Muse!

I have a lot of writing projects on the mind, so what am I working on? Stuff for NaNo, totally not necessary right now. Well kind of, but less so.

Anyway, I free wrote a big piece last night that probably won’t wind up in a book, and I thought I’d share it here. This is kind of a creation tale that’s been knocking around in my head. Thoughts?

The Coyote Tale of the Anointment

Long ago the world was new. The Goddess, the Crone, looked down upon her Mother aspect, and cried.

Her children, her Maiden aspect, had pillaged and plundered the soil of Mother Earth. They poisoned the seas and polluted the air with their waste. They cared little for the Mother beneath their feet, the creatures they shared that Mother with, or even themselves. Great towering cities covered the land. Stone monoliths were raised to false father gods in hopes for protection in war and savage. They grew over populus and slothful, and the Goddess could not bear to see it any longer. Her great tears landed upon Mother Earth and froze, the cold of her sadness spreading over the land in all directions.

For thousands more years the Maiden children wreaked havoc despite the cold that drove them southward. Finally, the Goddess could bear no longer the suffering of her Mother-self. But Grandmother Goddess did not seek vengeance upon her Maiden-self, for her children are indeed a part of her, and she a part of them. She knew nothing of the angry father gods her children had created. She only mourned, and began anew, as all mothers who love their children do.

So she came to them, in all their busy anthills, shining like the sun on a bright, hot day. She spoke within their hearts, and told them of her sadness and her regret that they spoiled what was once so beautiful. Her Maiden children fell to the ground, crying and begging forgiveness which she gave willingly. Each of them felt her strong arms around them, lifting them up and pouring love and wholeness where once existed only greed and anger. Their tears became tears of joy, and of gratitude and atonement.

And then she changed them.

She spoke of a new order on Mother Earth. Of a new life forming in places where the world had been plundered. Of a new species coming of age only now, many millions of years after Mother Earth was born. She showed her Maiden children these people, whom she called the “free willed,” or sometimes the “humans”. She told her children that humanity would be allowed to thrive on Mother Earth, and that they would disappear into her mid-day shadows.

She took her children’s free will, and they gave it willingly in atonement for the damage their greed and violence had caused Mother Earth. But she did not forsake her children. She gave them instead the Mystery of magick. She granted them each the ability to shift their form, better to hide themselves from the free-willed. She gifted them the ability to see and manipulate the magickal energy that flows all over Mother Earth in great rushing rivers called ley-lines. She granted them long life, though not immortality. She commanded them to live by her Rede, and to obey her will as long as they walked upon Mother Earth. She charged them with only one sacred duty: Protect Mother Earth, and protect those who walk upon it but cannot comprehend her Mystery.

They agreed, with gratitude.

Her great arms swept across the land, cleaning and healing all that was broken. Their great cities crumbled into fertile soil. Some sank below the sea. Nothing remained of the false grandeur they had created. And, group by group, she moved them to their new homes. The children, whom she called Guardians, were sent to live all over Mother Earth. As they settled into their new homes their forms settled as well–they could only shift into one shape besides their own. Their shape matched where they lived thus allowing them to hide or blend with the free willed seamlessly. They settled into their task with relish.

To this day, the free willed tell stories about Guardians. Those who live in modern day Ireland and England talk of fairies. In the Northern United States, Ravens are mystical and revered tricksters. Loki, Rabbits, Coyotes, Anansi the Spider, Kokopelli, Thomagota, the Fox …the list is great but the source is the same. And today the Guardians follow the Rede and the charge of the Goddess as did their mothers and their mothers’ mothers.

And the Goddess smiles from the full moon above.