Thrice Born

by Jon Jacks

  ‘Oh Damno damnoluke,’ he incanted, ‘aim your bow at Hymnos; ensure that he is dying with love and longing for you!’

  He kissed the arrow’s senseless tip.

  ‘Sprinkle dust on my grave,’ he whispered agonisingly to her, ‘so that at the very least people will say you cared for me in my death!’

  He smiled sadly at his own morbidly self-pitying foolishness.

  ‘And above my tomb, let there be flowers of passion-struck Narcissus, or saffron full of desire.’

  He set the arrow down by her side once more. Taking out his panpipes, settling down beside her, he whistled a playful wedding tune.

  Woken by the disturbing chords celebrating a marriage, seeing with horror and a darkening understanding that she was almost naked, the trembling girl snatched up her bow, strung an arrow: and killed poor Hymnos as he protested his love for her.

  *

  Chapter 12

  The mist suffusing Ino and Melicertes as they fell could have been a thick sea spray, thrown up by the frothing, foaming waves lying far below them.

  They fell, it seemed, endlessly through the air, through an endlessly moonlit sky.

  There are famous tales of another mother who similarly threw herself from a cliff in almost identical circumstances.

  The beauty of Orion the Hunter’s wife Side rivalled even that of Hera; and so as punishment for her vanity, the poor young woman was led to believe that she had killed her own children.

  Where she fell, where her blood was spilt, the very first pomegranate tree took seed.

  Fortunately, however, Lyaeus had responded to his nurse’s call for help.

  It was a mist of his making that now surrounded Ino and her child.

  He played the seven stringed lyre, the vibrations of each stripping mother and child of each of their earthly garments, the veils enveloping the soul.

  He charmed, too, the Tyrrhenian dolphins to take Ino and Melicertes away to their new life amongst the gods.

  Stripped of her earthly pride, Ino was now Leucothea: the White Goddess, holder of the Key of The Sea.

  *

  On the White Brow of the White Cliff of the White Plain of Leucophryne where the White Goddess had come into being, a temple was raised to Artemis Leucophryne.

  For Hymnos, who could not be saved, there was an earthen barrow for his grave. It was topped not only with the flowers he had requested, but also with the blood drenched arrow that had killed him rather than his shepherd’s crook.

  ‘Here lies oxherd Hymnos, whom the maiden killed without being his bride.’

  Naturally, Hymnos had hoped that it would be his love who hymned the rites for him; but of course, this was not to be so.

  Cybela was nowhere to be seen. But this was because she too, like Ino, was in her way unseeing, wandering in the darkness of a strangely unnatural mist.

  She could still hunt, still seek out her prey: but Eros allowed this only so that her efforts made her thirst for a slaking drink. Meanwhile his mist made her pass by streams, lakes – even through hard rainfall – without catching the merest glimpse of the water lying everywhere about her.

  The mist coiled around her, garlanding the forest, such that not even a thousand torches could have lit her way. Neither could her hunting hounds have led her by their shrill calls towards the water she increasingly craved.

  In the very depths of a darkened mood, she wandered throughout the night. She was brimming with so much fury that many thought it must be Brimo the Night Wanderer herself whom they had unfortunately come across during the night.

  At last Eros allowed Cybela to step out into a meadow of poppies and narcissi, where she could see a river snaking across the land.

  She drank gratefully from its waters, waters that flowed from the nearby Lake Boibeis, which she still failed to see despite Phoebe’s bright illumination.

  Just as she also failed to see that these were waters tainted by the wine of Lyaeus.

  *

  Chapter 13

  Who was this maiden to think she could thwart the rules of Eros?

  What Hymnos could not achieve by poems and flattery, Lyaeus would be able to take by other means.

  Naturally, Lyaeus was as furious with this huntress who had killed his friend as Eros was. But, as awful as it sounds, he was as much under Eros’ spell as Cybela was now suffering from the drowsy effects of the young gods’ wine.

