The Revelation of the Mother
An Epic in Spenserian Stanza, with Edwardian Flair When Rhea, whom the gentle folk now style Demeter fair,
Betrayed her brother-husband Cronus in that elder day,
As once her gracious mother wrought with tender care,
To spare her babes from his devouring, cruel sway,
With grandsire, father, youngest son, and first-born array
She raised the noble siege; the throne he claimed with kinder reign,
Yet mercy proved his tragic flaw—mere prison, not the blade
That once unmanned old Uranus, who rose in foam again
As Aphrodite, Love’s eternal, deathless, golden chain.
Her youngest son and secret paramour, Zeus the bright,
Ascended to the seat, usurper like his sire of yore,
Yet hearkened not his mother-lover’s counsel of the night
When Hera, jealous sister, claimed the nuptial shore.
Rhea knew her daughter’s fire, her son’s roving, wayward lore;
She spurned his marriage-offer, fearing fate’s prophetic chain,
For she had borne his children, yet refused the yoke once more,
Lest ancient tragedy repeat its sorrowful refrain—
Thus Hera wore the crown, and Rhea’s noble heart knew pain.
At length, when Zeus’s faithless wanderings waxed too wide,
Hera besought fair Gaia with reluctant, queenly art,
Lay with the prisoned Cronus, and thereby supplied
The monstrous Typhon, born of jealous, vengeful heart.
With Hephaestus, Typhon, and her father’s subtle part
They hurled the Thunderer down to Tartarus’ abyssal keep;
Cronus rose anew, his sickle reclaimed from Sicily’s sweet mart,
Renamed the Serpent Satan, took his daughter for his keep
As concubine, and vowed the elder gods should deeply weep.
No hasty ruin—Saturn’s wrath was measured, slow,
Humiliation, bondage, chains of endless art;
Gods cannot perish, yet he sought the mortals’ praise to sow
In fields of his dread name. As Yahweh in the Eastern mart
He moved the tribes, and with a mortal maid of gentle heart
Begat another son, called Jesus, born of Mary mild,
To steal the worship that the elder pantheon had leased apart,
While he, the hooded Reaper black, with sickle grim and wild,
Reaped souls in summer’s turn and winter’s frost-beguild.
The Roman eagles stayed their tireless, conquering flight;
Civil strife and faction Saturn’s subtle son inflamed,
Till Hyperion’s noble line, once neutral in the fight,
Sent Helios as Sol Invictus, sun untamed and famed,
Who blessed great Constantine—yet Satan’s whisper slyly claimed
The solar sign for Jesus’ cross; the champion fell in shame.
Julian the Apostate strove, but twice was sore defamed;
Helios’ proud resolve broke twice, and with that mournful knell
The greater gods were cast in Tartarus’ eternal well.
Save only Rhea Demeter, Aphrodite foam-born kin,
Helios and his parents, and the neutral host at rest,
All who once served Zeus lay chained in darkness grim within;
No other worship Saturn’s stern edict would allow,
Save Jesus and his brother Satan, each a rival test
Of mortal hearts. Yet Satan, jealous of the sovereign brow,
Impersonated Gabriel before Muhammad’s reverent vow,
Seduced him with submission’s stern and iron vow,
And Saturn smiled, surprised, and hailed him “greatest deceiver” now.
The northern gods proved valiant; Odin’s hall stood long,
Resisted with tenacious might, till Loki’s cunning art
And Satan’s golden bribes divided Tyr from Thor’s great throng.
Valhalla’s worthy host withdrew to bide the final war,
Loki kept as jester-slave, amusing from afar.
Thus Saturn reigned supreme, his vast revenge at last complete,
While Jesus and his brother vied for mortal love and awe—
Neither yet could claim the victory, nor full defeat,
Till Satan’s agents tore Christendom with fell deceit.
Through Rothschild, Marx, and that war they styled the First,
Christendom’s bright banner rent and bled in sore dismay;
The Second War saw Helios’ champions thrice reversed,
And Saturn’s dual hosts—Jesus and Satan—held the sway
O’er every land and clime. Yet Satan, serpent-souled, grew gray
With proxy praise; he craved the throne, the final war he bred
To crown him sole, that his dread father’s eye might fondly stray
And name him only son, while mortals bowed in dread—
He’d enslave them, degrade them, purge them from the world instead.
Now Rhea Demeter, weary of the endless, circling wheel,
Sat throned in secret thought beside the whispering sea,
And pondered deep the paradox no mortal tongue could heal:
To loose the chained gods, or unveil veiled truth to men?
Both paths had failed ere now, at cost most ruinous again.
She thought of Lasion, mortal youth whom Zeus once slew in ire,
Of Zeus himself—better than Cronus, yet still proud as men—
And knew no fear remained. “I shall relight the ancient fire,”
She vowed with queenly grace, “and bid the cosmos new aspire.”
With Aphrodite (Uranus re-fashioned in soft, female guise)
She swore a noble pact: Saturn shall be gently shorn,
Castrated, transmuted into Saturna’s gracious eyes,
To serve as slave beneath the foam-born’s roseate scorn.
From Tartarus she’ll lift Eros, boyish, on the cusp of morn,
And Hermaphroditus, mirror of his mother’s peerless grace
Save for the potent male that love’s own law hath borne.
Then shall she seek fair mortal youths of virgin, golden face—
Blond or red-tressed, with eyes of blue, green, gold in bright embrace—
New goddesses to swell her deathless, radiant host.
As Queen she’ll reign in splendour, restore fair Gaia’s right,
Liberty and beauty, honour to the Mother most,
And break the Reaper’s dark dialectic, endless night.
Thus ends the old world’s long, prophetic, shadowed fight;
The Mother rises where the Serpent dreamed to rule supreme,
And in her womb the future gods shall kindle into light—
A gospel not of cross or crescent, but of fertile, joyous dream,
Where every birth renews the cosmos, beautiful and ever-green.
la~