The Temple of Cybele

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Last month, we presented the introduction and first chapter of Verda Smedley's novel, "Ancestral Airs", which is set in the UK in the Mesolithic era. In chapter 1, we met Gobetween, a modern 20th century woman who has received visions and communications from her distant ancestor, a magician known as Moondog. We now present the first half of chapter 2, in which you will meet him directly...

Part I: The Seedbearers

Chapter 2

I am Moondog, Clan Greihound and kin to the Twilight Women. I am a Prayer Runner and the Twin Dreamer for my clan. I have traveled the spiral, the Infinite Present and have seen the passing of our people. Born of the Ancient Ones and destroyed at the hands of strangers, I proclaim the rebirth of my kind somewhere along the whirling arm of Forever Now. I am your progenitor and this is the story of the Human Beings.

The people were a paronym of the Earth Mother and our day began at sunset. We lived our lives by two calendars, the women observing the moon and the men the sun. The Twilight Women every 37th moon and the Bards every 19th year put to rest the irreconcilable differences in the disparaging cycles when the moon returned to the beginning of its journey.

Each of these lunar and solar months was marked with wooden posts or stones on the great wheel in the meadowlands and named for a clan. The nineteen years were called by the epithets of the elemental societies.

I am not permitted to speak of women’s secrets but I understood their position on the calendar. Eighteen women’s clans named for the species from which they had descended, honored their moon twice during each three-year cycle. The leagues of Clan Female were called Oak, Holly, Birch, Pine, Apple, Hawthorn, Willow, Dogwood, Bearberry, Ash, Poplar, Blackthorn, Currant, Linden, Elm, Maple, Alder and Hazelnut.

There were nine societies of women as well. Some took care of the forests in Old Granite Range and the Chalky Mountains. Others guarded the wisdom of the heaths and grasslands or handled the medicine from bogs and moors or the fens and marshy meadows. Included in their care were the springs, streams and rivers, the great salt marshes, and the vast ocean. All these bands knew by heart the lotions, potions, teas and decoctions rendered from the species unique to each of those habitats. Many of their prayers were made in the steam of their sweathouses.

The women of the moon and stars read the signs needed for rituals. No journey to any world could commence until they had divined their consent.

The other women’s societies saturated every day things with magic. Baskets, tanning, weaving, pottery and gathering brought comfort to our lives daily with food, clothing, and vessels. Every woman in our tribe knew how to manage those skills beautifully and their societies handled the spirits of that medicine for ceremonies.

It was understood that earth and water and therefore the plant kingdom composed the world of women’s medicine. A woman had only loaned any plant handled by a man to him. Medicine men endured long apprenticeships with women for the privilege of that knowledge and it could be stripped from them if he neglected or misused it.

But most importantly was the appreciation that men and women were wholly interwoven. The women of the grasslands, the mountains and the marshy meadows studied with the men who took care of the sun or the clouds. The astronomers of Clan Male apprenticed with the moon and stars. As vitally divided as male and female medicine had become each was dependent on the wisdom taken care of by the other.

The solar annum was divided into twelve months and each was honored by a particular sect of men. They were recognized as the clans of Turtle, Moose, Antelope, Roebuck, Beaver, Sheep, Dog, Elk, Bison, Wildcat, Otter, and Salmon.

Twelve additional facets further divided the world of men’s medicine. The Seedbearers who took care of the summer season emulated the Ram, Hare, Stag, Boar, Bear and Bull. They were eminent clans, great in number and impressively virile.

The Death Clans of Raven, Lynx, Owl, Badger, Eagle and Wolf were old clans. Once boasting many members they had dwindled to few in numbers. Their prayers protected the people during the Winter Wait with ceremonies that were as formidable as the elements to which they sacrificed.

Animal clans were not difficult to understand. They lived, ate, hunted, sired, prayed and died according to the dictates of their animal ancestors. Every part of an animal held a secret teaching. Skins, bones, organs, teeth, hooves and antlers had been given to our people for food, clothing, shelter and medicine. Rituals were born out of the intimate knowledge of these things. Spirit Handlers dressed in their relatives’ skins and antlers, and prophesied from their bones or made them into whistles. They wore their claws and teeth, and sang with hoof rattles. From the organs came medicine bags and divination. An animal’s hide was tanned with its own brain, kidney or liver. A creature could be watched and the observer could learn the workings of the world by how an animal moved or in what direction. The flick of an ear held inestimable wisdom or that of a tail might hold the privity of Creation.

