A little piece of eden - the brotherhood of the axe. Diary of an occult resolution assistant.
Saturday 00:30
The smoke figures stopped and gave me rest, I was keeping up but only just. We had danced through trees, across water and into the stars and all the while the dancers pulled me on but the dance has its cost and I was waning fast. I rested my hands on my knees, bent over and drew in large gulps of air. The sweet taste of salty water entered my mouth and I knew it was my sweat running in a torrent across my skin which throbbed in time with my heart thumping with exertion. I could dance no more and the smoke sprites came to me, urging me on. I shook my head in inability to comply with their wishes and I sunk to my knees on the floor. The smoked sprites took my hands and pulled me onwards, taking me further into the nebulous sky so high the stars looked close enough to reach out and touch but my hands were held tightly.
Shapes formed from gaseous clouds and energies expelled by universal bodies dominated the heavens and each as intricate and as delicate as a snowflake and just like a snowflake no two can ever be the same. The was so much space; distance was everything but also meaningless; every possible direction was limitless and I was perched amongst it all on a shooting star of golden glitter and bronze being propelled through the wonder with smoked guides giggling and chatting between themselves as we travelled.
Our velocity was immense, screaming past planets of emerald and crimson and phenomena I could never ever attempt to describe without inventing new words to convey scope and elucidate the indescribable: But the journey came to an abrupt conclusion when we crashed through a wall which shattered everything into shards of falling colour and light.
Everything was black. Black as a word cannot fulfil everything I expect it to in how to express to you what it was; but it was all I could see. A weight lifted up under my feet and I could feel I was not standing on something substantial. Colour un-dissolved around me like a developing photograph and a gentle brown focused into a warm yellow until it hurt my eyes and a burning gold took a hold on everything. Features were highlighted in the light and shade but the intensity hurt me so much I would not dare to see what they were.
In a strange way I knew where I was. Because of this I was not surprised to find my smoke essence dancers not present here, nor would they be welcome.
I could sense another near by, a strong man full of scent and aura; a deep bass strum signalled his ancestry and origins and his authority amongst the Other.
My arms were folded over a wooden rail and my feet pressed upon sun warped boards. My body did not move, but I could generate more control over it than before and felt a spasm of movement like a tripped nerve up my thigh as I tried to tap my toes. My gaze and posture were locked as before but a searing heat permeated my skin and a dry bouquet of grass and dust pricked in my nose.
"You need something of me?" A voice as parched as the sun bleached landscape tolled out and a buzz of feedback wavered through the rich deep bass reminding me of flies trapped in a glass.
"You don't do company well do you?" Ah, at least I knew this voice and pennies were dropping and new questions opening up.
"You need something of Me?"
"I've travelled a long way to be here."
"You want something I can deliver?" A kiln would not offer as much moisture eradication as that voice; it blasts calefaction into fever.
"A very long way and no welcome?"
"No; you know this so it must be considerable."
The conversation was left here, stagnant and unfulfilled for the lifetime of a galaxy and I could feel my host focusing inwards and watching me looking out through his eyes.
You were going somewhere you did not want to be. It was not a voice because here where I resided there were no ears with which to hear nor were there lips with which to speak.
I don't know how but it has happened and now you must go back.
The smoke sprits danced around me, no longer there to please me but frustrated in their actions and movements designed to jar and not entice. They dispersed leaving trails of smoke swirling around my head; as it cleared I could see I was still in the clearing with the girls singing around me and Mary stood by the alter.
"Did you see it?" Asked Mary as she saw me in a confused but lucid state. "Was She not beautiful and everything you want to be?" She opened her arms and the cloak around her hung like gossamer wings around her and she came to be and enveloped me with them and pulled me closer so I could feel her warm curved body through the thin material and the swift dub, dub, dub of her heart matching mine for pace and rhythm.
A smile and confidence I have come to associate strongly with this woman seemed to falter as she gazed down into my expressionless face; I did not know who 'She' was and it showed.
"You did not see?.....But......this can't be so, no one can.......but maybe......"
Mary let me go and after the warmth of her embrace the coolness of the night stung me as if an artic gale had blown through. She busied herself and with a flourish used the remains and ash from the incense to kindle a guttering flame and encouraged a new to develop and smoke started to pour upwards and in the breeze new figures started to form and at the point they appeared to live I knew I did not want to follow in their dance anymore.
"Yes, I saw, it was amazing." I said blurting out the words with both eyes fixed firmly on the fledgling dancers.
