Ritual Reality
24 Cauldron Dance
Sunday, 22 June 1969, very early in the morning
The cheers died and the priestesses gathered beside Rebecca and Wayne.
“We should take care of our criminal priest,” Judith said to Rebecca. “His presence in the circle is disharmonizing at best.” Rebecca turned her attention back to The Barber behind the altar stone where he was still held.
“And what shall we do with him?” she asked as he was brought forward.
“Geld him and send him ball-less into the night like Saturn sent Uranus and was himself deposed,” said the Priestess of Braithwaite. The Barber held his silence.
“Since he finds such solace in silence, let him keep it,” Rebecca said. “Hear me, Doctor McBride. You have bent yourself in pursuit of power over the cildru of Carles. You have exhibited that drive in attempting rape in the midst of the circle to forge a bond that was not rightfully yours. You brought an evil presence into our circle. Nothing is less in keeping with the tenets of our fellowship. As reward for your lust for power, I strip you of your priesthood, your crown, your sacred tools, and your name. Henceforth you shall be called ‘Silence’ for the power your voice shall have.” Rebecca raised her red staff as she faced him. “In the presence of the goddess, the cildru, and the Four Faces of Carles, I lay this geas upon you.”
“So mote it be!” affirmed the gathering. And so, the tools and ceremonial robe of the priest along with the string that held his measure were gathered and cast on the fire at the center of the circle. The Barber, now Silence, was led by his guards to the Northern Gate and was expelled from the circle. Judith closed the gate behind him with the ritual sword.
“Oh, goddess, I’m glad that’s over,” Rebecca sighed as she leaned against the older priestess. “We can get on with it now. Whatever it is.”
“There is still a small matter to be taken care of,” the priestess said. “There is a stranger in our circle. An uninitiate. Dare we proceed with even the most minor ritual with him here?”
“I will vouch for him, Counselor,” Rebecca answered.
“But will he prove himself?” the priestess asked. They looked over where Wayne had retreated to the altar stone as the former priest was expelled. His staff lay on the South. On the East, he had placed the former prop knife he had made. On the West was a coffee cup heavily inscribed with runes. He held a leather thong in his hand. Judith went to him.
“I think you need this,” she said, lifting the pentacles she had given him at Christmas from around her neck. He looked at her and smiled, relief on his face.
“Thank you, Swordmaster. It must have been very difficult for you without this for the past few months.”
“Yes. But it’s yours now. I told you. Forever.”
“Then you must take this,” he said lifting the leather thong to place it around her neck. Judith looked at the medallion and gasped.
“Oh, my Goddess. Do you realize what this is? How can you just give this to me?”
“I made it for you. Is it okay?”
“Okay? You overwhelm me, love.” She fell into his embrace and they held each other.
“Swordmaster,” Rebecca said softly. “You must give him formal challenge.” Judith separated herself from Wayne and looked into his eyes.
“Hang in there, lover. I think you know what comes next.” Wayne stood and moved to the opening between the stones from which he initially entered the circle. Rebecca stood beside him and Judith picked up the ritual sword. For the first time, Wayne looked at it and smiled. It was the sword he had crafted for her and given her at Christmas. He was ready for this.
Judith raised the sword and pressed it against Wayne’s chest. He knew how sharp this sword was; he’d whetted the edges himself. Judith was all business and Wayne realized he could still become a sacrifice. But he trusted them. In spite of their ups and downs, he trusted both Rebecca and Judith. He remembered his own recent, or distant past. He was not sacrifice, but Vagabond.
“Who stands before the gate of the dread Mighty Ones?” Judith demanded. The response came to Wayne as if he had rehearsed for this like any other play. It had been written in his uncle’s Book of Shadows.
“A child of earth.”
“Do you have the courage to make the assay? For know that it is better that you should fall on my sword here and perish than to assay the gates with fear in your heart.” He thought it was vaguely ludicrous to ask him if he had the courage to do it. What worse could happen than he had already been through? He looked aside at Rebecca and spoke his response directly to her, rather than to Judith.
“I enter the circle of your friendship with perfect love and perfect trust.”
“Who speaks for you?” Judith asked next. Rebecca stepped forward to pronounce her sponsorship before the Goddess, but Wayne raised a hand and held her back.
“There need none speak for me,” he said softly. There was a gasp among the coveners gathered behind Judith. “I claim sanctuary in this circle as Vagabond in your midst, a priest after the order of Merlin. I come as a messenger of the Goddess.”
