I love history and archaeology, our study of the past's remnants, but the incomparably larger body of lost human experience fascinates me even more. On the island of Crete last summer, I found myself musing about pre-Minoan cultures whose existence must be largely conjectural. We know little enough about the Minoans themselves, for all their palaces, cities and huge population -- how about earlier prehistoric people whose tracks in the sand vanished with the first high tide? For example, here's a story I heard from an old man in a tavern, waiting for a boat to Egypt five millennia ago or so. He was a bit drunk, and I have no idea if it's true.
I knew Limina as a girl before she turned priestess. We used to play together as children in Atsomouri village on the south coast, and I was even her sweetheart for a year. Go on, laugh if you like.
That was before the Orthoni came, when a king still ruled north of the hills and we served the moon-daughter and sea-mother using our old, crude ways, without temples or priestesses. All we had to guide us in those days were the keepers, women of the village who learned from each other. I remember the year my mother became a keeper; she sat with my grandmother many mornings drinking a kind of tea while my grandmother taught her the traditions. Most women as they grew older chose to be become keepers, and they shared the sacred duties between them with little fuss or formality.
Our beliefs were simple -- naïve according to the priestesses of trifold Acata. We thought the moon-daughter rides the night-boy across the aeons in an endless cycle of pleasure while the angry sun chases her relentlessly, now glimpsing her, now losing sight of her. Once in a lifetime, they used to say, she'd let the jealous old man catch her and she'd tease him with a kiss and a poke, though I've never seen it myself.
As lovers, we took inspiration from the moon-daughter riding her night boy through the evenings, ever so slowly driving his darkness into her, then drawing it out, heating the long summer with rising intensity, peaking in the autumn rains, cooling in winter, only to start all over in spring again.
We also honored the moon's lonely mother, the sea, who holds us in her arms and carries our ships on her endless tresses. We mourned for her -- born before time, she yearns after the indifferent sun so infatuated with her daughter, and diverts herself by nurturing mortals who reenact her daughter's passion and her own frustration.
Of course, the priestesses of Acata tell us these are superstitions and children's games. Perhaps they're right -- our delight was often that simple.
When I think of Limina, I remember the last sea-giving celebrated in our village. Sea-givings were among our most beloved festivities, the more so because they only occurred in certain years when the sea-mother lay calm on a particular evening in spring, I think it was the fifth Withdrawal after Awakening.
On that evening, as the sun was leaving the sky and night-boy creeping in, the entire village would gather on our sandy beach while the keepers spoke to sea-mother and consulted among themselves. All too often bad weather, wind, chill or even a cloudy sky would set the keepers keening, and the whole village would join them, both to show our sympathy and respect for sea-mother's mood and to express our sharp disappointment that the offering would not take place that year.
But when the air lay on us like silk, and small waves caressed the sand, and moon-daughter's womb glowed in empty perfection beyond the edges of the world, then the keepers at a sign would unbelt their cloaks, let fall their robes and stand naked before the mother, and all the village with a cheer would do the same.
Players would begin the music, and the keepers would lead us in a long slow procession into the sea. Of course, the children would soon be squealing and swimming, but the adults danced gradually to the throb of the great log drums until the sea touched our sacred places. Then, bowing until the water covered our heads, each made an offering.
Our offerings were nothing by Orthoni standards, containing no silver, gold or gems. They were just pretty stones or shells from the beach, given by the sea, altered by our touch and returned. Some people would carry a small stone through the year, polishing it by frequent rubbing. Others would prepare something the week before, staining a fragment of driftwood or stone with a drop of blood or semen, or painting a dream image on a shell using color from a mountain flower. Little children would simply pick up a stick or stone when the dance began, and change it with a kiss.
When the offerings had been given and each of us had lowered ourselves into the mother's arms, we would dance back to the sand, and the lead men would start the sacred fire. All the fish that had been caught that day would soon be cooking on it, and many foods that had been long in preparation were laid out on tables.
The keepers would see to it that from every dish a small piece was given to sea-mother before we ate the rest. We did this with real gratitude, but if by chance it did not happen, that was no great matter -- a keeper would make apologies and offer an extra piece. We had no fear of sea-mother being offended, because we knew she knew our hearts.
And as we cooked and ate, still dancing, we would begin to make the caresses of the waves as we had been taught from the time we were very young. First, like a wave approaching the shore, you bring your hands before the face of the person who is your shore; then, like a small wave breaking, you make the gentle caress with your finger-tips, linger just a moment and slip away.