"You saw. Ah I knew you would and wasn't she everything you want and have ever wanted?" Said Mary in response covering the incense with another dish; the dancers elegance was stolen from them and they faltered holding their vaporous throats, falling to their knees in mid air or throwing themselves around in fits and jerks and exploding into smutty clouds soon dispersed by the circulation of air.
"Universal." I added and this seemed to cause Mary a great amusement.
"Oh yes, She is everything to me." And the choir sang with everything they were and not for the first time tonight I was scared to the core.
"We need to invite her here to us on this earth and soil and you will see everything; We will all see everything and you will understand what She wants to give to us and how She will love us all."
I saw ropes above me tangled with complex detritus of life, rags, a child's doll, a mobile phone so ancient it could have been from 2010, pages from a book, a balloon, string, a mop head and a plethora of everything you could lay your hands on and more tied by shoelaces, string and somethings by the object itself to the thicker ropes spread out between the trees. I stepped back and around to see what it was around me and high up where the ropes and lines crossed towards the tops of the tree canopy was a star, a five pointed star and at its centre a ring of skulls from large animals.
This was mirrored by circles and crossed lines forming the pentagram on the soil floor by means of a stick or similar being dragged to form them.
Mary grabbed at a rope dangling from a tree set at one of the points and held it at her side.
"We will call her and she will come to us." She said holding a lighter next to the braided line.
What sort of power did Mary and this group have? I was fairly sure the universal bus trip was just smoke and mirrors with a mild hallucinogenic thrown in for good measure. Just smoke and mirrors and a measure of fear and theatrics. A burning pentagram would only bring in an air force of moths and insects wouldn't it? I've played this game as a young teen with others I talked into it from the children's home, sending our dreams and words above on a clear star filled night hoping for recognition and a message from the stars back. It never happened and the only voice I heard was a carer who heard us slip out of the home after hours and screamed at us for getting our nightdresses dirty. It wasn't the message I wanted but it did scare the hell out of me just as this was now.
I had to say something, to stop anything Mary had planned; I very much doubted she would be able to summon the universal She to us here in these small woods in a small village but with whatever generated Xanthic's initial interest in this place I thought the lights, smells and sounds might attract a very hungry wild cat of some kind and claw marks would be very difficult to repair in these clothes.
"I would not do that,"
The words carried across the clearing and everyone turned to look at where they originated. It was suddenly very silent and the night pulled in close.
"No, you would not would you." Mary recovered quickly and spat the words back as Melody moved into the sparse light. She stood there in well worn rags that made up a very formal and austere faded black dress and her hair pulled so tightly back it must be holding on to her head by its very roots.
"Dark things look for the light. We cannot show them the door." Melody stated in her factual manner.
"And what would you know, you so scared of what you might have achieved if you only tried. You who have held me back at every opportunity, you have crippled my life and you will not hold onto me anymore. Go away you old woman, you tired woman at the end of your usefulness and life." Mary poured emotion into her words and I could recognise a rebelliousness seen across households on every continent across the ages.
"I am me and you are you, no-one can change that and we live our lives to how we see the world."
Melody stood fingers interlinked around a body height walking pole held in front of her looking ever like the control her tones vibrate with; like my foster mother when I stood up and demanded to be allowed to go to a concert with my friends even if it was on a school night.
"I am me, you are very much right and I will do as I see fit without anyone else's conscience interfering. Witchcraft is not black and white as you see it, its the shades of grey that are gulf between the sides that give us our powers and Witches thrive in knowing the difference of right and wrong and influencing others and the world to give the outcome they require."
"Black and White. There is no grey. Right and Wrong and us. Everyone lives on one side or the other and a Witch knows which side she is one. We do what is needed, not what we want, there is no pleasure in the tasks we face nor is there in the outcomes from our actions. We do what we must and you have never seen that as a duty to the world, you want duty from it."
The two women faced each other; Mary from the middle of her circle looking up and Melody from the shadows looking down into the clearing from where I entered. How long had she been there watching? Was she there when I stumbled into this?
"We will see old woman. Soon the black will come for you and I will be here in the light without you to hold be down." Mary opened the lighter and fire licked out against the rope which caught almost instantly as if desperate to become one with the flame. Mary dropped the end as the light quickly ascended past her hand and up into the trees where it diverted left and right when it met the coming together of the lines and then criss-crossing until the pentagram burned its shape into the night and into my retinas. The girls rushed in full of childish wonder and gathered at Mary's feet bent low as if in prayer.
"This is progress old woman." Called Mary from the middle of the flock of hunched robes around her.
