The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER XX

  THE following Monday I was still far from well, and thoroughly edgy and nervy, so Morgan drove me down in her little coupe to Starber and I phoned Scottic and arranged to stop on at the fort for another week. He said he could carry on all right, and would fix things with my family. I didn't think they would take much fixing, as my sister certainly wouldn't spend a quid on a car for the pleasure of my company, and Whittles swore he wouldn't take her anywhere, except in his official capacity. It was exceedingly decent of Morgan to keep me on, and I don't know why she did it, for I was as fractious as a spoilt child. When we got back from the Starber trip, after fixing everything up, my mood changed again, and I said I was going to pack up and return to Dickford forthwith; it was in my mind that I had had enough of all these upheavals, and would break with Morgan Ie Fay. She said I must do as I liked, which made me wild. She suggested, however, that I should have a meal before I left, as I would land in too late for lunch, and she had brought something special back from Starber for me. Being a male, I fell for this, and I then knew that nothing would induce me to chuck Morgan till she finally chucked me. The last of the swell that followed the storm had died away, though the halcyon days went on and the hunter's moon sailed in a cloudless sky over the sea by night. One calm and perfect evening we strolled up on to the crest of the down, passing between the fallen cairns of the ancient worship till we came to the place where the overthrown pylon lay on the grass. We sat down on the fallen lintel and watched the moon rise behind Bell Knowle. She came up a queer dull orange, for there was mist over the marshes; but presently she cleared it and rode the cloudless sky like a ship in full sail, little light wisps of cloud going the other way lending her the appearance of speed. It was a strange thing to watch that great silver moon that looked so near and went at such a pace; if anything could, it gave one the realisation that there was more in the universe than our earth. Everyone knows nowadays the effect that sunlight has on health and vegetation, but Morgan told me that there was an ancient, lost knowledge of the power of the light of the moon-- how it affects vegetation in a way we do not realise with our uncertain island climate; but in places where the sunlight is constant they know the effect of the moon, and are careful to sow seed and cut timber according to her phases. She told me, too, that the moon had a profound effect on mental states and moods, as is well known to any who have to do with the mentally sick; and even we who consider ourselves nominally normal are more affected than we choose to believe. "Perhaps that is what is making me so cantankerous," said I, glad of the chance to find something to blame it on. "Yes," said Morgan, quite seriously, "it probably is. The moon intensifies everything and brings it to its crisis. Have you never noticed how many crises take place round about the full of the moon?" "What crisis are you expecting now?" said I. "The crisis of you and me," said she, and took my arm and walked with me to the end of the down that looked towards the land. I said nothing, for I had nothing to say. The mist that rose from the marshes gave the illusion of water where the moonlight fell upon it, and Bell Knowle rose like an island out of a misty sea. "The land is drowning," said I, "as it was when they sent for you, Morgan Ie Fay." She smiled. "Is it not strange," she said, "that men think they can keep back the sea by anything save observing her ways?" "I suppose it is the same with all natural forces," I said. "We try it on with what we are pleased to call our morals, and get drowned out." We strolled slowly back over the dew-soaked grass with thousands of rabbits feeding all round us. The dew was the only water-supply they had, but they did not seem to mind. We came down to the fort, and then strolled out over the rocks to the point. The tide was very low to-night, for the moon and the sun were making common cause for once. "Wilfred," said Morgan Ie Fay, "shall we light a sea-fire out on the point?" I looked where she pointed, and saw that a large, flat, tablelike surface of rock, obviously artificial, was slowly coming up through the ripples. It was the uttermost end of the ebb, and in another half-hour the tide would be turning, so there was no time to be lost. Morgan and I worked hard, despite her lovely gown of sea-green silk, and we raised a pile of juniper boughs with cedar and sandal-wood mingled among them; we made it pyramidal, for that was the ancient custom, and then, just as the hair-like weed on the edge of the rocks slowly turned round and began to stream the other way, we put a match to the pile. It took the fire well, as juniper does, the flames leaping from twig to twig and throwing off the showers of sparks that characterise burning juniper; in the heart of the flame the cedar and sandal glowed with a fiercer heat and the scented smoke went rolling over the sea. Presently a shallow silver ripple came washing over the level I surface of the rock and met the burning base; a furious hiss' replied to it and a line of inky black cut the perfect circle of flame, making the pyre look