When our Ancestors stepped out of the ice with their dogs they followed the herds back and forth across what was once a vast land. The creatures that they hunted and those great predators that hunted them as well taught men how to live with strength and confidence. Nine elemental societies of men remembered the ancient knowledge.

Spirit Fletchers took care of bows, arrows, spears, knives, and fishing gear. Each weapon could be enchanted with the magic needed for powerful hunts and safe returns. If the medicine became tired Spirit Fletchers knew how to re-empower it. They blessed the hunters, their arms, and doctored their dogs. Yew was given to them for their badge.

The Stone Society handled the spirits that would be reborn into points, axes and blades. They could doctor with crystals and powdered minerals, and carried the glowing, red rocks into the women’s sweat lodges.

The Sun Society took care of the four seasons distinguished by the four directions. Every village, home and lodge was set to those markers. They understood all the signs and could predict and interpret everything from forthcoming weather to eclipses. They set the dates for the men’s ceremonies including the Showoff Dance.

The men of the sun worked their magic alongside the league of Clouds. They divined from the events that took place between the sun and Earth Mother. Every cloud contained a message that could be delivered to the people by rain or snow, or the lack of it. Mist, wind, thunder and lightning were harbingers as well. The society of Clouds could read each of these secrets and knew every possible response to them.

The Rainbow Society had the wisdom of changing ordinary things into rich, ceremonial expression. They knew the pigments and how to prepare them. This was powerful transformation medicine. Some were employed to color arrows for spirit hunts, others went to face and body-paint so men could step into the world of their ancestors and be recognized by them. Colorants imbued hides, drums, flutes and rattles with certain spirits that would help the practitioners achieve their purposes. But the most formidable Rainbow knowledge was that of the species whose charcoal was used for tattooing. Each had a unique application. All of the men’s clans tattooed, some extensively, as did some of the women’s clans. Tattoos were records of journeys, badges of affiliation and accomplishment, and the intimate histories of lives. This was true of scarifying as well.

No ceremony could succeed without the help of songs kept vigorous and strong by the instruments that accompanied them. The Drum Makers, whose badge was juniper, knew every suitable species, plant or animal, for any drum, drumstick or rattle appropriate to any possible ritual.

The Flutemakers brought us flutes and whistles from a pallet as impressive as that of the Drum. Their badge was the elder. They could make instruments for calling game or spirits, and knew the secrets of pitch. When placed in whistles of bone or wood it could modulate the sounds sweet to the Ancestors. Flutemakers could fashion wood chimes that were good medicine for new lovers. Astoundingly they had isolated hundreds of tones for doctoring and had a whistle for each of them. Different bundles could be combined and the practitioners could play a divination or a remedy. Each note was further identified with a particular plant. Spirit Handlers from other groups used these tubes as prayer sticks and containers for their medicine. They were often painted up and dressed with plumes and other beautiful things.

I think there were as many varieties of fires as there were plants springing from the Earth and there existed a male society who knew them all. They understood the fires for cooking and pottery, and took care of the perpetual fires that burned in every village. The Fire Society kept the secrets needed to select the wood and manage its burn for every ceremony. They took care of all the smudging herbs that blessed and protected the people, their homes, and their weapons. This sect of Spirit Handlers knew all the varieties of sacred smoke that could purify or cure, and the invocations that went with them.

The last elemental society of the men was the Greihound Prayer Runners, my clan. We carried messages from one faction to another. Older runners became escorts for the shades of death, and elders shot the void to bring back answers for the people. Clan Greihound was the only elemental society regarded as a Death Clan as well.

In the summer Death Clans were released from most of their responsibilities and partook of the liberty enjoyed by the rest of the tribe to whatever extent they were actually capable. This freedom was clearly measured by how many women invited them to worship within their intimate temples. The foretaste of such honey, however, was usually sobered by the need to conserve energy for the dreamtime. The ecstasy of anticipation often became the only climactic expression of our hunger.