"This is the wrong path to follow." Called back Melody, "and it will not end with how you desire."
Smoke sprites were dancing along the burning lines, in long lines of figures which were growing in stature with each passing second. Nobody moved but more and more of the girls follow Mary's stance and admired the dancers and I was strongly reconsidering my first thoughts of hallucinations causing the images. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as the dancers rose to the height of tall men and floated gently, still in dance, to stand on the ground amongst us. At first they looked kindly like that of a nurse looking down on an injured child; but then as the witches laid themselves out on the ground in worship of them they looked, to me in my place still standing to one side, like militia standing over the bodies of villagers they have just calmed after an insurgency. And they danced around the boundary lines filling the circle on the ground with their passing around and through each other
I wanted to get away but the heat of the dancers scorched my flesh and the smoke spilling out of them like expanding fog off a field on a cold morning stung my eyes and filled my mouth and lungs with bitter burning smog.
Melody had staggered down the bank and was wielding her stick like a weapon swiping at the insubstantial bodies of the sprites but each one re-formed even as the stick passed through it and they showed no signs of slowing or noticing the interruption.
She got to my arm and without a word she pulled and started to drag me out of the circle. Whether the smoked figured knew we were attempting to leave and deliberately caused heat and smoke to bar our path or not we were barred from our escape and both the older woman and I coughed trying to clear our lungs of the heated dirty smoke and find cooler air to ease already scorched throats. Through eye lids scrunched as tight as I could to protect my eyes, but with the merest slits to aid my sight and escape, I saw the girls on the floor seemingly unaware or the dangers we were facing. As the heat bared down I grabbed onto Melody and pulled her to the floor and found a line of clean cool air where we took down lungful's of delicious sweet air.
There was a boiling sea of smoke above us looking like an inverted storm ravaged ocean rolling menacingly driving out any thoughts of my raising up to escape. There was a passage of clear air and I stayed in it and we, Melody and myself, crawled slowly through the bodies of the girls who were signing praise to the sprite and fuelling their dance. As we approached the limits of the circle there were crackles of power spinning through the shallow gully and I could see the trees in front of me and also at the other four points of the star engulfed in flame cutting off our escape. I rolled onto my back and held onto Melody who had her head down coughing uncontrollably with the smoke she had already ingested into her body. I watched as above me the tempest of smoke began to fall towards us all.
The smoke figures stopped and gave me rest, I was keeping up but only just. We had danced through trees, across water and into the stars and all the while the dancers pulled me on but the dance has its cost and I was waning fast. I rested my hands on my knees, bent over and drew in large gulps of air. The sweet taste of salty water entered my mouth and I knew it was my sweat running in a torrent across my skin which throbbed in time with my heart thumping with exertion. I could dance no more and the smoke sprites came to me, urging me on. I shook my head in inability to comply with their wishes and I sunk to my knees on the floor. The smoked sprites took my hands and pulled me onwards, taking me further into the nebulous sky so high the stars looked close enough to reach out and touch but my hands were held tightly.
Shapes formed from gaseous clouds and energies expelled by universal bodies dominated the heavens and each as intricate and as delicate as a snowflake and just like a snowflake no two can ever be the same. The was so much space; distance was everything but also meaningless; every possible direction was limitless and I was perched amongst it all on a shooting star of golden glitter and bronze being propelled through the wonder with smoked guides giggling and chatting between themselves as we travelled.
Our velocity was immense, screaming past planets of emerald and crimson and phenomena I could never ever attempt to describe without inventing new words to convey scope and elucidate the indescribable: But the journey came to an abrupt conclusion when we crashed through a wall which shattered everything into shards of falling colour and light.
Everything was black. Black as a word cannot fulfil everything I expect it to in how to express to you what it was; but it was all I could see. A weight lifted up under my feet and I could feel I was not standing on something substantial. Colour un-dissolved around me like a developing photograph and a gentle brown focused into a warm yellow until it hurt my eyes and a burning gold took a hold on everything. Features were highlighted in the light and shade but the intensity hurt me so much I would not dare to see what they were.
In a strange way I knew where I was. Because of this I was not surprised to find my smoke essence dancers not present here, nor would they be welcome.
I could sense another near by, a strong man full of scent and aura; a deep bass strum signalled his ancestry and origins and his authority amongst the Other.
My arms were folded over a wooden rail and my feet pressed upon sun warped boards. My body did not move, but I could generate more control over it than before and felt a spasm of movement like a tripped nerve up my thigh as I tried to tap my toes. My gaze and posture were locked as before but a searing heat permeated my skin and a dry bouquet of grass and dust pricked in my nose.
