Pagan Godspell

It happened in the time of long nights and icy winds: one morning the jasmine flowered in my garden, and the cold air was impregnated with the fragrance, and on that day the plum tree also flowered and the turtles awoke.

It was a mistake and did not last. But thanks to that mistake, the jasmine, the plum tree, and the turtles could believe that some day the winter would end. Me too.

-Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words

It is unseasonably warm for October. I try to walk under the sun and in the heat with an eye towards winter and not think about how my heart constricts with a hollow, empty horror about the potential of Climate Change, but I am often defeated. Last year our winter lasted approximately a month and came dreadfully late. This year, I wonder if we will have winter at all. I saw a film once where it began to snow in the middle of July, and some ridiculous couple grinned and frolicked in the white wet, and I thought – why aren’t they terrified? And then, at the same time I thought – this is good too, to be able to love and laugh in the midst of the end of the world. To know that in the mistake, we can believe that some day the winter will end. So I live my life torn. On one hand, we aren’t near as frightened as we ought to be when it’s 90 degrees in October in the Midwest. And on the other hand, we must struggle to remain human through it, to kiss our loved ones and rock in the dark. Paradoxes and mysteries are the heart of what we are, I guess. There is a seed of light that burns in the darkness and a seed of darkness that burns in the light.

So I find myself thinking about Darkness here in the waning days and in the tumble of my hot nights.

Darkness is necessary. The Pagani go on about this point quite often. And yet, at a group ritual this year I was disturbed to hear the leaders beseech the participants to release their negativities by “breathing out their darkness.” Well, goodness. How civilized. How terrifying.

More and more I miss unknowing. I shield my eyes from the glare of our post-enlightenment obsessions. We pour buckets of light on the world – exposing, investigating, revealing. And we don’t realize that in doing so, we are losing. Horribly. Destroying pockets of mystery, pockets of sweet shade and shadow. Savagely burning the hiding places for things that keep us grounded and sane…

The Sea Serpent’s Daughter: A folktale from Brazil*

In the beginning of the world there was no such thing as Night. The face of the glorious disk of the sun was always full and bright on the land, never rising and never setting, hiding the stars and the moon and washing the world with light. It was in this dawn of the earth that the wise daughter of the Great Sea Serpent happened to fall in love with a man who lived on Land. In time they married, and the daughter went to live with her husband under the sun, as a mortal man could not join her beneath the silent sweetness of the wave.

Though she was happy to be with the one she loved, living under the burning eye of the diamond sun was extremely difficult for one used to the sea’s peace and hush. As the months passed she withered into herself, withdrawn and silent.

“There’s something in my father’s kingdom we call Night,” she told her worried husband. “It’s a soothing darkness, a fabric woven out of heavy shadows under which someone may rest their eyes, where they may sleep, and dream. If only I might have some of this, for I miss the Night and my dreams as I miss no other, and I am so very tired of the light.”

Because he was a good man, and in love, on hearing this the husband rose from his wife’s bedside, ran from their home, and summoned three monkeys, his most trusted attendants. “I have urgent business for you,” he told them. “You must travel to the kingdom of the Great Sea Serpent and tell him that his daughter is in dire need of darkness. Tell him she may die here if she cannot have some slice of night.” And off they ran to the sea.

On hearing this news, the Great Sea Serpent hurried off into the shadows to fill a bag with night, sealed it tight, and gave it to the monkeys. “Remember one thing,” he told them, “Whatever you do, do not open this bag until you reach my daughter.”

This should have been simple enough. But what unraveled the three monkeys were the strange sounds coming from the bag filled with night: the piercing cries of night birds and the drone of insects, a chorus of hoots, hisses and rustling unlike anything they’d ever heard. And finally, the last monkey of the three grew more curious than alarmed, and after much persuading, convinced his friends that they should open the bag to see what could possibly conjure such sounds. And so it was that they broke the Serpent’s seal. And in a moment, the carpet tumble of night rushed out of the bag, full of birds and beetles and bats, and flew gracefully up and away, over the jungle.

Back in the village, the Sea Serpent’s daughter sat under a palm tree, her eyes burning with the dreams she had not dreamed in months. And then, a noise over the trees made her raise her tired eyes to witness the blue cloak of night gathering on the horizon. With a delicious sigh and a sweet laugh, she lay down under the palm and fell into a blissful, perfect sleep.

She awoke in that perfect tender moment of time between darkness and dawn, healthy and filled with joy. As she walked, she spoke to those things that would become the powers of land and time between dusk and morning. She told the rooster it would be his job to keep watch and call out at the approach of day. She spoke to the morning star, giving it her blessing to rule the sky just before dawn. And she whispered to a hundred thousand birds, singing them all the songs to praise and greet the dawn in a hundred thousand tongues.

And she dreamed. And all the world dreamed.

————

I’m not one to be breathin’ out my darkness any more than I’ll be breathin’ out my light. I have read so many treatises by Pagans on the subject of embracing darkness that quite frankly I was more than a little startled to hear the old “darkness = badness” thing trotted out at a gathering of the Pagani. Balance, yes. The dance of balance always. But if anything, at this time in our spiritual history, it is the darkness that we ought to be cultivating in the gardens of our hours, making pockets of space and time in which the small things can creep back in, restore the old wells, rekindle wildernesses, spark the gift of storytelling, and make safe haven for secrets. If anything, we should be breathing darkness into our bodies and making places of rest in our bones.

I am exhausted with light. I may go months without the gift of the truly starry night sky due to the obscene amount of light we pour upwards into the inky vault. I am weary of the great gaping mouths of runaway enlightenment scientism declaring nothing precious, nothing sacred, nothing left alone. Our silly fears will kill us. Darkness can’t be tamed and so it must be erased. Light is order, growth and abundance. Light is savior. Order over chaos, good over evil, light over darkness. No unknowns, no uncertainties, nothing hidden or fearful waiting to leap out from behind the thorny bushes. No mysteries, no chaos.

Without a healthy fear, there is only unhealthy fear, that becomes so overwhelming that we are lost in it. So distorted, we barely recognize ourselves.

Yes, yes, light is important and good. Without it we would die, of course. Oh but darkness, we know, without it we aren’t whole, and we can’t rest. In the wilderness and in the darkness we are full and flesh and glorious. In Dionysus we are mad and full of joy. In darkness we find the wild places, that when tested, come rushing out of the bag like the birds and beasts of nightfall, that are a fundamental part of ourselves, that, though we have historically tried over and over to tame them, are crucial to our being.

It is true that I have a bias towards the night, whom I worship, and the madness of the Lord of Honey and Wine over that Lovely Gent Apollo with the Lyre and the Shining Face. I get that we need both, but I hunger after what we are losing – I am terrified as I watch civilization snuff out darkness wherever it finds it. Where is winter, I wonder as the days grow shorter but no colder. I shiver against the hard light of civilization and pour my love into unreadable corners and unparseable shadows. Holding onto the night. Holding my breath to keep the darkness deep within me, where it makes me whole, and delicious, and full.

*This version has been partially re-written by myself based on a version that I read elsewhere. I don’t recollect where I acquired the original version of this Brazilian folktale, so I can’t cite it. But if you’re looking for a version of the story in children’s book form, I did find The Sea Serpent’s Daughter by Margaret Lippert.