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I don\’t normally publish results of rites publically, but for some reason it feels important I should do with this one, so here we go:

We come up from the Hidden paths, to walk by the side of the Lake so vast that it may be a Sea.. There are campfires burning, smoke hanging in the arc of the sky. All around lie the tents of kings and their warbands, these lords of strife and cunning; there is a moment of wondering how so many tents can be here, clustered together in all shapes and colours.

Then we understand, for there have many kings, many masters of the gnosis whose soul mirrors the land. Each of them receives their weapons, the tools of their trade, to reign with full-soul strength, from the waters.  In return they are drowned, wounded and baptised in their own royal blood. There is nothing holier – for they are Annointed.

And though we come from the Waters, we pick our bone-ways, our hoof-stamp dance drumming. We thread our way through those tents, full of animal vitality, and the smoke seems sweet to our nostrils. But our eyes are upon the Mountain, for kings are common-as-muck, which is to say deeply uncommon, for the land is from where we draw our vitality.

Into the Mountain then, swimming like a salmon against the tide of priests and magicians and wandering troubadors. Back upstream to the source, into the hollow of the mound.

And there she sits, lounging sidewise upon her throne, fingers twining round the stem of her goblet. Her feet kick airly and idly in the air, swinging like a child.

We breathe that place, with all its light and laughter and golden-green; we  raise our red right hand to the Queen of that place, and find a cup there. Our welcome is clear, our visitation expected. Our blood cools, slow and easy as we drink cool clear water and are refreshed.

She smiles impishly, this Lady underground, and leans as if to impart a secret. \”The Baptist\’s Head was given to Salome, mistress of desire – because she desired it. But twas poor slaughtered prophet who woke that desire in her.\”

  We are hunted, laid low ten thousand times by hunter\’s horn and bow. Heavy is the head that wears the horns of power. Our death is Desired, our flesh to feed and nourish. Our sacrifice so that others may live.

She puts a finger to her lips, smile widening.

In the silence is found all speech – so the Prophet cries out to Death, and in dying lives forever.

The head endures; from its mouth flow the waters of the cup.

We are born to become Ancestors, we who are so full of salt-water and iron-blood – here for a brief span, to serve, and then gone – back to remain amidst the Dreaming Azothian sea.

But we never left – the Fisher King is healed, and the land thrives. Because it always has. The sickness lies only in foolishly wrought speech, in the thoughts of mind.

Drink the waters and die. Drink waters and live anew.

So we drink, and she says \”Do not worry about how. Let it carry you like wine, to where you must go.\”

And then water falls from the cup I left out in offering to my ancestors and spirits, drenching my bad foot – the one with chronic pain and healing problems – with cool water, and the trance is broken.

Curiously enough, it does not empty itself but leaves some on in the glass. That\’ll stay there for at least a week, as will the jug containing more.

And in the dark, amidst the smoke and flickering candles, I realise that thanks to the water cycle, that a portion of that water might very well be the same as the tears of Alexander the Great, the sweat on the brow of the first dancers around the fire as they called on gods. That the moisture on my brow might have fallen, in part, on the head of Alaric as he laid siege to Rome, or that another part might have soothed the throat of a thousand scops and skalds.

That long ago, it might have staryed into the solar system and, being captured by the sun, descended to earth hidden in rock and flame and ice, gifting us with seas and oceans, mixing with the chemical reactions in the bones of the earth to form aquifers and springs which source our rivers.

Water is ancient – it\’s the gate to the Memory of who and what we truly are, the liquid transition. We\’re born floating, and we\’ll ascend to heaven as our corpse evaporates and burns in the fire, or the flesh and blood slough off our bones to soak our graves.

“I am the Headless Daimon with sight in my feet; I am the mighty one who possesses the immortal fire; I am the truth who hates the fact that unjust deeds are done in the world; I am the one who makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll; I am the one whose sweat falls upon the earth as rain so that it can inseminate it; I am the one whose mouth burns completely; I am the one who begets and destroys; I am the Favor of the Aion; my name is a Heart Encircled by a Serpent; Come Forth and Follow.”

PGM V. 96-172, Aune trans. aka  Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist  aka, Rite of the Headless One. Emphasis mine

There is a reason offerings have been cast into water since time immemorial, sacrifies made, to move things from the phenomenal into the numinal.

Mimir\’s head sits by the well. Bran the Blessed gets his head cut off after delivering the cauldron. John the Baptist\’s head sanctifies the grail.

You get the point.