, the realm of Earth, the darkness of the glory of Her womb whence all life comes. Dark in this sense is good. But also dark means dread, the darkness where danger and evil are - darkness divine, and darkness of despair - how different? Might they be both inherent in ourselves?

While Ariadne drank the milk I'd warmed, I wondered at the journey we had made already from the only world we knew, our world of Crete, which was our universe. Each passage from one island to the next, with the uncertain motion of the ship and the amazing bigness of the sky that stretched away beyond imagining, had been for us a new discovery. I seemed to find my proper self at last not only in the mirror of the sea when no wind blew and all was shiny calm, nor through my greater courage in some squall that blew up suddenly, but in a sense of liberty from Ariadne's bond. Not that I loved her less, I don't mean that, but in this atmosphere away from Crete in her condition she had need of me not as a slave but as we once were, free and equal in a close relationship.

The day passed slowly. We were left alone while Theseus and the crew worked on the ship. I told her nothing of what I had heard during the night. Who knew what she might do? Create a scene? Implore him not to go without her, leave her stranded on the rocks of Dia, to the mercy of the wind?

I had no doubt she must be rid of him, rid of this evil enemy to truth, to all our ancestry and our beliefs, rid of this danger to the Goddess' child whatever hardships we might have to face.

To pass the time I made her rouse herself and walk, protesting, down what seemed a track into the wildness of the virgin woods that were for me, by day, not frightening - rather it seemed that Ariadne took her pregnancy into the primal womb. The gloom was penetrated by the sun which threaded light through the embroidery of stitches in the trees' close canopy, Clearings we found where trees had fallen down. In one such place we came across a snake coiled up, contented, in the warming light.

"Here is a sign," I said, "the sacred snake, conduit of wisdom from the Earth to us." I seized on anything to cheer her up.

"Can we be sure? Theseus says otherwise. He says they token evil in the land, to be destroyed whenever chance occurs."

I thought she'd broken free from Theseus' God. She saw my look, and to appease me said, "That is the way his priest would have him think."

"That evil priest is where the danger is. He would destroy more than the sacred snakes. He would destroy our whole religion. All he can do is cause it to be hid, repressed into the darkness of the mind, when greed and fear do flourish in the light.

The snake, hearing our voices, slid away, its head raised up and forked tongue flickering, unhurried and secure in dignity, or so it seemed.

"Remember how," she said, "I had to hold them that day I was crowned? I've had such dreams about the Cretan realm. and now with this responsibility - Why me? Why must I be the chosen one? I have more dread than joy. It should be you, rather than me. You have the strength, while I have only rank and I depend on you."

"Your lineage makes you worthy of this trust."

She must be worthy, how else cculd it be that she was chosen for the mothering. I was by now quite ready to accept her total faith in her child's origin. But she was frightened, helpless in her fear.

Night came at last. I secretly secured supplies of food to last us a few days. I noticed how they loaded up the ship without their seeming to, the priest in charge. Theseus, I thought, may this be our revenge, that you will be priest-ridden all your days. Guilty they'll have you live, and guilty die.

I hardly slept. Be sure I was awake at that gray hour before the breach of day when such cold labor seems to brook delay in giving birth to light. I heard them leave, in silence, silently. Thieves in the night, but all they stole was nothing but themselves.

And Ariadne slept, and slept, and slept, as if the Goddess sent a special charm to keep her sleeping while they stole away.

Now they have gone like truants in the dawn leaving behind the queen her servants and three men

One of the men is nice friendly and soft of voice the other two are bad

Why is she left like this? What treachery is done? What trouble have we here? We must take care!

As climbs the holy Moon high in the night to set the rhythm of the tides and time and of the cycle in the course of birth

As breathes the Mother Earth source of all life Her spirit into us so we must treat this queen as mortal deity respect her sanctity and help her how we can

It is, we think, the prudent thing to do.

33.

I had to tell her. There was not much hope she'd take it calmly. At the very worst it might bring on the birth, but not too soon for surely it was due. What I must do - go to the islanders and find somewhere a home, a hut, a roof, no matter what, however simple for her laboring. But could I leave her? No, I did not dare. If she woke up and found the others gone, and I not there, what would she think?

As I had overheard, there were three men, angry at being left in such a place. I was afraid of what they'd do to us. At fullness of the Moon the three of them might take me, one by one, time after time. But then their anger might be of some use if it would win them over to our aid. I studied them. One of them I had seen to be more gentle than the other two. Josan his name. He'd served as handyman on board the ship, clever at working wood.

At my suggestion, Josan went to see what shelter was available to us. The other two, making the best of it, would be the cooks and gatherers of food.

By good luck most of Ariadne's clothes were left with us. Most of her jewelry was on the ship, except for what she wore and her fine coronet - these I must hide.

Theseus was stupid to have left the men, relying on their loyalty to him. Or so it seemed. I must not be too sure. I should assume the worst, and plan for it. These men were Greeks, but also they were men. They might show gallantry towards us two. It might occur to them not to offend, by harming Ariadne, Goddess Earth who was according to what they were taught the wife of their own God. But they might fear, if Theseus should send back or come himself, his anger if they had not done their job.

Still Ariadne slept. Unbearable to wait! To get it over, break the news was what I had to do. I woke her up and told her what I had rehearsed to say.

I should have waited for her mind to clear out of the haziness of such deep sleep. She could not take it in. I must repeat all I had said. Abandoned, here, on Dia, on the rocks, and not a ship to take.

I looked at her. Silence, no sudden storm, though I knew surely that a storm must come.

"For the child's sake," I said, "Don't get upset."

"Aie," she cried, "the bastard! May the sea swallow his ship and vomit up his bones!"

Soon the storm broke, but with it only rain in form of tears. No thunder of abuse. No lightning strokes of violence. Not yet. After a while she ceased to sob, and said, "I brought this on myself. I broke the faith. Some evil in me had me countenance the image of his man-made deity. What mad diversity made me admire a man so antithetic to my heart! The Earth Herself will punish me for it. She'll punish me, Nysa, I know She will."

"There is no She, my dearest, you know that, we use such words only to simplify our attitudes. To say She, means to us the whole, the all, the sum of everything in time and space. You punish yourself. I punish me, but only when I act against my inner self, as you have done."

"It's not as if I had much joy of it. All that I counted on, the human touch we both experienced - although unnatural - the bliss of man and wife in union each giving each the beauty of themselves - this never happened. Things he did, Nysa, I could not tell you. So ashamed for him and for myself. Some things he made me do to pleasure him, in their perversity disgusted me. So love now turns to scorn."

I too had been denied the ultimate of what I'd tasted now and then with her, and what I knew from others to exist, the way to get to share the great life force of Earth through consummation of the act, two bodies and two hearts in unison. Our destiny was different, apart. The Earth so worked in us that one should breed, the other raise, a child born to be king not of the treasury but of the hearts and minds of those who'd hear him speak.

I said, "We're not the same as others are."

"You're not the same as me. I am divine."

I answered sharply back, "Divine or not. you know well what I mean. Don't talk like that. Right now we have to make the best of things. Be practical. You have a baby to be born, two lives to live, and I to see you safe. We have to plan what happens to us now."

"If I say silly things, Nysa, forgive. I'm furious and frightened both at once. I'm not in my right mind. It's all my fault. I've lost the right to my divinity. I've forfeited my title to the crown, if not in theory, in certain fact, and I deserve what punishment I get."

"It's punishment enough that we are here in this predicament. We shall survive."

I thought she had recovered from the shock and would be sensible, but suddenly her sobs came back, sobs less of grief than rage, scarcely coherent, weeping through her words and beating with her hands upon the ground - "How can...like something...happening to me.. Moon Goddess... mortal avatar... divine... I am divine... they said so... oh I am... I am... I have to be... the treachery... how dare.... now evil is a Greek, his name is Theseus, he who lays down law... his law."

She tore the necklace from her slender throat and threw it through the opening of the tent where it bounced off the rock into the sea. I tried to get it back, but it was gone, the water was too deep, the surf too strong.

"We needed that to help us pay our way."

"He gave it me." Her eyes from azure blue turned pale and hard as stone. Her tears had stopped. "Disease, decay, may rot his filthy guts, worms eat his testicles and sacred snakes sink poisoned fangs into his manliness!"

Her mood reversed. She seemed to crumple up. "What will become of me?" She moaned the words.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," I said, not hiding the impatience that I felt. She looked at me astonished. I went on, "We're in a fix. If we are to survive from this time on you must do what I say. To see us through I'll manage our affairs."

She was not used to me ordering her. I feared she'd come the princess over me. After a moment's silence, very tense, she lay back on the bed, resigned, and said, "Into your keeping I commit myself, Nysa, into your care. help me give birth to such a boy as will make my revenge when he is old enough and strong, as he, of birth divine, must surely grow to be."

I thought, vengeance is not the proper way. And must it be a boy? Why not a girl? She'd from the first been very sure of it. The days of female dominance were done. I knew it. Born of Earth it had to be a human boy. It was a time of change. A time for us to leave false paradise and move ahead toward another land of promise which might well turn out to be the same loved place that we had started from, when Ariadne's thread has led us out from dark into the proper light of truth which is itself implicit in the dark.

And, after all, we might be better off, alone on Dia, Theseus gone away. I put this thought in Ariadne's mind to give her comfort, which perhaps it did.

"And now," I said, "I must be practical, and organize a way for us to live."

34.

Time and again, during the next few days she made me promise her, time after time I swore to raise the baby as my own if she should die of it. She was afraid. She had such apprehension of her death. I tried to reassure her that her life was not in danger, she would be all right, but always something shameful in my mind, some thought too hideous to contemplate, promptly suppressed but ever surfacing, caused me to covet the idea of it in spite of which I knew I'd do my best, and if it came to it, surrender my own life to bring about a safe delivery and Ariadne's sure recovery.

The place we found was clean enough, and dry, with water close at hand. The islanders were friendlier to us than I'd dare hope, in some way like the country folk at home when not exposed to Knossos' luxury, a simple people, unassuming, good, believing in the deity of Earth whose immanence they felt in everything. Their way of living was most primitive, but as they knew no more than what they had they took for best what life afforded them. Nothing to envy, so nothing to hate. Sickness and death, famine and forest fire were part of life and so acceptable. They helped each other as they helped us now. With room for all, no one disputed land. For what Earth gave they showed their gratitude, and showed their fortitude for what Earth took. Nothing for us to fear, for all we had of value was the golden coronet of vine-leaves, Ariadne's wedding gift from Daedalus to celebrate the joy, the joy she never found, in the new life she'd hoped marriage would bring. This diadem I'd kept well-hidden. Nobody could know we had it there. And Ariadne said, "If Daedalus was right, there is a hope these golden leaves of vines that make the wine through which we gain relief, in ecstasy, from all the troubles of a mortal life, will crown a joyful head somewhere, sometime, for me or for the child that I'm to bear."

Fortune had brought us to equality, with danger shared, and shared adversity. No more the royal mistress and the maid, just two young women stranded on the rocks. Lately I had begun to see in her, or else imagined that I saw, some traits, some flaws of character that were no more than bastard offspring of an envious mind. Did this mean that my love might turn to hate in this upset of our relationship? But no, no risk. I asked of Goddess Earth forgiveness for my thoughts. I then saw her just as she was, a very frightened girl about to bear a very special child. Often enough what had seemed selfishness, or vanity, her whining petulence and self-pity, so much disgusted me that I'd been tense and anxious all at once for her and for myself, but what I saw was something I'd projected from myself. I knew this suddenly, and knowing it forgave her, loved her, cherished her the more.

Once in a fit of royal peevishness, not long before her fated wedding day, "Are you my shadow?" she had asked of me. Was she my shadow now, or I still hers? Shadow or not, I was myself again. Again? For the first time I was myself.

We are not used to strangers here they frighten us and we don't understand what's happening

This man supposed to be a king with all the bearing of a king tight-lipped, stern-faced, and arrogant how is it he has sailed away and left his woman here so close to giving birth?

She is the queen of Crete who treats a queen like this? Something is bad antagonistic to the Earth

And now the king has gone leaving behind three men of whom one seems a decent sort we heard him say he would have none of it

We heard the other two laugh scornfully and say we do what we are told we don't believe the Earth's a goddess and fool should know there's one great God who made the world and lives up in the sky

We'll watch these men to see what they will do if possible we'll see the ladies and the baby safe.

35.

Josan is with us now. The other two are not. Apparently they stole a boat. They won't last long out on the open sea, unless they have the luck to meet a ship which is not likely. Can they be so daft? Or are they hiding here, with some intent, evil perhaps, although I can't think what and Josan seems to know no more of it.

Josan is good, he helps us where he can. I ask him, "Will your master come again or send someone for news of us?"

He says, "He's not the man to leave a thing half done, or by default not follow through on it."

"You think he really planned this in advance, to leave her here?"

"Who knows? It's possible. He plans ahead. But all the same something, I don't know what, some scruple in his mind, some superstitious fear has held him back in spite of constant urging by the priest, from outright murder. Better leave you here, you and your mistress and the child to be, stranded - with us to put the baby out to die, our orders were. If what I hear is true, your mistress is divine? My mother too was once a priestess in the Goddess' cult before the northerners abolished it. She taught me to respect the living Earth, and though I must believe my father's god, it is compulsory, my deeper faith is similar to yours. So have no fear, no harm will ever come to you from me."

"How comes it that you are so diffferent from others of your kind? You speak so well, and seem to know so much. Where men are rough your gentleness is rare."

"As I have said, my mother raised me in the older faith. My father died in some unneeded war so she was all my early influence."

While we are talking, Ariadne calls. I go at once to find out what she wants. I want to tell her not to call so much when there's no need. This time she is in tears.

She says, "We two were once as close as one till circumstances separated us and now misfortune's made us one again."

"It's not misfortune, carrying this child. What better than for Theseus to be gone?"

"But how can I, here, raise him properly?"

"As he's divine, he'll need no luxury."

"I'm frightened, Nysa, please don't go so far that you can't hear me call. It must be soon. My womb is cramping and I feel the pain. You spend more time with Josan than with me. Can he be trusted?"

"I believe he can."

"Nysa, you are my courage and my strength."

She'd taken me for granted all the time since early childhood, never mind how she reduced me to the status of a slave, a willing slave, oh yes, but even so... I hold her hand to comfort her, and think - so I may lose the half of what is we, in order to be whole? I fear for her, she's weak, in no condition for a birth.

"Josan," I call, and Josan answers, "Yes?"

Well now have we done wrong one should not kill but still evil they were and evil their intent no doubt of it from what we heard them say they'll do no evil now we've done what we believe is right to do but now we fear the king may send to know his orders carried out this woman and her child must disappear soon as the babe is born so we can say in truth we know not where they are and if she's all she is supposed to be no doubt the Goddess will look after her.

36.

Oh weep for Ariadne - is she dead, her divine spirit floated in the air, or else descended deep into the Earth? Or is she in this child that now is mine? I have a child not made by man to call my own! My mistress and my love lies all de-spirited in my despairing arms - no, not despair!

No longer mistress and no more my love she lies so heavy in my arms. The blood is all gone from her face but yet her hair seems living as it hangs golden across my arms while her dear cheek rests on my swelling breast.

Josan is here with me we have the child born to be king now hope is born now a new world is brought to life and waits a growing up.

Oh weep for Ariadne, she is dead! Oh weep for when we loved beside a mountain stream and the trees on the leaves were alive with the joy of the day and the mossy bank was soft where we lay in nature's innocence, hearing the song of the wind and the water running to the sea.

Rejoice in Ariadne' child! Rejoice for Ariadne born again a boy whom I will raise to be a king!

How was this child conceived? No seed of Theseus germinated here to make this fragile budding free to grow into a strong-stemmed flowering of grace.

When came the spirit into my love's womb? More than nine months ago, that certainly, but generation of divine intent need answer to no mortal scale of time.

I know already what I'll call this boy, this precious gift of Earth for me to raise until he comes of age to change the world.

Now weep for Ariadne who is dead! She bled and there was nothing we could do to stop the flow. Was this ordained by Earth's self-organizing genius?

We did the best we could, Josan and I, a local woman helped who said she knew all about labor, and we did our best.

Will there be anyone who dares imply we failed in it? Could we have better done?

Between her birthing and the hour of death weak though she was. she said to me, "How does he look, is he as fair as he should be?

"He has your golden hair."

"That is the sign of his divinity. No look of Theseus there?"

"No look at all. Already I can see a likeness to yourself."