There was a palpable silence in the circle. Judith looked questioningly at Rebecca but she was equally as surprised. It was Counselor, the Priestess of Braithwaite, who stepped forward to lay a gentle hand on Judith’s and point the sword away from Wayne’s chest and into the ground.
“It is written in the earliest of our records that the Vagabond is a priest without heritage. Thus it was when The Vagabond Poet came to us and others over the years. Truly, as he has brought to us the Athamé Creüs, he may be said to be the messenger of the Goddess. Your heritage, therefore, must stand unquestioned. But tell me, young Vagabond. By what name should we know you?”
“I am Promethean, The Unbound, heir of Prometheus, The Bound, a Vagabond Priest and Toolmaker.”
The old priestess stepped up to him and kissed him.
“Welcome to Carles Castlerigg.”
Judith, too, took him in her arms and kissed him. Perhaps it was less passionate than he had known her to kiss before, but at the same time, it was warmer and touched him more deeply. A third priestess, to whom he had not been introduced, kissed him in greeting. Then Rebecca was in his arms. He recognized her touch and the taste of her lips, before his eyes had opened to look into hers.
“Come then, Vagabond Priest. Meet the cildru of Cobhan Carles.” Suddenly the circle was moving, passing him from one to another, spinning him around and kissing him. They chanted, they yelled and they screamed. He was caught up in the dancing and celebration. At last the celebrants collapsed around the fire and Wayne lay between Rebecca and Judith.
Judith heaved a deep breath which raised her breasts delightfully in front of Wayne. He felt himself responding to her. She stood and faced the coveners.
“The Hart, The Huntress of Carles, was selected as High Priestess at Litha last year. She was challenged. She has fulfilled all aspects of this challenge, even beyond what the challenger intended. She has gathered into our circle the Four Faces of Carles from the places they were concealed. Therefore, as Swordmaster and as Priestess of Threlkeld, I declare the challenge fully met and declare that Threlkeld recognizes Sadb, The Hart, The Huntress as High Priestess.” The older priestess stood then.
“Braithwaite acknowledges that The Hart has succeeded in her challenge and by all rights of the Great Circle, Braithwaite recognizes Sadb, The Hart, The Huntress of Carles, as High Priestess.” She looked pointedly at the third priestess. The mousy woman stood.
“High Lodore acknowledges the fulfillment of the challenge and recognizes Sadb, The Hart, The Huntress as High Priestess,” she said. “But please. I ask of my circle to begin selection of a new priestess, for I have failed in keeping our former High Priest in check. As priestess of High Lodore, I must fulfill my duties, but as a wife and mother, I must excuse myself and follow my husband. There may yet be salvation.”
With that, she dropped her tools, her robe, and her measure into the fire with her husband’s and moved to the Northern Gate. Judith rose and opened the gate with her sword.
“Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again,” the circle intoned. The priestess stepped through the gate and Judith sealed it as the woman walked away from the circle. Everyone was silent. Finally, Judith faced the remaining members of the circle.
“Who speaks for Skiddaw?” she asked. A man about Rebecca’s age stood.
“Skiddaw accepted Sadb, The Hart, The Huntress as both priestess and High Priestess when it was announced last year. We have not wavered in our acceptance. We further ask that the High Priestess accept the Fourth Face of Carles, the pentacles Enceladus, as a sacred trust from her brothers and sisters and that she hold it on behalf of our circle for the Great Circle of Carles.”
Rebecca bowed to the man and the members of his circle voiced in unison, “So mote it be.”
“By consent of the lesser circles, we accept and affirm The Hart as High Priestess of Cobhan Carles,” Judith declared.
“So mote it be,” shouted all those gathered.
“It remains,” said the Priestess of Braithwaite, “for our new High Priestess to gaze into the Cauldron Ops. However, we are without a High Priest and need a champion for this ritual.” She looked pointedly at Wayne. Before he spoke, he turned to Judith.
“Um… this is a little outside of what I’ve been taught. What am I supposed to do?”
“Unbound…” she began and then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Wayne, do you love me?” There was so much yearning in her voice that Wayne nearly broke down in tears to hear it. Because he knew that in the circle they only used ritual names, he dropped his voice to a whisper as well.
