The Hanged Man: Part 2: Mabon
Post #4: In which the sacred act of cleansing brings comfort, a story is told about what a woman wants, and a teacher leads a dance ...
(If you are a new subscriber, you might want to start at the beginning of The Hanged Man. If you prefer to read Parts 1 and 2 in their entirety, go here. For the next serial post, go here.)
Demeter rose from a sleepless handful of hours after Elizabeth went out into the night to continue her search for Rapunzel. Her face felt hot, her throat raw and her eyes swollen. She rinsed her face with water from the rain barrel in the cool morning air. It cleared her head.
She made tea, sitting in the willow chair outside the door in the sun to drink it and think of Rapunzel and her mother. At last, she tipped the dregs of the tea onto the ground next to a clump of creamy puffball mushrooms and went back inside.
She opened every window in the cottage except Persephone’s window. The door to that room stayed shut. She gathered every piece of bedding, her neglected clothing, curtains, dishcloths and table linens, and did an enormous wash, draping it to dry over lavender and rosemary bushes when the line became full. She took rugs outside and beat them until dust flew. She cleaned ashes out of the fireplace and brushed and scrubbed the hearth. As day sank into evening she brought in the laundry, made her bed and folded and hung everything else. The linen smelled of the sun and garden. She lay down exhausted in her fresh bed and slept.
After breakfast the next morning, she swept the floor with a dampened broom and then scrubbed it on her hands and knees until her back ached and her hands were chapped. She scrubbed the table, kitchen shelves and counter, noticing the nearly empty grain and flour bins and depleted tea herbs in their jars. She cleaned out the pantry and stirred and watered the compost pile. She washed days of dirty dishes and scrubbed the kettle and teapot until they shone. She cleaned lamps and chimneys, trimmed wicks and filled them. She didn’t pause to eat, drink or rest, but all the time she remembered Elizabeth’s suffering face and what she’d done in her anger and grief. By the end of the day the cottage was shining. Demeter felt bone weary and her anger was worn out. Once again, she slept until birdsong.
In the following days, she slept a great deal. Her weariness refused to be assuaged, no matter how many hours she lay in bed. Without the burning coal of anger in her belly she felt flat and diminished. She went about her tasks, noting without much interest the horses were at the end of the hay and their grain stores ran low. She washed and fed her heavy, joyless body and put one foot in front of the other, but she saw no point to it.
PERSEPHONE
Persephone and Hades explored the Underworld together. They collected the story of every soul they met. When the tale was told from beginning to end, they asked each soul what they wanted to do next. Some could answer but many could not, having so seldom possessed the power to choose. They needed time to consider. There was plenty of time, and Hades and Persephone bade them take it and come back when they could answer.
The Underworld transformed from chaos and fear to quiet order. A deep contemplative silence replaced uneasiness. Word spread. The life of every person, no matter how humble, how long or short, was a unique story to be told and heard and then the question, “What do you want to do now?”
Some asked to be released back into the Green World so their spirits could mingle with field and forest, animals, rain, stars and sunlight. Some wished for another life, a chance to make different choices. Some chose to stay in the Underworld for a time, and among these were many skilled craftsman and husbandmen, including the two antagonistic branches of the dwarf family. The Dvorgs called all places underground home and in some cases hardly noticed their deaths. The Dwarves, more accustomed to life above ground, possessed all the skill of their more traditional brothers. Hades granted form to those who wished it and the Underworld gradually became a place of shadowed beauty. The Dwarves and Dvorgs forgot their differences and worked together, hollowing and shaping rock, freeing hidden water and veins of jewels like underground galaxies.
Workmen enlarged the cave where the hot spring bubbled into a kind of bathhouse with a pool for soaking and washing and cold water piped in to splash in its own basin.
The dead who’d loved flocks and beasts and worked farms and fields were sent to the Green World to enlarge the barn where Hades housed his stallion so goats, pigs, sheep and chickens could be accommodated. Gardeners tilled and planted. Craftsmen built furniture. Women spun wool and wove.
Teachers came. Odin and the Valkyries visited and the old one-eyed man embraced Hades like a son. He brought as a gift a wolf pup with green eyes. Hel came from her boarding house on the northern sea, a threshold place like Hades where certain souls rested between one life and another. Hecate visited often.