"Aie, what will become of me, Nysa? Is this the punishment for what I've done?"

"The punishment lies surely in yourself, in your imagining. They say that we are born with just so many days to live, and then we die. Take heart, my dearest one, you may recover yet."

I knew she doubted me. She was so weak. I waited for her death with a strange mix of my own helplessness and eagerness to get it over with. In the meantime I did my best for her, with fresh spring-water cooled her burning brow, uttered what words of comfort I could find and held my arms around her tenderly, with sorrow's cruel clutching at my throat, blurring my eyes with scarce-contained tears.

Oh weep for Ariadne. She has died. Freed of her now, of my obsessive love, and of my status as an underling, still young, may I be granted the great joy of love between a husband and a wife? Am I now free to love a man? Josan? He's gentle with the babe, tender with me.

Until she's cold I hold her in my arms. I too grow cold. I shiver as I sit. Such close proximity to death! Is Ariadne dead, or does she sleep, anesthetized by the dark occult force of evil's jealousy, personified perhaps by Theseus who had cast a spell that she shall never waken? No, a man who's mortal has no magic spell to last for ever. Never is for deity. A day will come, perhaps not in my life, the prince and prophet of the Earth, grown up, shall find her memory and kiss her lips with an eternal life-restoring love. Evil is always limited by time. Goodness alone allows infinity.

Have faith for Ariadne, that her son, our son, will grow to be the promised lord of that glad land within our hearts, the land of mystery. I am alive, I feel, and so I am. And as I am I live. Love and enjoy. The past has flowed away into the sea of its obscurity. Have done with it. The future here is born.

She truly was a virgin after all, virtual, in spiritual terms. Her one insemination was of Earth that day the spirit entered into her and she took on her brow the symbol of the Moon. All else is make-belief. A child is born to be the prince of purity and love, for whom I have responsibility. Now is her body cold. Now Josan comes, we lay her down. Now Josan takes my arm, carries the babe, and firmly leads me off.

Now I am free, free of the mortal pain that comes from love which feels itself less loved.

Oh weep for my lost love, for she is dead.

So what should we do now the child is born a lusty-looking boy they claim that he's the son of the GReat Mother Earth can we believe?

What should we do? We'll send them to the upland through the wilder woods that's what we'll do not to offend the Goddess nor bring Theseus' anger down on us and if the child's divinity is nothing but a myth they will be lost but if he's special, then they'll be all right.

37.

It took all day to gather enough wood. Darkness rose out of Earth. The Moon came up in the slim crescent of her dying phase. We carried Ariadne to the pyre as custom was, wearing the coronet of golden vine-leaves Daedalus had made, as delicate as only he knew how. to match the fineness of her slender form.

Laid carefully upon a black goat-skin, clothed in her best white robe that she had worn the day we crowned her as the Goddess Moon's mortal persona and as high priestess, she was ethereal, empty of life in its material sense. The dying Moon gave light enough to make her body glow as if she too now gloried in the night.

Josan made fire, and at a nod from me he put the burning torch into the pyre. He took the baby while I snatched the crown from Ariadne's white and waxy brow before advancing flames could capture it in their fierce onslaught on the citadel of her abandoned beauty in the flesh.

Some people who had helped us stack the wood looked on, but not too closely, from respect and from a proper sense of awe. I knew they'd seen the coronet, but in the dark would not have seen me reach to take it off and hide it quickly underneath my gown before the flames' effulgence lighted us.

I said to Josan, "This is for the boy to have when he is grown to be a man."

"We'll keep it safe," he said, "somehow we will. I doubt if these poor people even know the worth of gold, but let's not take the chance. We'll hide it safely.

"As we'll hide ourselves safely from Theseus' sight." I trusted him. No reason to. Simply I knew I could.

"Tomorrow some may rake the ashes through, but they will find no trace of melted gold."

We stood together by the burning pyre, as close as possible with such great heat.

The baby, bright-eyed, smiled to see the flames' increasing violence as more wood caught alight, and over them the sparks that flew high in the air, with an erratic flight like fireflies when they do their courting dance above the lambent moonshine on the grass in eerie copulation with the night.

The sparks, the stars, and the sad-smiling Moon displayed a pattern marvelous to see. Not so the cruel scene before our eyes as we must watch the greeny-whitish skin blister and blacken from the passionate and life-devouring libido of fire.

Josan was silent. He most often was. The light reflected from the lurid flames made savage patterns on his olive face in harmony to the harsh holocaust.

Sickened we turned, and slowly walked away. He took my hand, and I was glad of it. No man had ever held my hand before. I left my old self burning in the fire. A new persona walked away from it. I was released - yes, I must tell the truth - by Ariadne's death. Free to be me. It was as if the fire burned in my heart and cauterized the sores of servitude.

38.

Shortly before she died she'd said to me, before her mind became delirious, "What have I done, Nysa, what have I done? Do I deserve to die? Because of me my country is betrayed to foreigners. Women are now subservient to men. The truth of Earth is perjured by the lie of this new God."

I could not say to her, This is the way it is. I am the one with the ability to raise the child in the best way to make him fit to be the teacher who will take the people's hearts.

"Don't blame yourself," I'd said, "It had to be. Even hard rocks are overcome by storms and dragged to ruination by the tides when both combine under the high command."

"How could I be so foolish, not to see the kind of man that Theseus really is?"

"Because you were in love, I must suppose. Although divine you have mortality and with mortality its weaknesses."

"But how can such men be, if we all have the Goddess' spirit given us at birth?"

I could not answer. Later I would think, Perhaps the element of grace may be still-born within the body of a man, so he can live without it, never know what we know to be true and therefore good. Such men must live in loneliness lacking the sense of peace, cursed by a restless mind. It follows that in consequence of this they think that more material property, with its concomitant of influence in context of materiality will fill the emptiness in their own selves. Since all they have can never be enough they are forever needing to get more from someone else, and see no wrong in it. They even fight the Earth. Putting themselves apart, as doctrinated by their god, they lose the liberty of being at one with all the manifests of sacred life. When all are equal, everyone is free. With Theseus' god no one is ever free, their faith is based on fear of punishment. The mercy they believe their god will grant is self-deception, is an antidote a drug to dull the guilt he makes them feel.

39.

The main thing was to keep the babe alive. Before his mother died he'd fed from her, and even after, while her flesh was soft and not yet stiffening. It had to be. What to do now? We must find milk for him.

Then suddenly a miracle occurred. My breasts came into milk. Oh wondrous Earth to grant my wish that I might suckle him so he would know his mothering in me! I'd felt a strangeness in me taking place, a pressure, and a swelling of the glands, but, so distracted, gave it no concern. I only knew the burning love I had for this small baby as it was my own. Oh ecstasy! To feel him leech to me, his tiny fingers clutching at my breast, his lips pulling each teat so eagerly as my sap flowed into his sapling life to feed the succulence of tender love.

And Josan said, "So it is given us to be the parents of this infant child. So we are chosen!"

"Happy, happy us!"

"If this boy is divine the time will come he'll not be ours alone but all the world's."

What a good man. In no way brilliant, not beautiful, but quietly competent, a man I sensed at once reliable and true. His teeth were sound. His breath was good. His smile was tender as the dawning sun, and when he cursed he meant no harm by it.

"We'll call him Dionysus, the lame god, that way he takes my name, and he is lame as he is limited by mortal form."

"I like the name."

"First he will have to grow to manhood. Until then he'll be the same as any country boy.

"We'll feed him well, but first, Nysa, I have to feed you well so that your milk is rich and plentiful. I have my bow, I'll bring you meat enough."

"But when you kill be sure that you give thanks and ask forgiveness for the life you take."

"I will. It's what my mother used to say. It's an old custom and I think it's good, but those whose faith is in the northern god consider meat their due and see no need for gratitude. The earth is theirs, they say, for human benefit. So I was taught, and I believed it so. Not any more."

Nothing was said of our relationship. Josan in any case was not a man to have the words for anything like that. but we both knew we were together now.

What blood throbs in a wayward star what lonely light from depths above is wrought in space?

40.

Josan had made a carry-bag of reeds to hold the baby Dionysus tight against my breast. His heart was close to mine, this piece of Ariadne, of the Earth, piece of the Moon, and now a piece of me, a miracle, without paternity.

We had been told to take a path that led, they said, up to the mountain grazing fields where herdsmen had a small community. I bartered some of Ariadne's clothes for food. As we could only take with us as much as we could carry on our backs we had to choose with care. Some things we hid, hoping to fetch them on a future day.

At sunrise we set off into the woods. It was as if we went back into night so dense the canopy of ancient trees that interweaved their branches overhead. Where the sun's rays could filter through there was as if a flickering of stars whose light was just enough to throw a dappled pattern on the forest floor, but while the proper night must always wear the dark robe of the Moon's divinity, this daytime dark cloaked us in the unknown of sight and sound. It was not long before we lost the path. or else there was no path. I wondered if perhaps the islanders had sent us this way to be rid of us. Perhaps there was no cause to be afraid, but that we were was undeniable. The gloom encircled us, confined our space with walls that made a high but narrow hall where vast primordial tree-trunks held the roof.

Howl of a beast in dark invisible. Most living things we saw were colorless, as if on loan to life from death's account. Beneath our feet a mat of rotted leaves where nothing grew but giant funguses and all we smelled was odor of decay. Stench of insanctity, subliminal.

Thick ropes of vines that climbed up to the light hindered our passing through and tripped our feet entangling us as if to hold us there all wrapped around as spiders hold their prey to keep them lardered for another day.

This underworld, this interdicted space, this gloomy sepulchre where no birds sang, this spurious night where day was held at bay suspended time and fed upon itself.

It was a journey through a dream of death in which there was no sense of afterlife. We shrank from sounds of unknown origin, clatter of brush, or rustle of dead leaves. footfalls behind, and heavy breath of fear. Useless to say it was a part of Earth. Being eternal She is not concerned with the laments of existential fate.

As well as all we carried on our backs my lameness made our progress very slow. Then, when I needed most a place to rest, and we were on the threshold of despair, we came upon an opening to the sky where a great cedar-tree, fallen, lay dead, dissolving slowly back into the ground in normal consummation of its growth by the self-sacrifice that life demands allowing growth and greenery again. Call not decay the property of death!

We stopped at once, rejoicing in the sun whose rays brought hope and confidence again. We drank some tepid water from our gourd. I fed the baby, put him down to sleep. We ate some pine-nuts found along the way and then lay down together in the grass.

Now he leans over me, his mouth near mine. His breath is like the scent of cedar-wood. Now finally I know the joy of it. First the arousal, then the happiness lasting as long as the life of the Moon, which is forever, an eternal now, light within dark, and dark within the light.

It happened just like that, without request, without consent, and ineluctible. Not what I have imagined it to be. He is so gentle, so concerned to please. Is he a rarity? From all I've heard he must be so, and what's more, he is mine. On this dear day we recreate ourselves.

I'd had a dream on two successive nights, how Theseus, yes, that very man himself, came striding from the sea, took me by force and entered me, all the while bellowing just like a bull, and even as he thrust and throbbed his member hard inside of me my head split open like a bursting bud and out of it a purple butterfly fluttered into the sky and out of sight. I took the dream as meaning fear of men, mistrust of them, and yet a strong desire for giving birth. Perhaps it represents a wish to be as Ariadne was. From this day there need never more be fear of mating with a man. Josan! Josan!

He took me as I wanted to be took. When climax of our mating came to me, Earth lifted me and held me in the air, I was a bow tight-strung and strongly drawn, a wondrous tension stretched to breaking point, so my whole being was convulsed, released - then softly let go down, just as might fall a feather from a dove struck by a hawk.

We lay awhile, wrapped in each other's arms, till Josan said we must go on again. We loaded up the bundles on our backs and put the baby in his carrier, then once again we stepped out of the light. Further we went, more steeply rose the ground till we must place our feet with care and draw our bodies up by grasping at the vines. I soon began to tire, but Josan said we must press on while there was daylight left.

"So long as we are going up the hill we must come out on the bare mountain-side. The forest's thinning out, it won't be long."

And then what do we do, I thought, what next? Soon birds were singing, all their private song from out their secret hearts, a thousand notes that coalesced into a common chord vibrating from the throat of Mother Earth as each, though separate, is part of Her in natural and perfect harmony.

41.

"Look, Nysa," Josan cried. He was some way ahead of me by now. "We have come through!" For quite some time I'd barely tried to see beyond my feet, so burdened by fatigue. Then I looked up, and saw what Josan saw. Ahead of us, between the trunks of trees, there was a greenish light, and very soon we came out to what seemed like paradise. In memory's eye I see a barley-field, bleached pale with drooping heads beneath the sun - no, that's some other place, another time - now I recall, there was a treeless slope which was, between the outcrops of the rock, all gleaming yellow, the last blossoming of summer, lit now by the sun low down over the sea's edge. Not much further on some women stooped among wild tangled vines gathering grapes, which as we later learned, they used for making wine, not to be drunk on any day, but at the cyclic time of the autumnal Moon, in ritual to celebrate the Earth's fertility when the enlightened feeling from the wine let them conceive divine proximity and know themselves to be possessed of it as they gyrated in ecstatic dance.

But I digress. So many memories come into mind, The women ceased their work, calling the children close to them. The babes too small to run they carried on their backs which they now straightened as they gazed at us. As soon as they could see we were no threat suspicion turned to easy friendliness. inviting us to pick and eat some grapes - no doubt they saw our need for sustenance - which you can guess we did most readily, gulping the ripe red fruit, sour though it was. The while they studied us, we studied them. As women do, they gathered round the babe, exclaiming at how beautiful he was.

They were the families of farming men who herded goats and grew a litle grain living in caves there on the mountain-side.

When we explained that we needed a cave they knew at once where they could show us one, a little way apart from where they lived, handy, which was important, to a spring, and in a good position facing south protected from the icy winter wind which, like the Greeks, came out of northern waste.

One said, "It was a mountain-lions' den" - another said, "But not for a long time, we smoked them out. They've not been back again." How earnestly I hoped that that was true!

One of the boys was told to lead us there, and in the time it took the sun to sink close to the far-off limit of the land in customary colorful display, we found our future home. It was not much! Living with Ariadne at the court I'd grown accustomed to the luxury. It smelled of lions still. They'd not been back? I almost wept, for my discouragement. At least no Ariadne to console, that would have been too much for me just then.

First Josan lit a fire so we could see, though day would linger for a little while high up here on the open mountain-face. Making a broom from twigs that grew near-by I swept the cave as clean as possible, at least that part of it not too far in. We'd find out in the morning soon enough our home's extent into the underworld. Josan had set himself to make a gate of willow-wands to keep intruders out.

As I was fetching dry grass for a bed two of the women came, carrying skins to lie on, and some woolen coverings, with food to last us for a day or two. They looked at Josan's bow, better by far than anything that they knew how to make, and then suggested he should join their men next day, when they were going on a hunt. Josan agreed. It was, he said, a way to become part of the community.

Our plan was this - that Jason with his skill at carpentry should barter work for food as well as what by hunting he could get. I, for my part, would work around the home, feed Dionysus, keep him clean and well - this through the coming winter anyway. That would be our routine. On this first night I fed the baby - there was milk enough, my breasts were heavy with the weight of it. We fetched some water from the well, washed there, ate gratefully the food our neighbors brought, then lay down on what served us for a bed.

Jason made love to me, then fell asleep. Though tired enough, my mind was all afire with uninvited thoughts, both good and bad. Why had they sent us through the wilder woods? I'd learned the hill-folk took another way, a rocky, twisting path where no trees grew, Did they perhaps intend us to be lost, to die of thirst and hunger in the woods? Well, let them think us lost, the better so. I wondered how to get the neighbore here not to let our survival known below. And what of lions, were we safe from them? I lay awake, hearing the sounds of night, the rhythm of the breathing of the dark, while the changing airs of the constant wind vibrate the varied music of the land.

42.

At last I sleep, this time without a dream. No Theseus comes to rape me from the sea. Twice in the night I wake to feed the babe, again just after dawn when the brash sun and a fresh breeze arouse the dewy grass to wavy dancing in the morning mass of celebration for the gift of life.

I look out onto the scintillating light that makes me feel refreshed and confident. We learn our smiles and sorrows through the sense of Earth's inconstant, ever-shifting moods.

The view from our cave's mouth is wonderful, reaching from east to west and far away to a clear line that marks the outer edge of human knowledge, where the Sun and Moon sink out of sight in their mysterious way, always dependably to come again as though they are arisen from the dead - recycling spirits ever fleshed again.

