The Storytellers Goddess Part 17

The silence there was like a cape. I could feel the eye in my mind close in peace, and I sang the song of nothing without any words.

Then I heard the sound of aa aaa around me. The eye in my mind darted open. I could see I'd come to a red velvet room. Inside stood a bed hung with silk. But I could not go in, for two black tigers paced its entrance. Two black tigers one striped yellow and the other white. I recoiled. I wished for my friend. I pressed away and the sound of aa aaa pressed back on me. I saw the mouths of the tigers yawn. Their teeth and scalloped lips glinted wet.

I snapped shut the eye in my mind. The sound of uuuuu came to me. When I opened that eye again, behold! The tigers, first the yellow, then the white, scratched their spines against the floor, forepaws limp with pleasure, and the fur of their bellies rumpled and soft. That sound of uuuuu clasped me tight, and I was able now to enter the room. There the Shakti and Her s.h.i.+va held each other on the flower-strewn bed.

I was shy. Surely this embrace was not meant for my eyes. But I stared. The blue blacks of their heads looked like rocks in a moving river. I felt the sweeping longing and fascination of a child. Oh! I knew I must go.

But the s.h.i.+va sat up.

"Stay!" He said. The movements of his chest and wrist were graceful as a cat's.

"This is the center of your heart, after all," said the Shakti. Her eyes were laughing, and She'd hooked a hand over the rosy blanket at Her neck.

"Stay and let Us tell you Our story."

s.h.i.+va patted the bed and inclined a welcome with His eyes and chin.

I held my breath.

"Come," said the Shakti. Both Her arms reached out to me. I scrambled.

And there I was between Them smelling Their jasmine and patchouli, enveloped like a yolk in an egg. The sound of mmmmm swelled around me mmmmm and I slept.

When I awoke, I traced with my finger the design imprinted on my forearm by the cuddle of covers. There, while I lay tiny between Them, They told me Their story.

"At the beginning of every beginning," said the Shakti, "I am alone.

There is nothing. I am like a windless red flag, vibrant with color but not moving. And I watch My Lord s.h.i.+va. The lashes on His cheeks are so pointed and fine. His cheeks are like wax. He is so still, then. So unbelievably still."

"She says I look dead," said the s.h.i.+va.

"You do, You look dead. There is nothing. So I drift and I float. I lie with Myself and I dream," said the Shakti.

"And then, finally, She wakes Me," said the s.h.i.+va.

"Yes, I want Him up! I want a breeze in My flag. So I kiss Him. I wake Him up with My kisses."

The Shakti and Her s.h.i.+va laced Their fingers over me. I felt so safe that I wiggled.

"Oh, how You wake Me, My Queen," said the s.h.i.+va.

"I wake Him for the dance," said the Shakti.

"And how You dance, My Lord! Oh! You can dance!"

I turned my face up to the Shakti's. Her eyes looking over me to Her s.h.i.+va were melting.

I saw the s.h.i.+va's mouth and eyes, too, soft and wet. He turned His head down to mine and drew His finger across my forehead.

"You can imagine the dance," He said.

I felt a knowing, an excitement. Oh, I could imagine that dance! s.h.i.+va turns His wrists and buildings hoist to the sky. s.h.i.+va's foot arches and lovers cling. His knees unfold and with His leap monies glitter through the chutes of the marketplace. With the undulation of His back could come war and pestilence; His chest might ripple and a library rise and fall. The skin of His cheek might stretch taut and the new year's crop burst with fruit. At the flicker of His tongue, the dying hold the living; at the flinging of His arms, the quake erases a nation.

Like a drop of His sweat, my life might roll like a cat in the sun, purring, then springing after its prey. In a race down His side, my life could realize its promise. Caught in the crease of His elbow, it might lie still. One day it would evaporate into the air He would breathe again.

I felt the knowing, the excitement. Oh, yes, I could imagine this dance!

The Shakti and Her s.h.i.+va curled Their arms about me in the nest of Their heat. The lips of the Shakti were reddened and full.

"Your limbs and Your contours!" said the Shakti to the s.h.i.+va.

"You are like a melody."

"And You the breath that sings Me, Beloved," said the s.h.i.+va.

The room muted around me. And I slept again. But this time I dreamed.

The shapes of the Queen and Her Lord were subtle now. They faded in and out. First She was enormous and the s.h.i.+va but Her finger's width.

Then They were fighting. Could it be? They spoke harshly, and I could not see Her face. Then He chased, frantic and alone. Now She appeared again, like the Mother to the child crying after the nightmare. Now Her face is one of ecstasy: She collects to Her throbbing triangle of life His magnificent flowering tree of desire. Oh! How the picture blazed and faded in that dark and fiery place!

I was spinning then. Turning past the velvet and the tigers, into the floating peace of nothing and then the aum sound all around me. Past the mud and the roots, up between the fan of the lotus and over the castle entwined with roses and the long green rice. I sifted through the spiral of calves and peac.o.c.ks, past the jeweled elephants and the curtains of principles and politics. Back through the rain and the sun and the wind.