"You need something of me?" A voice as parched as the sun bleached landscape tolled out and a buzz of feedback wavered through the rich deep bass reminding me of flies trapped in a glass.
"You don't do company well do you?" Ah, at least I knew this voice and pennies were dropping and new questions opening up.
"You need something of Me?"
"I've travelled a long way to be here."
"You want something I can deliver?" A kiln would not offer as much moisture eradication as that voice; it blasts calefaction into fever.
"A very long way and no welcome?"
"No; you know this so it must be considerable."
The conversation was left here, stagnant and unfulfilled for the lifetime of a galaxy and I could feel my host focusing inwards and watching me looking out through his eyes.
You were going somewhere you did not want to be. It was not a voice because here where I resided there were no ears with which to hear nor were there lips with which to speak.
I don't know how but it has happened and now you must go back.
The smoke sprits danced around me, no longer there to please me but frustrated in their actions and movements designed to jar and not entice. They dispersed leaving trails of smoke swirling around my head; as it cleared I could see I was still in the clearing with the girls singing around me and Mary stood by the alter.
"Did you see it?" Asked Mary as she saw me in a confused but lucid state. "Was She not beautiful and everything you want to be?" She opened her arms and the cloak around her hung like gossamer wings around her and she came to be and enveloped me with them and pulled me closer so I could feel her warm curved body through the thin material and the swift dub, dub, dub of her heart matching mine for pace and rhythm.
A smile and confidence I have come to associate strongly with this woman seemed to falter as she gazed down into my expressionless face; I did not know who 'She' was and it showed.
"You did not see?.....But......this can't be so, no one can.......but maybe......"
Mary let me go and after the warmth of her embrace the coolness of the night stung me as if an artic gale had blown through. She busied herself and with a flourish used the remains and ash from the incense to kindle a guttering flame and encouraged a new to develop and smoke started to pour upwards and in the breeze new figures started to form and at the point they appeared to live I knew I did not want to follow in their dance anymore.
"Yes, I saw, it was amazing." I said blurting out the words with both eyes fixed firmly on the fledgling dancers.
"You saw. Ah I knew you would and wasn't she everything you want and have ever wanted?" Said Mary in response covering the incense with another dish; the dancers elegance was stolen from them and they faltered holding their vaporous throats, falling to their knees in mid air or throwing themselves around in fits and jerks and exploding into smutty clouds soon dispersed by the circulation of air.
"Universal." I added and this seemed to cause Mary a great amusement.
"Oh yes, She is everything to me." And the choir sang with everything they were and not for the first time tonight I was scared to the core.
"We need to invite her here to us on this earth and soil and you will see everything; We will all see everything and you will understand what She wants to give to us and how She will love us all."
I saw ropes above me tangled with complex detritus of life, rags, a child's doll, a mobile phone so ancient it could have been from 2010, pages from a book, a balloon, string, a mop head and a plethora of everything you could lay your hands on and more tied by shoelaces, string and somethings by the object itself to the thicker ropes spread out between the trees. I stepped back and around to see what it was around me and high up where the ropes and lines crossed towards the tops of the tree canopy was a star, a five pointed star and at its centre a ring of skulls from large animals.
This was mirrored by circles and crossed lines forming the pentagram on the soil floor by means of a stick or similar being dragged to form them.
Mary grabbed at a rope dangling from a tree set at one of the points and held it at her side.
"We will call her and she will come to us." She said holding a lighter next to the braided line.
What sort of power did Mary and this group have? I was fairly sure the universal bus trip was just smoke and mirrors with a mild hallucinogenic thrown in for good measure. Just smoke and mirrors and a measure of fear and theatrics. A burning pentagram would only bring in an air force of moths and insects wouldn't it? I've played this game as a young teen with others I talked into it from the children's home, sending our dreams and words above on a clear star filled night hoping for recognition and a message from the stars back. It never happened and the only voice I heard was a carer who heard us slip out of the home after hours and screamed at us for getting our nightdresses dirty. It wasn't the message I wanted but it did scare the hell out of me just as this was now.
I had to say something, to stop anything Mary had planned; I very much doubted she would be able to summon the universal She to us here in these small woods in a small village but with whatever generated Xanthic's initial interest in this place I thought the lights, smells and sounds might attract a very hungry wild cat of some kind and claw marks would be very difficult to repair in these clothes.
"I would not do that,"
The words carried across the clearing and everyone turned to look at where they originated. It was suddenly very silent and the night pulled in close.