“Judith, when I look at you I know that all I want for my future is in your arms. When I saw that priestess leave the circle because the asshole was her husband, all I could think was that if it was you who had been expelled, I’d do the same thing. It wouldn’t make a difference to me what you had done or why. I would want… I would need to be by your side. I love you, babe, and if you walked from here right now, I’d be right beside you.”
“I don’t plan to share you,” she said. “Not unless it’s really good for me, too. But our High Priestess needs a champion. I want you to be with her.”
“With her?”
“In any way that is needed,” Judith clarified. Wayne hemmed.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Help her. Raise the power she needs to descry the cauldron. Support her. Protect her. Once the scrying ritual begins, no one else in the circle will be able to do more than feed it power.”
“But if I’m supposed to… you know… have sex? How can I do that to you? How can I do that in front of all these people?”
“Darling, don’t you love her?” Wayne stopped his response short. Did he love Rebecca Allen, the professor who nearly flunked him? Perhaps not. But the woman who saved his life? The woman he sat beside when she was injured? The woman who shared her tools with him? Yes. He loved her. He nodded.
“Do what is necessary,” Judith whispered. “And you’d better be damned sure she enjoys it!” she laughed. Wayne turned red and then faced Rebecca.
“High Priestess.” He bowed. “As Vagabond Priest after the order of Merlin and Melchizedek, I am sworn to protect, help, and defend my brothers and sisters in the Art. As Promethean, The Unbound, I offer myself as your champion, yours to command in this ritual.”
Rebecca rushed to him, but instead of embracing Wayne, she embraced Judith.
“Thank you. Thank you.”
“Hey. There’s nothing saying you can’t enjoy this,” Judith smiled. She caught Wayne in her arm and pulled him into the hug. “We might have to explore this further one day,” she whispered. Both Wayne and Rebecca looked at her sharply and then began to laugh.
“In my dreams,” Wayne said. “In my dreams.”
Rebecca and Wayne placed their tools around the fire, joining the Four Faces of Carles. With three sets of tools arranged, they moved to the East and Wayne picked up Creüs, the Athamé that had been in his care for six months. Rebecca joined him and he raised the knife in his right hand. She placed her left hand over his and both felt the tingle of power and sexual energy that coursed through them. Rebecca invoked the powers of the East as the circle of dancers moved around them.
Holding the blade was like holding the tail of a cyclone. They made a full circuit of the fire, following the dance, and Wayne could feel the wind picking up as they passed each quadrant. The wind whipped through their hair and against their naked bodies. It tore around the circle in the wake of the dancers building into a towering cone of power around them. From each direction, the wind blew as it would in its season, but the four winds met at the tip of Creüs and mounted up from there to a point high above them. It seemed only slightly out of place to Wayne that the winds of all four corners of the earth should blow at the same time on the same point where they focused the energy of the knife.
Stranger still was the sweet seductive pull of power. They ruled the wind. Wayne was caught in the vortex of its power and scarcely felt Rebecca tug his arm down until the point of the knife touched the ground and the wind settled into a pattern of swirling around them. They were in the eye of the storm.
They moved to the south and Wayne picked up the staff, Iäpetus. In a repeat of the first circuit, Rebecca invoked the Powers of the South. At the mention of Iäpetus, the rod burst into flame in their hands. As they circled the compass, the fire came with them and when they reached the South again, a wall of fire surrounded them. They moved to the West and picked up the cup Cottus. Wind and fire were things that Wayne could comprehend. Somehow it seemed natural that a knife could call wind and a staff could call fire. But when the cup became heavier with water and it began spilling over their hands as they completed another circuit, Wayne was a little freaked out. There was no rain, no stream to dip it in, not even a bucket. Yet the cup spilled water out all the way around the circuit.
As soon as Wayne touched the black disk, Enceladus, with its numerous magical inscriptions, the ground shook. Rebecca made her invocation and as they moved around the circle, a crack opened in the ground. When they completed the circuit, they were on an island, a fire blazing in the center and between it and a ring of fire surrounding them was a channel filled with water. The wind whipped around the circle, fanning the flames. At last, they continued to the East and each grasped the knife again.
The experience was a surprise to both Wayne and Rebecca.
Years before, she built a bond between the bearer of this knife and herself in a fire ritual. The bond went forever unconsummated. But the sexual and sensual charge that remained in this instrument was as strong as the day it was generated. In Wayne, it awoke a deepened sensual awareness that was new to him. It did not seek its own gratification but extended a caring and concern that he had demonstrated in sitting by an invalid’s bed throughout the night, only a few days before. It awoke a willingness in him to be whatever the woman would have him be because he cared for her as the companion of his passage to adulthood.