I am back with you now, my daughter, my brother. I am back with you now, my lover, my friend. Back from the center of delight and pain. Up from the shades of death and the elixir of immortality. Up from the everlasting temple of the Shakti and Her s.h.i.+va. Up from the center of my heart and the secret of the world.

Mary Queen of Heaven (European) Introduction The Queen of Heaven in the person of Mary has been so manhandled that revulsion and pain have often outweighed my ability to connect with Her as G.o.ddess. Indeed, through the ages, male church leaders have wrestled to stuff the love for the Mother they could not rid from their congregations into the box of Virgin Mother, shutting from common cultural understanding the sacredness of s.e.xuality. Arguments about Her "history" have raged: church fathers have periodically attempted to prove Her neither divine nor maternal. But in the first centuries of the church's existence, leaders saw that without the wors.h.i.+p of this combined Stella Maris, Juno and Mariamne, Ancient Spinner of Fate, and Begetter of Savior, their inst.i.tution was doomed. Gothic cathedrals were regularly built over shrines to the Ancient G.o.ddess and dedicated to "Our Lady," or Notre Dame, becoming truly palaces for the Queen of Heaven. Ambivalence born of denial and ignorance continues to this day: recently a Jesuit priest enthusiastically touted the inspiring new theory that Mary was really the first disciple of Christ. In agreeing to birth him, She became his first follower, goes this almost pitiful attempt to give the Great Originator the status of "first."

Like most people in modern culture, my first experience with the G.o.ddess, unbeknownst to me, was with Mary. Raised as a Protestant rather than a Catholic, I met Her when I was seventeen in Mexico in the purple velvet, candlelit churches of Sinaloa. The sensuality and warmth of those rooms greatly comforted me; after the spa.r.s.e, ascetic sanctuaries of my childhood in which the Spirit was the bodiless Word, these female-filled chapels washed me with relief.

I recently called on Mary at an afternoon ma.s.s in the Catholic church near the graveyard of my Protestant ancestors in southwest Ireland.

While the elderly congregation chanted, "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee; Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus; Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our deaths," I too softly chanted a prayer to the Star G.o.ddess, borrowed from the traditional one that encodes Her own words: "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the dust of Whose feet are the hosts of Heaven; You are the white Moon among the stars and the desire of human hearts; You are the mystery: that if that which we seek we find not within, we will never find it without; For You were here at the beginning and You are that which is attained at the end of desire."

Challenged by friends to write the Christmas story from Mary's point of view, I came to terms with Her story as an extension of both the ancient story of Mayahuel and Her Fish Son and the Roman story of Juno Lucina as the yearly Creator of Light (see stories). My inspiration for Mary's story comes from the famous Vierge Ouvrante, a statue depicting the familiar, gentle Madonna and Child, whose opened hinges reveal inside Her: G.o.d, Jesus, the angels, and the saints of Heaven.

Mary and the Birth of Light In the midst of the darkness, Mary, Queen of Heaven, opened the flower at Her center. Gently, slowly, in the midst of the darkness, She opened Herself, breathing a sugar of stars into the silent night. Softly, tenderly, She spread the brown petals under the tips of Her gathering hands. In the midst of the night, in the glitter of stars, Mary dreamed and touched Her flower moist in the darkness In the midst of the darkness, the flower of Mary heated and swelled. In the starry, breathing night, the fingers of Mary grew firm and sure and the flower's edges melted into the center. Into circles it melted, and out of the center came a cave in the shape of a stable: a box of warm breathing in the midst of the night. Out of Herself, to surround Her, birthed the Queen of Heaven a cave: simple, humble, thick smelling, dark, and deep under the night of the sky.

In the midst of the darkness, Mary's hands cradled Her flower. In the midst of the night, the cave cradled its Queen. In the midst of the cradle, in the midst of the circles, in the midst of the gathering, Her breath became music. Out of the music, out of the scent, out of the body of the Queen of Heaven came the animals of magic. Out of the breathing, out of the waves, out of the pliable, bending night came the animals that filled Her cave with their heat and their help.

Out of Mary's knees came the donkey. s.h.a.ggy, brown, carrier of burden, keeper of patience. Out of the knees of the Queen came the donkey, filling the cave with intractable certainty.

Out of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Queen came the cow. White and red, milk and blood: cycles of pondering; enduring; full, placid heat in the stable of holiness.

Out of the feet of the Queen came the sheep. Simple and following, bleating their needs.

And when the music of holiness touched the rafters of the stable, the dove and its mate flew from Her arched back throat.

There in the dark, there in the shuffling heat, there in the cave song of the Queen of Heaven, there made the animals the nest for the light to come.

Then from the eyes of the Queen of Heaven rose up the beloved husband.

Husband with the long hard back. Husband with the kissing hands.

Husband to lie with, searching, rejoicing. Husband to enwrap and to touch again the flower at Her center. To have and to hold, the Queen of Heaven birthed the beloved husband.