Showing my Serpent's Tail

The hour is cold, too cold, for shadow people suffering from ignorance that their quest's passion should give fire greater than that of the surface of the sun. Singly they curse the numbing frost and pray for the waking sun to hurry in its course. A wasted prayer, for that plan had been set eons ago. Not a single prayer for the courage to share warmth with another.

Do not turn away in fear - there is nothing but darkness behind you. See in me the light - the doorway to eternity. I come from a land where there is no pain, where an herb grows for every ill and the faire wind ever blows. But in Loycha can there reside but one, and my love sits there in peace. When I return she must drift away leaving only Sping's perfume. So I have no fear of death, my friend. I would rather you dash my blood upon these rocks than send me back to that! Lay on!



If there were no Sun there would be no shadows to linger in, no place to stand illuminated. The shadow builder may be a dark, mysterious, intelligent phantom or perhaps shadow builders are simply those who are brave enough to plumb the suberterranean, the submerged places, places like Lemuria itself. Who is to know what we would find if we made our way down and walked through the cities that were purported to exist.

I must confess all this talk of shadows and doorways to Bowers of Bliss has reminded me of one of my favourite chapters of From Blonde to Beast by Marina Warner. In 'The Cave of the Enchantress' Warner writes about the Grotto della Sibilla in the Umbrian Mountains which was first mentioned in classical legend. Guerino the Wretch reaches a mountain pass near Norcia in Umbria where he meets with the Devil. The Devil, of course, wants Guerino's soul and tempts him by describing a subterranean kingdom where every delight will be his. Seemingly, in this kingdom, trees flower and fruit at the same time and there is no pain or age or sorrow.

No pain! No sorrow! Lead me to the Umbrian mountains immediately! Of course, what the Devil failied to mention was that the cave is inhabited by an enchantress who turns into a snake every Saturday.



"I love it!" I exclaimed when I read about this wily enchantress who only turned into a snake and revealed her true, deformed, self of a Saturday. How civilised of her?

So where am I headed with all of this? What is my point? My point has something to do with Ying and Yang. No shadows without the light of the sun, no perfect, idyllic bowers of bliss waiting to be found.
Personally I feel sort of safe here in the shadows, with my shadow people, trying to express my truth, showing my serpent's tail everyday.