Page 53 (1/2)
6
"Whenwhite robes, and his coarse blond hair had been combed, and he looked immaculate and impressive and solemn There were other tall white-robedyellow hair, who came into the small shadowy room behind him
"In a silent circle they enclosed me And after a protracted silence, a riff of whispers passed aod,’ said the eldest, and I saw the silent pleasure in the one who had brought od has asked for,’ the eldest said `You will rereat feast of Sarove and there you will drink the Divine Blood and you will becoic that has inexplicably been taken from us’
" `And willat therace hich they surrounded me What a terror this race must have been when its warriors swept down on the Mediterranean peoples No wonder there had been so much written about their fearlessness But these weren’t warriors These were priests, judges, and teachers These were the instructors of the young, the keepers of the poetry and the laws that were never written in any language
"`Only the mortal part of you will die,’ said the one who had spoken to
"`Bad luck,’ I said ’Since that’s about all there is to me’
"`No,’ he said ’Your forlorified You will see Don’t fear And besides, there is nothing you can do to change these things Until the feast of Sa, and you will learn our tongue, and our hymns and our laws We will care for you My name is Mael, and I myself will teach you’
"`But I aods don’t want one who is unwilling’
"`The old god will decide,’ said Mael `But I know that when you drink the Divine Blood you will becos will be clear to you’
"Escape was iht and day I was allowed no knife hich I ood deal of the time I lay in the dark empty room, drunk on wheaten beer and satiated with the rich roastedhich to write and this tortured me
"Out of boredom I listened to Mael when he ca anthems to me and tell me old poe hiod should not have to be so instructed
"This he conceded, but what could he do but try to make me understand ould happen to et out of here, you can come with me to Rome,’ I said `I have a villa all my own on the cliffs above the Bay of Naples You have never seen such a beautiful spot, and I would let you live there forever if you would helponly that you repeat all these antheht record them’
"`Why do you try to corrupt me?’ he would ask, but I could see he was tantalized by the world I came from He confessed that he had searched the Greek city of Massilia for weeks before reat ships that he had seen in the port, and the exotic foods he had eaten
" `I don’t try to corrupt you,’ I said `I don’t believe what you believe, and you’ve made me your prisoner:’
"But I continued to listen to his prayers out of boredoue fear of as in store forfor hiure to illuht, for his quiet, measured voice to pour forth with all the old melodious nonsense
"It soon came clear that his verses did not unfold continuous stories of the gods as we knew them in Greek and Latin But the identity and characteristics of the gods began to ee in the ed to the tribe of the heavens
"But the god I was to becoreatest hold over Mael and those he instructed He had no nah he had numerous titles, and the Drinker of the Blood was the most often repeated He was also the White One, the God of the Night, the God of the Oak, the Lover of the Mother
"This god took blood sacrifice at every full moon But on Samhain (the first of November in our present Christian calendar -- the day that has becood would accept the greatest number of human sacrifices before the whole tribe for the increase of the crops, as well as speak all ments
"It was the Great Mother he served, she who is without visible fors, and the Mother of all things, of the earth, of the trees, of the sky overhead, of all arden
"My interest deepened but so did my apprehension The worship of the Great Mother was certainly not unknown to s orshiped under a dozen names from one end of the E God, the one who grew to row, only to be cut down as the crops are cut dohile the Mother reentle myth of the seasons But the celebration anywhere and at any tientle
"For the Divine Mother was also Death, the earth that ss the re lover, the earth that ss all of us And in consonance with this ancient truth -- old as the sowing of seed itself -- there caoddess orshiped under the name of Cybele in Ro theods of elded, Dionysus rent liyptian Osiris dismembered before the Great Mother Isis restored his -- the vine god, the corn god, the god of the tree, and I knew that whatever happened it was going to be so
"And as there to do but get drunk and murmur these anthems with Mael, whose eyes would cloud with tears from time to time as he looked at me
"`Get me out of here, you wretch,’ I said once in pure exasperation `Why the hell don’t you become the God of the Tree? Why aod confided to me his wishes I wasn’t chosen’
" `And would you do it, if you were chosen?’ I de of these old rites by which any man threatened by illness or od if he wished to be spared, and all the other sacrosanct beliefs that had to them the same childlike barbarity
" `I would fear but I would accept,’ he whispered `But do you knohat is so terrible about your fate? It is that your soul will be locked in your body forever It will have no chance in natural death to pass into another body or another lifetiod The cycle of death and rebirth will be closed in you’
"In spite of eneral contempt for his belief in reincarnation, this silenced ht of his conviction, I felt his sadness
"My hair grew longer and fuller And the hot su the great annual feast of Samhain ’
"Yet I wouldn’t let up on the questions
"`How ods in this manner? What was it in me that caused you to choose od,’ he said `But the god is old; he is robbed of his ic A terrible calas He has chosen his successor’ He looked frightened He was saying toothe deepest fears in him
" `And how do you knoant me? Have you sixty other candidates stashed in this fortress?’
"He shook his head and in a moment of uncharacteristic rawness, he said:
"’Marius, if you fail to Drink the Blood, if you do not becoods, ill become of us?’
" `I wish I could care, my friend’" I said
" `Ah, cala
subdued observation of the rise of Rome, the terrible invasions of Caesar, the decline of a people who had lived in thesethe cities of the Greek and the Etruscan and the Roholds of powerful tribal leaders
"`Civilizations rise and fall, ive way to new ones’
"`You don’t understand, Marius,’ he said `Our god was not defeated by your idols and those who tell their frivolous and lascivious stories Our god was as beautiful as if the ht, and he spoke with a voice that was as pure as the light, and he guided us in that great oneness with all things that is the only cessation of despair and loneliness But he was stricken with terrible calaods have perished cood upon him, but how the sun entered into him in the hours of darkness and sleep is not known to us, nor to him You are our salvation, Marius You are the mortal Who Knows, and is Learned and Can Learn, and Who Can Go Down into Egypt’
"I thought about this I thought of the old worship of Isis and Osiris, and of those who said she was the Mother Earth and he the corn, and Typhon the slayer of Osiris was the fire of the sunlight
"And now this pious co reat calaave out on me
"Too many days passed in drunkenness and solitude
"I lay down in the dark and I sang to oddess to me, however Not Diana of Ephesus with her rows and rows of entle De for Persephone in the land of the dead had inspired the sacred ood earth that I sh the small barred s of this place, the wind that carried with it the dareen forest She was the rass, the water I heard now and then gushing as if fros that I still had in this rude little wooden roo else had been taken from me And I knew only what allthings has within itself soe
"I looked through, the bars to the stars overhead, and it see in thepeople I did not ad sanctity of it all infected ive in, to seethat possessed its own exalted beauty
"I sat up oneand touchedat my shoulders
"And in the days that followed, there was endless noise and ates from all directions Thousands on foot passed inside Every hour there was the sound of people on the ht of the Druids ca of the spring water and sunshine in which they’d been washed and dried, and their hair was brushed and shining
"Carefully, they shaved all the hair froernails They brushedme on all sides hite veils they passed on
"I gli back an enormous crowd, and I realized for the first time that only a select few of the Druids had been allowed to see me