victim (n.)

late 15c., “living creature killed and offered as a sacrifice to a deity or supernatural power,” from Latin victima “person or animal killed as a sacrifice.” Perhaps distantly connected to Old English wig “idol,” Gothic weihs “holy,” German weihen “consecrate” (compare Weihnachten “Christmas”) on notion of “a consecrated animal.” Sense of “person who is hurt, tortured, or killed by another” is recorded from 1650s; meaning “person oppressed by some power or situation” is from 1718. Weaker sense of “person taken advantage of” is recorded from 1781.

We are all victims. We are all consecrated idols, embodiments of Being. Death opens up that awareness; a bony portal through which issues the breezy breath of a million years of evolution.

Your ancestors are not simply those folks who you knew, but are in fact the people you come to know. They are the hidden hand in ten thousand different bodies; the endless rushing presence which issues forth from the mouths of gods. Naked gods, all unveiled with the clothes and shapes and interfaces our minds beg for cast aside.

And how to tell you that there is no difference twixt you and those who drift through the dark realms within the earth, coaxing forth image and shape from stone and flickering firelight?

How to tell you that the weight of unwritten history, of heredity, flows through you – that in your utter aloness you are the emissary of a restless horde?

That your will wells up from deeper places than you have ever dreamt, that your choices were writ long ago, in reams and realms of possibility; that the planes of prophecy and the routes and paths which you may take are infinite in shape and form?

That you are not what you think you are, that the dismemberment of your Soul is but a bloody spell to allow you to recall your owh Wholeness? That the world comes at you with knives and fetters and you are slain ten thousand times, not for reason, not for point?

Not for Because?

That there is no justice but this strife; this pounding pulsing redness of the bloodglow; the suffering you endure has no salvation but itself – the obscenities wrought upon you have no justification, no Higher Purpose save the implacable merciless Purpose which has no End nor Beginning?

How to tell you of the burning calm of the utterly engulfing Isness, the ichor of gold which flows through your veins though you recall it not; the sooothing boil and bubble of the mead-cauldron in your belly?

How to tell you of howe and mound; of foxfire dancers and will o’ the ‘wisps and Shining folk and those who swim through stone like water? Of spear and song and the cunning coming-to-be; knowledge like amber tears falling from the face of the beloved?

Weep! Yes, weep – but grieve no more! Open your minds and hearts and throats; with bellows-breath take up the cry!

All shall die! All shall die and stillness is a lie!

Wyrd goes as it must.