Dancing Down the Moon

Fever

Goddess, I am burning alive.

She brings the fire.  She is the fire.  She ran lava through my veins and filled my mind with smoke, driving it up and through and out into the Circle, and while She spoke to the others I, a mere passenger in my own body, was consumed by flame, immolated.

At a party Saturday night we talked about dying, and it was agreed by most that the worst way to go would be burning alive--but that's burning from the outside in. What happens when you smolder and spark from the inside out?  There is fever, and then there is holy fire the likes of which the Church fathers never imagined.

After ritual Sunday, once my living room was a living room again and I had traded my slinky black robe for cotton pajamas, I found myself standing at the kitchen sink compulsively washing my face with cold water that almost steamed when it hit my skin. 

Fire in the head, fire in the heart--what am I to do with all this heat?

It took nearly an hour sitting in a heap on my balcony in the chilly Autumn air to feel somewhat normal again.  But there are levels of normal, and sometimes your baseline shifts.  I shared my bed with snakes and woke this morning feeling like a completely different person. 

The strangeness of it all dissipated during the old routine of get up, get dressed, feed Cosmo, go to work, run reports, check email...and yet...I still feel like a stranger to myself today.  I gulped the morning air as if I'd never breathed before, and though it's 64 degrees outside when I got to my office I found myself turning the air conditioner lower and lower until it was practically sub-Arctic. 

At Samhain I burned the year away in my little cauldron; last night we did it again, this time with the added blessing of the Dark Queen, Serpent of the Sacred Flame.  Fire energy is powerful but hard to control--it will take any fuel it finds, past present and future, leaving nothing but ash in its wake, from which only the strong will rise.

Every time I close my eyes I feel it: flickering tongues of flame licking their way through my chakras, leaving my insides shaky and my forehead blazing.  When people speak to me I hear them at a distance.  I feel like I might glow in the dark.  Outwardly things seem like any other Monday.  Inwardly all is fire, a conflagration of the spirit that is at once pitch dark and jewel bright. 

She brings the fire.  She is the fire.

What a lovely way to burn.

Learning Parseltongue

Last night I had a dream that I was in the throes of labor, on a bed of skins and furs (I'd like to think they were synthetic), surrounded by a dozen bare-breasted women.  Some were drumming, some were chanting, some were painting my naked body with spirals and serpent figures that were echoed in the paintings on the walls. 

I was fighting the pain, arguing with it viciously the way I argue with everything that's good for me.  I am of strong, stubborn will, but nine times of ten I turn my will in the wrong direction, against myself; my life is battle-scarred from thirty years' war with myself, terrorism against my body, cruelty toward my spirit.  This time, again, I fought, and the women's voices seemed a thousand miles away as I lashed out violently against the tempest in my belly.

Finally, my attention broke as a stranger emerged from the shadows and knelt between my knees.  She did not speak, but took in my struggles and my refusal to join in with the chant and drum, and just looked at me, one eyebrow raised, a flash of wicked humor in her flint-sharp eyes.

She, too, was marked with the undulating forms of snakes, down her arms, around her neck...but hers were moving, their tongues flicking out in the firelight.  The others in the room didn't seem to see her; the woman serving as chief midwife (someone I actually know in real life, oddly enough, though of the rest I only recognized the head drummer) went about her work with relaxed confidence, her voice soothing and encouraging.  My eyes, however, were all for the snake woman with the flame-red hair...for I knew her. 

She sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms.  "Well?" she asked, her lips not moving, merely smiling slightly.  "How long are you going to keep this up?  I have all night."

It's taking so long, I wailed to her silently.  I'm so tired, and nothing is changing, and it's taking so long!

Now she laughed, and the drums fell silent, the tribe of women struck dumb by the sound.  Everything seemed to fade into mist and smoke as She said, "You know there's only one way out."

My head fell back and I stared at the ceiling, where someone had painted a sort of Middle Eastern Sheela-na-Gig, a woman giving birth to a snake. 

"Through," I said aloud, looking down at Her.

A nod.

I wanted to scream--and in fact I was about to get the perfect opportunity, as I felt the labor building again--but instead I just asked plaintively, "What do I do?"

She rose, put her hands on my knees, and tilted Her head to one side, smiling the way I imagine a cottonmouth would smile at a rabbit.  She leaned forward, nails digging into my legs, and said,

"Push."