Our people had been kind toward the peculiarities with which Death Clan members had been endowed. They had resisted giving us over to the Ancient Ones at birth and created a discipline that would usurp most of our lives. We had never been forced to join the Death Clans and could have remained tied to our mothers as misfits. Instead, the people nudged us away from themselves toward the only ones who truly embraced our lives as though we were the finest of blessings, Death Clan elders.

Confined by segregation and yielding to the physical demands of our practice drew attention away from the underlying truth that we were discouraged from proliferating throughout the tribe. Omophagic predisposition was excepted, enshrined, and enshrouded in ceremony so consuming it was virtually impossible to impose ourselves upon them anyway. Death Clan populations always stood on the brink of extinction. The only progeny we were permitted to acknowledge were those ritually conceived. And we rose to this responsibility quite willingly each autumn between the voluptuous thighs of the Life Givers who had plucked us from the Tree of Life at the Showoff Dance.

Unfortunately many harsh winters had taken an unprecedented number of our tribe. And the Greihound had excelled as unfaltering companions to the dead, guarding their journeys to the meadowsweet of our Ancestors. But paradoxically our evincive love for our people touched off the loss of our penchant to draw Clan Female to our den. Even the virile youth of my fraternity, run ragged by the decedent, had grown raw and strange from the inordinate demand. Repulsive to the vitality of the women we hadn’t been picked from the tree for years. As disillusioning as that was, it was trivial in light of our subsequent loss of Snow Rose.

Nine men composed the asterism of my clan. Each of four elders had one apprentice. We had one stand-by and a dreaming woman.

Progeny indemnified survival but not for clans so limited in membership they could perish in an instant. This fragile order compelled the Greihound to scarify, each symbol preserving a piece of its tradition. Our raised flesh was a map of the mist and the image of blessings received from sacrifice.

The Spirit Handlers doctored spirit and flesh. They could set a bone, cure a cough, suture a gash and pack a wound. More profoundly they could set our souls to ceremony and cure the terror of anticipation, knowing that the wounds of the dreamtime were meaningless in light of the ecstasy. They flaked star-studded black glass until the edge was untouchably fine. When pressed against our skin, the flesh of our backs burst open like a boulder split by ice. Some of the blades were straight others shaped like the crescent moon. All were given back to the Mother after sacramental service, their lives spent on the expression of our rapture.

Sprung from a Birch Clan mother, Burnt Knife was the unchallenged Alpha Male of Clan Greihound. He was quite a bit older than I was and closer to my mother’s age than to mine. He had given over his life to our clan when only a boy, and had run with many of the Ancient Ones I only knew as dust in our burial cave. Old Dog had been many years in the magic. And although I was considered an elder I had been reluctant to become one and he served as an uncomfortable reminder that I had a long way to go.

Burnt Knife had a chronic limp from some swollen agony in his knees. He had a creaky, slow way of standing up, and although he never made a sound, we held our breath in empathetic pain. One of his hands had become a twisted, immobile club with deformed and utterly useless fingers. But most assuredly we did not pity him. He was the one who cut the signs into our backs and before whom we always stood alone.

A Hawthorn mother called his understudy Blue Ice. He had given his life over to the Greihound early as well. Blue Ice had been a stand-by for many years, waiting out the death of Burnt Knife’s forebear, who had fought tenaciously to stay in this realm. He was finally awarded inculcation, now officially apprenticed to Burnt Knife. Blue Ice and I were the same age. The medicine men had stolen him into their way of life long ago, and influenced, perhaps even created, his propensity. Traditionally, young sentinels were indentured to any old grey whose predecessor had dropped off the top. But the medicine men had a special wisdom about the order of things. They knew precisely when the death of Burnt Knife’s forerunner would precede the rebirth of Blue Ice, guaranteeing his apprenticeship as a medicine man years before it was actually recognized. Blue Ice had lacked only the title and had been privilege to decades of training deep in the mystery with two teachers.

Sadly, there remained a separation between us. After only a brief apprenticeship I had become an elder, a position I had already enjoyed for five years. Blue Ice knew that I had been tricked, if not dragged screaming into the clan while he had given himself over with breathless willingness as a boy. Blue Ice suspected, as did I that the coincidence of my birth to a powerful clan, not the bent of the illimitable inherent in me, had provided the realization of my status at an early age. Old Dog had never let him cut the whispering ether into my back.