A green sea sparkles to the new-born day, not more than lightly rippled by the air. An eagle soars not far from where I stand. Below, I look down on the jagged coast, with here and there a scattering of rocks ringed with white foam that seems to suckle them so hungrily, each with a rounded mouth as might a teat look from inside the breast feeding the hungry Sea with milk of Earth.

Although I cannot see from so far up, I know that cormorants sit on the rocks holding their black wings out to let them dry. I saw them when we came in there to land, like fateful figures darkly watching us. We have escaped from their malignancy. Now those ill-omened birds can worry me no more. Now bluebirds sing, and butterflies sip nectar from the autumn crocuses.

But first I tell you how our day commenced. Josan has opened out our makeshift gate and gone to gather fuel for the fire which we will keep alight through day and night. The baby Dionysus is asleep. I come out yawning, then I stand erect, letting the new day wrap me in the arms of its luxuriating warmth, just as Josan had held me through the chilly night. I close my eyes and raise my face toward the sky, stretch out my arms in cruciform, in sensous delight and reverence, then draw my arms back to embrace myself,

My dress, not suitable I know for work, wear it I will, is Ariadne's favorite, showing my legs and my left shoulder bare. A band of gold that was my mistress's holds back the long black tresses of my hair that hang in glossy waves down to my waist. Now it is my turn to be beautiful, not for a man, not even Josan, but as beautiful only for beauty's sake. The sun, that bathes the land in cleansing light, shines through the sparse leaves of an aspen tree to throw a dancing pattern on the rocks that top the grass like reefs washed by the sea. Not till the evening will sun shine in exposing all the detail of our home.

I feel uplifted by the scented air, the sun, the sea, the shining greenery. I issue new-born from the birthing cave into a future brightly beckoning. Problems will solve themselves. If others live in this rare atmosphere, then why not we? It gives a sense of strength and dominance to look down from this height upon the sea whose coloring shows shades of difference - dark further out, and lighter near the land, from deep to shallow in a graded line, green almost blue, and gray to almost green, and green the wilder woods of yesterday.

Already I'm enamored of this place. Bare ledge of rock, coarse grass and scanty brush, trees stunted from the paucity of soil - this is not poverty. We are aloft above the murk of our mortality. There is a large rock, tall, irregular, shaped as I fancy in a human form, discernable perhaps to none but me. It stands a sentinel before our cave, a whitish gray on all its sunny sides with sparks of mica shining in the day, but dark and mossy in the always shade. Then when the Moon is high it's luminous, dark purple, glowing with an inner light, star-dusted in the cavern of the night, my private image of divinity.

With Dionysus safe in Josan's care, barefoot I make my way down to the spring. I feel an overwhelming sense of immanence, a spirit of this place quite palpable,

As I bend over the pellucid pool fed by a gushing from the fissured rock, to fill our water-carrier, I watch the beaded bubbles rising to the light. I feel the spirit's presence more and more, encircling, entering, possessing me. My body dissipates and I am free not to be me but part of all there is. I am myself a tadpole in the pool, with fascinating patterns on its back; a dragonfly that rests upon a reed, its purple splendor radiating life; here where the water seeps into the moss I am among a forest of small trees with emerald stems and coral-tinted leaves; crawling upon the surface of a leaf I am a tiny beetle made of gold, a little bead of shining purity that shimmers in the ecstasy of life. All that's around me is immediate and yet eternal; timeless, all of time; intensely separate, but all in all; infused with meaning, and yet meaningless.

Was I in trance, lost to my consciousness, knowing what is to mortal sense denied? Whatever - to normality returned, now I am in my body, fleshed again. I go below the spring where out of sedge the water issues as an infant rill to start its ageing journey to the sea. I walk along its course a little way and find a wider pool, deep, overhung by a nut-laden slender-branching tree. The water pauses there to gather strength before descent into maturity. It brings into my mind the day we lay, myself and Ariadne, by a stream, where we would leave our innocence behind. to enter the dark woods of destiny.

Out of this still pool watered of past time where time must wait before its downfall to futurity shallow on one side edged with pebbles overslimed by summer's subsidence or scoured white by winter's overrush deep on one side dark, deep, dappled brown and still, beaded with foam from upstream turbulence out of ths pool where gauze-winged ephemeridae in maiden flight of orgiastic dance up, up, in life down, down to death as faint they fall in their hymenial collapse wings cruciform upon the water floating fish-food fattened on one day's light egg-laid and satisfied spent and fulfilled out of this pool where fish lay seed on the gravel bed of the shallow stream that springs virginal from the mountain's loin thence to return exhausted, dying, down from this still pool the only way over the hard enduring rock and the sea will receive and return the rain to the living land for its regenesis in the continuing ejaculation for the springs creation out of the still pool's potency thrust through the fatal freeway two lives joined as one transmute, transcend transfuse with love all energy so we in the endless flood of life fulfil our destiny in the sea's infinity.

43.

Picking my way on rough, untrodden ground, I went back up the slope toward the cave. The thyme and marjoram, bruised by my feet, released their sharp aroma to the air. I thought of Josan and my love for him, so very circumstantial but so sure - of Dionysus with another love, more of a sacred trust to be preserved intact for all the peoples of the world. Josan and I agreed our proper course - we'd bring him up like any other boy. If he was special he must of himself grow into his own speciality. For now, we'd have him think himself our son.

Divinity is not in mortal hands but we can influence the flesh and bone. I was in no way daunted by the task. For the first time I'd come to know myself, become aware of clear and conscious thought, free now for the first time to make my choice, Now I could see my Ariadne plain, not as I'd wanted her to be, but as she was, insensible, selfish and vain to all appearances, but in herself an inexperienced and normal girl with status and responsibility before she was sufficiently mature, a maiden full of life, and wanting love. She wanted what she thought she saw - Theseus was what she got, but not the man she saw.

Bodily love is such a private thing for two to share, but Theseus never shared, nor cared - to him both words were meaningless, at least that's how I've always thought of him. As I look down the tunnel of the past, the long, long tunnel through time's avenue into the depth of life-begetting Earth, as I look back from where I've come to be, all is compressed into a timeless tale, a myth of many meanings, overlaid each upon each, always revealing clues to much I might have wanted to forget but which I need for comprehending all the urgent pleading of my origins to be allowed the pride of consciousness. What is the past? What makes our memory? If past exists, am I its prisoner? Or am I its incarnate permanence and it a part of me I cannot see, just as I feel but cannot see the skin, the flesh, the muscles of my back?

There's one thing I can see, an image clear in that bright morning light before the cave, Josan the man, naked above the waist; the pretty woman, nearing, notices the muscles on his shoulders and she feels the urging of her body, and exults in her new, altered sensuality. I see the image, and remember how I felt - the utter joy of such a brave new life.

44.

(We do not know the how and why, or when the first of our forebearers settled here. There is no telling in our legendry. From where we have our homes, high on the hill, we have a clear view of the coastal line and rocky bay below. Also we see a clearing where the trees have been cut down, and there are huts within a stout stockade to keep out any preying animals.

We saw a ship come in, a rare event, with well-armed men. Greatly to our relief they served no damage to the villagers, and sailed away after a day or two. All such incursions from the world at large threaten our harsh but gentle way of life.

Those who went down on weekly business to trade our cheeses and a skin or two for fish fresh from the sea, or waterfowl snared in the marshy lands, brought back report of a dead queen, abandoned by a king, a new-born child, a maid - and now are come a man and woman with a babe-in-arms, pleasant, polite, and anxious to be friends. The woman tells us that the child is hers - it must be, since she has the milk for it.

There was a prophecy - though no one knows its origin - that on this mountain-side within a cave there will be raised a man, a true son of the Earth, born to be prince of peace and happiness - might this be he, this little babe? But why abandoned here? We'll let them tell us in their own good time. The woman without question was the maid, the man seems to be guardian of the child. He is a Greek, but none the worse for that, eager to please, and skilled in carpentry for which he carries with him basic tools. So much they've managed to bring up with them, and coming by the very hardest way. The woman wears no ordinary clothes. It seems she served her mistress in a court where all the people dressed in finery. She's passing pretty, but she has no airs.

They want to settle here, and we agree. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of the Earth is watching over them, and gave them strength to make the journey here. We'll welcome them in our community. There will be things they'll need from us to help them settle in.)

45.

The sun at evening comes in our cave exposing all the cracks and crevices but not so far as to illuminate to full extent the depth within the dark, the passage to the ovaries of Earth. I like it best when I can be outside.

I love this place, this piece of mountain-side we call our home, I love it as myself, with sensuous, corporeal delight as I might throw myself upon the ground and feel its heart-beat throbbing into me; I love this place with such a fierce desire that I am one with it, a sacral bride. I offer up my body for its breath to enter me and vitalize the blood that through my veins is surging to my womb.

The crimson poppies with their nodding heads are nearly over now. Some of their blooms are scattering their seed upon the ground where, after nourishment for birds and mice enough will grow to replace what must die.

The days are shorter and the sun is cool, but even so the heavy morning dew will dissipate within an hour or two. Winter is near - the signs are all around, with nuts and berries ripe for picking. Those inedible to us will feed the birds. Bright color-patches show among the trees that like a lower garment clothe the loins of our bare-breasted mount of liberty - lanterns of flame among the evergreens, with here and there a single tree that seems it draws blood from the Earth.

Winter is rest. We don't know why we must contend with cold. Winter is growth invisible. Perhaps the Sun needs to regenerate his heat, as we in darkness find regenesis.

This first full-bodied Moon after the birth is Dionysus' very special day, his day of dedication to the Earth. Also it is the celebration day in honor of the harvest of the wine. First, ceremony, more than you'd expect with so few of us, then baptismal rites for any born in the preceding year - only one girl, this time, besides our boy.

I know already how our new friends feel, not yet exposed to foreign influence, about the sacred nature of the Earth, but contrary to country folk in Crete they do believe the Goddess really is one divine personage, though they can sense the presence of Her spirit everywhere.

After the ritual, the dance begins which is itself part of the ritual. There is a clean and level dancing place. First, cups of wine are passed from mouth to mouth. and we believe we drink the blood of Earth.

The Moon looks down on all the mountain-side. What does She see? Reflection of Herself as we might see ourselves in others' eyes?

Two men with drums begin a steady beat, their rhythm drawing us into the dance.

I wear my red robe - Ariadne's once - Egyptian made, of finest linen cloth, held on one shoulder by a silver clasp and gathered with a girdle at the waist. Its length falls almost to the ground and hangs so graceful folds from off my narrow hips. I love to look down at myself and see it swirling round my ankles as I dance. I let my hair hang loose without a braid - a freedom that was not allowed at court - the long black tresses covering my back and flying sideways when I whirl about, as whirl we all do to the steady beat.

Great Spirit, Mother Earth, beat of our hearts, transcend us from our mortal prisonment! We dance your dance, and feel you dance in us so throbs our blood to your emphatic drum.

Released from the constraint of daily care, inspired by the strong magic of the wine, wildly we dance, and yet more wildly still, whirling around in one place, dizzily, and all the while the Moon shines down on us, infusing us with mystic energy.

Soon we will come to feel ourselves entranced, transcended into altered consciousness. out of ourselves into a paradise.

The older people sit around the ring with all the smaller children in their care. I keep control enough to go and feed, in state of ecstasy, my baby there.

Josan looks at me with intense desire. He does not say much, but I know he's proud to have a woman who can look so well.

As time goes on some couples leave the dance and, fired with passion, lying on the ground, engage in the atoning act of love. I draw Josan apart. He lays me down. Before we join, I see a falling star and wish that I, this night, may make a life.

Some people end the festival flat out, quite drunk with the Great Spirit's influence, exhausted, done, touched by a little death like day-flies spent upon a summer pond, in dreamless sleep, of tension dispossessed.

46.

Yes, there were hungry times, especially toward the end of winter, early spring, when goats, half-starved themselves, gave little milk, when stores ran low and there was still no growth of greenstuff eatable. Then all we had was what the men from hunting might bring back. They would not venture far into the woods for which they had a superstitious fear, and there were tales of men who went too far, were lost, or killed, and never seen again.

The deer came out to browse at dawn and dusk, but they were shy, being at once aware of danger threatening. We feared the woods, they feared the open space, but each must brave the other for their food. Not only we, but wolves and mountain-lions preyed on them. The goats had to be herded in at night, and closed up in the safety of the caves.

Of course there always were the goats to eat, but that was only as a last resort. Goats were the base of the economy, their milk, their cheese, their skins, and then the kids which were made fat to eat on special days. We would eat rabbits, squirrels, even birds that sometimes could be snared or hit with stones, though that was difficult. This period was not so long. Soon there were eggs of birds, fresh greenery, and the spring flow of milk.

But no one starved, neighbors would see to that. Though we arrived as strangers, soon enough we became part of the community. We were informed that any family who did not properly co-operate would be compelled to go back down below. This happened only once while we were there.

We paid our way. Josan was in demand for making this or that. I did my stint at working in the cultivated ground, such as it was, shared by each family in labor and for what the stony land produced for us, but goats we never kept. I would not have them with us in the cave and we had no place else to shut them in.

The number that the land could well support here on this rocky slope was limited. Within that limit we were probably the last, and no one more could be allowed. We made our cave as home-like as we could. Mostly we lived outside the opening where Josan made, with poles and rushy thatch, a covering to keep out wind and rain.

Our Dionysus grew a sturdy boy. I knew that I must wait for any sign of his divinity until he was of age. The burden would be too much for a child. Don't think I did not watch for signs - I did! I surely did! The only difference I saw between him and the other boys was that he liked to be off by himself. He was so self-contained, and he was brave, he'd go off in the wilder woods alone although we told him it was dangerous. "Don't worry," he would say, "I know my way."

But that came later. I gave birth again. We named this new son for his father - Jo. Dionysus took, throughout their growing, always the lead, but showed the younger boy such love that he was all the world to Jo.

Of course he thought that he was Josan's son, and I his mother, as did everyone. He learned so fast. I taught him all I knew of Crete, as Josan did of Attica. Jo also learned, but not so readily.

47.

I, Josan, am the happiest of men. The luck of it, that I was one of three that Theseus chose, to leave behind him here. It must be that the Goddess willed it so, chose me to a guardian of the boy. But Nysa says, "It's all part of the plan that is no plan. The way the world evolves. Out of what seems like chaos comes the way. We make the choices that we have to make."

To think that I was ever taken in by the delusion of that northern god. Perhaps I was not, but pretended it to be as others were. To tell the truth I did not put much mind to it at all.

Her mistress' death is my good fortune now. The worst of deaths may give rise to a birth, in this case to the birth of our new love and of my understanding - double birth. I always thought a woman was to mate, to satisfy her husband's nightly need, to breed, do what she's told, sew clothes, cook food and work the soil, leaving her man free to consort with all the other men gathered together in a banded brotherhood. How wrong I was! How wrong we all, we men, who think that is the way it's meant to be.

Friendship, companionship, and shared respect, the will of each to help the other out - all these are part of our relationship as well as what we do in bed at night, and, as she says, fulfilment of desire is a beginning, not the end of it. This fits in with my new-found consciousness that we are rooted in the living Earth. She has more sense of Spirit than I do, but it's a sense that I'm developing.

I used to be a man of little talk. Having few thoughts, I had not much to say. But now what an exciting life is ours! What visions brighten my once darkened eyes! What fancies find expression in my speech! The first deep look into her morning face awakes me to awareness of the joys of our togetherness in constant love.

How often in the comfort of the night I've wanted to dissolve myself in her, be part of her, have her a part of me. By day our chores are separate. Each night we draw the stars into our union and if I miss a night it is because repeated mating makes my body tired. Not so my heart! What wears the body down can fortify the nervous energy. Once when a neighbor said, "How pale you are!" I answered him, "my heart needs so much blood, it sometimes borrows from my outer face."

We've had a fight or two, mostly because of wanting so much to be one, that each grew cross at our essential difference.

And when she bore my son, our dearest Jo, I loved her more than I thought possible. He was conceived, she says, the night I danced for the first time the country dance, the dance of Earth, of life, of ecstasy.

She never favors Ariadne's boy over our own son Jo, and as for me I love them both. A peasant I may be, but I'm a prince of life the way I feel.

48.