Persephone and Hades learned and grew together. They gave of the Underworld’s abundance to all who came, according to his or her wants or needs. Odin and Hel received quantities of food and wine for their tables, and Odin bargained shrewdly with the dwarven folk for marbles made of bloodstone, jasper and flint. Hel accepted woven and dyed wool blankets. Her boarding house was in a cold country.
Baubo came one day to Persephone. Persephone had heard of Baubo the sacred trickster, Baubo the clown, and found a stout old woman with thin curls of grey decorating her pink scalp. She was round in shape, double chinned, and her face seemed made to smile. She possessed none of Hecate’s power and dignity. The care of children and infants was her responsibility and she came to instruct Persephone about their special needs in Hades, as these souls were unable to speak and choose for themselves. Persephone had given some thought already to these, so they soon took care of their business and Baubo felt confident the young woman understood what needed to be done.
Persephone offered refreshment and showed Baubo into a chamber set aside for her private use. Here burned a bright fire, flowers decorated the table, and comfortable chairs and thick woven rugs softened the stone room. A vein of black crystal was exposed in one wall. The rock around the crystals was carefully chipped away, and they were polished until they glittered. Frona brought tea, along with a round of creamy goat cheese, olives and bread.
“Now, my daughter, I also come to you as a mother and a counselor,” said Baubo. “How is it with you, Persephone?”
Persephone sat back in her chair and fixed her eyes on the fire. “I’m ashamed to tell you what’s in my heart,” she said. “I’ve found what I was searching for, and yet…”
“You left the Green World for the World of the Dead, child,” said Baubo. “Of course, you miss your home.”
“I dream of the barn,” said Persephone. “It’s early morning and the horses are stirring. I walk in and smell the way it used to be. Cats press against my ankles. Horses nicker. Sun comes in, so golden, so bright, and everywhere color and texture and life!” Her voice broke. “And then I wake and I’m in my bed. There’s much to do, much to learn, but nowhere is there touch, warm flesh, pulse. There’s no sunrise.” She turned and looked a Baubo. “The dead tell me stories of famine and suffering in the world. Why are people starving?”
“Yes, there’s famine in the land,” said Baubo. “Many die. Your mother has lost her joy in her work. Hecate visited her and tried to help, but Demeter can’t accept your absence. I’ll go to her soon and see what I can do, but this isn’t your fault. Children grow up and go into the world to seek their own lives. You were right to do so.”
Persephone looked into the fire again and tears fell down her cheeks. “I was cruel,” she said in a low voice. “I felt so trapped, so smothered before the Wild Hunt. But now … now I miss her so much, Baubo! But I ate the pomegranate seeds. I don’t regret it, but I can’t go back now and she’ll never come here. She’s lost to me.”
Baubo smiled. “Daughter, you’ll learn life isn’t all one thing or another. The story is not yet all told. It’s too soon to say you’ll never see her again.”
Persephone avoided Baubo’s eyes.
“Your feelings about your mother are not the only weight in your heart.”
Persephone wiped her cheeks with her hand. She shook her head but didn’t speak.
Baubo poured herself tea and sat back in her chair. She too gazed into the fire. “Here’s an old story that hasn’t yet taken place,” she said.
“Once upon a time not yet come and long ago, there lived a young man named Richard who committed the worst crime against a woman possible. He appeared before the court to receive justice. The judge was a woman. She sentenced the young man to discover the answer to the riddle, ‘What does a woman desire most?’ If he didn’t return in exactly one year with the correct answer, he’d forfeit his freedom.
Richard was astonished at the leniency of the sentence and felt he’d escaped punishment very well. As he made his way out of town, he saw an attractive young woman. He approached her with his best manners and most seductive smile.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ’can you tell me what a woman desires most?’
She, in her turn, smiled coquettishly back, swaying her skirts and glancing up at him from under her eyelashes. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What a woman desires most is a lover!’
It was hot in the street. Richard wiped his forehead as he walked on.
A while later he saw a woman with a babe in her arms and two young children at her skirts. She looked tired and disheveled.
Again, he approached, courteous and friendly. ‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said, ‘could you tell me what a woman desires most?’
She hardly looked at him. ‘Rest,’ she said without hesitation. ‘What a woman desires most is rest and peace.’
As Richard reached the outskirts of town, he spied an old crone leaning on a stick. People passed her with some impatience, as her slow gait obstructed the foot traffic.
He fell into step beside her. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, raising his voice in case she didn’t hear well. ‘Can you tell me what a woman desires most?’