As he turned to Rebecca, the first thing that he noticed was the still-blackened, over-exercised bruise that had resulted when she saved his and Judith’s lives. His left hand reached to her shoulders as he drew her to his embrace and all his energy focused on easing that pain. As he touched her—as she came willingly into his loving embrace—the blackness lightened, faded, and disappeared.
In Rebecca, the same force was working in a different way. It awakened within her an inconsolable longing for a love she was unable to put behind her. It aroused her in a way that only a lifetime of that longing could do. Every sense in her body, her touch, her smell, her sight, all told her that Wesley Allen was near her. She could hear the strains of his music and the joy of his voice as he sang in the wild whirlwind surrounding them.
She did not—could not—lose sight of the fact that the man in whose loving embrace she was locked was not J. Wesley Allen. She knew Wayne and felt the tenderness that he gave to her; felt the bruises fade as he touched her. But it did not seem to make a difference here, behind the inner sanctum of Cobhan Carles. Such was their magic that here, behind this ivory veil, they were who they were, released to vent the passion they had felt building all along.
But they were so much more. As he laid her on a robe on the ground, she held herself open for him and guided him into her. In that moment, he was Wesley.
He was also the great horned god and she the goddess working the magic of Litha beneath the canopy of the heavens. Her Sun King was at the peak of his glory. They were all the lovers of the world who dared to indulge their fantasy on the shortest night of the year.
Wayne knew that when Rebecca looked at him, she was not seeing the awkward student who slept through her classes. In fact, as he looked at her, the now familiar sensation of other eyes joining his own crept in on him. This time he knew what to expect; it no longer frightened him and he gladly invited the visitors to join him over whatever ages they might have traveled for release on this night. He recognized the Vagabond Poet who saw in Rebecca his own beloved Mari. He felt different, like he was more than Wayne Hamel, when a voice sang through his mouth inviting a longed-for and separated wife to his mountaintop. He knew this was what Rebecca drew from him and felt a kinship with the man. In that instant, he vowed to find her husband and reunite the couple.
And they were The Lady of the Rake and her husband, Lord Derwentwater, Ishtar and Tammuz, Arthur and Guinevere, hundreds of others to whom he could give no name but welcomed nonetheless.
It didn’t matter.
For even in this crowd, Rebecca accepted and loved Wayne for what and who he was.
Each stroke burst from the two lovers hidden behind the impenetrable curtain of power around them and left them with more rather than less energy. Each climax sent them into a dance, holding each other as they spun around the fire, building the power higher and higher. Each peak was just a step up and not the mountain itself. They spun like the particles of an atom around the nucleus of Ops, the great black cauldron at the center of Carles. The knife had long since found its place at the Eastern edge of their circle. Now, hands joined, they danced around the undying fire on which the ancient cauldron boiled. The cauldron called them both inward and soon they were as engrossed in its depths as they had been in each other’s. Their perspectives changed and they were now engaged in the deepest scrying that the powers of Carles could raise.
Rebecca the High Priestess knew the purpose of this dance, even though she gladly lost herself in its passion. As they circled the cauldron, each time she passed one of the Four Faces of Carles, she felt the prickle of it in her back, like passing through the spray of a hose. She gathered this power—the power of the greater circle dancing outside their sphere, the power of her sex act with her Vagabond Priest, the power of the tools and the watchtowers—and focused it on the black cauldron. Here she would find the answer; how would she find and rescue her husband?
This was the cauldron of Ceriddwyn where the dead come to life; a broth that imparts all knowledge and understanding; the womb of the goddess. And in its depths, Rebecca scried the lives of a thousand people who were remade and brought to new life as Wayne channeled the energy of the circle into it. In that instant, she could not separate the spirits of the cauldron from the ghosts of her own past. She stood in a different world. Behind her were a dozen paths leading to this single crisis point. She saw herself approaching from each of those directions. The Rebeccas that came were each different. One was an old and embittered woman. One was a lonely and frightened pregnant mother. One was the High Priestess of Carles and another the lover of the young man that orbited around her still.
Ahead lay a hundred other paths, fanned out like the points of a compass. On each path was a different Wesley and a different Rebecca walking away from her. But which was the one that would lead to her happiness and to the recovery of her beloved? It was the point of decision. If she would have her husband back, she must decide what path to take. All these futures closed in on her and down each path she saw a hundred other paths that might also branch off. The curse of controlling the future was choosing which of the many paths she should take.