The Stargazers set our ceremonies according to the secret journeys of the stars. Most returned with ritual precision but five were keenly watched. They were not fixed in the bowl but moved tenuously forward, retreated and finally plunged again into the night sky. Like all Death Clan members, they too stood apart from their tribe restricted to peering into the substance of existence only at celebrated homecomings.

Star Stalker was sprung from my mother’s sister and was numerous winters my elder. An outstanding astronomer, he bristled in his expansive enlightenment. He ran with the stars suspended in the air of chasms, and with those that filled the daylight sky. Star Stalker reveled in the warmth of many of our females. I secretly called him Overly-Fond-of-Women. He called me Doesn’t-Want-to-be-an-Elder.

His apprentice Shadow Glass had an Ash clan mother. I doubt that he was yet forty. He had been indentured to Star Stalker for years. I was never certain if Shadow Glass loved me because I was just like his teacher or in spite of it. More than once he had been caught in the middle of Oak clan rivalry, Star Stalker and I having been known to rise to intense flexing. In our youth it had been arrogance and virility, later experience and apperception. This left Shadow Glass torn between genuine love and embarrassment for us.

The Consummate Artists summoned the songs of our inexplicable wonder. Every conundrum of the Mother attracted us like a fly to a spider’s web. Rocks, sticks, skins, bladders and hollow reeds whispered, ejecting us into the boundless wide-eyed and hungry, trembling in the despair of knowing our effort to understand it was futile. Red and white ochre from the depths of our mountain, and the black soot from the trees which had given themselves over to our comfort were chewed up and spit out by the Consummate Artists onto the walls of our den. Our hearts leapt when our eyes could see the mystery that eluded the voice of our minds. They painted the memories of our struggle to sustain the Infinite Present in all that we did.

They were an incredible example of just how good our system could be. I never knew two men more at peace with the consequences of their lives, not jealous or competitive in any way. They epitomized the requisite essence of ebb and flow, new to old, old to new, like ripples on the surface of a pond. Each man was a visionary, neither man subordinate. The songs flowing from the void through their spirits and into our rituals conveyed the stirring perplexity trapped inside each of us. They left us with the cognition that no matter how feeble, our paths were filled with potent eloquence.

Spirit Chalk, our elder artist, had been sprung from a band of the Willow clan who camped near the salt marshes in the summer. He was born from the very tidal pool to which he would eventually return. He was one of the old ones, white-haired and shrinking.

His understudy, called Bird Chant, was about the same age as Shadow Glass. They had petitioned together as boys and were initiated into apprenticeships perhaps seven years ago. Born of an Apple woman, Bird Chant’s spirit was as ancient as his mother’s clan was. He and his old teacher seemed more like twin brothers born by accident on two different occasions. The Twilight Women, who dearly loved them, saw our Consummate Artists as a paradox of fixed and inextricable motion.

Custom allowed us one stand-by to close the inevitable gap caused by death. He and the apprentices managed our resources under the scrutiny of Burnt Knife. They hunted our meat, hauled our water, and stoked our fires day and night. But more importantly our stand-by guarded the den and the abandoned bodies of those who had disappeared into the vapor or emerged greihounds to join up with the wild pack. He bore silent witness to our continued struggle to remain suspended in the only world that embraced us.

Longbow was a catharsis for the clan. Bird Chant and Shadow Glass had beaten him to apprenticeships by only one year and no one had died since. He had none of the advantages of birth, predisposition or adoption enjoyed by the rest of us. As a stand-by he could only wait out someone’s death to become an apprentice. If Burnt Knife knew whom Longbow would eventually replace, he wasn’t telling. None of us had a clue. Blue Ice made well-meaning attempts at consolation, reminding Longbow that he had waited decades to become an understudy. Disguised in this truth was a bitter irony made apparent by the common knowledge that Blue Ice was discreetly adopted by the medicine men at an early age. Longbow’s sedentary manner, however, did not reflect our speculation. Free from the entrapment of blood or appointment he had the privilege of bearing witness to all that we did. Spared from the dangers of detachment he was a master of diversity. Longbow could sing from the depths of his being and read the stars day or night. He could doctor a wound or discharge propitiation from our flesh. His dreams were startling and profound.