The old woman grunted. He noticed she didn’t smell good.
‘Health,’ the old woman wheezed, without looking up. ‘What a woman desires most is good health.’
Now Richard began to feel less confident about his task. Three women had given three different answers to this riddle. What if every woman gave a different answer? He decided to buy a notebook to keep track of the answers.
So, Richard went into the world with his notebook and his riddle. He talked to women of all ages and in all conditions. He asked his question of rich women and poor women, women living in towns and women working in fields, and every woman gave a different answer. He soon filled up the first notebook and bought a second, and then a third.
In this way, the year passed and the last day found him back in the town from which he’d started. Tomorrow he must to return to the court with the correct answer — or give up his freedom forever. He sat on a low stone wall with his head in his hands. How could such a simple question be answered differently by every woman?
In the midst of his despair, he heard a voice beside him.
‘Are you in trouble? Can I help you?’
Richard looked up. The ugliest woman he’d ever seen stood next to him, and by now he considered himself something of an authority on women! Her body was twisted and crooked. Her eyes were different sizes, small and dull, the color of mud. Her humped nose looked off center. Her mouth was too large, lips loose and flabby, and her discolored teeth leaned every which way. Her hair hung in lank rattails. She was hideous.
‘Tomorrow I’m to lose my freedom forever,’ he said, ‘unless I answer a riddle.’
The ugly woman gave him a look of polite inquiry.
‘I thought it would be so easy,’ said Richard. ‘I…I did something wrong and was sentenced to find the answer to a riddle. The judge gave me a year. Today is the last day of the year and I’ve filled three notebooks with answers to the riddle, but not one answer is the same as any other.’
‘What’s the riddle?’ asked the woman.
‘What does a woman most desire?’ Richard said.
‘Oh, that’s easy!’ said the ugly woman. ‘I know the answer. I’ll tell you, but you must do something for me in return.’
‘You know the answer?’ Richard asked in disbelief. ‘Are you sure you know the correct answer?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said with great confidence, and he believed her.
‘I’ll do anything if you’ll give me the answer,’ he said, hardly daring to hope. ‘Anything is better than losing my freedom.’
‘Ah, don’t promise so quickly,’ said the ugly young woman. ‘What you must do is…marry me.’
He stared at her.
‘Marry…you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you the answer to the riddle. You’ll go to court and finish your business and then meet me and we’ll be married. I know an inn, not far from here, where we can spend the night together. My name is Rapunzel, by the way.’
Richard hesitated. How could he bear to marry this hideous woman, promise to spend the rest of his life with her? But if he didn’t…if he didn’t he’d spend the rest of his life locked up. Better to be married to this ugly woman and free.
‘Agreed,’ he said. They shook hands on it. Her hand felt clammy.
‘What a woman desires most,’ she said, looking him in the eye, ‘is to stand within her own power.’
The young man thought for a moment. ‘Her own power,’ he said to himself, ‘her own power.’ He remembered his crime and realized he’d taken away a woman’s power, and felt ashamed. He thought of all the answers in the notebooks. Each answer fit into this answer. Each answer was different because each woman was different. This was the correct answer!
‘Thank you,’ he said to Rapunzel, and meant it from the bottom of his heart.
The next day Richard presented himself before the court. The judge was waiting for him.
‘Have you discovered the answer to the riddle: What does a woman desire most?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied. He straightened his shoulders. ‘What a woman desires most is…to stand in her own power. And,’ he reddened, ‘and I’m truly sorry for what I did.’
‘Very good,’ said the judge. ‘That’s the right answer. Dismissed!’
Richard, true to his word (so you see he had learned something in his year with the riddle in his mouth), met Rapunzel and they were married.
They arrived at the inn and Rapunzel wanted some time alone to wash and make herself ready. Richard, rather sadly, went into the bar for a drink.
He bought a drink, and then another, and then another, making each last as long as possible. At last, the barman asked him to leave so he could close for the night.
Richard climbed the stairs to the room where he knew Rapunzel waited. He walked down the hall. He turned the knob and walked into the room. Candles and lamps were out and the window opened to admit a sweet evening breeze. Rapunzel, mercifully hidden from view in the dark, appeared a vague shape in the bed.
Richard took off one piece of clothing at a time, beginning with his boots. All the while he remembered the way Rapunzel’s skin had looked — like the belly of a dead fish. At last, he stood naked. He made his way to the bed and gingerly inserted himself into it, trying to stay as close to the edge as possible.
