will return each day, and if you have more of these dreams, you will lay them before us. There is one to whom they should be told, that is, unless the goddess drives them from your mind.”
“Of course I will tell anyone who can help,” I said. “I hate these dreams. But why are you so anxious? Are you afraid of me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t fear you, but there is something I must confide to you. I must talk to you either today or tomorrow. I must speak with you. Go now to the Mother, then come to me.”
The others led me to the chamber of the Sanctuary; there were white linen curtains before the shrine. I saw my sacrifice lying there, a great garland of sweet-smelling white flowers, and the warm loaf of bread. I knelt. The curtains were pulled back by unseen hands and I found myself alone in the chamber kneeling before the Regina Caeli, the Queen of Heaven. Another shock.
This was an ancient Egyptian statue of our Isis, carved from dark basalt. Her headdress was long, narrow, pushed behind her ears. On her head she wore a great disk between horns. Her breasts were bare. On her lap sat the adult Pharaoh, her son Horus. She held her left breast to offer him her milk.
I was struck with despair! This image meant nothing to me! I groped for the essence of Isis in this image.
“Did you send me the dreams, Mother!” I whispered.
I laid out the flowers. I broke the bread.
I heard nothing in the silence from the serene and ancient statue.
I prostrated myself on the floor, stretching out my arms. And from the depths of my soul, I struggled to say, I accept, I believe, I am yours, I need you, I need you!
But I wept. All was lost to me. Not merely Rome and my family, but even my Isis. This goddess was the embodiment of the faith of another nation, another people.
Very slowly a calm settled over me.
Is it so, I thought. The Cult of my Mother is in all places, North and South and East and West. It is the spirit of this Cult which gives it power. I need not literally kiss the feet of this effigy. That is not the point.
I raised my head slowly, then sat back on my heels. A real revelation came upon me. I cannot fully record it. I knew it, fully, in an instant.
I knew that all things were symbols of other things! I knew that all rituals were enactments of other happenings! I knew that out of our practical human minds we devised these things with an immensity of soul that would not allow the world to be devoid of meaning.
And this statue represented love. Love above cruelty. Love above injustice. Love above loneliness and condemnation.
That was what mattered, that single thing. I stared up at the face of the goddess and I knew her! I stared at the little Pharaoh, the proffered breast.
“I am yours!” I said coldly.
Her stark primitive Egyptian features were no obstacle to my heart; I looked at the right hand which held her breast.
Love. This requires strength from us; this requires endurance; this requires an acceptance of all that is unknown.
“Take the dreams away from me, Heavenly Mother,” I said. “Or reveal their purpose. And the path I must follow. Please.”
Then in Latin I said an old litany:
You are she who has separated the Heavens and the Earth.
You are she who rises in the Dog Star.
You are she who makes strong the right.
You are she who makes the children to love their parents.
You are she who decreed mercy for all who ask for it.
I believed these words, but in a wholly profane way. I believed them because I saw her worship as having collected together from the minds of men and women the best ideas of which men and women were capable. That was the function for which a goddess existed; that was the spirit from which she drew her vitality.
The lost phallus of Osiris exists in the Nile. And the Nile inseminates the fields. Oh, it was so lovely.
The trick was not to reject it, as Lucretius might have suggested, but to realize what her image meant. To extract from that image the best in my own soul.
And when I looked down at the beautiful white flowers, I thought, “It is your wisdom, Mother, that these bloom.” And I meant by that only that the world