Thorn Arrow was sprung from a Holly clan mother. Greihound elders recognized him as a twin dreamer at birth. He was given over to our clan when he was a boy and had been my apprentice for five years. If Longbow was cathartic I was certainly enigmatic, having given myself over last before Thorn Arrow.

Every Death Clan had a Twilight Woman, one of the rogues of Clan Female. Together these women formed their own clan as well. The Twilight Women were midwives to clan newborn and the twins of Death Clan dreamers. They alone had the inexplicable ability to teach us how to gain entry into the dreamtime.

Dreaming Twins, whose only proclivity was to dream, weren’t regarded in the same light as the artists, medicine men and astronomers. The protocol by which we had to live was strict, requiring monastic isolation, concealed under the auspices of sacred imperative. This predisposition could transform itself into a sickness that would eventually destroy the dreamer were he separated from his twin. Mismatches were devastating.

Her Roebuck mother had given Snow Rose to the Twilight Women at her puberty rite. For years they had molded and manipulated her into a dreaming jewel. There she waited out the death of Old Dog Dreaming Woman, my preceptor, and finally took her place as the Greihound Twilight Woman. She had been my partner for five winters as well. Similar in age as Thorn Arrow she was a good teacher for him and after my death, they would have become a well-balanced set of dreaming twins. Unfortunately she was twinned to me and we were a terrible match. I don’t know if it was her age or the blood of her people, but her fire didn’t burn hot enough to propel me into the dreamtime. My hunger for such a twin was insatiable and my attention to Snow Rose hollow and divided; consequently she was taken from me.

Shortly before the end of the year young and often fragile boys placed themselves before the elders of the Clan Male. Our heads were filled with wonder and ambition. And as boys often do we believed this was the hardest day of our lives, the day we chose to leave our mothers. It was the turning point that lead us to become great warriors and eventually ended by becoming one of the old and terrifying men before which we had to stand.

All of us were clean and shiny on that day, dressed in finery (that our mothers had made) and bearing what we believed to be splendid gifts (for which our mothers had traded). We gathered our courage and practiced our deep voices, having reached an age when they fluctuated unpredictably. But we were strong and revealed our abstruse thoughts and dreams to our elders. The first test of our manhood was to take a tattoo of our mother’s badge over our hearts. If we hadn’t the boldness to do it we could try again the following year.

On the Day of Gathering Bones the old men went from house to house collecting anxious petitioners whose childhood would die with the old year. It was a tragic day for our mothers who wailed inconsolably, making certain we understood just how sad it was for them. Along with mourning the loss of their sons into adulthood to a world in which they would only rarely take part, they lamented the dead as well. We tried to appear stricken by their grieving to appease their tears but we were secretly eager waiting for the elders to appear at our door and take us away.

Winter brought six months of preparation for the first of four initiations we might endure in our lives. Many a young boy lost his nerve on that day the following spring when he might be flogged, whipped, tattooed again or had to make his first flesh offering, as I did. And some couldn’t do it. There was no shame in that. They could go back to their mothers’ bands free to solicit again, free also to never return.

The ritually conceived were the only progeny Death Clans were permitted. Never the less, Greihound Prayer Runners tended to broadcast their seed throughout the villages in spite of the overwhelming disapproval of the people. Naturally this led to many fine offspring who would never know their paternity and although easily recognized were never acknowledged.

This was the secret foundation for my eagerness to become a runner. The virile imperative of my youth along with the power of the union that brought my spirit into this world coursed through my blood. I was far more peeked to dispersing my wellspring than to disseminating litany.

My second initiation was grueling, not handed down to me by old, soft-spoken men but by the coldest, fiercest predators in my group. It set me on the path that ultimately led to a spirit hunt. For many months I lived like the pack hunter I was predisposed to become. My training took place within the territory of the only known wild pack of greihound, up in the alpine region of the Old Granite Range and in the caves of my Ancestors.

No one could successfully take an animal for which he had no understanding. We were molded and plied with agaric, the orange and white mushroom that grew in the roots of the birch. When we could become a greihound we were allowed to pursue its spirit.

Spirit hunts for nearly all the clans were deadly dangerous affairs. None of the animals could be wounded or in any way flawed by our ineptness. This required critical strategies based entirely on the behavior of whatever species you were to hunt. Many a young warrior was gored, mutilated, or occasionally killed. No weapon was permitted to pierce the flesh of their quarries, only their shadows. These animals had to be netted, trapped or snared, subdued, and smothered by the initiate with only limited cooperation from his clan. The bows, arrows, spears, nets and hunters had been purified and blessed in long ceremonies with smoke and washes, with songs and potent medicine.