‘Aren’t you going to touch me?’ Rapunzel inquired.
He must! He knew he must. He reached forward, shrinking at the same time, and encountered…well, it didn’t feel like the skin on the belly of a dead fish! It felt warm and smooth and rounded and smelled wonderful! He moved closer and took her in his arms. He kissed her. Her lips were delicious!
He leapt out of bed and lit a lamp. By its light he saw the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen! And after a year with the riddle in his mouth he thought himself something of an authority by now on women! She had a cap of short golden hair.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What is this?’
‘I’m your wife,’ said she, sitting up and letting the sheet fall. ‘I, uh…did something wrong and my punishment was to take on the appearance I had when you met me until a young man agreed to marry me. When you did so the sentence lifted. But, there’s more…’
‘What more?’ he inquired cautiously.
‘Well, now you must make a choice. You must choose whether I’ll be as you see me now by day and ugly by night or beautiful by night and ugly by day.’ She spoke quickly and angrily.
Thinking of the night ahead, and not noticing her irritation, he said, ‘Ugly by day and beautiful by night!’
‘So,’ said Rapunzel, ‘during the day, everywhere we go, people will laugh and jeer. Young children will run away in fright.”
‘Oh,’ he said, picturing it. ‘Well then, ugly by night and beautiful by day!’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Every night for as long as we live, you’ll get into bed with the woman you met on the street.”
The young man thought. What best to choose? ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute. This choice shouldn’t be mine. You’ll have to bear with it more than I. I’ve learned what a woman desires most is to stand in her own power. I think this choice should be yours, and I’ll abide by it.’
She looked surprised, gave him a smile and became even more beautiful, if possible, than before. ‘A good answer,’ she said slowly. ‘Then I choose to be beautiful by day and by night!’
And so it was.”
Persephone stirred. She laughed but there were tears on her cheeks. She looked at Baubo. “All right,” she said, “I choose, then, a life with Hades, whom I love, and whom I believe loves me.”
“Well done, my daughter,” said Baubo. “Now your desire is spoken, clear and true and from the heart. Concentrate on the life you want and see what happens.”
The old woman rose to her feet and smiled a wide smile, a child’s smile, a smile of mischief. “Time for talking is over. Now is time for a deeper knowing. Bring out your drum, Persephone!”
Persephone brought out a wooden box. Opening it, she took from the padded interior a dumbek. Seated, she tucked the drum under her left arm, and closing her eyes, began a slow rhythm. Demeter had taught her to play the dumbek when she was a child and she fell into a rhythm as natural and measured as a heartbeat. She remembered herself sitting on the floor in the front of the fire making friends with all the sounds the drum could make. She remembered her mother, smiling and laughing, encouraging her to explore this new toy, clapping her hands to the rhythms Persephone discovered. She smiled to herself, watching child and mother together behind her closed eyes. Her hands beat the rhythm of those days, the cycles and seasons of her Corn Mother, her abundance, her unchanging love. The rhythm spoke to her of endurance, of bonds beyond time and change, and she felt comforted.
The sound of the drum held her, rocked her, built a safe place. She opened her eyes.
Baubo had snuffed candles and lamps so the room was lit only by fire glow. She was naked. As she danced to the drumbeat she looked like a spirit of earth, solid and squat. Her big round belly and wide hips moved to the drum. Her thick thighs and ankles stepped, turned so now her buttocks moved in the firelight and now her dark and hairy groin. Her breasts rested on her belly, pendulous and softened with age, nipples large and dark. Persephone looked at her and saw strength and endurance, a body made for nurture and knowing. She saw the female spirit underlying youth, motherhood and old age. Her hands quickened from the dreamy rhythm of childhood and safety to something deeper, more assertive and passionate. Baubo responded, moved her body with even greater strength. If a rock could dance, a twisted gnarled old tree, a mountain, it would dance like this. Baubo turned her back to Persephone and released a long, loud fart. Persephone, startled, let out a shout of laughter before she could stop herself. She felt her face flush in the dim light. Baubo turned to face her again, giggling. She guffawed. Her belly heaved. She belched and laughed harder. She put her hands on her belly and rocked with laughter, watching it move. Her breasts bobbed. Persephone laughed with her.
