The Gorgon

 I had prayed to Lilith quite fervently in the evening, I have been asking for a boon and made a special offering of incense, silver coins and black roses on my altar, I burned a fumatory of aconite root, belladonna and henbane leaves, sending up a sacred smoke into the cathedral ceiling of tiny ritual room. I fell  asleep some hours later and instantly saw long tendrils of darkness reaching out to me. Wrapping around my body, the arms of the Dark One wrapped around like a serpent, choking off my breath, holding my eyes shut, covering my mouth as I felt myself squeezed by a Boa Constrictor of night that had tightened itself around my body. Then I was jarred awake into bright light. It was not the light of a familiar sun, but the light of that other world. A place I have learned to know, a place I often find myself in mystic visions  and where I now feel most at home. 

I woke up aware of my body walking. Just as my legs stepped up to the front porch of a ramshackle cabin. Slowly the feeling was returning to my body and senses as my full awareness came into that Other place. The floor boards of the porch were covered in dust and dirt, the house seemed like it was about to collapse. The walls tilted to the left and the roof was covered in rusty tin that had peeled free in places. I went up and knocked on the door. A young girl came to the door and looked me up and down with eyes black as pitch. Staring at me through the door glass. She opened the door and said with a twang “Come on in heeah, the Mother must have sent you”. I laughed to myself thinking of her reference to Lilith, calling her the 'mother'.

“Sit right there,” she said as she pointed to a chair in the middle of the room. A shadow moved quickly around me, I felt her looking into my face for a few seconds then she turned and walked over to a counter at the edge of the room before walking away through a door that suddenly appeared and then disappeared in the wall I was facing. There was another presence in the room but I couldn’t see clearly. I felt there was a woman there. She was sort of there but not really physical.

I looked around the house, which was barely more than a single room. It was dark and I could see and hear shuffling as shadows were walking around in the hallway behind the room where I sat. 

"Take awff your shirt..." she said as the soft curves of her body grew steadily clearer. Her face remained hidden in a soft haze, but I could make out the shape of her naked body. Her legs were also hidden in haze and the soft lilt of her voice was the most material part of her subtle entry into my awareness. Her voice, the curves of her body  and the creaking of the floor as though a great weight was moving across it.   

“ Okay", she said to me,"turn to the left and keep your feet flat on the ground," she instructed. Her voice was deep, and I felt a heaviness settle on my shoulders. 

I felt hot water on my back, dripping water then across my skin in what felt like a zigzag pattern. 

I still couldn’t see clearly, I could feel someone moving behind me

"Ok theyn...you go sit on the floor in the doorway over there," and she pointed to the door leading into the hallway,"Ay want you to sit with your legs on either sahd of the door jamb, and put your arms around the wall".

I did as she told me sitting on the floor between the kitchen and the hallway.

"Ok, you stay there for a bit, it's ok to look around now", she said. 

So I sat there facing the door post. I saw a woman's skirt as she was walking and when I looked up to see her face I noticed she had what looked like a birds nest tied to her face, looking at it carefully I saw it was a round disk, about 3 inches thick, made of a spiral of sticks (maybe mugwort stems?)

 I asked her "can you see where you are going with that on?" 

She answered me in a nonchalant tone, " of course, I can see perfectly" as she continued to walk down the dark hallway. 

I continued to sit there as the whole house got very still and quiet. Then the shadow returned through an instantly appearing/disappearing doorway in the wall in front of me. 

"Ok, you should come here now, stand up and come here", she said softly in her gentle breathy drawl. I stood up and walked towards the voice in the dark. Then  the floor fell away and I felt my body lying in a soft bed.

"It’s alright now, It's not quite sunrise!" the now familiar voice said to me.

I closed my eyes and returned to the dark room, I could just make out the break of light through the window as I became aware of the space and my body in the dreamscape. 

I felt my own nakedness laying there in bed, I heard footsteps close by and smelled the scent of flowers in the air. I pulled that smell deep into my lungs, the smell enveloped all my senses and I felt myself begin to lose consciousness. I tried to stand, swinging my feet towards the floor. 

“Stop right there, don’t move a muscle, you can not leave yet”, said the voice. The sun was beginning to come in through the windows and looking around me the room was empty. All I could see were the dust motes as the sun grew brighter through the dirty windows.

Then I felt her touch on my face. Her fingers across my eyes and then my beard then my lips. 

It seemed normal to have this invisible lover run her hands across my head. Her touch was gentle, her skin felt cold and soft. 

 I felt a sharp talon, sharp and long talons moved softly across my body  grazing my chest but not breaking the skin. Then soft fingers played across my stomach arousing my deepest desires. Then I felt her around me. The smell of frankincense and sandalwood filled my head with spasms of pleasure, I felt long, curly hair as it fell around me covering me with the smell of her body. 

