Sometimes Dio would tell me legends of his mother’s country, which was Minoas, the Island Kingdom in the Northern Sea; how their gods lived in the stars, and, if men failed in tribute to them, they would strike them down with rods of lightning. There they worship bulls, for, they say, without milk babies would die; if babies die, then all mankind will perish. And milk comes from the cow, yet the cow gives nothing until the lusty bull thrusts springing seed to swell her placid flanks. These people wrestle with their sacred bulls, vaulting between the razor danger of their horns, so that the watchers cheer to see a fellow mortal outwit the god.
And trying more closely to understand Dio’s heart I visited Minoas in a dream.…
It is more richly green than Kam, and vineyards crowd great steps down to the sea. Their temples have elaborate pageantry, yet they are but a mask that hides a face that is not there. Their gods are only puppet gods of stone, forgotten symbols of that which never was. Their temples ring with music to the deaf, and incense rises to nostrils that cannot scent. They seek truth from lips of carven stone, and deck themselves with roses for blind eyes. And, of the people’s will, these things of form shall raise great monuments to earth beauty; yet, if true knowledge does not come to them, their buildings shall be like a ruined hall, where only lizards cross the broken floor and lost altars crack beneath the sky.
In these temples there are no true dreamers, but the priests distil a draught of herbs, in which are poppy seeds, and they give this to any who come to the temple—if they can pay. He who drinks it has strange dreams, for it opens the eyes of the spirit, though to no place which it is desirable to see. Then, when he wakens, the sleeper describes his dreams to the priests, who, being men of wit, experience, and earthly knowledge—though having no true wisdom—interpret his dreams, saying that they have hidden meanings, and twisting a fevered vision until the poor dreamer thinks it a message from the Gods.
And in one temple, the Temple of Praxitlares, there was a high-priest who, though small of spirit, was most lusty of body. The priests of this country are celibate, as are the priestesses; and strangely, here they think it more important to keep their virginity than to open the gateways of their spirit. Yet the sower of this high-priest was impatient that his seed remained stored in his granaries, and often he longed to plant it in a fruitful furrow.
Now in the temple there was a statue, which was hollow; and in the secret chamber beneath it the high-priest would hide himself, and from there his voice would echo as though it were the statue that spoke. And the people revered it as an oracle.
There were days when to this oracle came virgins, who would ask it to describe to them the men who were to be their lovers or their husbands. They would wreathe the plinth of the statue with flowers, for he was the embodiment of all their hopes, being carved in the form of a young man of great beauty, with a straight nose in one with his forehead, full lips curved like a bow, and tightly curling hair.
One day while the girls were bowed before the statue, the priest’s voice spoke through it and said:
“I am a god, yet sometimes, when I am tempted by beauty such as yours, I come to Earth. But if I should come to you in my true godly form, then would you die as though you were plunged in fire. Nor can I take all outward semblance of a man, for that would be as though gold should cloak itself in filth. But I shall take the semblance of a swan, and ten of you, whom among yourselves you judge to be most fair, shall lie with me to enhance your beauty; and when men see you they will think it is a goddess that walks on Earth; and the proudest shall kneel at your feet in supplication that you should be their wives.
“And so to-night, which is the dark of the moon, secretly you shall come to the third sanctuary behind the temple. Each shall enter alone. Then you shall feel my swan’s wings brush your face, and each may keep one feather from my wing. And if in any of you there be some greater spark of godhead than in other mortals, then shall that one feel the god beneath the swan, and, in the darkness, to her I will appear in my most sacred semblance, as a man.
“Let no word of this escape your lips, lest you profane the message of the gods by letting it be heard by other mortals. To-night I shall await you as a swan, and perhaps to one of you as man.” Then the girls returned to their homes. And they spent that day in busy longing, smoothing their bodies with fragrant oil.
As they walked up to the temple through the moonless dark, their pulses sang with an expectant joy. The high-priest waited in the inner sanctuary, and as each girl entered alone, he threw about her a feathered cloak, so that she felt as though a great swan clasped her in its wings. And while she lay upon a silken couch, she thought she must be a goddess to have reached with a god this pinnacle of bliss, where past and future were lost in feathered flames.
Then through the secret door of the sanctuary each in her turn found herself alone upon the mountain-side, holding a single feather in her hand. And one was drowsy with her memories and slept beneath a tree through the warm night. Her body had shown her as yet undreamed-of-joys, and the future hid from her its heaviness and the sharp cruelties of birth.