Josan, as well as working hard all day, worked well enough at night. His rod of love was ever ready to be up. It suited me. As one so starved I was insatiable. I who had thought I'd never love a man! Well, Josan was another sort of man. How one is altered by the circumstance! I'd say to him, "Pleasure me, Josan, please, and stimulate me till I gasp and groan with wanting you. Make my hot passion rise and swell as does your rod. and fill me with the sap of life the Goddess puts in you."

My body fires, I rise and fall in space, my heart beats to the bursting point of breath.

I should explain the change that came to us. By us, I mean the women of that time. No longer was our love-need limited to those few days at fullness of the Moon. Now we could be desiring any time except the days of blood. What made the change? I like to think the change was due to love apart from any need to propagate. The love that makes each put the other first and glues the bond of mutuality. Oh yes, I know that lust does not mean love, and my ideal not reality.

In point of fact the shift was gradual, in some respects doing more harm than good as two meanings of love came out of it. When I was young all love was lived as one. Bodily love was like a sacrament when mortals perpetrate the union with nature in the Earth's fertility, not consciously, but from an inner sense that all the dance of life is sexual. We shared with nature, nature was our love. We mated, and of mating came a birth. When intercourse became its own reward much mating was no more an act of love when all the meaning of the word was lust, which had no correspondence with the sense of union with nature who was now no longer honored in the coitus - and this would Dionysus come to teach.

49.

As years went by, Dia was better known, and took the name of Naxos from the Greeks. The harbor was improved. Ships came and went. From where we lived high on the mountain-side above the trees we looked down on the coast where we could clearly see the goings on among the dwellers in the land below. With some disdain. We held aloof from them. We watched a temple built, which soon we learned was for the worship of the northern god.

Worship is a bad word, for it implies something outside, and not within oneself. No, what we meant and felt was gratitude, awareness of the debt we owed for life.

This worship of the God is something else, a fever of the mind that spreads like plague from one place to the next. People forget the Goddess never was personified, She is the Earth, the sea, the sky above, the body and the essence of us all, the arms and legs,the liver, heart, and lungs, the bones, the kidneys, and the pulsing blood, the man's hot rod and the hot woman's womb, the food and air and drink and through it all the spirit enters into us at birth, leaves us at death. Such is our mother Earth. We never had a name for Her in Crete, Semele sometimes is a given name.

By any name the spirit is the same, within us and without. Then comes the God whose worship spreads so quickly everywhere, starting the concept of duality, division of the body from the heart, and worse, a life as separate from Earth. So is the human psyche dispossesed and disconnected from its origin. A god who is not part of living Earth can never save the loneliness of those whom he has separated from their roots.

Sometimes, on looking down, we see the smoke of sacrifice beside the temple door. They see their God as having human form, and human appetite, and human greed. They think that if they feed him something nice, a fatted kid, a heifer or a doe well roasted on the spit, he will confer favors on them. It's all a make-belief to gain possession of the people's minds and so make them dependent on the priests.

But what of Theseus? Did he never send to learn of Ariadne or the child? He was too busy, as we later heard. Theseus by wedding Crete took all of Crete into the Attic realm, and next he tried to further his ambition all the more. He married Helen, the Spartan princess, famed for her beauty even as the child which she still was. Theseus had made a deal hoping through her that he would get the land of Sparta for a jewel in his crown.

This time it did not work. Theseus renegued on his part of the bargain he had made. There was a war, a war that Theseus lost, so Helen went back to her father's house.

Soon all the states of Greece, including Crete, owed fealty to a new overlord, the Argive Agamemnon, such a man as seized any excuse for making war to widen his empire - in this event Helen, who for love's sake had eloped, prefering joy and freedom to the life of loveless marriage and the court's constraint, was most unjustly made the cause. War upon war, with untold misery for all the folks who never benefit, or win or lose. So many ruined homes. So many dead, in dubious battle fought with treachery. The gentle Trojans, wanting only peace; aggresssive Greeks, seeing honor in war and fighting in dishonorable ways.

When Agamemnon sacked defeated Troy on reaching home he's murdered by his wife, with reasonable cause, so some aver - you may know even more of it than I.

It's prophesied his empire will not last. More raiders from the north will raze his land more cruelly than Agamemnon's wars which had already spread the evil cloak of famine through the fertile lands of Greece with not enough men left to work the farms. So much for the false god they trusted in!

But now I'm far away from my own tale. I wander on, and think my thoughts aloud. Josan is always teasing me. He says "You think so much, your thoughts must overflow into your speech like rivers after rain which break the banks of reason in their flood." There is a poet under his plain face, but not a thinker. He can madden me, but I cannot be mad at him for long.

"It's true," I say, "I am condemned to think, and to express my thoughts, as if some spell is in my mind, as if some Earth-born spring rises within me. Longer that I live, more I am flowing with its influence, and so must live to give it utterance."

The days that pass we count from Goddess Moon who lives and dies for us, granting us grace. The changing seasons mark the years that pass. Our feasts are regular. The longest day, the days of equal darkness and of light, the day when dawn comes earlier again, seeding the grain, then harvesting the crop, the pressing of the grapes and the new wine - in spring we deck our altar-stone with bloom, at leaf-fall with a garlanding of vines. The feasts are time for fun. We drink and dance to lose ourselves in transcendental joy. Next day we are refreshed. Although our heads may hurt somewhat, our nervous energy is quite recharged, and we can look ahead to our next taste of immortality.

As in a trance the dancers of the world follow an endless thread through space and time - don't ask who lays the thread, we lay our own.

50.

So when he went we knew he had to go, but we assumed that he'd be back again to claim the coronet that we kept hid deep in the cave's recess among the bones of ancient animals. We did not know how destiny would bring him to declare his divine, sacred mission to the world, his ministry to all the poorer souls who had no joy in life, and lacked the faith to make supportable their misery.

He gone, we had our Jo, our darling Jo. I'd born him at the time when asphodels thrust up into the light their phallic stems, the flowers I most revere, reminding me with their deep fleshy penetrating roots how we are also rooted deep below where formless spirits wait regenesis, and with their blossoming lift up my heart in exaltation of the living Earth.

Boys must grow up. What would become of Jo? Must we lose both our boys? It might be so. With Dionysus gone, could we keep Jo to be a comfort in our latter days?

Josan surprised me once, and said, "Is there a meaning to it? I must know."

And I replied, "Meaning? For all I know there is no meaning, does not have to be. Perhaps we are the meaning, you and I. Life simply is. Earth is, and so are we. LIfe will go on. We make the best of it, and from what we believe our hearts are strong. Dear Josan, do you ever have regret at your decision to consort with me? It's not an easy life, here on the hill, few comforts, and no luxuries at all except the luxury of being here in liberty, breathing the mountain air."

"Far from regretting, I have never ceased rejoicing. Luxuries you may regret, not I. You know my life was ever rough."

One day Josan and I were at the spring. I said, pointing at something in the pool, "What ugly and rapacious thing is that? See how it hunts and greedily ingests another's life. A Theseus in the pool!"

And Josan said, "That is a dragon-fly or will be when it rises to the sun and splits apart its skin, then to emerge in all the glory of its purple hues, an airborne, irridescent overlord, greedy for life, but a destroyer born, destined to kill, to mate, and then to die."

"Such beauty masking such an ugliness!"

"The beauty leaves the ugliness behind, lit by the shining of the mighty sun."

"Josan, you talk too much about the sun, as if you still believed its deity."

"I'm sorry. I forget. Old habits last. Don't you agree the good inserts itself into the bad, and then by metamorphosis the water-wolf becomes a prince of light. Good alters bad as sun soaks up the dew."

The sun again! Was I sure he was free from the religious freaks of Attica? And anyway, Josan had got it wrong. He often did, when trying to be wise. For all their beauty, dragon-flies assert a tyranny to others in the air.

Josan was good at heart, of course he was. Hearts have no difference. It is men's minds that make the mischief and the miscontent. So Theseus had a heart? Deeply enclosed by all the fat of his ambitious self!

Was Jo like Josan? More like me in looks. Josan was equable, and all the time kept busy. Jo seemed to be up or down. When up, then he was irrepressible, over-excited, hardly making sense. When he was down he'd sit without a word, or lie in bed long after break of day, Beset by melancholy, he'd complain in gloomy tones, of the futility of life and nothing we could do would cheer him up. Then lethargy became a restlessness, a boiling up of hidden energy, just like a flock of ducks when, nearing dusk, the time when they take flight to feeding grounds, they work up to a tension, to a pitch of high excitement in their intercourse, then at the point of readiness they fly.

Must other's minds always be mysteries? And which of us confesses every thought? An animal will sit, and watch the scene, thinking of - what? Or is the mind a blank? Lost in the past? That could be me at times. It would be nice to have my mind a blank.

When Jo had been depressed for overlong I knew his silence meant a coming change, as if something fermented in his mind. That he missed Dionysus, I knew well.

51.

When Dionysus left, he was so young and yet adult, so calm, so resolute. I said, "We'll miss him, but I understand.' he has to go and see how others live."

Then Jo, behind me, taller than us both - "The sailors that I talk with down below tell of great horrors, wars, and slavery, the poor oppressed, treated like animals, with hunger, sickness, and such misery as makes one weep to have to hear of it. It's not the happy world it's meant to be."

"I know it. It was happening in Crete. Dissatisfaction, and a loss of faith. We need someone to teach the people truth."

"My brother says that's what he has to do. When ready, he'll come back, then go again, and we must follow him to show our faith."

"You know this, and you've never said a word. Did he say this?"

"I know it in my heart."

"Come back, and go away? Yes, I suppose - he's not as others are. But you, our Jo, you go so often to the lower land as Dionysus did. Why do you go? It makes me so uneasy when you do."

"How else am I to learn what's going on?"

"To become worldly, is that what you want?"

"Oh Mother, you should know me more than that." He turned away, his long hair, black like mine, hanging untidily behind his back.

Was he also touched by divinity, that he could see into his brother's mind? One thing for sure, he was his father's son. He might not look, or even talk like him, but I knew Jo was just a mortal boy, while Dionysus. with his golden hair, had such an aura never sired by man.

I only wished Jo would not go so much among the people of the lower land. From what I heard there was the sickness there, a creeping malaise like I'd seen in Crete, a malady from having lost the roots of faith, and worshipping this God, this pseudo God, ill-founded in the mind.

So many young went down, not to come back. They married there, or went away to sea. It was not good for our community, too much old age, and insufficient youth.

Once Jo brought back a girl, and what a girl! A cocktease or a whore, the way she looked, and which she was I never knew for sure, all painted up and giving herself airs, and showing Jo the come-on all the time. She wore her breasts uncovered in the way the fashion was, imported here from Crete. Small-minded girl, always dissatisfied. Our life-style did not suit her, so she left. I think that Jo was glad to see her go.

Jo thought his brother was to save the world, but Jo's experience was limited. Could beauty save the world, even in death? Our Dionysus. Beautiful. Divine. Was there a price to his divinity? A dreadful feeling came to me. I gasped. Who would believe him? The God's followers would persecute him, make him out a fake, and only in his death would he be known and by a few believed. I saw it clear. His mortal death - was that what I must bear?

I used to sit outside the cave and watch, so far below but yet so clearly seen, the restless, loving, hateful, moody sea with an eternal face, -its changing moods - its discontent on any cloudy day, its surge of madness in a raging wind, its rippled surface from a gentle breeze as if some tender hand was stroking it, its cheerful winking in the joyful sun and then its lighted pathway to the Moon - the path, some say, that spirits have to dance, released from life to the embrace of death ascending from the sea into the Moon.

52.

Inevitably Jo said he must leave, he had to get away and meet the world. He'd take a ship sailing this way or that. I begged him not to go - to no avail. Little the news we had of either. Once Jo sent a message that he was all right and well, working his way for room and board. He was in Crete! The sailor who came up to bring the message said that Jo was thin, but hard, seeming in perfect health. He also said Jo talked a lot about a brother who would come to teach the truth and bring good news to all who cared to hear. The sailor smiled at us, as if to say "We know your son's perhaps a little touched." He told us there were some - equally touched? - who were in secret practicing the faith and seriously listening to Jo.

Later we heard a rumor that some man was living wild and telling everyone a god was coming who would save the world, restoring the true knowledge of the Earth. This was in Crete. Could this be Jo? Our Jo? How would Jo know? And did he really mean his brother Dionysus, who must come to see us first and claim the golden crown?

My heart was reft apart by fear and pride. I longed so much to see my boys again. I feared they would be punished by their faith and even - oh my Goddess! - put to death by the authorities for stirring up dissent among the people, challenging the proper power of the establishment.

What could I do, except depend on fate? Was their belief really worth dying for? I had a sudden envy for the God - at least for what his followers believed - that he, as some extraordinary man, might intercede for those who prayed enough, humbling themselves to him sufficiently. There might be satisfaction in the state of absolute submission to his will. We'd no such comfort from our Mother Earth whose working was for common benefit, with nothing for the individual. But no! Such envy is a blasphemy! All things are all, and there's no way that one can be preferred to the organic whole.

I'd turn to Josan, always near at hand, my silent, strong, reliable support, for comfort to my dark, foreboding mind. Josan and I had one great thing in life, that each possessed the other equally. To be possessed but not oneself possess - that's bad, as with this new relationship between the people and their mighty god.

53.

Uncounted cycles of the seasons came and went. One evening, near summer's end, with air still warm, and crickets in the grass reverberating Earth's eternal breath, I sitting near the entrance to our cave beside the bright and ever-burning fire, watching the smoke blend margins of the light into the tide of darkness - something moved, obscure, but vaguely visible - some beast? Or could it be?... I had a wild surmise... I sat transfixed, removed from space and time. feeling a presence like a burning breeze, silent, and bodiless, vital, intense, but radiating peace. I had no fear, but neither could I stir nor say a word. Then through the smoke-haze came in to the light a man! Now I could see him. Oh what joy! Our Dionysus, home! "Josan", I cry, "He's here at last - my boy - what happiness!"

I threw my arms round his beloved neck and held him closely, tightly to my breasts - a surge of his remembered infancy.

"How are you both?" he said, quite soberly, as if he'd gone away the day before. I mumbled incoherent words and then drew back to have a better look at him.

"It's been so long," I said, "You have not changed, not much, and yet..." I could not find the words. There was a change in him, for sure, but more - a prince's dignity, a poor man's pride, the aspect of someone who knows his way. When he went off he was not yet a man. Now he looked strong, and dominant, but still his eyes were tender and compassionate.

First instant joy, then came a wave of fear - a sudden sense of suffering to come. All this emotion seemed to tie my tongue, and he was silent. He was so composed, standing as if firm-rooted in the ground, immobile, motionless but natural.

Then Josan came. "It's you," he simply said, "It's good that you are home again at last." Poor Josan, he had hoped that it was Jo, his only proper son. Except to me perhaps his disappointment did not show. But then he always was dispassionate, and anyway he soon got over it.

What Dionysus wore was something strange. Though worn and dirty, obviously rich made of a heavily embroidered silk. He saw me looking at it, and he said, "Where I have been, this a normal wear."

"I saw such stuff, among the trader's goods in Crete, so long ago, brought from afar out of the regions of the rising sun - garments of luxury the rich would buy."

"I thought I needed the experience. I got rich, then I gave it all away."

Nobody spoke. Why were we all so shy? This man that was our boy struck us with awe, I felt so small and insignificant. Such worldly knowledge! So he had been rich!

A movement in the dark, behind his back. "I'm not alone" - he motioned with his hand. First came a woman, followed by two men. "This is Melania," he said of her. To her he said, "Come meet my family who brought me here and raised me in their love."

He introduced to us the other men. "Their names are Pandorus, and Panthilus, both fishermen, friends who believe in me. They brought us here in their seaworthy craft."

It was too much to take in all at once. I hardly saw the men, being too intent on looking at Melania. So dark, so tall, and very beautiful - as much as by the firelight I could see of her. Her long bare arms bore glinting bracelets. She looked at Dionysus all the time. I saw humility, and sensed that she had gone through much of bad experience. Remembered pain lingered behind her eyes, her large and liquid eyes, but she had pride the way she held her back so straight.

Pride with humility? Could that be so? She wore a woven shawl over her head, blue as the blue of marsh forgetmenots, and round her neck she had a string of pearls that showed so white against her darker skin. The gown she wore, though very travel-worn, was of some palish-yellow silky stuff worn in a way I'd never seen before, wound tightly round her waist and narrow hips then falling so that anyone might see her long bare legs with anklets at her feet.