like a gibbous moon. The sea thought better of it, and kept quiet for a bit after that. Then, with the rising tide behind it, the ground-swell sent another ripple across the rock. Furious hisses and clouds of steam rose from the angry fire; and then we saw a curious sight--the crest of the pyramidal pyre went on burning, crowned with flame and plumed with scented rolling smoke, but all around was water. Slowly the tide rose higher, but the crest burned as fiercely as ever; not easily could the sea accept the sacrifice and devour its prey. Then finally, its base undermined by the working of the tide, the whole fiery pyramid collapsed into the dark creeping water in a shower of sparks and flying, burning brands that sank hissing through the softly waving weed, and I smelt again, as I had smelt in my dream, the acrid odour of burning wood extinguished by salt water. And there came to me a vision of the sea as the source of all things. I saw her lay down the sedimentary rocks and withdraw and leave them land; I saw the slow process of the lichens and the weather that broke down the rocks into soil; I saw the sea rise and take them again as primordial slime, and in that slime arose the first life. And I saw life come ashore from the slime and grow feet and wings. Then I knew why Morgan worshipped the sea, for it is the first of created things and nearer to the Primordial than anything else. That night I could not sleep, and I sat up in my bed and smoked cigarette after cigarette and watched the moon-set. She went down a dull copper as she had risen, for a haze had gathered over the waters and I thought the weather was in for a change. It may be that watching that shining disk had hypnotised me, for I began to see back into the beginning of things with a great clarity. I remembered the Greek tag, "panta rhei", and that the mother of the gods was Rhea. I looked out into the measureless depths of inter-stellar space and saw arise a fountain out of which water like liquid moonlight poured in boundless abundance. This, I thought, is the First Begetting. I watched the liquid light gather into a great pool in the deeps of space. I saw currents arise in the pool, and presently it began to swirl, and out of its swirling motion arose the suns. And I knew that water had two moods--the flowing and the still, and not until it is still can life arise in it. And learning as I had that the beginning of things is reflected through all their nature, I reckoned there must be in us this flowing of our energies and their gathering into a deep pool, and that these things might be under the moon-rhythms. And I recognised that it was a man's nature to be predominantly dynamic, like the First Outpouring; and that it was predominantly a woman's nature to gather into a deep pool wherein life can form. But I knew also that there must be an alternating rhythm in these things, and that maybe it is this rhythm we have forgotten. Then I began to see where I stood with Morgan Ie Fay, and why she had seen in me possibilities that she had not found before in other men with whom she had been friends. It may have been my upbringing by women, or it may have been my bad health, or it may have been that I was the child of my parents' old age, but in me the physical dynamism is low; I am never really virile unless I am in a tantrum. Morgan, on the other hand, was an extraordinarily vital woman. Then I saw why there must be priestesses as well as priests; for there is a dynamism in a woman that fecundates the emotional nature of a man as surely as he fecundates her physical body; this was a thing forgotten b
y modern civilisation which stereotypes and conventionalises all things and forgets the Moon, Our Lady of Flux and Reflux. Then I saw what Morgan was playing at with me--that shei] was trying to discover the manner in which this lost force f worked. Most men wouldn't let her do it, for it is the male | convention to keep the initiative at all costs. But behind our conventions there is primordial Nature, and I saw why vamps have such a success and the kind, unselfish woman gets left on the shelf; for men do not love the women who give and give, but the ones who make demands on them and so call out their strength. It is women like Morgan Ie Fay, who will not give themselves to any man completely, who are best-loved, not the women who give their all. Love is one of those things in which to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. I wondered what the hell Morgan thought she was driving at with me, and where she expected to land. As far as my experience of life went, we could only land in a mess. But she seemed to have other ideas. And as the only alternative open to me was to go back to Dickford and be a decent citizen, and I could not see myself doing that, I decided to give Morgan her head and let her get on with it, that is, so far as the option was mine; I had a shrewd suspicion that we had reached a point by now when it mightn't be. Having arrived at this decision, I was considerably more amiable next morning than I had been for the last ten days, and I settled down to watch Morgan and see what she would do. I was also able to settle down and paint the last of the panels-- the still and moonlit sea; and in the lights and shadows of water and cloud the face of Morgan Ie Fay appeared from every conceivable angle.