We Built the Fire Where the Monster’s Mouth Began, So We Would Not Be Eaten
Cronus, Tantalus, Demeter, and the ouroboros reveal the ancient fear hidden at the edge of every sacred circle.
The fire blazes strongly inside the circle. Embers drift west in a wind current that makes the flames look almost like hair. You can feel the warmth, the safety, and the smell of fragrant wood burning. Some people are laughing to your left, others are enjoying hot food, just cooked over the open flame. Darkness has been pushed out, yet it presses on all sides. You hear a creak outside, and far away, the fire answers with its own. Someone tosses another dry log into the bonfire.
Titanic Hunger
You are a being of power, might, and immortality, in an age before mortals knew even fire. You are more than that; you are the child of the ruler of all. Yet you are hidden away as soon as you enter existence, straight from the belly of your mother, into exile, to a lonely island, bathed on all sides by a warm sea.
The island is a refuge as much as a prison, yet it is a better fate than what your brothers and sisters have endured, being devoured by their own father, swallowed whole, lying inside his primordial guts in the darkness.
You grow up inside a cave, and as years pass, you know what needs to be done, what prophecy must be fulfilled. Your mother spoke those words in a way you will never forget, her voice trembling, as the dread and weight of the words filled the cavern.
The reason for the prophecy was you. The child fated to do to him exactly what he had done to his own father, for he too had risen by the sickle, had cut down his own maker to seize the throne. The blade he feared was the blade he had already swung. You were not a new horror loosed upon the cosmos. You were the old one, come round again.
You rush back to face your father and force poison into his throat. The dark titan is forced to disgorge all your siblings and a stone wrapped in clothes, the very thing your mother gave in your place, swallowed whole without a glance.
This is the beginning of war, long and deadly, shaking the very foundations of all that is known, until, a decade later, you are crowned king of the gods, triumphant, and Olympus becomes your palace.
Time devoured the things it helped create, yet time makes devourers out of the devoured.
The Grieving Goddess
You sit down at a table surrounded by the most beautiful, powerful, and supreme beings. You smell the sweetest, yet softest fragrance known; it does not overstay, but rather softly lingers. Nectar, the drink of immortality, is sought across the world, from the Aegean Sea to the mountains of the Hindu Kush; humans can only dream of it.
One sip of the fragrant drink, sweeter than honey, softer than milk, and death becomes a forgotten fear.
And among the divine company, you place your eyes upon him, a genial man, a charismatic king and son of the ruler of the gods, who won his way into the seat of the gods, thanks to both his noble lineage and honeyed tongue. He reaches out again and again for the divine drinks and foods.
He thanks the gods and promises an even greater feast in honor of them as he leaves; even then, you notice how his empty words do not ring true.
Another night, you move with the speed of thought as you meet with Hermes. His sorrowful eyes tell you everything you need to know before a single word is uttered: your own daughter, the light that brought hope and beauty into the world, has been snatched.
In the cold claws of the lord of the underworld, she lies, as much a prisoner as a wife. You can feel your immortal soul grow cold. The vast green world has turned into freezing darkness as your pain drives you almost blind.
The night of the feast with the king is here, no longer in Olympus but in the mortal world, yet there are only bleak images, memories, and ideas in your psyche. How much you miss your dearest Persephone! The world feels dead to you, a corpse devoid of any joy, movement, or energy. A veil of grief is upon your eyes.
You sit down among the gods, going through the motions, dragged by them into this banquet, just moving along like a sacrificial sheep follows the shepherd who takes her into the temple.
Your eyes feel so dull, so painful. Goddesses don’t cry often, but when they do, their grief falls like melting ice, and their sorrows drown out everything like the springtime torrents.
The food is here, and in your pain, you cannot even make out what’s in front of you, move like an animated statue, and be done with it, you think.
You hear cries, divine cries, and see the dread in the eyes of the entire gods' assembly, looking straight at you. You instantly drop the piece of meat you were eating, and the realization hits you with the force of a titan. Human flesh, a child’s shoulder, a child… and you, who would unmake the world for your own, have just consumed another's son.
The gods remake the boy at once, all but the shoulder. That, you had already taken. So they give him one of ivory: smooth, white, and cold as the world your grief had made. He will live, and grow, and that ivory will catch the light at every table he sits at for the rest of his days, a small bright proof of the one moment you were not there.
You were not cruel. You did not hunger, or test the gods, or set this table. You looked away, once, into your own pain. And that was enough. Tantalus could not deceive the gods. He could only deceive the one who wasn’t looking.
A boy walks the earth in ivory. Proof that absence can do what malice cannot.
The Eternal Serpent
The blazing sun parches your face as you hurry across the white limestone tiles. It is a sacred day, and you know you must not falter, not even for an instant, as you approach the temple complex. The guards hail you, and you climb the stairs and enter the chamber where they expect you.
The smell of incense and resins, meant to purify the place, reaches you fully now, and you recognize the fragrance of myrrh. It is too strong for your nerves; you feel you might be sick, and knowing what a grave transgression that would be only pulls the knot in your stomach tighter.
You steel yourself, mindful of what the day asks of you. The air grows less thick with the scent as the corridors darken, lit now by small oil lamps rather than the blazing sun through the high windows. The shifting shadows become almost a comfort; you have seen them before, and you know they belong to the rite.
They are already waiting, the priests who watched you take your trials, and who will now oversee your purification before you may become a full priest of Ra.
Your eyes wander to a carving: a snake devouring its own tail. Intrigued, you wonder why the most feared of all creatures has been given a place inside the temple.
The older priest, shaved smooth as his office demands, meets your eyes the moment he notices your attention, and the faintest smile crosses his lips as he takes the chance to instruct.
“That snake is not the great devourer who attacks Ra on his daily voyage, as he carries the sun. That beast was born of the primordial waters, never to satisfy its hunger, only to consume and destroy.”
His words are full of contempt, almost spiteful, as he speaks of the great enemy of all that exists. He gathers himself a moment before going on.
“This snake within our temple is not such a being. It does not hunt, nor seek to devour the sun; it seeks itself, not out of hunger, but out of eternal renewal to encircle and protect the whole of Ma’at. Remember that difference.”
His words echo softly in the chamber. You take one last look at the symbol before you, the lesson as fresh now as it will ever be, and your eyes soften as you turn back to the papyrus and let your learning continue.
The Fire Still Burns
The voices rise in unison as the last tale is told, a mythic echo that pushes darkness away by naming the maw that lurks in it. A great devourer of gods, felled by his own fated child, a grieving goddess lost in sorrow eating another’s child, and finally a serpent of hope, teaching how death is not the end with one single motion.
The warmth of stories shared, even with so many macabre twists bringing a little of the outside's darkness inside the circle, yet that seems to only make the fire shine a little bit brighter, the voices sound a little more melodious, and the food taste better.
The dark still holds its open maw, the monsters still seek to devour, but myth has given us a voice that not even time can fully silence.
What is named and understood can never hold as much power as that which lurks unseen and unnamed. The power of myth lies in shining the light upon every monster and closing the mouths that would otherwise eat us whole.
A spark flies from the fire; it slowly rises against the dark canvas of the night sky. For a moment, it looks like the smallest of suns.