three

Chapter Three

THE GOD OF HEALING GIVING PLEASURE TO DIANA

The huntress Diana is red with warrior energy needed for survival.
Soft hands turn it into a soothing healing heat.
Diana is sure in her virgin (independent) ways,
and enjoys the touch of an equal.
- Morgan

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THE GOD OF OCEAN VOYAGES

Distancing is healing,
moving away from our usual lives we get perspective,
as when rolling on the ocean waves, gazing out at the horizon,
the edge of our world.
We can feel with our bodies the vastness of the sea,
which hints at the true vastness of landscape and space,
inner and outer.
We can feel ourselves as part of something huge, powerful,
unpredictable.
The ocean is food, travel, trade, death, a world of creatures,
hidden kingdoms and a world of stories and tales.
We need to stretch our minds and hearts,
to steep ourselves in its lore and its brine,
in its dangerous and healing waters. -Morgan

THE GOD OF PLEASURABLE TENSION

Our pleasures are made up of opposites:
hot and cold,
dark and light,
salty and sweet,
energy and sleep.

We go to the beach and bake delightfully in the sun,
then cool ourselves in the waves.
Hunger makes food taste better,
and teasing makes sex hotter.
Opposites show us we are alive
and living in our bodies.

- Morgan

THE GOD OF QUESTIONS by Sheryl St. Germain (poet, teacher and translator)

Thinking about the God of Questions on Winter Solstice

He shines above the fireplace mantel, the warm heart of my house.
I love most the large white glowing ball that he holds firmly
in front of him, as if it were a gift.
The ball is almost as large as he is, and I cannot tell if the white of the ball is painted or bare canvas.
Whether it is a moon, a sun, or a full round nothingness, pregnant with all that we do not know, but would ask.

The god of questions is the keeper of questions.
He guards them, and when we need one, he gives it to us. He is thus not unlike the shamans and priests of our past.
He is a kind a Sphinx, and his ball, like an overgrown crystal, does not show the future, but answers our questions with questions.

Sometimes I think I see destruction in the ball he holds.
Other times, especially this darkest of nights, it seems that he holds my own face, bodiless, emptied of passion.
There is a stillness, a calmness there I have seldom known.
And in that calmness is hope, hope in the face of utter darkness, a turning to light, questions to light the dark winter,
and the longer I look, the fire underneath warming my body, the fire in the
ball of the painting warming my soul, I feel it is me the god holds, me, two months sober, turning my hopeful,
questioning face to the familiar dark.

On to the next chapter (4)