Josan stirred up the fire to make more flame which threw both light and shadow on her face. Her skin shone softly, deep, and luminous, like the deep glow of polished ebony, dark brown, with glossy undertones of black. She looked at me and smiled for the first time, threw off her shawl, revealing hair that fell in a cascade of black. Her teeth gleamed white. Her smile was like the rising of the Moon into the starlit splendor of the night.

"You must excuse her," Dionysus said, "she does not understand the way we speak."

She said something to him in her own tongue. To me he said, "She's so pleased to be here. I rescued her from an unhappy life. She was a whore, giving herself to men not for the holy sacrament in which the priestesses are trained to make a man god for a night, to die and be reborn initiate to sacred mystery - but for whatever price a man would pay for the brief need of his carnality. She'd been brought up in the belief that she, a woman, was inferior to men. I've taught her that is not the truth of it, that women, whose life-force comes from the Earth, who have from Her the power to create, whose knowledge is instinct and spiritful, are to be held in honor by the men. I honor her, just as she honors me. I love her, she's my wife."

What could I say? I took her in my arms and hugged her close.

Then Josan said - always a tactful man - "There's room inside for all of us to sleep. You'll find our cave makes quite a handy home the way we've fixed it up over the years."

"We're used to sleeping rough beneath the Moon. Out here beside the fire will do for us. We'll cook for you, Nysa, we have the food, and a whole skin of wine to let our hearts rise up above the limits of our flesh."

Why did he not say Mother? Did he know?

His friends were setting down their heavy loads. They had - what shall I say? - a carefree air. They dressed like ordinary country folk with uncut beards and hair, but dark, not fair like Dionysus with his mother's gift of golden curls - the mark of deity? Something there was that gave them both a look of living in the rhythm of the Earth, relaxed and self-assured and free of fear, ready to laugh, appreciating joy. They thanked both of us for receiving them.

Panthilus said, "That was a long hot climb to get here from below. We thought your son had got us lost among the wilder woods."

"For goodness' sake, why did you come that way?'

"You came that way, as now they too have come, their rite of passage to the higher land. My friends of little faith, did you suppose I might mistake the path? I can't forget. All things are present in my memory. I am the present and the past. Future is in me too, but not yet clarified. Your fear was natural enough, and yet unnatural. Such fear is lack of faith, a falling of the heart projected on the vision of your close environment. It is the test of man's experience, to face the fear, and learn there is no fear."

So he had come to his maturity having the knowledge of his origin. I knew it, but I would not say a word, and told Josan not to say anything. When Dionysus spoke, I realized I had to listen closely, and believe.

54.

Melania had slipped into the dark like a black hand into a midnight glove. She was not long. When she came back she had a bunch of flowers, one of which she gave to each of us, and with each bloom a smile as tender as the smiling of the Moon. The last left-over bloom, a marguerite of purest white, she placed in her own hair.

"How can she find the flowers on the dark?"

And Dionysus said, "She senses them, she finds them in the dark instinctively. These flowers are unspoken words of love. Also they represent abiding truth whose value is deep-hidden in the dark, impenetrable to most mortal eyes, the dark of death which does contain the light, though there can be a few who in their lives go through the darkness of a death in life and come out to a shining of the Moon. Melania is one. She knows the dark is like a locket of the living Earth that holds a picture of eternal life. She died to life and now she lives again, a flower which when ripe can scatter seeds to come up flourishing, not in the ground beneath our feet but in the fundament which is the hope and longing of our hearts, and in our hearts breed other fertile seeds of faith that in the span of mortal life we can soar up above the dreary day, loosen the bands of care, and be aware of music's magic, and the charming spells of poetry that speak from heart to heart free from the censor of our consciousness, painting in pictures of our inward eye the shapes and colors of eternity with joy that might seem inconceivable. That's why I am among you, so to teach. And if I use the mushroom or the grape why not? Better to glimpse infinity if only in a carefree now and then than live within the frozen cast of mind that comes from being ever sightless, blind in the wasteland of spiritual death."

Some things he said, I could not follow then, but all his words are in my memory, and only later, after his decease, the dawn of understanding came to us who'd followed him until the fateful day that was a new beginning, not an end.

"Speaking of magic mushrooms, what about" Pandorus said, "those which while coming here we picked along the edges of the woods?"

And Dionysus answered, "No, not now, tonight the wine will make us free enough."

Turning to me, he said, "I've brought you this" - and from a pocket he drew out a string of gems, a necklace to the waist in length, of blueish-green, the color of the sea when the hot sun has sunken out of sight.

"Tokens of wealth I would not give away, but kept as gifts for those who'd value them not for their currency but for their worth in the pure beauty of their coloring. Such jewels are the outer eyes of Earth. Look into them, beyond their bright facade, and you may see into the mother-soul where all the spirits have their terminus."

"It is an ornament for royalty."

"What's royalty that does not have its realm within the hearts of ordinary folk? This is my royal offering to you, the dearest foster-mother one could wish."

So he did know the truth of it, but how?

"I'll put it on you. See! How well it shows against your skin, and how the colors trade their glowing with the glossy of your hair and with the bright fenesters of your eyes."

"When can I wear it?"

"Wear it all the time, and show that pleasure's not a prey to pride."

"It's more befitting to Melania." I made a sign to show her what I meant. I took it off, and offered it to her. "Tell her," I said, "as she loves you, a gift to her is as a gift to me."

She looked to Dionysus for assent, then took the necklace, held it to the Moon to catch the light, then did a little dance, and Dionysus said, "See how she moves above the ground, like dandelion seed, weightless, afloat on air. Where she alights, life is. So she may take the necklace, but remember this, whatever the Earth gives if not received with joy She takes away."

He was not angry, but I felt reproved. For Josan he had brought a ruby ring which Josan wore until the day he died.

"I chose these gifts for mortal parentage, for the dear couple who did raise me well, and for the memory of she who died and gave me safely to your fostering."

He knew his mother, but how did he know?

I said, "You are unique in that you have no father, but two mothers, Goddess Earth and Ariadne."

He said, "Really three, as milk from your breasts made my nourishment and your love gave my childhood happiness. It's better that the world should not yet learn the sacred fire that fed me in the womb of Ariadne, priestess of the Moon. You are my mother, let them think it so, and let all think my father is Josan."

I said, "I ceased the bleeding from my womb some time ago, but I know that my life is not yet over. You have come to me to be a guide for my less carnal days, desire a memory, darkness a dream."

"Hard times may be ahead."

"We'll follow you."

55.

We would have asked our neighbors for a kid to make a proper feast of homecoming, but Dionysus said, "We eat no meat. The birds and beasts are worth no less than we, and as for sacrifice, what craziness to think it might be pleasing to the Earth that one should offer her part of Herself!"

It was no more than I had thought myself. though I heard Josan mutter to himself, "Without the meat we'd have enough to eat?" His skill in hunting meant a lot to him.

We made a simple meal, with barley-cakes and cheese, wild garlic and the precious oil they'd brought with them, along with fruit and nuts I had not seen the like of since in Crete.

Melania had an alabaster jar from which she poured on Dionysus' head some special oil, and rubbed it in his hair. Smiling, he spoke to her in her own tongue, then turned to me and said, "Her doing this is not symbolic of subservience. As she annoints me, so I am her king and she asserts her primacy as queen - it is a ritual once carried out for the regeneration of all life."

I knew the ritual. Also I knew, as he must too, its meaning, that the queen annoints the king before the sacrifice - once of the king himself, but in due course a substitute was offered in his place. My heart was troubled, but I held my tongue.

Before our eating, Dionysus stood to offer thanks for all Earth gave to us, the food, the wine, the sunshine and the wind, but most of all he gave thanks for our selves, for our Earth-Mother's greatest gift - the life that animates, inspires our mortal form.

We ate, we drank. Dear Goddess Earth your own life-blood was surely powering the potency of that rich ruby wine, so smooth, so soft, so magic to the mouth, as like the sour stuff we could make ourselves as mature berries are to unripe fruit.

We tasted love that night, and lost all care. The warm gale of the spirit ghosted us. We were translated out of consciousness. It was a foretaste, Dionysus said, of life without our human frailties, to love, and loving to surrender all without the fear of not receiving love, for only in the love of Mother Earth can we be fearless, when we have the faith that in Her essence she is love itself.

"Humans are never perfect, so the world they dominate must be imperfect too. However, it is in their heritage to strive for some perfection in their lives which in their death, as they re-enter Earth they may attain, or for a little while, by their release into a trance-like state that lies beyond the conscious mind's control - so to achieve this spiritual sense we use a means that is material."

We were inebriated by the wine into the Spirit's beauty, and the Truth.

Melania had changed her travel-wear, put on, against the chill of evening, over her white wool gown a mantle red as embers in the deepest part of fire as if to show the passion of her heart combining with an inner purity. Some of the time she sat and sewed a coat of curious design, covered with leaves cut carefully to shape from greeny cloth.

"How can she see," I asked, in this poor light?"

"Her green eyes seem to give her special sight, and then of course she is a child of night."

"What was her parentage?"

"All that I need to know, all that we need to know, is that no man admitted fathering. Her moon-blood came, the mother sold her for a concubine to a rich man who before long was dead - perhaps she killed him, I would never ask. He'd dressed her well, and she is beautiful. She used her beauty to maintain herself. Whatever she was once, she is become someone whose spiritual sense is strong. I love her, much as any mortal can. She makes complete my masculinity."

"Oh how I wish that I could talk with her!"

She gazed at him, with an adoring smile. Continuing her work, she sang for us a wandering and ever-changing tune.

"I longed for love you taught me what love is

I pleasured men let them pollute my womb with their unwanted seed you purified my need

I longed for life you taught me what life is

I longed for hope that in my final breath I'd breathe a new and better life you taught me how to lose my fear of death

I longed for something pure that will endure I saw in your dear face an everlasting grace you told me when I die I have a place in Earth's embrace and we will never part

You told me I have emeralds for eyes through which you see all that may lie within my heart you told me I have rubies for my lips through which Earth sips the nectar of desire you set afire

You told me I have sapphires in my hair which is not fair like yours but blue as night in midnight's sight around the lovely Moon by whose reflected light is kindled our delight and when I weep my pearly tears are drops of rain to wash away the pain."

Of course I could not understand the words in her own language, but she sung to us in meaning that our hearts could entertain and Dionysus afterwards explain.

56.

He would not say much of his wandering. "This is no time for me to talk of all the bad things I have seen in traveling. Their cause is universal. Lack of faith. So let me tell you only of the good - I have seen things beyond imagining, some visions of great beauty and pure light which mostly came to me when I was tired or underfed, and in a state of trance - a private preview of the Spirit's once and future, origin and ultimate I have to share these visions with the world. I do know what I am. It became clear the day I left. I learned it from a man who dwelt below. He said he'd heard Nysa talk with my mother just before she died. You had your reasons for not telling me?"

"We planned to talk to you when you came back, thinking you'd be more ready then to bear the burden and the bliss of what you are."

"All things turn out the way they have to be. You will forgive me, Josan, when I say I have no father. I am born of Earth, brother to holy Moon, among you All incarnate in the flesh and bone you see by virtue of my mother's sacred womb. While in my flesh I am as mortals are, your foster son, so treat me as a man the way that others will until the day when they commit me to a seeming death. I'll not escape the body's pain of it. And so I say to you, tell no one else of my divinity. The time will come when people know me, not because they're told, but from the certain knowledge of their hearts. If I declare myself the son of Earth priests of the Grecian god will want me dead before I've had the time to speak out clear.."

He looked at me and Josan. As he spoke his eyes grew darker, to a gentian blue, as beautiful as gems, but soft, not hard, with their own inner light. In them I saw the beauty of his heart.

"You've both done well for me. You are the best of Earth, with lives that will be long, but longer my name may live as may Melania's, in faithful memory. Out of my heart I deeply thank you both. My friends already know the most of this. I have declared to them, and they believe, I do not know how steadfast they will be in their belief if trouble comes to them. Others will follow me, and when my name is legend, many more will join the faith in spite of those who call me charlatan. No one in mortal form can teach the world so much as can his spirit's memory.

I bring the possibility of peace through love, respect, and through release from care and knowledge of the beauty of the heart that conjures truth from ordinary things. I cannot bring you all a paradise within the term of your mortality. I cannot cancel pain, or poverty. All things of nature have their share of bane. But I can lift your hearts, and show you hope, and how the torments of your mortal form can be at times forgot. I can inspire you to a better life, and so to teach I go to where I was conceived, to Crete, where my beginning entertains my end within the dark and secret mystery, the complex evolution of the Earth, my Mother Earth, whose breath and blood I am, Her mundane intellect. Into Her heart all things, perfected, reach finality."

"I do believc all that you say is true. I do believe my mistress mothered you without the seed of any mortal man. I do believe that she was bound to die to pass on her divinity to you all in accordance with the way things are. One thing I wonder at - you are a man! I would have thought the Spirit of the Earth would have revealed Herself as feminine."

"Do you not see her in Melania? But it is mostly men who need to hear, and they will listen better to a man, however unlike them that man may be. I have the kernel of a woman's heart within the rough nut-casing of my skin. As in the winter-long, when Nature sleeps, and all the world starves for the Goddess' grace, I am to be the harbinger of spring. She sleeps within you. I prepare the ground. How long it must lie fallow I can't say. Deep-buried seed may never germinate until a deeper ploughing turns them up."

"But how, my son, if I may call you that who nursed you with the milk that contrary to the known laws of nature filled my breasts..."

"My mother in the Earth has many forms, unseen and visible. There'd be no life without Her essence, but you need the faith before you benefit. She was the milk that filled your breasts to fatten out my flesh. As she is in you so I am your son."

"My son - that's how I've always thought of you. I've had the gift of faith since I was born, but in your case, it seems you are the faith."

"It's in my consciousness. Apart from that, once in my wandering I lost myself in wilder land than you have ever seen, a desert land, almost devoid of life, and there came into me a fearful pain, a pain at first unbearable, and then, as if some abscess burst inside of me, I had a feeling of exquisite peace from knowing that all future is contained in now, all opposites are one. I felt a peace of being in my destiny, a peace of certainty, immune to doubt, a peace that comes of knowing what I am, of knowing what I have to do, and how my mortal body has to endure pain before my spirit may return to Earth within the wholeness that projected me into its fully purposed mystery. I must go soon to Crete, and when I go will you come with me, to your sometime home? And Josan, has he faith enough to come? You'll have no comfort, but to be with me. Your company will surely comfort me. Also Melania will need your help - to be so full of love needs love returned. I'll like it if you'll come. The choice is yours. Decide between yourselves. The ship has room."

"In fact there is no choice. Of course we'll come. One thing's a worry - what if Jo comes back?"

"Jo is in Crete."

"Our Jo? How do you know?"

"Because I do. He's there to spread the news that I am coming, Ariadne's son, begotten in her by the Earth Herself, that I am coming not to claim the throne of Crete, but to proclaim the truth and rescue them from their recusancy - restore their faith in an eternal life and in the meantime give them present joy."

I looked at Josan. With no need for words we were agreed. "We'll follow you," I said.

"Thank you, I shall be glad of you support. So speaks the mortal weakness in myself! To fear a pain perceived is natural. And now there are some things I'd like to know -. Mortality denies omniscience. Tell me about my mother, how she was, really, as you, who knew her best, must know. Did she live out her all too short a time as might befit her given deity? Tell me the best of her, what you most loved - that only is significant. The bad is transient, and disappears with death."

"I loved her first, and then I loved her last. She was a woman not as others are, not quite a woman, and not quite a girl. So beautiful, and very proud of it."

"Why not? One should appreciate oneself, and beauty is itself a gift of life."

"The best in her was worthy of her state. Perhaps, by fleshing you within her womb, she nobly lived her life. It was enough. For you she must endure her suffering. I loved her as a sister. More than that. I tell you now without embarassment, I loved her body as a lover does."

"So love complete comprises physical as well as spiritual pleasuring."