I remember the sea-givings now with such longing, for all that we've lost. Through that whole night, we would show our affection to friends and family, gratitude to our neighbors, admiration to these who excited our desire and respect to any with whom we were on bad terms. As a wave gently breaking, you could caress anyone anywhere depending on your intention, on face, neck, shoulders, back, breasts, arms, thighs, buttocks and of course on the sacred parts, but this was the only form of love touch that was permitted before dawn.
At first, as we danced and ate and fed each other with sticky fingers and washed ourselves in the sea-mother, the keepers urged us to show our appreciation for one another.
Later, as the children fell asleep and the music slowed, the keepers joined us into sea snakes, lines of thirteen people weaving slowly around the fire, and encouraged us now to give and receive the pleasure-passion of moon-daughter and night-boy above and about us. As the snakes slowly passed one another, each of us exchanged several wave caresses with every person we passed.
For the young men especially, this could quickly become unbearable -- I remember how fast the touch of so many knowing fingers on our straining shafts brought us close to the shining moment. And yet, you always wanted to wait until you faced someone you desired before asking to give yourself to the sea. Then your sea partner would lead you into the water and give you seven times seven wave caresses to lift you out of time so you could release your seed into the sea-mother's womb.
This of course became a fine game, since many a young girl liked to show the magick of her fingers to drive you wild too soon, so you had to ask to be taken to the sea without waiting for your sweetheart. Even better was to make you lose all control and spend your seed right there in the sand, so you'd have to scoop up damp handfuls as best you could and carry it to the mother yourself. On the other hand, if you went too soon to the sea, seven times seven caresses, no matter how loving and insistent, might not give you release and then you'd have to rejoin the dance in an even more desperate state.
Women went differently to the sea, for we believed their shining moments were felt more directly by sea-mother than men's. Unlike a man, a woman was not restricted to any limit on the caresses she could receive once in the water, and unlike a man, once she had chosen someone to take her to the sea she could ask at least one other woman and sometimes more, and also additional men so long as their shafts were soft. Thus she could gather a group to support her as she lay in the water and add their caresses to those of her chosen partner until she lifted out of time and achieved her sea union. For this reason, women often waited longer to go, and stayed longer. While it was common for young girls to ask only a sweetheart and a close friend, the older women were not shy of surrounding themselves with a much larger group.
This was a feast
when admirations impractical in our daily lives were expressed for sea-mother's
pleasure. Married couples, who danced next to each other in the snakes, went
together as one person to the sea whenever either one asked or was asked. As
they shared their pleasure-passion with others, it often happened as the
keepers taught, that petty jealousies washed away in that sacred
innocence. Thinking back on the gossip that flowed constantly through our
village like a chattering stream, I believe the revelations of the sea-givings
made our marriage ties both looser and less fragile than those of the Orthoni.
Sometimes, there were surprises that were unnerving. I remember my fear as a youth when one of the warriors of the village, named Paron, asked me to take him to the sea. I knew about the love of some men for men and women for women, and had experimented with my friends as we all did, but I'd never liked Paron, a lonely man of few and harsh words, and never suspected he might admire me. Yet as we stood in the shallows and I did my best to give him release I saw in his face a gentleness and yearning I had not expected. When his lean, scar-crossed muscles shuddered and he gave his seed to the sea-mother, I looked up to see a tear streaking his cheek and he seemed not so different from any other. From that time on, though not lovers, we became friends, and I owe him much.
At the sea-giving in the year when the Orthoni came, Limina chose me late in the evening to take her to the sea. I had already given seed twice by then, but she was my sweetheart and my heart was full for her. But Limina, who had been quarreling with her friends, went to the sea with me alone, as if she were a man, choosing no one else. She stopped in the shallow water, and instead of lying down as was customary, told me to kneel before her and apply my tongue to her sacred parts.
I said what we both knew, that such was not a permitted kind of wave caress, but she tossed her long hair and said the sea-mother would permit it, and she pushed me down. I did what she asked as she stood in the shallows with her legs apart. In spite of my reluctance, I remember how the waves lapping at me behind and the taste and smell of her sacred parts drew me almost at once into a kind of trance where I felt closer to sea-mother even than in my own shining moments.
Of course, a keeper soon approached and told us to leave the water, but Limina said let us be, that sea-mother was making an exception for her pleasure. And indeed, her pleasure was clearly growing. Then another keeper, a big woman with little humor, waded out saying that any who refused to heed the sacred law must leave the celebration.
But as she grabbed the girl in her large hands, Limina lifted out of time and broke free of the keeper's grasp in her ecstasy. Rushing into the water, she swam like a dolphin away from shore. We heard her voice a minute later from far out, calling back that such interference with the sea-mother's pleasure would carry a heavy price for our village. To say such a thing was a bad omen at best, but we had little idea how true her words would be.