"No, you would not would you." Mary recovered quickly and spat the words back as Melody moved into the sparse light. She stood there in well worn rags that made up a very formal and austere faded black dress and her hair pulled so tightly back it must be holding on to her head by its very roots.
"Dark things look for the light. We cannot show them the door." Melody stated in her factual manner.
"And what would you know, you so scared of what you might have achieved if you only tried. You who have held me back at every opportunity, you have crippled my life and you will not hold onto me anymore. Go away you old woman, you tired woman at the end of your usefulness and life." Mary poured emotion into her words and I could recognise a rebelliousness seen across households on every continent across the ages.
"I am me and you are you, no-one can change that and we live our lives to how we see the world."
Melody stood fingers interlinked around a body height walking pole held in front of her looking ever like the control her tones vibrate with; like my foster mother when I stood up and demanded to be allowed to go to a concert with my friends even if it was on a school night.
"I am me, you are very much right and I will do as I see fit without anyone else's conscience interfering. Witchcraft is not black and white as you see it, its the shades of grey that are gulf between the sides that give us our powers and Witches thrive in knowing the difference of right and wrong and influencing others and the world to give the outcome they require."
"Black and White. There is no grey. Right and Wrong and us. Everyone lives on one side or the other and a Witch knows which side she is one. We do what is needed, not what we want, there is no pleasure in the tasks we face nor is there in the outcomes from our actions. We do what we must and you have never seen that as a duty to the world, you want duty from it."
The two women faced each other; Mary from the middle of her circle looking up and Melody from the shadows looking down into the clearing from where I entered. How long had she been there watching? Was she there when I stumbled into this?
"We will see old woman. Soon the black will come for you and I will be here in the light without you to hold be down." Mary opened the lighter and fire licked out against the rope which caught almost instantly as if desperate to become one with the flame. Mary dropped the end as the light quickly ascended past her hand and up into the trees where it diverted left and right when it met the coming together of the lines and then criss-crossing until the pentagram burned its shape into the night and into my retinas. The girls rushed in full of childish wonder and gathered at Mary's feet bent low as if in prayer.
"This is progress old woman." Called Mary from the middle of the flock of hunched robes around her.
"This is the wrong path to follow." Called back Melody, "and it will not end with how you desire."
Smoke sprites were dancing along the burning lines, in long lines of figures which were growing in stature with each passing second. Nobody moved but more and more of the girls follow Mary's stance and admired the dancers and I was strongly reconsidering my first thoughts of hallucinations causing the images. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as the dancers rose to the height of tall men and floated gently, still in dance, to stand on the ground amongst us. At first they looked kindly like that of a nurse looking down on an injured child; but then as the witches laid themselves out on the ground in worship of them they looked, to me in my place still standing to one side, like militia standing over the bodies of villagers they have just calmed after an insurgency. And they danced around the boundary lines filling the circle on the ground with their passing around and through each other
I wanted to get away but the heat of the dancers scorched my flesh and the smoke spilling out of them like expanding fog off a field on a cold morning stung my eyes and filled my mouth and lungs with bitter burning smog.
Melody had staggered down the bank and was wielding her stick like a weapon swiping at the insubstantial bodies of the sprites but each one re-formed even as the stick passed through it and they showed no signs of slowing or noticing the interruption.
She got to my arm and without a word she pulled and started to drag me out of the circle. Whether the smoked figured knew we were attempting to leave and deliberately caused heat and smoke to bar our path or not we were barred from our escape and both the older woman and I coughed trying to clear our lungs of the heated dirty smoke and find cooler air to ease already scorched throats. Through eye lids scrunched as tight as I could to protect my eyes, but with the merest slits to aid my sight and escape, I saw the girls on the floor seemingly unaware or the dangers we were facing. As the heat bared down I grabbed onto Melody and pulled her to the floor and found a line of clean cool air where we took down lungful's of delicious sweet air.
There was a boiling sea of smoke above us looking like an inverted storm ravaged ocean rolling menacingly driving out any thoughts of my raising up to escape. There was a passage of clear air and I stayed in it and we, Melody and myself, crawled slowly through the bodies of the girls who were signing praise to the sprite and fuelling their dance. As we approached the limits of the circle there were crackles of power spinning through the shallow gully and I could see the trees in front of me and also at the other four points of the star engulfed in flame cutting off our escape. I rolled onto my back and held onto Melody who had her head down coughing uncontrollably with the smoke she had already ingested into her body. I watched as above me the tempest of smoke began to fall towards us all.
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