  Lyaeus was in love, he believed.

  He was suffering from a madness brought about jealous gods.

  Added to this, one of the winged serpents that drew his chariot was missing; killed, it seemed, by a king who didn’t wish to see his own rule thwarted by the spreading of this new knowledge of growing grain.

  Eros would make sure that their paths crossed, the maddened youth coming across the unsuspecting maiden.

  And once again, Eros elicited the help of the breezes to woo the dreamy girl with softly persistent whisperings of love.

  *

  Even though Cybela was delirious, she revelled in the gentle caressing of the flowing waters as she stood in the river.

  She bathed in its coolness, gratefully stepping deeper into the cold water’s embrace

  The breeze was calming, too, in the way it so gently drifted across her skin, wafted through her hair: breathed against her ears, her cheeks.

  Deeper in the water, where it was darker, colder, the snaking current was harder, more insistent. The caressing was urgent, full of longing, and increasingly desperate.

  Cybela had experienced something like this once before; the encroaching of a serpentine darkness that pummelled at her flesh, that yearned to know more of her.

  It was the desire of He Who has Many Names, Polynomos of All That Flows Beneath The Moon.

  As she turned to head back to the shore, she felt the dragging hands upon her legs, the pulling at her sodden clothes, such that they were completely torn away from her.

  Unfortunately for the young Actaeon, who was out hunting with his hounds, he saw the naked Cybela struggling in the grasping waters; and was instantaneously transformed into a stag. He was brought down and torn apart by his own pack, the tortured soul of his poor, haunted mother Autonoë later rising like her bees into the heavenly sky.

  A large herd of the Mares of Onkios were slaking their own thirsts by the river’s edge. Cybela headed towards them, hoping to lose herself amongst their massed, darkened bodies; and so with a swift kick of her hooves, she effortlessly mingled amongst the other mares.

  But Polynomos merely rose up after her, taking on for himself the form of a horse, one of a dark stallion…

  *

  Chapter 14

  The memory of him coiled endlessly about her, no matter how much she attempted to scrub herself clean.

  As the poet Musaeus tells us how secretive Leander made Hero ‘parthenos hêmatiê nychiê gynê’ – ‘a virgin by day, a woman nightly’ – Cybela fumed that she who once was virgin now had the name of bride.

  Of Nychie.

  Having swaddled the twin babes that were born to her in the spotted skins of fawns, she left them as defenceless as any child of Man, any beardless Youth, amongst the golden skinned Lions.

  *

  It is said by many that Cybela also gave birth to a daughter, to Despoina as some call her, or others Melinoe: ‘Dark-Minded’.

  She retained the head and long mane of a dark mare, and her madness was indeed that of the mare denied what witches collect for love potions and call hippomanes; the gem gracing the forehead of a new-born foal, which the mother regards as rightfully hers.

  Those unfortunate enough to encounter her in the gloom of night, but lucky enough to survive, swore that sometimes it was the head of a serpent, sometimes of a hellhound; now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness.

  Others were driven to the edge of their own madness, simply by drawing too close towards the clutches of the airy phantoms claimed to accompany her.

  But whatever
the truth of these statements, we know that the land itself became darkened and useless, refusing to grant life to any plant and therefore also any animal that would normally feed off it.

  Offerings were made to the ghosts of the dead, with prayers that this nightmare would expel the mad fears of the souls in her company to the ends of the earth. It was reasonably feared by everyone that this was the end of days, that the earth itself was being plunged into a new darkness.

  The world was now so dark that even Cybela had to carry two blazing torches to light her way.

  Cybela had become used to everyone she came across avoiding her as swiftly as possible: they turned, they ran, they slunk away, they concealed themselves as best they could in whatever remained of the undergrowth.

  They hid their faces, if only so they didn’t have to look upon her ever-changing yet ever-hideous form, fearing that that sight alone could damn them for ever.