"Until she came of age we were as one, and everything was natural and good. We loved the Earth as carefree people can. We loved each other without guilt or shame or any thought of inequality. Then the day came when she must take her place in the corrupted custom of the court. To stay with her I must become her slave - something she seemed to find quite natural - and face up to the change in circumstance, suffer her moodswings between comradeship and the awareness of her royalty; witness her simple maidenhood take on the meretricious mask of worldliness. Oh I must struggle daily to deny myself the irritation and despair that sometimes overwhelmed my love for her. To keep her confidence I must comply with all that she expected as her due. While there was bad, there was some good in it, comforts, and luxuries of daily life. I came to share vicariously her sense of pleasure in the tastes of vanity while counting the poor value of the cloth that covered up her naked innocence as purple dye provides the privilege and hides the truth beneath its coloring, which, as it wears, ceases to satisfy but leaves the innermost reality somewhat transmuted to the outer stain. I watched her expectations play her false. She needed love of man. Her need for it misguided her innate intelligence. But who am I to say what might have been when what was has to come before what is. She lost her throne, her innocence, her hope - until at last she had the hope of you, and even that was shadowed by her fear of Theseus' anger, and what he might do. She never knew the joy of motherhood, yet, as a bud may blossom to the sun then lose its face before the seed is set, in her dispetaling she gave you flesh as destiny became her diadem. Chosen to give life, she was given death. I have to wonder why it was that way. I tell you also, at the very end she put aside the grotesque mask of pride, lamented her mistakes, and was again the Goddess-loving maiden of before."

"Then all is as I thought, and it is good. The future will revere her motherhood. Our Mother Earth creates humanity alike, as male or female. Neither one should to the other feel superior. All who believe in Her may hold themselves inferior to none, equal to all. Women for long have had the leadership; now men are dominant, and most of them have lost belief in the oneness of all, have lost respect for mortal mothering. The habits of nomadic northern tribes have brought about contempt, a carelessness of damage both to Her and to themselves. Bodily strength is what they most respect. They cannot see that weakness of the hand may go along with spiritual strength which in the end is what matters the most. and for which, Nysa, you, the chosen one, saved me for life and raised me to be man. True spiritual knowledge will come back. The concept of the sky's paternal god has put men out of touch with their true selves and this will cause a sickness of the heart until such time as they will find again the female principle that dwells in them to balance out their masculinity. All this I have to teach as best I can. Though many will not listen, a few may. One thing is certain, I'll have little time."

When we protested, Dionysus said, "I cannot see, but all has been foreseen and I must do what my heart leads me to."

57.

I said to Josan, "Will you fetch the crown that we've kept, safely hidden, for this day."

And I explained, "Your mother's diadem of grape-vine leaves, wrought out of finest gold, made by a good man for a wedding gift. Think none the worse for that. It was her own. The cursed Theseus had no part of it. She made me swear to keep it safe for you until you were of age. For you to wear the day that you should learn your origin."

"That was a very mortal way to think! Oh yes, I shall wear vine-leaves in my hair, but fresh leaves, taken from the living Earth, and on my back the coat of foliage Melania makes, and almost ready now. Here's Josan with the crown. Exquisite work! Such artistry is seldom to be seen. What shall we do with it?"

So Josan said, "When you reclaim your rightful heritage as Ariadne's son and proper heir, this crown will witness your identity. The people will rise up in your support and cast the current tyrants to the sea."

"No, Josan, no. Blood must not flow for me. Only my own may flow. It is enough. My kingdom's not in Crete, but in the realm of immaterial energy from Earth. I ought to say, destroy this diadem, break it in pieces, use it to buy food for those in need. Or bury it again away from greedy eyes. Unless, perhaps -" he smiled at me - "you wear it on your head!"

"You know I can't. Destroy it? No, not that! It would destroy your mother's memory, and mock her dying wish. Once happy girl, her wedding put an end to happiness and hope for it. She never had the joy that a good marriage gives. She died in tears, and nothing helped of her divinity beyond the one fact of the son she bore. Her spirit lives. Let's not offend it so. Bury the diadem, and it will be a monument to her sweet memory. We'll mark the spot, which only we can know. We'll set a secret stone to be a sign of hidden worth beneath a coat of dirt, a monument to all maternity within our hearts if not before our eyes."

Then Dionysus said, "I must forego all vanity. I'm here for common folk, the folk who are the closest to the Earth, be one with them, so they believe in me and in the omnipresence of the Earth. They've had enough of hypocrites who pose as one of them, while all the passing time they use the public for their private means."

Melania, who sat there all the time as if re-entered to some private space whose elements are quietude and peace, smiled and held up to us the coat of green tinted already with the autumn tones.

"She's nearly finished," Dionysus said. "When it is ready. I'll be ready too. I'll wear it when I speak before the crowd, to represent the Earth's fertility, and show the sacred unity of men and women with the fire that gives them birth, and makes the grass grow greenly in the spring after the time of death that is not death. I have to teach that there is joy in life available to all who learn from me."

The Moon had swung a long way down the sky before sleep took me in her arms that night, after Melania had sung to us -

"My body is the garment of my heart and only different as flowers wear their colors various in kind rooted all in Earth as projects of her mind so why the fret and fear we have to bear longing to be like her within Her entity and happy when the mind is in the heart."

The fishermen were with us in the cave, lying where our two sons had used to lie, in evident happy companionship while Dionysus and Melania prefered the open air beneath the stars. I listened as they celebrated love, and felt the deep orgasm of the earth. I lay and thought of all my life before. I've heard it said, by some, that their past lives are like another country that they fled, a dreamland peopled only by the dead. Not so with me. All that my life has been is in me like the marrow of my bones.

58.

The news soon got around that he was back and all day long they came to visit him -, some playmates from before, now grown, as he, to play whatever humble part in life, and others who had known him as a babe and watched him grow until he went away.

As a rehearsal for the act to come he told them he was born to save us all. "My mission is to take away your cares, relieve you from the dreadful sense of fear and teach you how to taste the ecstasy of union with the creative force by sharing in the Earth's deep mystery to be revealed to all who have the faith."

Some thought him crazy, others looked alarmed, gave me a rather sympathetic look and - all but two - slipped silently away. The two believed him, and they asked to stay. Two only did not auger very well. Others might change their minds. For the first time in this world, now of men, spoke out a man to teach what had been nearly lost with men.

His message was that people had the right to pleasure, joy, and innocent delight in this life as in any following.

To me alone he said, "As things are now you can be happy only when you're mad - or in some state that is equivalent - and unrestrained by what's called sanity which means of course faithless conformity. That's why we need the mushroom and the grape, the flights of music and of fantasy, to free us from emprisonment of time, the tyrant janitor of consciousness, so we can breathe the spirit of the Earth and in a temporary madness sense Her limitless dimensions freed from space, Her constant beauty and Her saving grace."

A woman asked him, "What of women now? Will you restore our former prominence?"

"My strength is of the spirit, not the flesh. There are no rulers in the future state where men nor women have a precedence but hold their place in equilibrium each in their own and unique difference."

His answer pleased her not. She went away.

59.

I'd never once gone down below again since our hard coming through the wilder woods that in my memory is like a dream but not, for all the dread I had, so bad, since dormant in the rotting husks of time I'd found that seed of promise, Josan's love.

From our view-point high on the mountain-side, and from the talk of those who went and came we knew there'd been inevitable change, though some might say we'd managed well enough sequestered from all outside influence. Now that with Dionysus we had left the cave that had so long been home to us and gone below, we saw growth and decay - the first material, the latter sign indicative of sickness of the heart - march hand in hand toward the marriage bed whereon the bride, the spirit's principle, was now subjected to material man.

Raw greed and grief, riches and poverty, wealth for a few, and hunger of the heart for almost everyone - this much we saw with our untinctured eyes. Apart from that we noticed how a harbor had been made, a warehouse built, all for the sake of trade and its selective new prosperity. Naxos was a convenient stopping place for ships not able to be long at sea. The labor was supplied by local men, while Greeks and other strangers stood around to oversee. As Dionysus said, "Someone is getting wealthy here, but not the islanders. They're little more than slaves."

A temple to the God was being built. Nearby, the older shrine of Goddess Earth, a rough and ready place, built with the tools available before, had a sad look. A man was selling pieces of the stone for curios to passing visitors. Oh Goddess, can you bear such blasphemy? What surging billows and what winds of rage will drive these heathen's ships upon the rocks that wait with sharpened teeth around the coasts and vomit their distempered spirits up, denied re-entry to eternal life! What quakes will split the atoms of the rock on which the temple of the God is built and falling walls will crush the worshippers. So might I wish, but I must wish in vain.

I thought that Dionysus would explode with sudden anger uncontrolable and overturn the heathen huckster's stand.

He said quite calmly to the man, "Beware lest you offend the Goddess with your trade. For your soul's sake, and for your body's breath, desist, and make your living somehow else. The Goddess may not be much thought of now, considered as a part of history, but I assure you she's alive and well, taking a little sleep, a winter-time when deepest growth denies the visible, but when she wakes, and her fertility grows again greenly in our ready hearts, watch out! I say, watch out! Your afterlife may have an ill reward. Don't trust the God. It's She who lights the fuse that fires your life. Remember this - She is invisible, intangible, but always merciful to those who see the error of their ways."

To me, he said, "I know the thoughts you have, but call not on Herself to have revenge. Her way is to forgive, compassionate, and by Her patience bring all to her truth however many lifetimes it may take. She is in everyone. Some are aware, but others must make Her discovery. The Goddess' spirit is within all hearts beneath the level of their consciousness, and so you know Her only through your faith."

The huckster, quite bewildered, wandered off.

The night before had been windy and wet. The early day had dawned dark, ominous, but then, as we prepared to board the ship, the sky was clearing and across the cloud we saw that many-colored arc of light we always took for an encouragement. That day it made a bridge from land to sea, joining the being to the what-will-be, substance to spirit, plant to flowering.

So Dionysus and his followers began their travel to his destiny with hearts aglow, and all foreboding thoughts dismissed. Calm was the sea, kindly the wind, with just enough of it to fill the sail. The sky was clear. Our captains, Pandorus and Panthilus, inspired our confidence. Melania sang, and slept, and sang again. Her soft and even, unemphatic voice merged with the constant music of the sea against the hull, expressing what she felt in tones of melancholic timelessness that struck me with a haunting poignancy as she communicated not with words but in the direct way that music has of entering into the hearer's heart.

"I have to sing to keep from being sad although I know there's death in life love cannot die beyond the sea after our nemesis are waves of other life beyond our love is death beyond our death is love as love is life and all life lies beyond the sea and so I sing and watch the waves go by."

Josan had packed a heavy bag for us. The way he looked, I knew him well enough, he had some secret that he hid from me.

60.

The day was nearly done when we saw first the mountains, then the coastal line of Crete. As we came close a swarm of biting gnats assaulted us. I was prepared for them. I had a flask of pungent-scented oil to keep them off. Up on our mountain-side there'd been few flies, but I remembered well their greed for human blood, in my old home, at certain times. The others gratefully accepted when I offered them the oil.

We landed where a line of ancient planes, with yellow tints already on their leaves to match the maculated pattern of their bark cast their long shadows on the harbor-side. Some fishermen were there, mending their nets. They greeted Pandorus and Panthilus as old companions who were home again.

Would I be recognized? Or did I want to be? This was not Knossos where I'd been well known. Better it was, remain anonymous, keep out of sight as much as possible. Such anyway was Dionysus' view, not for himself, but for our safety's sake, "Until," he said, "We know my words like oil with gnats can calm the minds that bite."

Pandorus took us to a house he knew - a family maintaining their belief in the Earth Goddess as she really is, not as the God's wife she was made to be in the official doctrine of the state. They took us in, and told us that there were some other houses of like-minded folk.

We dined that night on fish that we had brought, caught on our way by trolling from the ship, while they provided honey-cakes and figs. We drank the local wine that bonded us with one another and with life itself. "It works with us because our hearts are pure, not otherwise," so Dionysus said.

I was aware of what the new priests taught, that man's relationship with the sky God was more important than relationship with one another - how could that be so? The spirit is in every living thing and through each other and the world around we find our true relationship to Her whose essence is the love of each for all.

Where there is love and good companionship, with common purpose, the effect of wine is to release us from our consciousness so we can enter in the greater joy of our communion, but when there's bad within the mind then wine will bring it out to make it worse - all this I was to learn from listening to Dionysus teach, but drinking wine came to be much abused with Dionysus often held to blame by those who wished to denigrate his name.

61.

That night I had alternate happiness at being part of Dionysus' love, and dread of what authority might do to him, when he revealed his proper self which would be something they could not allow.

Next morning we all met. Melania had ready-picked for Dionysus' crown fresh vine-leaves, round their edges turning red in present portent of the year's demise. She'd bring these leaves as often as he'd need to have his nature-symbol always fresh.

Her beauty needed no embellishment, but she took pleasure in possessing it, delighting in fine slothes and jewelry, but for its own sake, quite devoid of pride - to say she flaunted it was never true. Whatever was the torment of her past she was now happy in her selflessness. Both she and I were fast becoming friends for all our lack of understanding words. I liked to look at her, as I had liked to look at Ariadne long ago, but what a contrast in their characters! She had a sort of hazy luminance like when the sunshine glimmers through a mist that lingers in the hollows of the land.

The morning air was chill. Dew soaked the ground, the grasses hung with spiders' gossamer. Soon Dionysus said, "No time to lose. When the year dies, then may I also die and loose my spirit to my mother's care."

Imagine how we felt on hearing him speak in that way. Our protests were ignored. or else dismissed in some profundity about the permanence of inner life.

The nearest market-place was where he chose to make his first appearance to the crowd. He wore the coat of green Melania made, the silky raiment shining in the sun as if annointed by a gentle rain.

A soft warm wind was blowing from the south. Trees waved their lazy leaves against the sky with seeming weightlessness, like seaweed in the soft slow motion of a timeless tide. His voice was soft, and slow his opening words not to alarm officials any way, His tactic was to test the people first amd see how eagerly they might respond, and how much freedom might be granted him to speak at will to all the multitude.

He talked to them at length of Goddess Earth and how he came from Her to tell the world - "You are the Earth, the Earth is all of you. Set your hand on a stone, that stone is you. Whatever you touch, or what touches you is part of you as both are part of Earth, and in this mystery is happiness if you in your belief can come to it. I do not question the authority of those whose fate it is to govern you. Their law must be obeyed. But in your lives, between each other and your Mother Earth, who is the sum of your environment, observe the sanctity of your relationship. Awareness of the truth can counteract the cosmic virus that invades the heart, the common malady of selfishness that makes the Goddess weep in Her despair. Awareness of the truth, the inner truth, the truth that is eternal, out of time, can save you from the temporary lie.

It is the mystery that gives us hope, enables our belief in the one force greater than we can ever understand, the force of which each is a little piece - though no one piece is insignificant - the force that is what we call Goddess Earth, self-organizing, perfect, and complete. The self is not One Self, but Self-in-Earth and so I say to you, beware a god who is conceived as being not of Earth. Put trust in him and he will cut your roots and separate you from your Mother's womb, deprive your being, disaffect your blood. There is a world within a world, a life within a life where you may enter in and have a share of divine ecstasy, loosen your cares, and lift your hearts up high. The mystery! Always respect the mystery! It is as if you visit Goddess Earth for a short sojourn in Her company. This you can do with wine. Not any day, for it must be a special happening, and not too often - once in every Moon. First dedicate yourselves to Her embrace then wash your bodies clean of any dirt. This is a ritual you must observe. Then cleanse your hearts of any evil thought, like envy, anger, jealousy or hate, or lust or pride or will to dominate. The flesh has no less spirit than the heart. Once purified, you enter mystery. Beware less the intoxicating fumes of vinous breath lead you to blasphemy by doing injury to any part of Her, and that means anyone or anything, for such are all the aspects of Her face.

I say to you, if you will only hear, the world around you is one entity to which we pay respect as Goddess earth. As we are part of Her, from Her we come and to Her we return in Her good time. She only, in a common good to all, can make us one united family. Be reverent for land you cultivate, respect the aspects of the living world in all the glory of its wilderness. Respect the rights of animals and birds for they themselves are also part of Her. Treat other people as you would yourselves that they may treat you likewise decently, and when they don't, endure with patience. To live in equal terms and shared respect, united by the energy of love, your spirit and your sensuality blending in balance - that's the way to be."

And he repeated, "You must understand in days to come, it is not my intent to set in motion a rebellion against all those who tyranize the poor. A revolution, yes, I'm here to make within the hearts and minds of humankind, a peaceful revolution, to reject all greed and selfishness within yourselves. An armed uprising would have no success, so many lives be lost in trying it, as violence breeds only violence."

There were some doubting questions from the crowd - "If She is all you tell us that She is, why is it She permit so much that's bad? Why is there sickness, poverty, and why do some live in the greatest luxury? Why are we subject to a foreign rule? Why are we hungry, others eat too much? Surely you should be talking to the rich and powerful - it's they who need to change."

