(or, That Night at The Cross-Roads pt 2)
Dear Friends,
So when last we left our hero, he had had an encounter with the Raven of Battles, Morrighan, at a Cross-roads. Standing stunned and not sure what to do with this experience that, to him at least, has proven the reality of the Gods. I stood there at a place where three roads met, between Earth and Sky and Sea, not knowing what to do next. Until this point I had only had small experiences of the Divinities as a sense of Presence and Connection, and one or two light touches from The Lady and Lord, a voice and an image respectively. I had never had the experience of the Gods happening to me… In the language of Religious studies I suppose you could say I had only experience Mysterium Fascinans before this moment, not Mysterium Tremendum.
So I stood there and began to feel another sense of Presence, subtler and gentler this time. In my head I ‘heard’ the following…
“It’s ok, The Gods are like that sometimes… It’s all right. Now pick up your pack, good now lets get going towards home… one foot, then the other…” and similar dialogue in my thoughts.
There was a sense of caring, and of compassion and age, and a bemusement to this presence; but definitely not at my expense, more at the folly of youth. This Presence, which felt outside myself despite ‘hearing’ it’s words in my minds ear, shepherded me the rest of the way home. A definite sense of being led/escorted home from the Cross-roads.
I got home and the sense of Presence seemed to leave me as I got to the yard… and I went to sleep and…
…didn’t think about That Night for years!
I remembered it, but I also avoided it… and anything more specific than the generic Witches Goddess and Witches God for years. A few years later I let a lot of my practice and worship lapse… I kept an altar but didn’t really ~do~ much with it. (Which is kind of like having a family Bible that you never bother to pick up…) Life moved on and with the exception of a few daily prayers and visualizations in difficult times I followed my life path with other foci than my Faith and Philosophy. I began picking my Pagan path back up in late 2004.
Then The Big Guy and a lot of life changes came down the pike and moving across a Continent and Schooling and a desperate search for full-time work at a living wage. In those misadventures I one day penned a prayer to Hecate…
It was a day or two after reading it, and after running into multiple references to Hecate on the internet, that I did a bunch of research into Her… and started to realize that the Cross-roads Golden-clad Guardian, Maiden Goddess who attends and protects the young (because She is a lot more multifaceted that some more recent sources might lead you to believe) may have been with me That Night.
Since then there have been some diversions along the path but She has been with me, and I Her.
Peace,
Pax / Geoffrey
Libertas (whilst written before this series was conceived of, it fits a little too perfectly into the theme to be ignored…)
Hecate (this post)
Dionysus
The Honored and Beloved Dead
Spirits of the World Around Us
Chrysalis 