Somewhere under her laughter lurked tears. Persephone tried to let the laughter out and keep the tears buried, but she couldn’t. It was like trying not to sneeze. Baubo’s feet danced as she rocked with noisy mirth. Her flesh bounced this way and that. It was too much for Persephone. She laughed, tears hot in her eyes. They slid down her cheeks. She laughed and she sobbed. She sobbed and then, watching Baubo, laughed again. Her sides ached. Her nose ran. Still her hands played on, drumbeat filling the chamber as though the drum controlled her hands and played itself.
The drum’s voice became sexy, suggestive. Baubo rotated her hips. She cupped her breasts and lifted them, reaching down to kiss first one and then the other. She kissed her own shoulders, slid her hands down her hips and over her lush belly. She circled her nipples and her belly button with thick fingers. She turned towards the fire and looked at Persephone over her shoulder, spreading the cheeks of her buttocks apart. The drum beat sensuously. Baubo stood with the glow of fire behind her and began to touch herself, stroking the curly coarse hair at her groin. Persephone watched, fascinated, as Baubo’s fingers moved in and out of grizzled hair. Baubo pinched her nipples and they hardened.
Persephone felt her body respond to Baubo’s excitement. The room felt warm. She wanted to dance too, but she couldn’t dance with abandon and drum at the same time. Baubo spread her feet apart on the floor, moving her hips now to the drum’s rhythm. Persephone saw a gleam of moisture. Baubo spread the lips of her labia and put two fingers into her vagina. Persephone gasped. Baubo smiled, brought her fingers up to her nose, smelled them, and put them in her mouth. She touched her nipples. She caressed herself with one hand and moved her fingers in and out of her vagina with the other. She held Persephone’s gaze with her own. The rhythm grew faster, building. Persephone couldn’t look away. Her own body moistened and opened like a flower. She wanted to touch herself as Baubo did. Her hands beat the rhythm and Baubo jerked her hips, hands urgent on her body. The rhythm peaked. Persephone gasped. Baubo let out a fierce cry. Persephone’s hands faltered and the rhythm scattered and lost itself. She looked away from Baubo, embarrassed and uneasy.
“Daughter, rise!” Baubo’s voice rang out strong and commanding. Persephone set the drum aside and rose. She trembled. An intimate smell of sweat and sex tinged the air. “Close your eyes!” Persephone felt Baubo come close, warm and solid. She tied a piece of cloth about Persephone’s head, covering her eyes. She felt Baubo’s hands in her hair, unplaiting and shaking it out so it covered her shoulders. Baubo slid her robe off her shoulders and helped her step out of her underclothes. Baubo took her hand and led her to a place close to the fire. She could feel its warmth on her bare legs and belly. Her labia were swollen and moist, sensitive to every movement she made.
Baubo left her and Persephone heard her pick up the dumbek. She began to play the rhythm of a heartbeat, elemental and soothing.
“Womanhood,” said Baubo, her hands beating on the drum, “is watered with blood and tears. You’ll laugh and weep and true friends will prevent you from neither. Life is a dance, Persephone. Dance for strength. Dance for joy and for lust. Dance for birth and death and dance at every crossroad. In dance, you’ll know your truth.”
The drum beat. Persephone listened to Baubo’s words and her body listened to the voice of the drum and responded.
“A woman is two creatures,” said Baubo. “One creature looks out of eyes in a woman’s head, speaks from her mouth and acknowledges the rules of civilization.”
The drumbeat changed, became insistent, somehow wilder. “But there’s another creature that a woman is. A creature of shadow, wild, a creature untamed and passionate. There is in every woman one who sees with nipples and speaks uncivilized truths from those lips hidden in a forest of hair.”
Baubo’s voice trailed away, swallowed up and overcome by the drum, and Persephone gave herself to its rhythm. Her eyes blinded, she allowed her body to move as it would and gave no thought to how it looked or smelled or seemed to anyone else. She touched herself as she’d never touched herself before, explored sensation, texture and movement, allowed the drum to command her. She threw her shoulders back, thrusting her breasts out, and feeling her flanks bunch with muscles.
She lost a sense of time. The beating drum slowed, smoothed and quieted. She danced smaller and smaller. Her heartbeat slowed. Her body relaxed. She stood swaying in dim light. Baubo set the drum aside and went to her, lifting off the blindfold. She took Persephone by the hand and led her to her pallet on the floor. Persephone let herself down onto it and fell asleep before the old woman had pulled the blanket over her shoulders.
(This was published with this essay.)