He amswered them obliquely, in his way, "Look at the forest, how some of the trees smother the smaller growths, are tall, healthy and strong, with a great crown of leaves, while in their shade are other forms of life which flourish there, adapted to the dark. The dark is much a part of life as light. Time comes, the big trees sicken and they die, invaded by disease or felled by storm, and other trees grow up to take their place. Consider animals,and how they prey on other lives but are themselves preyed on by bigger beasts or smaller parasites. Each thing that is of nature has its time and place in its due destiny to live. All humans have the gift of hope and love - you only, in the world's complexity, have minds to understand the way things are."

"When will you free us from our servitude to lords and ladies who treat us as dirt?"

"It's not for me to answer that. I'm here to free your spirits from the yoke of fear and hopelessness that bears you to despair. The way that nature works is never fair to the particular. She works in general to keep the forward balance of the whole, but She has granted you the faculty to rise above and make the best of it with the great gift of your self-consciousness. All things are possible if you believe and act on it, but without violence, and patiently, knowing the Goddess' time encompasses an everlasting span."

When asked, "What is religion?" He said, "Religion is reverence for Earth, the Sea around us, and the Air we breathe. These three are aspects of what is the All, these three are the eternal triarchy, and as we treat them so they will react, for they are Nature. Nature is to us as fluid is to babies in the womb, without which life would be impossible."

Some wealthy men were listening, and priests whose main concern was not to learn from him but only that they might assess how great a threat he was to their authority. They posed him questions meant to catch him out with answers that would justify arrest.

"We've heard you talk of how great forest trees are sometimes overthrown by a great storm - can leaders fear as much from angry crowds roused to a fury by dissenting winds?"

"I meant a metaphor. Anyone's free to find in it their own significance. If that is in your mind it would be wrong to assume my thought is similar to yours."

"Think you that it is right to tax the poor?"

"What's wrong is that there should be poor to tax."

"It's in the law - God made the world for men. This to deny would be a blasphemy."

"The world is made for lions, just as are the lions for the world, and so with men, as all is for the benefit of all."

"It's said you don't bow down before the God?"

"Is he in front of me? My body bows beneath the weight of so much suffering. Where is the God? Or is he everywhere? Is he a witness to the poverty? I affirm life. Is that against the God? Is he perhaps within these scented herbs on which we trample? In the air we breathe? Or is it death, destruction and disease he represents, quicker to shorten life and bring the worthy into paradise? What's in a name that makes a difference? The Earth is life, the Earth is also death which is a night between two changing days, a short time in the month when the Moon hides her clear reflection of the Mother's face. Such are the facts your eyes can verify - does that offend your concept of the God? Denying life, then you deny the God. Affirming life, you affirm deity."

They answered nothing, knew not what to say, and none of them was willing to admit, before the rest, he did not understand. So one by one, not satisfied, they left, later to talk of him, priests among priests, officials with their own collegiate. They feared the crowd, if they arrested him without good cause. Perhaps he was no harm, only a has-been from the goddess-age. Arresting him might only help his cause. Most thought to let the governor decide.

After this first speech Dionysus said, "They do not understand. I have to find some way to empathize with how they feel, their hopes, their fears, their problems of the day. Words cannot move them, not the words I use. I cannot give them what they want to hear, nor promise them a present paradise. Untutored people need a ritual to move the heart without the intellect."

62.

Many who listened shrugged, and said, "He's mad," while others recognized the Goddess Earth as the creatress, but were not impressed by words like love and hope. All they could wish was rain and sun both at the proper time, enough but not too much of either one. These felt no bitterness except against bad accidents, sickness among the stock or in themselves, and weather's treachery. So close to nature were they that they felt no guilt, and likewise never put the blame for what was wrong on any deity, and they had no resentment in their minds for fate's sporadic and uneven hand. Their anger was towards their overlords. When Dionysus said, "Those who live close upon the land know best the heart of Earth," then that was somwething they could understand.

While some thought Dionysus dangerous, likely to bring on them the wrath of law, others believed in his divinity and would have worshipped him. To these he said, "My mother is the Earth, as yours is too. I have no mandate to improve the ways of Nature. All I do for you is teach that you may understand the truth of Earth and through Her spirit come to better times. I show the way, and it is up to you whether or not you choose to follow it."

Many were disappointed with his words. Their minds were hungry for a living god, indeed they now seemed eager for a man come to them as the son of Goddess Earth who would at once ameliorate their lives and be incarnate as their mortal king. But what they wanted was a miracle that would make them the princes of the land without the dangers of rebellion.

Some wanted action; he was too abstract. They needed to be told what they should do, not only how to feel - they would have liked to have an image they could see, and touch.

A few heard what he said about the wine and took it as a fine encouragement, fully misunderstanding what he meant, to drink themselves into abandonment of any sense but the most animal. Some understood, and out of it there grew what would in time become a sacrament.

I noticed how Melania would look while listening - hard to apreciate - always the same sad-happy sort of face, but with no sign of fear, as if she saw the grief to come followed by happiness, her joy and sorrow balanced equally, her confidence in him being so firm while he, I knew, depended much on her, upon the strength of her feminity. I'd learned that she was carrying his child.

His first discouragement was not to last. He soon became more adept with his words. Each time he talked there were new followers, not many at the start but as a stream gains water on its way towards the sea, the ever-waiting sea, their numbers grew. Some understood and were sincere at heart. Others were riotous, and uncontrolled - these he discouraged. They endangered him.

Each night we found another place to stay, another household of like-minded folk prepared to risk the anger of the law.

Each day he spoke his mind more openly, time and again declaring Goddess Earth to be all our beginning and our end, an end that, as he put it, is no end. He learned the way to make the people hear. He made no mention, ever, of the God so he might not be charged with blasphemy.

The rumor spread among the multitude that he was Ariadne' son and heir, born to deliver them from Greek control, enforce their freedom and restore their land.

Now Dionysus' plan was that we'd come to Knossos at the period of the Moon's fulfilment in her perfect entity, a day still celebrated secretly, and there to preach in the main market place where people gathered by the palace gates.

All that I felt most deeply in my heart, that I'd held sacred to feminity, now Dionysus shared with everyone as everyone would come to hear of it the more his word was spread from mouth to mouth.

Each place we stopped, he spoke before a crowd which gathered in from homesteads all around. It made me think of my own family. If they still lived, still farmed their strip of land, perhaps they'd come. I would not visit them, not yet, until we knew how things would go.

At first we wondered that so many came. It was soon clear they were expecting him. How did they come to know? They had been told. Our Jo! His brother's honest harbinger! Sent to announce the coming of the king - so Josan thought, who could not understand these worldly titles were a metaphor which had no meaning in the greater realm of spirit-life which knows no precedence.

Would we catch up with Jo? If so, how soon? How safe was he from Greek authority, or from fanatic people of the God?

(We fear this may be getting out of hand. The governor will not commit himself. There is another man, quite mad, it seems, who goes around foretelling what's to come, destruction and damnation to the rich. He prophecies the coming of a lord who is this Dionysus, possibly, and that is why the crowds grow, day by day. This man is dangerous. He must be stopped.)

63.

To be at Knossos on the proper day we planned our schedule so the night before we'd reach a village where we'd rest awhile. Pandorus undertook to go and look for Jo, and find out how things were with him. When he returned he had a worried face. "I found him, yes, a creature of the wild, unwashed, unkempt, and clad in dirty rags. His eyes are fire, his words are burning coals. He calls on people to repent their sins before the coming of the judgement day." .

And Dionysus said, "He's got it wrong. His listeners have nothing to repent, while those who have won't listen. I bring hope, not guilt. Jo is a good, well-meaning boy, but doesn't understand what I'm about."

"He prophecies the ending of all life in desperate explosion of the world resulting from the errant ways of men. Those who repent will then be born again to live in an eternal happiness. Many believe, and these he washes clean, by ritual immersion in a pond."

"Our Mother Earth in her material form is liable to change, like the chameleon which changes only to protect itself. So may the Goddess, if too much abused, alter Her shape, and doing so withhold Her hospitality to human life. She'll breathe Her spirit in some other form. This may not need occur. I bring you hope."

I said to Josan, "We must go to him." But then Pandorus said, "Better you wait. When the time's right, then he will come to us. In the meantime, given the state he's in, he may not know you."

Dionysus said, "He's right. Don't leave me now."

Reluctantly we did agree to wait. After three days the news came. Oh the dreadful news! It shook us all. Jo had been put to death, accused of stirring up rebellion. It was a rumor, probably untrue, our Jo would be at Knossos, Josan said. I knew him dead, and silently I wept, and wiped my eyes with my now graying hair, while Dionysus said, "Be of good faith, if it is so, then it is meant to be."

All very well. I was not comforted. Jo was my only son, of my own womb.

I begged of Dionysus to take care and not too much provoke authority. How could he teach, if he were not alive?

He answered, "If the truth I have to tell, even if cloaked in metaphor, brings me to danger, there is nothing I can do."

About this time, from other things he said, I came to think he had a wish to die.

64.

We come to Knossos in late afternoon. It is the time of equal days and nights when we lament the weakening of the sun, although it still glows red at setting time. It is near dark. The harvest Moon appears slowly above the distant trees, lit up by fire below, a phoenix from the flames of burning time - perfect maturity against the pale, immaculate expanse of an unending spacial emptiness. The glow is echoed on the palace walls, a coral-pink suffused on grayish stone and also on the ardent upraised face of Dionysus as he stands to greet with outstetched arms his sister in the sky. It is the eve of that most sacred night, that of the perfect Moon, so soon to shine when darkness comes with all her brilliance surrounded by a myriad of stars, queen of the sky, consummate womanhood, resplendent in the glory of her court.

On such a night I glimpse reality, sensing a vital current through my nerves from the deep plexus of eternity, thrill to a throbbing of maternal blood that pulses through a cord connecting me to the divine placenta of the Earth within the holy, life-promoting womb. Why was not Dionysus born of me? I feel what Ariadne never could.

Now Dionysus stands before the gates flanked by his followers. A crowd collects. There are, it seems, more women there than men. Their expectation tensifies the air. Excitement grows. They wait impatiently, and soon a cry goes up, "A sign, a sign, give us a sign," they cry, "that you are he born of the Goddess Earth to be our king."

And now Josan cries out excitedly - there is no way he can be stopped in time - "I have the sign. Behold! The diadem!" He draws it from a sack, and holds it up. "The crown of Ariadne! Proof indeed! His mother's diadem that we have kept until the moment of his claiming it."

He offers it to Dionysus - "Lord, take this, and set it on your sacred head to show the people that you are their king, their rightful ruler." He has kept it hid even from me. Poor Josan, he means well.

But Dionysus softly says to him, beneath the hearing of the crowd, "Josan, please try to understand me when I say I may not take this crown. Call me not king. Did I not tell you once? Break up this thing, and with the gold buy food for those in need. In showing it you do endanger me..." - he raised his voice so all around could hear - "Lest the protectors of material power name me their enemy, and shut my mouth. Good people, listen carefully to me. I challenge not the Cretan government but you yourselves to find the good in you. Look deep into yourselves and you will find the spirit's source which comes not from the sun. The sun is impotent, cannot make life. I come to share my heart with all your hearts, to liberate your spirits with my words, to free your minds from bondage as a way toward the breaking of the body's bond, as speech can sow the seeds of liberty that may lie dormant but are there to grow. I tell you, joy is sharing with the Earth in knowledge of the Earth's connectedness. While you are each your own, your sacred self. As lovers love each other in the night so love the Earth in sensual delight."

Meanwhile Josan has put covered up the crown and slips away to find a hiding place, but not before they've seen him holding it.

And Dionysus cries, so all can hear, "If you lose contact with the living Earth you will bring on a sickness in yourselves, causing you fear of life and fear of death."

Then, bending down, he took dirt from the ground. "There is no fear in this handful of dust, this piece of Earth which also is of you. We fear no death, for we will come again. Honor the seasons' changing. When the sun shortens the daylight hours and loses heat, that is a death. But when the morning light comes earlier, to warm the winter land, that is a resurrection. You will sleep and you will wake again to lasting day. After the long hard winter of the heart comes the bright bursting of the spirit's spring. Regard the trees, how silently they form the next year's buds before they shed their leaves. A life is like a mountain stream that runs slowly or fast through many brakes or bends between black rocks into a pool of light, and like all rivers runs into the sea, the ever-waiting and embracing sea. Love's waters rise, and fear is drowned therein. Your time will come, if only you believe. Drink wisely of the wine, which is the blood of the Great Mother Earth, and it will bring release from care, with knowledge of the truth that lifts your heart and draws you to the core, the many-layered complexity of Earth."

The crowd is restless, hardly satisfied with words that they don't really understand. Action is what they want, and leadership.

"Where is the crown?" a voice cries out, and others follow, "yes, where is the crown? Put on the crown! Why won't you put it on?"

Josan unwittingly, delivered him into the hands of the authorities. Some errant preacher they might tolerate, but not a claimant to the Cretan throne. The crowd gets noisier. How quiet them?

"Take care, or you will draw the soldiers' swords. I seek not to excite rebellion with its resultant grief. Go to your homes, disperse, and take your ways in peace before it is too late."

The people are aroused, some for him, some against, while others stand aside to watch events. What can he do? He takes the deepening dark for an excuse, and with us following, withdraws from there.

Later he says to me, "It is no use, I cannot make them understand. My fault, I get so wound up when I start to talk, it comes out all confused, repetitive, and metaphors all mixed. I am not sure they even understand a metaphor. They take it literally, as the truth. I should be more plainspoken than I am." And he was right, as they did mistake much of what he said for something different. Later of course his words were edited by those who followed him, and taught his way, but in the editing some truth was lost. His followers themselves misunderstood, or even altered what they did not like to suit their own idea of what should be.

65.

Leaving the market-place as darkness falls we go into a field where olives grow. The shouting of the crowd diminishes as, disappointed, they go slowly home. Pandorus says, "I fear some danger now," and Dionysus answers, "So be it."

Josan is silent, heavy in his guilt, but Dionysus comforts him, and says, "Grieve not, Josan, for what you've done tonight. You are a man whom I do dearly love. Josan you are, and what you are you do. I cannot be the cause of any guilt when guilt is what I am here to relieve. You are tool of fate which has to be for the fulfilment of my destiny."

We have our supper seated on the ground as if we floated on a grassy sea, our minds Moon-stricken, hearts excorporate, so heightened are we in our consciousness of what momentous things are happening.

We eat and drink, and Dionysus says, "This wine is of the Earth, blood of Her blood, therefore divine. I am this wine, and you, drinking this wine together, are as one with one another and your Mother Earth, and so remember me, when you drink wine." He is transfigured by the rising Moon which shines directly on his upturned face and whitens all the olives' foliage.

Later we lie, wrapped in our traveling robes. The day was hot, but now the night is chill.

I see that Dionysus won't lie down, he walks about, as if absorbed in thought. I weep a little, thinking of our Jo. I know he's dead, but what poor Josan thinks I cannot tell. I take his hand in mine. Our Jo is dead, his joyful spirit gone. Is it for nothing? Is it worth the while?

I hardly sleep, and when I do I dream a dream I can remember vividly. An outsize flower-bud is opening a pinkish red and many-petalled bloom and out of it a monstrous organ thrusts erect and swollen like an agaric; then suddenly this throbbing priapus withdraws, retracts, and seemingly is sucked in introversion back into itself and where the bloom was, Ariadne stands, the crown of vine-leaves set upon her head. Her look is sad. I wake. The vision fades. The Moon is shining brightly overhead.

I see that Dionysus is still up. I call to him, and tell him of my dream. Standing above me, looking down, he says, "She was my mother, so she is the Earth."

Perhaps I look offended, for he adds, "You too, when your time comes, will be of Earth."

The Moon sets round the heads of all of us shining haloes of other-worldliness. Oh lonely, lovely Moon, shed silver tears of dew! Oh weep for Jo, our only Jo, preparer of the way, prophet of truth, the shining shadow of the Goddess' son thrown forward by her light invisible. Take Jo into your resurrecting womb! Weep, weep for Jo, never to come again to his dear home of birth and upbringing. Make it prove worth the sacrifice he's made in being faithful to his brother's word, although perhaps not understanding well.