I knew that greihound spirit inside and out. Like them I was strong and extremely fast. My quarry ran long and far, through some of the most rugged terrain around. But I was a good match for his skill and eventually overtook him. It felt really good. I was exhilarated by the pursuit and bursting with confidence even up to the moment I released the net that trapped him. He stumbled badly, his swift, forward motion entangling him grossly as he rolled. I watched him struggle for his freedom, with every move becoming more hopelessly ensnared. My arrogance had blinded me to the overwhelming struggle that everyone suffered to survive and to which everyone ultimately succumbed. Disconsolate I watched that superb creature battle for his life. I wanted to release him, abandon my ambitions and return to the Oak clan.

The greihound made only the smallest shadow, up close and slightly under the contour of his body. It was a exceedingly difficult shot. I pulled the arrow from my quiver, fitted it to the bow and drew back the string. He was still moving sporadically, lunging obscenely in his terminal effort to escape. I paused and took the tension off the bow. I was shaking. My heart was pounding, I perspired to excess and I paused. Where was the shot? But as I waited I could feel my nervousness transforming itself into the anticipatory anxiety of a predator prepared to make his last and lethal move. At the critical moment I got the shot off, my arrow embedding itself in the earth beneath the greihound’s shadow.

Now I had to approach him. He was extremely dangerous, growling deeply, baring his teeth, poised to tear me to shreds should he get his chance. He was caught on his side and I maneuvered myself into position behind his shoulders. In one swift motion I grasped his head and got the sack of smothering herbs over his nose. His final fight was so powerful it required all my strength to hold on to him and it lasted longer than anyone could have expected. When his spirit was at last free I was faint from the exertion. I stroked his flanks over and over, ran my hands down his legs, caressed his soft muzzle. His body, although lifeless, was still warm. It made me heartsick and I sat at his side and wept.

My clan had witnessed the entire event but allowed me to collect myself before materializing from the shadows. The shade of that greihound was already dancing in my veins. Elders inspected every inch of his abandoned body, making sure he bore no injuries, before motioning to me to proceed with the harvest. I would have the skin, its teeth and claws, and some of its bones for divining, maybe even a whistle. A minuscule piece of its flesh would be dried and kept in a pouch that would hang from my neck for the rest of my life. Some of the organs were carefully wrapped and set aside to tan the hide. My clan and anyone else who wished to partake of it would consume the rest of the flesh. The meat from a spirit hunt was medicine and many would want a fragment of it. I wouldn’t eat any of it, if I had all the other hunts in my life would be ruined. I sat alone and ate wormwood.

After sunset I gave my flesh again, one more badge I had been awarded was cut into my back. Most people dreaded making these offerings. I discovered that I secretly enjoyed it. The elders, no doubt, knew this about me. After that I was smudged off, congratulated, and welcomed into the clan as a Prayer Runner.

I had achieved my goal. I would run from the Old Granite Range of my mother’s alliance all the way to the ocean carrying prayers and the passion that would fuel my run. I would enjoy tutelage with women who would teach me the identity of every plant along the way that could sustain me or heal the wounds peculiar to runners. I’d study their habits as well, never failing to entice them to take an interest in what I already knew. I figured I’d run for ten years and retire with the homage and accolades I had earned. But that didn’t happen.

Those of us too crippled from running but too young to be elders could petition for apprenticeships to escort the souls of the deceased to the domain of the Ancestors. This was considered a great honor. I personally had absolutely no interest in soliciting again. It was an entirely different realm, the world of death and doctoring the affections of the human mind. Women had little desire for those Greihounds consumed by it. Death Clan men became strange and unapproachable, I certainly didn’t want that for myself. But in the end it didn’t matter what I wanted. Burnt Knife would drag me into that world like prey dragged into the shadows to be devoured.

(~ End of the first half of Chapter 2 ~)

We will present the conclusion of chapter 2 of Verda's book next month... in the meantime, if you would like to email her with any questions or comments, just click on this link:

Email Verda Smedley

Priestess Jean