10 Feb H E K A T E – MYTHIC EROTICA SERIES, PART 2

HEKATE’S DESCENT – PART 1

Hermes walked solemnly behind me and the parade of shades followed at our heels. When we reached the gates of Hades, I turned to admire Hermes’ eternally youthful beauty before we parted. Lust, longing, duty; in an instant much passed between us unspoken. Then he led the dead back into the earth and I walked on alone.

I have my own entrance into the Underworld, but before I descend I undertake a private ritual of my own death. Of course, I am immortal, death is but transmutation. With the proper ingredients and proportions, one can concoct a medicine that relieves the burdens of identity and physicality, liberating the soul to travel great distances.

I followed an invisible path known only to the beasts who inhabit this wood. There I found the spring where the body of the earth weeps. Geothermal currents keep this split in the ground warm, fostering lush perennial undergrowth year round. This is my apothecary. Some flowers that grow here smell like sweet honey, and others like rat urine. By tracking its offensive smell, I found hemlock with its delicate white blossoms and deadly stems. I took my dagger from its sheath and harvested the herb. I cut handfuls of pennyroyal mint. And I used my knife to dig into the ground, searching for fallen seeds of henbane. Then I pried up fallen cedars to find red amanita fungi.

At the edge of the water there is a stone mortar, hollowed by many similar workings I’ve made over millennia. I gathered the baneful bouquet and began pounding the herbs to extract their liquid. I added spring water to the sap, knelt in the soil and lapped up the bitter poison.

I thought of my lover, the pleasures of our private hierogamy during Anthersterios, as I expelled his seed from my womb and made myself a virgin again. I am nobody’s bride. I am sovereign.

HEKATE’S DESCENT – PART 2

Succumbing to my own spell, I collapsed and fell to the ground. My bones disrobed from their flesh. My body shrank and dissolved into hummus, feeding the forest floor. Slowly, my awareness liquified and seeped through layers of soil and bedrock as I descended to the Great Below.

Dying is like dreaming. My consciousness sank through great darkness undefined by space or time. Persephone cries grew louder and woke me from my slumber as I approached my destination. As I entered the realm of Hades, I took on a new form, Genetyllis, and recomposed myself  as ‘Birth-Helper.’

The royal halls of Lord Hades are made of rammed earth, burnished terracotta clay as dark red as dried blood. Roots and rhizomes knit wandering patterns through the walls, floors and ceiling. The Underworld smells of must and mineral. As I walked the long, dim corridors, the sound of each footfall was muted by earthen acoustics.

Persephone’s howls led me to the Queen’s bedchamber. I found her standing wearily, head slumped, bracing the posts of her bed. A pained expression carved her young face. She was no longer maiden Kore, damp with spring dew; her body was sweat drenched and plump like ripe fruit. Silently I came to her side and her body relaxed under my gentle, reassuring touch. I embraced her from behind and palpated her abdomen, assessing the baby’s progress and position. Her uterus tightened under my fingertips and I felt the contours of the being with.

With every uterine convulsion I pressed her hips together to help widen the birth canal for the child-god’s passage. Between contractions I smoothed her hair and wiped her face with cool rose water. I whispered encouragement in her ears, “your mother is waiting aboveground to embrace you and your son.” Her membranes broke releasing a flood of waters, amniotic and emotional. She grunted and bared down to expel the baby from her womb. The child slipped into ready my hands. Its serpentine, bovine and human characteristics would defy anthropocentric logic.

After the baby drank from his mother’s breasts, he was passed through the hands of his father, Hades, to Hermes who would guide Persephone and her son to the surface where Demeter and all of humanity were waiting for their seasonal return.

HEKATE’S DESCENT – PART 3

Above ground, the festivities of Khytroi extended beyond the night of All Souls into the morning of Epiphany. The dead had been banished from land of the living by the priests; Hermes had led the restless souls back to Hades; yet the portals between worlds remained porous. The haunting sounds of Persephone’s subterranean labor cries rose, whispering through the earth. An otherworldly spectacle unfolded, animating the liminality between dark and dawn, winter and spring, death and rebirth.

Their raucous sounds preceded their appearance. Shepherds and hunters came, baying and growling, from surrounding pastures and woods wearing beastly costumes of goat pelts and tall headdresses adorned with animal horns and skulls. Some donned fearsome painted masks with angry wolfen eyes and fangs, embodying the wild predation of the chase. The gang split up and went knocking on doors through the night, chasing evil spirits out of each dwelling and accepting offerings of wine to satiate their primal thirst. After many cups were filled, spilled and drunk, the sky began to blush crimson on the horizon. When the sun crested and day broke across the land, shrinking the shadow of night, the revelers rushed through the streets en masse singing loudly. In the center they congregated, stomping and dancing, clanging large metal chimes hanging from their belts. Men dressed in lurid garb gestured lasciviously with large, absurd phalli and women from the crowd responded with lewd, theatrical moans of pleasure, mocking the Sacred Marriage two nights before.

The carnival celebration was the seasonal ritual heralding the birth of the horned god, Zagreus-Dionysus, the hunter.

Catherine Brooks, 2023

Image: Souls on the Banks of the Acheron, painting by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, 1898.