It is the longest night. A night of dread. A silent night. A night of time's arrest. Even the crickets in the olive-trees are silent, but a night-bird's lonely cry calls like a mournful bell in monotone. I sleep a little. Dionysus, no. He walks about, refuses to lie down. He leaves dark footprints on the silver dew. Melania entreats him to her side, holds out her arms. The Moon's light on her face makes gleam the glossy darkness of her skin against the palor of the cloak she wears.

He says, "I have so little time alive with you in this my incarnated form. Shall I waste moments in a fitful sleep?"

"I think your eyes will not know sleep this night. You might make love to me before the dawn comes all too soon to steal our privacy. We can lie closely in each other's arms feeling the Earth's heart beat in time with ours."

"We shall be closer in our lasting life than we can ever be in human flesh, and with a keener kind of ecstasy than is the climax of our coitus. Trust me Melania, my dearest one. I must be gone from you a little while. But you are right, it is not wasted time to join ourselves for our remembering. We have been given consciousness, and while we live we have the pleasure and the pain, the joys and sorrows of mortality." So he lies down beside her on the grass.

I hear their murmuring beneath the cloak. I sense their tension rise, know their desire a shooting flame, then the slow dying fall.

Then for an hour or so it is a time - an interlude, a spatial vacuum - of peaceful mindlessness, as now the Moon sinks down beyond the sea and out of sight.

66.

When the sun rose we were all wet with dew. Melania would dry her lover's feet, but he said, "No, it's not appropriate. Your role is not some hired handmaiden. Within you is the conflux of our hearts. You are my equal in mortality and the dear life you nurture in your womb is your great gift to me. Within you is my love, my blood, myself. The sun comes up, before long we'll be dry." He seemed to make a conscious effort, then he smiled at us in such a way that made us one with him, a smile that lights forever in my eyes.

"What happens now," he said, "remember this - grief is ephemeral, joy never dies." But we were hard put to restrain our tears, and to prevent the heartbreak from our fears.

And then they came for him. Soldiers and priests, the most unholy of alliances.

He said to us, "Always remember me as clothed in nature's green, the leafy coat of Earth-in-growth Melania made for me. Always have faith that I remain with you not as a man, much less a worldly king as some would have me be, but as the truth which like a seed I sow within your hearts to grow into a widely branching tree that drops more seed and sends its off-shoots out to carry scented flowers like the rose, the yellow rose, the rose of happiness that in due time shall flourish everywhere."

Some of his followers prepared to fight the well-armed soldiers of the palace guard, even if such resistance brought them death, for they had learned from him, or so they thought, that in so dying they'd find paradise. But Dionysus said, "No, no, put up your stocks and staves. No violence. No good will come of it for me or you. Besides, you must live on, to spread the word and counteract the tragic influence of disaffection and disharmony."

He asked the leading priest, "What have I done?"

"Pretended to be God, that is a blasphemy. The God is God, there is no other God. Incited crowds against authority. The law makes both a capital offence."

"Which of you heard me say I am a god? Can gods shed blood, and thereby come to death?

"You talk as if you think you are divine. We have our witnesses."

"Well paid, no doubt!" Pandorus shouts aloud.

"The governor has given orders, that's enough for us."

Melania clamps her arms around his feet. He cannot move without his dragging her along the ground. "Be brave, my love," he says, "no one can hinder this. Have faith enough you'll come to me in immaterial joy...."

A soldier moved as if to strike her arms, but she let go before Panthilius, enraged beyond restraint, could intervene.

"... Our spirits will know consummated love together in the great Earth Mother's heart. The joy we've shared together in the night will be as nothing to the ecstasy that waits us in the light that needs no sun, and in the meantime count on Nysa's help so you will not be laboring alone."

She loosed her arms and sat back on her heels, and with her sky-blue shawl wiped her wet eyes, watching him all the while, without a word.

Then Josan broke the silence suddenly - "My lord, speak out. Is there not strength enough in your divinity to save yourself?"

"My mission is to save you, not myself. Yes, gentle Josan, I have strength enough - to suffer silently what has to be. Eternal bliss can spare a moment's pain. Remember that I am in mortal flesh and must obey the laws of mortal life in the evolving nature of the world."

A priest exclaimed, "Out of his very mouth come words condemning him."

A soldier said, "Come now, come quietly." They led him off. We followed and were present to the end, kept back from him, but close enough to hear.

They asked him questions.

"Who created earth?"

"No one created Earth. She is Herself, She always was, and so will always be."

"We know the God has made the world for men."

"The world is for the women and the men, and any other life that therein is. You may believe what you want to believe. I cannot tell you other than the truth."

"Do you accept the one almighty God?"

"I have compassion for all misbelief."

"The question must be answered, yes or no. Answer the question."

"I have answered it."

They thought awhile, and tried another tack. "It's being said that you are Theseus' son whom Ariadne on her rocky deathbed bore, and therefore claimant to the Cretan throne, a danger to the state. What say you here? Will you deny that you claim to be king?"

'A king is but a title, born to die as leaves in autumn die, to be replaced by others of a like mortality. Have I not said I make no worldly claim?"

"Many are saying that you are divine and cannot die. That is a blasphemy."

"Oh, I can die, there is no doubt of it. My mother bore me. No man seeded her. The one eternal spirit touched her womb and sprung the life you see before you here, truly begot in perishable flesh. My death is nothing if its aftermath can bring about the spreading of my word."

"What is the spirit, other than the God?"

Tired of evasive answers, now he said, "Self-organizing Earth, seething with life; the stalwart Sun, regaining energy each night from hidden fire below the rim; the maiden Moon, so frail, so feminine, but with the inner strength to regulate the rhythms of our life, our death and birth. The mother, son, and daughter all in one - these three comprise the sacred trinity, which is the spirit that you ask about, eternal, infinite, and immaterial, compassionate, but unacountable. The ground we stand on is contained in space and limited by time, impermament. A day will come when all will be revealed and all the world collapses into light."

Still the inquisitors were not quite sure they had the evidence to make the crowd believe him guilty and accept his death. So they conferred together. Then one asked, "Surely you teach obedience to the law?"

"Since evil comes of inequality, laws must be just for all to be obeyed."

"Enough," the governor exclaimed, "Enough!" He raised a hand to silence many cries. "I will have order, or I'll have the guard clear all you people from my audience. From his own mouth he is three times condemned. The law is clear. The law commands his death. Does anybody speak in his defence?"

His followers dared not declare themselves. There were a few fanatics for the God who waved their fists and cried, "Kill, kill the man!" This cry took on and echoed through the crowd.

The governor called silence and he said, "No one defends him? Guilty then as charged. Let all of you be witness to his death lest any say he was no mortal man and start a legend of his deity."

Then Dionysus raised his arms up high and in this final gesture closed his eyes. My gaze that had been fixed upon his face glanced sideways at Melania to see how she, in her distress, was taking it. Her look was quite impassive, but I knew it was an inner strength from faith in him gave her the courage and the self-control. She looked, as always, beautiful. She clasped before her breasts her slender hands. Her hair but partly covered by the sky-blue shawl around her head and shoulders, and the robe of yellow silk, narrow, slit at the side so that her long legs showed, set her apart from other women there. I was afraid they later might resent her seeming pride and do something to take it out on her. No doubt some of the men were wondering if she'd become available to them. But for the moment Dionysus held all their attention, waiting on his words and what he might say in his own defence.

He spoke, and it was us that he addressed. "Remember me, who talked to you of joy. Remember me, who talked to you of life. Remember me, who tells you not to make a sorry tragedy of my decease. A mythic triumph you must make of it. To die is to become invisible to human eyes, but not to faithful hearts. I came, I go, and I remain with you."

67.

One soldier either side holds firm his arms. Another stabs him in the chest. Three times. He whispers softly so we hardly hear, "Mother, I come to you."

Which does he mean? His mother Ariadne, or the Earth? Or are the two perhaps one and the same?

As with a groaning sound his chin drops down, he falls, with shudders, to the dusty ground stained by the blood that spills out from his heart.

They leave him lying there. For all they care the vultures and wild dogs can pick him bare of flesh, and crack the marrow of his bones.

A dirge for Dionysus! He is dead before our eyes, his spirit gone away before the passing pattern of our lives. Now we can weep! Melania and I, no longer needful of our self-control, hold tight together like two children lost together in a forest of despair. He told us not to weep. Why do we weep? We weep for Dionysus as a man. For the incaranate god we may rejoice but the loved mortal has deserted us to leave this vacuum in which we weep.

We take his empty body on an ass to a deep cave high on the mountain-side. I limp along behind. lately my leg had given pain. Melania and I, both love-lorn, hand in hand, henceforth will be for one another mother-substitute and lover, daughter, sister all in one.

Josan leads on, for he has taken charge. He means to keep his idol's name alive, not understanding his divinity. The other followers seem not to grieve. They are quite numbed by the experience. I am not sure how much they understand. Their concept may be something of their own. One thing I hold to in my deepest heart - he will return, whether or not in flesh, as certain as a great river of love to Moon-filled waters of eternal sea.

We clean out rubbish from the cave, a skull, old bones, and piles of droppings from the bats.

In his green mantle stained with autumn blood, upon his head a wreath of grape-vine leaves picked fresh this day, colored with purple death, we lay him down and look for the last time and take some comfort from his tranquil face, the temple of his grace. But now Melania said this was wrong, we ought to bury him beneath the sky, among the roots that grow. We stop, we think, and then we all agree. We find a place with depth of soil enough, and bury him among some asphodels.

We watch all night beneath a tearful Moon. Her pale face, like the fragrant flower of night that scents the air, inspires our hearts to understand the meaning of the day, the first full-bodied Moon after his birth, his day of dedication to the Earth.

Now his free spirit dances on the path across the waters to the waiting Moon, the weeping, downward-drifting Moon, her light transfiguring Melania's face, the mourning face of Dionysus' bride, the bride whom he before all others chose, who in her sorrow seems more beautiful as though when leaving he bequeathed her grace.

Within our grief we now begin to feel that out of death there has been born to us a miracle of beauty that will save in time to come all people from despair.

Now all is silent in the watchful night. Even the owls respect his memory. Only we hear the laughter of a stream which, risen from a spring not far away, starts on its headlong downfall to the sea singing unhurried songs of happiness before re-entry to oblivion.

At dawn we wearily start walking down and where Melania steps flowers unfold their colored petals in defeat of death.

We feel the vibrant waves of energy that swell the silent voice and raise up high in one great chorus of the universe the song that's in us all in unison if only we can tune our hearts to it.

68.

The rest is memory. Rumors there were of Dionysus seen after his death. Indeed I thought myself I saw him twice and my heart stopped as though all time had stopped but only for a moment much too short for my emotion to be registered in the amazed attention of my mind. Each time he disappeared into a mist. Melania experienced the same. No doubt it was a vision of desire, or else he really was there for a while before his spirit finally broke loose from the material body, visible within the minds of those who loved him best.

The legend grew that he was seen alive. Whatever - his true spirit lives in us. Now I can tell these things without the pain. Now I appreciate his gift of hope as he is resurrected in the hearts of more and more who come to see the truth, fearing not death but death's concomitants of feeble mind and physical decay, which, like the labored passage into life preceding all the joys of consciousness may cause a painful entry into death which is the door to joyous afterlife.

The word went round of his divinity. A cult became established in his name. The priests, who are no fools and know their job, gave him a public and official history - a parentage quite other than his own, which fitted well with their idea of God as father of a divine family composed of all the many other names that were once local concepts of the Earth evolved from times of far antiquity. Rather than try to extirpate the cults, the priests made them subordinate to God.

When they personified the deities - who seemed to grow in number all the time - in mortal image, then these images took on our mortal immoralities and so could have no moral influence.

The priests reserved the meaning to themselves. They understood control, which they achieved through knowing how to make the people feel guilty of sins which only they forgave and not without exacting penalties which they could use for their own purposes. Then godliness no more meant goodliness and gave rise to the idiot belief one must be bad before one can be good.

But there are some who see the mockery of the Great Mother in man-made beliefs, who recognize the spirit of the Earth which can alone make happiness from woe, and laughter in despite of misery.

His teaching and his fame have slowly spread, though it must be kept secret from the law, disguised within the cult of mysteries.

Melania in public wears her shawl, her sky-blue silken shawl, around her face beneath her blackened eyes, made darker yet with art than is the darkness of her skin. I love Melania, but any lust, unlike my love for Ariadne once, is sublimated to a height that is all spiritual, mutually shared. For all our loss, there is some joy in it.

We live as one, Melania and I, and we are able to communicate. She knows beyond all doubt she will rejoin her Dionysus when the day is due, a day for which she waits quite patiently. We live alone, held somewhat in distrust by those who put their faith in the one God, thought to be dangerous, and full of sin, and capable, perhaps, of wickedness. We live apart, high on the mountain-side, not very far from Dionysus' grave which is a secret and a sacred place.

Josan has come at last to understand that Dionysus was no worldly king but born to rule within the human heart. He makes up for the loss of our son Jo by being busy organizing cells of underground belief, opposed to that of the official faith which quickly spreads around our world, soon to degenerate obscured, perverted, sadly trivialized, when all most people know about the cult, with Dionysus named the God of Wine, leads on to its abuse in lechery, debauchery, as the distorted rites let loose the savage animals that lurk within the wilder woods of human mind. Intoxication has to be controlled, as Dionysus always emphasized, by the transcending grasp of union with all of Earth unseen as well as seen, and only in a state of purity as ritualized by cleansing of the skin.

Josan and I balance each other well. Each can respect the other's difference. He comes and goes, being much time away.

Melania has given birth to twins, already growing up, time passes so. We tell them that their father was a man who wanted, for all people, better lives, with laughter, and transcendent happiness obtainable through the experience of flesh forgotten, freedom in the One. He's named Orpheus, she Eurydice. He has his mother's coloring, while she, grown up to be a golden girl, is like her grand-dam Ariadne born again. But she has a dark side, and once a month, the Moon invisible, she is depressed as if drawn down into a depth of night that even Orpheus can't raise her from. I think she is half mortal, half divine, her inner self stronger than consciousness.

For all the darkness of his mother's skin Orpheus surely is his father's son, with physical and spiritual grace a gift inherited from both of them. I'm very fearful for his future life. He is too gentle for this present world. He will charm mountains. He will also die too soon, killed by an envious mankind. As soon as he is old enough to learn we will instruct him in the mysteries so he will follow in his father's steps, and he may wear the golden grape-vine leaves that we, in spite of all, have safely kept, not for a sign of worldly eminence but for the crown of music and of song, the language of the mind within the mind.

Our knowledge of the spirit never fades for always there will be a golden thread that runs through the unfolding tapestry of life, the thread of Dionysus' truth, a thread spun in the very heart of time that Ariadne wove into our lives between the warp of birth and woof of death to guide us safely from the labyrinth, the thread of spiritual unity that, being immortal, meaning infinite, maintains awareness of the mystery which makes a whole of everthing that is, the mystic apprehension of the force, the power to create, that we call Earth, the one great Spirit which infuses all incarnate in the endless chain of life within the chalice of eternity, the chalice that is every mother's womb as every mother is Melania, the sacred bride of the incarnate god.

I never have been one of those who gush at every little child, but when I watched Melania as she held her two babes, one at each breast, blissfully sucking her, it was as if her love flowed with the milk and I could feel inside myself the heat - I know no other word describing it - that strikes the heart given a glimpse of truth, a transcendental prime experience that also needs material release which is, perhaps, what Dionysus meant - such pent-up passion needs to be released with an enraptured offering of faith through coitus when love is mutual, through wine, but only when the heart and mind are ritually cleansed, for otherwise what should be ecstasy is a bad trip and evil is released into the world.

69.

Orpheus and Euridice left us together, soon as they were old enough. They were a pair no human hand could part. Melania, after her children went, soon died, her spirit gone where spirits go, her body laid by Dionysus' grave among the asphodels whose roots go deep into the heart of Earth where comfort is.

Soon I must die, and I am not afraid. In my long life I've come to realize chaos is also order, visible in patterns of the Moon's light on the waves which hide the vision of eternal mind.

Officially, all faith is formalized. It seems that this is what most people need, so much of outward show, so little love, and the result is to obscure the truth only a very few have understood - that true religion is in the heart, a state of being that is of itself, instinctive knowledge inexpressible by word or deed, having the inner sense of our connection to each other and the Earth We are the Earth. The Earth is all of us.

I can remember Dionysus said, "The Earth as She is now was born for us out of the turbulence of former time, will also die, returning to the void of spaceless being, then to be reborn in some new unimaginable form, of which, as We are Her, we'll be a part.

There never was a beginning, there never will be an end."