  As she determinedly strode over the scrubland of what could at one time have been glorious wheat fields, the flickering torchlight’s bloody glow drenching the dead stems poking up through the hard earth, she saw that one man at least didn’t fear her.

  Rather, he remained standing where he was, observing her rapid approach with curiosity, even amusement.

  It was a man whose beard and hair had been left uncut.

  He was dressed simply in white linen, and wearing sandals of bark, not leather.

  *

  Chapter 15

  The man returned Cybela’s fearsome scowl with a kindly smile.

  She was so unlike him in every way: her dress was of the darkest black, her sandals of gold. Her jet-black mane was whisked up elegantly behind her by even the slightest breeze.

  ‘Why do you not run from me like everyone else?’ she demanded as she rapidly drew closer to him.

  ‘Because I see now – or rather sense – what drew me to this particular spot,’ the man replied calmly, his eyes glittering with kindness.

  ‘Which is?’ Cybela growled irately, annoyed all the more by the man’s close observance of her. ‘Me?’ she added unsurely, only to add even more swiftly and intuitively when she noticed that he was paying particular attention to the basket on her back: ‘The scroll? It’s your history, isn’t it?’

  The man nodded, yet retained his amused smile.

  ‘Yes, I sense that it is indeed a history of my life: even though it will be written long after I’ve departed this underworld. And therefore, strangely, it will also detail and explain the reasons for my journey here.’

  ‘Then…you know where we are?’

  ‘We are standing outside of time: we are in the underworld, or what you call Tartaros.’

  ‘Then we can never leave,’ Cybela pointed out morosely. ‘My soul must have been transported here when I took on this new form, this horrendous Horse! And you, at least, must be dead.’

  The man shook his head, even chuckled a little.

  ‘No, no,’ he replied good-naturedly. ‘I am merely lying in my tomb: for my crucifixion only recently came to an end.’

  *

  ‘I’ve heard of such a journey into the world of the dead,’ Cybela said, completely unfazed by the man’s claim that he still considered himself to be alive. ‘When you are taken down unconscious off the cross, your soul passes through into the realms of the immortals. But soon you will awaken in your coffer!’

  ‘By recognising that life is eternal, we vanquish death,’ the man replied with another nod of agreement. ‘We each possess a higher self of god-like beauty who lives in the heavens: and our imagination is our vision of these higher realities. Unfortunately, it is an imagination that can be warped, that misinterprets the messages we wish to leave behind to inform others of our understanding of the world.’

  Once again, his gaze drifted towards the basket containing the scroll.

  ‘Your life story has been misinterpreted?’ Cybela asked. ‘Yet this scroll tells the truth, doesn’t it?’

  ‘In many ways. Yet even the most subtle alterations to words transform them into footprints men assiduously follow only to be led even further astray. Even my own version of my life, my travels with my friend Demas – my own attempts to share the drink of wisdom contained within the Cup of Tantalus, which I’ve sought since my childhood in Tarsus – it has all been misinterpreted to suit other people’s ends.’

  ‘This one they call the Apostle Paul: he altered the true histories?’

  With a resigned sighed, the man hung his head as if embarrassed.

  ‘Unfortunately, I became this “Apostle Pol”; it was my travels that became his story.’

  ‘Pol?’ Cybela had to only briefly consider this pronunciation of the apostle’s name to understand how the confusion had arisen. ‘Short for “Apollos”?’

  The man that she now knew for sure must be Apollonious nodded sadly.

  ‘But this scroll tells your true life story, Apollonious,’ Cybela insisted. ‘People will at last be able to see where the confusion with their Jesus arose!’

  ‘Will they?’ Apollonious asked, his manner and tone indicating that he didn’t believe this would be the case. ‘It is my history as set down by Philostratus; “The Life of Apollonius of Tyana” – one of many histories that the Apostle Paul’s followers have destroyed because they regard the similarities between my life and their god as a threat to their beliefs. If this scroll was unveiled, they would merely state that everything written their was a lie; whereas those with their own beliefs to promote would simply use it as a scourge or a venomous serpent to cause yet more trouble amongst men. Better, I think, that this new god of peace they have created for themselves is allowed some form of dominion in the hope that men will eventually begin to reach some form of agreement amongst themselves. This story of this Jesus; well, it is the essence of the Mysteries after all, isn’t it?’

