Airgetlam
“We are never alone.And the darkness is not outside of us. Solitude is a gift only found in the endless soul of the ocean."
“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.” —Hermann Hesse
Within us, there is another, Who we do not know, who walks beside us, Sleeps beside us, The opposing force, The other, The one who stands behind, The one who sits at the foot of the bed while we dream, The shadow by moonlight.
The thing that, when denied, rises up From the black meres and tarns smoking with mist In the depths of the shadowy primordial forests, Where our souls and dream wander. It rises, in blood, when it is forgotten, And we live a fetch-life, a double life, The twin of our soul that stalks through the ruins of the world, Howling and begging in a storm of fire, A ghost hungry with wrath. And so the world becomes the blood-stained battlefield of our souls disregarded. We see the twisted, mutilated fragments of our selves In the face of everyone we meet. That which is denied in the self is born into the world. There is a deepness within us, A depth that cannot be sounded, And that void is haunted by a universe of spirits That seek to claw their way to the surface, And overcome the self that rules, And lay waste to all that has been built.
He who voyages into the darkness of dreams will find the other. He who searches for the demon will find him. And he who does not search will be devoured. The monstrous gods have retreated into the heart, And by denying them, we become them and bring them into the world. We are never alone. And the darkness is not outside of us. Solitude is a gift only found in the endless soul of the ocean.
He who is whole alone may be King, And take the crown of the Children of the Goddess, And bear the arms of Four Cities. Silverhand! Who led his children from the North of the World In ships of war to the land of the Bag Men, Swollen with the fury for battle. And Mac Erc saw in a dream the fair gods descending from clouds of fire, And he woke in horror, And he knew the day would soon come when he would seek water And desire it more than life itself, And the water would be hidden from him by the weavers. And thus shrieking for water, would he be cut down.
And with the Goddess behind him, Silverhand declared half the land for his kin. But the Bag Men defied him And in honor of their glorious pride, He joined them in the sacred covenant of war. Silverhand, whose sword none could withstand, Thus faced the champion Sreng On the plain of broken towers. And Sreng in his warlike might shattered Silverhand And sundered his arm from his body. And the Children of the Goddess wept as they saw the king go down. But the battle turned against the Bag Men, For the spirit of the blood swan was not with them. And Sreng found himself alone on the bloody field, And in his martial rage he shook his spear At Silverhand and demanded recompense for his kinsmen slain. War for eternity, did Sreng promise to the Children of the Goddess. War without end. But Silverhand would not face the dread man again And overcome by his valorous soul, Gave him the gift of land and pasture.
And then was a hand wrought of silver to replace What the king had lost. And so was he known as Silverhand thereafter. And then did he regain the kingship, for he was whole once again. But his wyrd came for him in time, As it does for us all. And when the Deep Ones came upon the land, Silverhand fell to the arms of He of the Evil Eye.
None are free, all are driven by the monster inside of us. We push it aside, only to ensure that it will follow us with even greater force. Blood engenders phantoms. As Paracelsus wrote, there is within the human soul The quintessence of the universe, light and dark alike. And there is poison in all things if not taken in their measure. What we have lost has not disappeared, It is always within. And the flames of the world are nothing to the infernos inside of us. The path is a spiral.
The path we walk is the path of madness, But we must not turn away, we must not purge the madness from inside of us. Those who abandon the path of madness within make the world into a nightmare. The demons that we seek to banish from our souls wreck the pillars of the world. How can we choose? Between a dry, placid soul and a world sundered by horror And A lacerated spirit, panting and wounded from endless battle, living in a world of stars. Alas, the choice is a false one. For only the one who is whole may rule. And in the depths, there is only the cacophony of struggle And the quietude of the Moon, in her strange ways.
Ramon Elani
Ramon Elani holds a PhD in literature and philosophy. He is a teacher, a poet, a husband, and a father, as well as a muay thai fighter. He wanders in oak groves. He casts the runes and sings to trolls. He lives among mountains and rivers in Western New England
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