She stepped out, forcing herself along any path, and her eye was caught by paths in more directions, a starburst of futures exploding around her like some awful nova. She was breaking up. The solid flesh that she had felt when she struck this point was disintegrating.
This is what had killed Mari and the Vagabond Poet. It was not the forging of the tool, but scrying the cauldron Ops, brought out only when all four tools were present in the Great Circle. The choices of futures were too much for the priestess to bear. The power of the great circle was more than the priest could hold and direct. Bits of what had been Rebecca floated off down one avenue after another like fallout in the aftermath of her own internal explosion. And one-by-one, the separate paths began to fade from before her eyes—fade as the futures became no longer feasible and the moment of choice passed. In their absence, she could see only a circle of faces holding before them the Four Faces of Carles and in their midst, in place of the black kettle, Rebecca saw the figure of her daughter, as oblivious to the roaring flames as the iron kettle.
It was not for Rebecca to free her husband.
Blackness surrounded her.
Wayne, too, was caught in the world of visions as he scried in the cauldron and hovered over Rebecca. He knew other eyes would join his here and he would see their experiences. He no longer feared the intrusion but stepped back to watch objectively as The Vagabond Poet stepped out of the past.
“Learn,” he whispered.
He stood in a mammoth sanctuary canopied above with the dark starless night. Right and left extended the ancient pillars after whose image the rugged circle of druid stones must in some distant age have been fashioned. Behind him stood the darkened, unopening gate of sunrise, sealing him in unending night. Ahead lay the altar upon which burned a waning sacrifice of fragrant leaves. This he all but ignored, mounting the steps to part the veil that separated him from the Priestess there. Her eyes held his in fatal fascination like a cobra staring its victim to submission before the strike.
The eyes went unblinking, staring past him, through him into a secret world that he could not share.
The Poet, caught up in his own unfolding vision as energy tore through him, did not understand what to do. No one told him. She was deep in trance, her eyes wide open and staring, unseeing and unblinking. He found the answer in her eyes. By some magic he scried their depths for a reflected image of what they saw. For a long time, they knelt, thus.
Wayne carefully and objectively analyzed the scene. Mari seemed gradually to be fading from his sight and he blinked his eyes to bring her back into focus. It was not a trick of his eyes. She was breaking up, dissolving in fragments and floating into the kettle before her. Disappearing. But what could he do?
The Vagabond Poet was a crazy man, a charging bull, rolling the cauldron from the fire, throwing the sacred tools right and left. Calling, screaming in panic after his vanishing priestess. He charged the wall of light, shattering the wards, but for Mari, the mother of his unborn child, it was too late.
Wayne snapped back into his own time/place with the painful fear of what he would find and a panic rising in uncertain response. He found himself kneeling across the cauldron, not from an image in his mind, but from Rebecca. There was a stark terror in her eyes. You promised. Protect The Huntress.
Comprehension flooded in on Wayne. Immense knowledge could be had from the cauldron Ops, but it exacted a heavy price. The collected energies of the circle were flowing through the Four Faces of Carles and into Rebecca. As she fed them on to the vision before her, they took bits of her with them in ever-increasing portions.
Wayne realized what he must do. It was not the ivory veil, but the cauldron itself. This was the same energy that caused the explosion and fire when the knife had struck his staff. He reached out with his mind and collected the streams of energy, refocusing them into himself. He spun, wrapping himself in the four ribbons of power like a maypole dancer. He felt his body temperature rise with the resistance of the energy flow. He could see his skin glow with the red heat.
And then he stepped into the flames. The cauldron was heavy as he wrapped his arms around it and lifted. Strange that he should notice its weight and not its heat, he thought absently. With a superheated body and what must have equaled superhuman strength, Wayne stood with the great black kettle embraced in his arms and held against his chest. Then he charged forward.
An explosive impact met him when he hit the surrounding wall of light—not the gelatinous mass he first encountered. The impact jarred his teeth, but the force of his blow was stronger than the barrier. It shattered. He stumbled through the circle and tripped over a covener lying on the ground at its perimeter. He fell, loosing the great kettle as he went, watching its momentum carry it on beyond him through the air. The last that Wayne saw was the ancient cauldron striking the low-lying altar stone in the East and the geyser of liquid that erupted from its broken form.
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