My dream took place in the Middle East, perhaps in Judea, during the time of the Roman occupation. In it, I was a relatively new initiate of a goddess, though not completely new; the shrine I served had gotten a new group of initiates since I had come. The shrine was run by women only; we were virgin priestesses.
I forgot on awaking the name of the goddess we served. She was an ancient goddess, identified with but not identical to Cybele. In the dream, she was also connected to Saturn or Cronos _ we said "clothed" in Saturn. Her cult was very old.
I had become an initiate of this goddess by choice. The cult had fascinated me; I had tried and tried to become a part of it. I was one of the younger of many children and not much use to my parents; though they didn't approve, they gave in at last and sold me to the shrine.
The shrine had a walled compound divided into four quadrants; at its center was a building holding ritual areas and housing. The younger priestesses couldn't go beyond the wall; the more senior priestesses could.
Ours wasn't that popular or large a cult; we were poor, our central building and walls mud-brick and dusty. The surrounding Roman culture held the cult in disrepute, and it was in decline, the organization lax, most priestesses not devout. The new initiates were each given a new goddess-name but little else; we didn't receive formal training but were expected to pick up what we could.
At the beginning of the dream, the whole priestesshood was assembled in the temple precinct. It was a hot day, brown dust drifting on the ground, the air full of dust. The assembly didn't seem official; each priestess was dressed differently from the others, and we stood around talking. We were gathered because a man had come to us for an oracle, about some ugly or niggling matter for which he could not get no oracle from more official cults.
Then suddenly the talking was over, and we were parading the image of our goddess around the courtyard.
The image was boat-shaped. She was made of wood and sat on a wooden throne, which enclosed her and on which she was paraded, four women carrying the throne platform as they would a litter. The throne itself was sacred to Saturn but was merely present to bear the goddess. Saturn wasn't important to us; we drew him into our rites so the Romans would let us perform them. The Saturn throne was roughly cylindrical and had oblong raised shapes on it.
Both the Saturn-throne and the goddess-shape were relatively newly made, and the cracks and depressions of both held remnants of the yellow meal the priestesses shook on them in blessing. As we paraded the goddess image around the precinct, we continued to throw yellow meal. Priestesses beat drums and chanted; a high-pitched flute played. One girl, draped in pale yellow with green markings _ her street clothes, nothing from the shrine _ seemed to go into a trance as she followed the image, and waved her arms. The new initiates nudged each other and laughed, but I told her earnestly she must have followed our goddess in a past life.
She glowed in response and told me she had seen herself, me and another ritualist as three tall flowers, or rays of light. I thought the image must have come to her from the showers of yellow meal. But I marked her as one who might truly be attuned to the goddess.
We walked around the central shrine building deosil; then the priestesses bearing the goddess-image carried it into the temple building. A group of priestesses followed it, among them one new initiate. The rest of us did not follow. Presently the image was brought out again, but the working in the building continued.
For those outside, the show was over. We milled about. My mind was on the young woman, the new initiate, who had gone into the central building. I saw again her walking proudly among the other priestesses, her head held high.
I realized what was going on in the ritual area: They were offering the girl as a sacrifice.
Hints dropped, inklings, images from the past came suddenly into focus. Some of the initiates went on to be priestesses; some went on to be sacrifices. This was the great secret of our cult, the reason the Romans disdained us. Learning this secret was as great for me as learning the secret of sex.
I was under threat of death. I had to consolidate my position, be worth more to the elder priestesses alive than dead, but how? I needed to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. Finding the young woman who was putting away the image of the goddess, I got her to show me how she did so. One covered it completely with yellow meal with a feather. She showed me quite off-hand, because I asked.
I was filled with fear. I had gotten myself into the wrong place. I had tried so hard to enter this priestesshood; now I had taken the vows and it was too late, I couldn't back out. The human sacrifices were secret. The priestesses would kill me if I tried to leave the order. I had one hope: I had stayed alive this long, even ignorant, which meant I could probably live longer. I wasn't in as much danger as the new girls; I'd already picked up some learning and had some seniority.
That evening, a breath of cool after the oven of the day, we had an evening off. The social barriers among the priestesses relaxed. The senior priestesses had gone swimming, and a group of them stood in the dark leaning in a window of the precinct wall. Some of the younger girls were talking to them, hoping to gain favor or just hanging around. The elder priestesses were joshing among themselves; they had taken some kind of hallucinogenic priestess-drug, as they had in the oracle. We younger girls had been drinking wine, which we weren't supposed to do, but everyone was off-duty; the elder priestesses knew but just laughed about it.
I brought up the girl who had been entranced by the rites to introduce her to the chief priestess. This woman was relatively young, kind, patient, good to the new initiates, and I liked her. Some of the priestesses were only power-hungry or bloodthirsty, but the chief priestess was genuinely interested in service to the goddess. Still, I was frightened to approach her.
Hesitantly, leaning next to the high priestess, I introduced the new girl. I couldn't remember the girl's outer-world name or new goddess-name, which was a fault; I was supposed to know at least her goddess-name. I tried to cover it with a joking manner, slapping my knee, covered with spangles I'd worn for the rite, saying, "I can't remember your name!" My idea was to pass along the news of this girl's trance. I knew I myself wasn't particularly psychic, so I wanted to be connected in the senior priestesses' minds to this girl, who was. I wanted also to gain points as being intelligent enough to notice the girl's potential.
I explained what had happened. The chief priestess listened, dark eyes upon me. The gaze made me tremble. Her notice could be a good thing, or it could be dangerous. I realized too I was attracted to her and wondered vaguely what might come of such an attraction.
But my explanation was interrupted. The other elder priestesses had continued talking, in particular one older, skinny woman, hatchet-faced, her thick-painted eyes oddly feminine in her petrified face. Suddenly into a silence she said, all alone, "and she drowned."
The elder priestesses turned on her, shocked, as if she'd said something wrong. It took the speaker a moment to realize this. Her callousness stunned me; it was clear she spoke of an incident that had just happened swimming. But the atmosphere told me that what the elder priestesses reacted to wasn't that the girl had died, but that the hatchet-faced priestess had said so aloud. Especially it shocked them that she had done so in front of new initiates.
Hatchet-face bore out my suspicion. She spoke as if she dealt with death daily. The drowning was an accident, not a ritual sacrifice, but her callousness about it confirmed what I'd thought: The cult did human sacrifice.
It's clear from the dream I was not a sacrifice who would have gone willingly. In that life, if a different life it was, I was deathly afraid of human sacrifice and thought it evil. Possibly I had been raised with Roman sentiments.
When I woke from this dream, my inner voice compelled me to write it down, though it frightened me. I felt that the dream explained the fear that made me take more than ten years to come to goddess worship in this lifetime. Another thing I sensed at the time was that this goddess wanted to return and be worshipped, but that for our time she would accept a more benign form. In trying to better imagine her, I asked for and received a more appealing face. She looked to me like a Cretan goddess then, flounce-skirted, with many ornaments hanging from her flounces.
Why were women sacrificed in the dream? My theory on awaking was because the cult couldn't get men any more. Or perhaps men were sacrificed as well.
What oracle was our sacrifice performed for? I don't know.
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