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.

Comments

[Thalia]

Oh-ho, do I hear you Dianne. Not that I have any advice, mind you, but I hear you.

[JediKnight437]

I hear you too Dianne. The fire is always there. I fig'd it was my Lady Brighid pouring the Celtic fire through my veins, but I think its just the power of the Lady and the Lord reminding us they are near.

But the passion is unreal. You can almost faint from it. Its a terrible/wonderful experience all in one!

[Danmara]

MMM, I love fire. But then I have a very close (too close?) relationship with a fire god so...it must be in my blood or something. Or else I'm just abnormal. That must be it. :P

[Macha]

Beautiful! Thanks.

[Macha]

Beautiful! Thanks.