I felt no weight, but only the pressure and the pleasure of her as her body opened to let me in. I opened my eyes and saw a dark haze above me. Looking up I saw the shape of her eyes, twin flames burning in the darkness. 

Then she began to move, and I felt her thighs wrapped around my legs like tentacles, her skin soft and cool against mine. Her hold on me was so tight I could scarcely move, but I could move just a little even though I felt trapped in the coils of her ferocious embrace. 

Caught up in the insanity of pure desire I reached up to grasp her and felt nothing. I closed my eyes then, and saw above me the unspeakably beautiful face of my lover, her head covered with serpents in the place of hair. She looked down at me, suddenly aware I could see her with my inner eyes, and a smile arose from her lips. The twin fires of her eyes calmed into pools of jet blackness and the serpents of her hair lay calm down her back. 

I half heard her breath as she inhaled a soft moan growing louder. She fell forward, her body on me, her serpents hissing and the coils of her legs wrapping me tighter. I felt a talon gently slice through the skin of my lower lip and her mouth on mine sucking the blood as it rose through the open wound she had so tenderly created. As she lay there feeding on my blood I slowly felt the weight of her body on top of me, Very light at first, like a feather, then becoming more solid, gradually heavier and heavier, slowly her form took shape in my vision and I saw her face dancing in front of me. Her body was the body of a beautiful woman, her legs were covered in scales and ended, not in feet, but in a soft curve like the body of twin serpents coming from her hips. Looking up at her eyes I saw they  had vertical pupils, like the eyes of a serpent. Her eyes looked at me, yellow gold and unblinking. Staring into her eyes I  felt the power of her gaze. 

“Hhhi have nott sshhhown my facesss and form to a hummannn fforrr cencchhhurrries”, she half spoke half hissed. “ How izzz it that you can withsssstand my facesss and not be ttturned to sssstone?” 

“I am not afraid of my desire,” I said. “And I am not afraid of you. I have prayed and sacrificed to Lilith and Hekate and long have I studied the ways of the Ancients. I have walked along hidden paths in the dark, and I can see without eyes much of that which is hidden” 

“ You are wise for a hhhumannn” she said and lay her head on my chest.”I have never known a man who wasn’t afraid of me. Even great heroes of old would turn to stone at my countenance.” 

“It was not always so, I have heard the story of how you were changed, some say you were cursed, some say it was for your protection. I think it was something else.” I said boldly. 

“What was it you think that turned me this way then? Speak the truth human but you know I can burn you to ashes if you are wrong!” The light in her eyes turned back to fire as she spoke. 

“It is your beauty that so many men have tried to possess, have tried to possess you. They never understood…” 

“Yes-sss human, what is it they never under-sssstood?” Her eyes were close to me now, like twin coals of hot flame. 

“They never understood you are a creature of pure desire and manifestation, they did not know their own desires... their own limitations turned them to stone, frozen in their own indecision. Over time even the women turned from you. It may be they had learned to deny their desires. You are a wish fulfilling gem. But also a living, feeling being.” 

“You have studied well,” was all she said. 

 

“The world is changing my goddess, humans are changing, perhaps now you can find the peace that you seek and come back to that world...we need you.” She uncurled herself from around me and sat up serpent like assessing me with her golden eyes. Then she blinked for the first time. She lowered her head just a little and then spoke very slowly in her soft, hissing drawl. 

“hhh...I w-hh-ill consider what you are saying, but first I whh-ill repay your trust,” she said.” You have trusted in me when other men abandoned my memory, if you wish I can teach you the path to becoming a god, like us, like me.” She laughed as she spoke the last words, she laughed and vanished. As her form retreated into emptiness I saw a quick glimpse of golden wings unfurling behind her. The sound of her laughter was all that remained as the shape of her body melted back into nothingness.

I awoke then, sitting up I put my feet on the ground and felt the solidity of the floor beneath me. Something made me turn and look at the bed where I had been lying and I saw a single drop of blood on the pillow. I felt my lip and then went to the mirror. Like an incision a cut had been made across my lower lip. It looked like my lip had split but it was already half healed. I thought on the encounter and decided she must have been Stheno, the gorgon of strength, everything about her displayed  power, both physical and magical.  

The cut on my lip remained, the only testament to the reality of the dream. The reality of the encounter, for it was no ordinary dream. I thought back to what the gorgon had said, that she would teach me the path to godhood. I wondered what she meant.  I wondered where she went. I felt she would return, but when and how she would return is not something I could readily predict. She is, afterall, a force of pure wildness.