  As Apollonious had talked, Cybela had slipped the basket off her back and taken out the scroll.

  ‘Then this is the key to understanding why men go astray in their beliefs!’ she declared assuredly. ‘This is the truth!’

  ‘Then you have read what’s written there?’ Apollonious asked innocently.

  Cybela nodded.

  ‘I read of your visit to the Oracle of Trophonios; I saw from that that you seek only the truth, rather than accepting as fact the nonsense other men tell you!’

  He grinned once more at this comment, this time a little unsurely.

  ‘So may I see,’ he asked once more, ‘what is written there?’

  Cybela nodded once more.

  And yet when she unrolled the scroll, it was miraculously seen to be completely blank.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Apollonious said studiously as he began to dissolve before her eyes, returning once more to his initiation into the Mysteries within Egypt’s Great Pyramid, ‘every word written there is indeed true.’

  *

  Chapter 16

  Cybela had carried the scroll all this way for nothing: for no reason, other than that a priestess had informed her of its importance.

  She cast its now useless brass case aside.

  She furiously tossed away the basket too, seeing no further use for it.

  Tartaros was a place where only the most sinful were cast; those who in a moment of passion have killed an innocent, or committed an act of violence against a parent.

  Only endless repentance can save such a persecuted soul; and then only for them to be carried out on a wave, tossed around in a serpentine river’s current as they plead for forgiveness from those they’ve offended.

  And if no forgiveness is on offer, then they are washed all the way back to Tartaros.

  Even a god that swears falsely can be imprisoned here for nine thousand years.

  Despite the intense darkness, the landscape glittered with the red veins of the multiple tails of the many rivers that flowed from here, the waters throwing back the saffron flares of the torches Cybela held.

  Was that the way out? she wondered: would
it be possible to use the waters as a means of escape?

  She drew closer to the bank of the nearest river, staring down into what could have been a stream of fire, the waters glowing red hot amidst the darkness.

  As she peered into what would otherwise be the very darkest of waters, it dawned on her that the ruddy glow wasn’t the reflection of the fluttering flames at all; for it was a glow that was all too perfectly circular, too steady in its bright illumination.

  It was a reflection of the moon, clad in its blushing saffron robes.

  Startled, Cybela glanced up into the sky; and yet there was no moon there, of course.

  The sky was endlessly black, the moon nowhere to be seen there.

  And yet here she was, reflected within the waters, flushed red with the shame of being beckoned by incantations.

  And yet, she had made no incantation…had she?

  Under her breath, maybe?

  Maybe she had whispered for help…and the moon had unwillingly responded.

  ‘Hail, Holy Beam,’ she now recited loudly, urgently, ‘who whirls up out of darkness and subverts all things... I’ll call and may you hear my holy words since awesome Destiny is ever subject to you.’

  ‘Oh thrice-bound Cybela,’ Phoebe replied wearily, ‘set yourself free…’

  Startled by Phoebe’s indifference, Cybela fought to recall the most apt words of the spell.

  ‘Now I adjure you by this potent night, in which your light is last to fade away, in which a dog opens, closes not, its mouth, in which the bar of Tartaros is opened…’

  ‘Put down your torches; make do with my light alone,’ Phoebe insisted dispassionately. ‘It’s enough for your purposes–’

  ‘And how would you know my purposes?’ Cybela snorted back dismissively, even as she doused the flames of the burning brands in the waters with an irate hiss.

  ‘How would you know mine?’ Phoebe calmly replied. ‘It's the same question, the same answer.’

  Ignoring Phoebe’s continued disinterest, Cybela continued with her incantation, if far more unsurely now.