A Chapter in the Life of Thoth

Rejha looked out upon the sea. It's marble pallor did not reflect warmth this day. Its companion, the sun did not stir from its dark enclave in the clouds. Rejha felt the coldness of encroaching sorrows upon her heart, yet within her temples beat the fiery rhythms of a Sea Priestess whose soul would not, could not surrender to defeat. She gazed reflectively at the winding stairway through the polished rock that led from the sea-cave to the temple above. A man ascended the steps with measured grace. His height and golden skinned appearance pronounced to the world his Sun Born heritage. He wore the kourla, the robe of a Dolphin Priest. A man of many mansions, thought Rejha. A faint smile crossed upon her mouth as she saw the regal one stoop to tenderly examine a large snail making its way across the rock in front of him. Why was he here? He had the power to dismantle this temple should he choose. Rejha was well aware that Raismes of Aphra was a direct mouthpiece of the Solar Legion, and further was Toth-Mus-Zurud, the Sword of Orion. His word was accomplished on Earth just as surely as the stars moved in the heavens. Yet she also knew that Thoth Raismes was beyond the desires of men. He acted in harmony with the Voiceless Silence that sounded in the depths of the soul. That knowing brought to the Priestess Rejha’s mind a verse from the Book of the Time Keepers: “He that breaks the day upon the shore of the Eternal Sea is the Night King, the wizard of the Great Mystery.” The unknown, the darkness, sheltered her fears in this moment. In the next, it might erupt them into the Terrible Known. This Sun Born, the Sword of Orion, was the ‘Night King’ who had invaded her eternal dream.

The Thoth stood before Rejha, calmly and patiently seeking to find a communing flicker in the depths of her dark eyes. Worlds within worlds, he mused, “She is the ebb I am the flow”. The stately priestess stood by an open window, ocean breezes caressing her maroon robe with invisible fingers, as if searching the silken weave for passage into her soul. But Rejha was inscrutable - to the air of Atlantis and the waves of the sea, but not to Thoth Raismes. He knew her heart. He saw the laughing child running to keep up with her father as his huge hand opened expansively to embrace hers. He saw her mother’s cool face reflected in a mirror of polished baltic stone, seeing nothing, wanting everything; and Rejha standing silently, a child in a pool of shadows, desiring only her mother’s love. He felt Rejha’s tears as she wept over her father’s tomb; and her desolation as she gave herself to the Temple. “I am no one now,” she had spoken solemnly to herself. “I am what the temple will make of me. I serve the universe, yet I am a darkling star upon the tide of an eternal sea.” When his mind touched her in that secret place, Rejha flinched. She who had endured the most grievous of internal pain and sorrow, blanched at the sting of the flaming arrow of his love. She could not control the reflex of her heart as this swirl of loving light moved through her pain and strove to release her Spirit into the sun. She could endure it no more. The priestess turned from him. She whispered deep in her throat, “So you are a magician as well, oh, great Thoth.” “Not I,” responded the Thrice Great. “It is only your own longing come to claim you.” Her back still to him, Rejha fingered the hem of her sleeve, and then spoke with a final certainty she did not truly possess, “You have come to close this temple. It is so, for this place has been defiled, its light has been compromised in the grey dawn you see before you. I could not keep it in abeyance, for my mouth was parched with empty words and impoverished prayers. As I am sure you know, Great One, the Komer have entered this place, long sacred to the Goddess of the Sea and her consort the Delphoni. I will do as you command of me.”

Raismes placed his fingertips on her shoulder, a move which startled a woman seldom touched by flesh. She turned to face him, her expression a mixture of challenge and defeat. The blue-gold eyes of Thoth became a depth filled with wondrous life. Rejha’s failing light consolidated in its sanctuary. Here was a place she could rest, could breathe, could raise herself up once again to the day. She seemed to drift away in the mist of those eyes. Suddenly her instinct for survival caught her in its hoop and she became alert and wary, a trapped animal seeking only escape from its loving captor. “Rest, Mariya,” - he called her by her birth-name; “You guard an empty house, Do you not know that the temple is still shining within you? No one may take that from you, nor will it perish in the night. All things of God spring eternal, forever re-creating their Genesis into the world.” Raismes paused, bowing his head slightly, then he glanced into Rejha’s tear-filled eyes, like a star falling from the endless blue into a deep and murky pond. “You are no more vanquished than this temple, priestess. It is your grace which has brought me here. Your unwept tears have been hoarded for this day, for now they will fall freely and joyously from you and the veil will be lifted.” His hand feather-touched her cheek, and Rejha felt her heart explode in a passionate rush. Her whole body shuddered and from her ebony eyes, rivers of emotion poured out upon her face. She could not shut away the rampant storms that now flooded through her being. Rejha crumpled upon the pillowed floor and sobbed deeply and long. The Thoth knelt beside her, his hand resting gently on her dark head. When the waves of emotion subsided in her, Thoth spoke once again, and the tone of his voice was a soothing balm into which she could now completely surrender, “I bring unto this holy house a beginning and an end.” So it was that the Sacred An, the Alpha and Omega of the Word of God, came to reside for a time in the Temple of the Dolphin.

From the unfinished manuscript, "JOURNEY OF THE BELOVED," on the life of Thoth, Raismes of Aphra
 

more pages of Thoth's story

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