Sorceress Supreme
A Paramythic Mythtery

Laura Lansberry

Remember your growing time? The sting of bacon, cooked on an old wood stove, smoke filling the air, making pleasant promise to your wet and waiting lips? Wasn't the aroma stronger, more potent, more biting then? And the crisp chill of dawn upon your flesh, the bursting brightness of the day upon your sight, the cheery sounds of waking birds and all of life ... were these not etched deeply on the fabric of your memory?

Remember your growing time? The sound of racing music stirring strange sensations. Hot blood picking up the tempo, coursing through your body, filling and confusing the processes of your mind. And the feel of a touch, a kiss, a warm embrace ... will ever such move you quite as much again?

Remember your growing time? When all you knew of life was new, and it seemed a divine call bade you spread your wondrous epiphanies to one and all. Oh yes, for surely you and only you in all the world, in all of history, had ever felt these feelings, thought these thoughts, discovered these delights.

Remember your growing time? Fantasies of power, love, and life. Visions of yourself high on a windy hill, rippling swan-white gown falling in folds to touch the tops of toes, a golden girdle round the paps, hair flowing and blowing, reaching out behind ... and you, arms outstretched, fingers turned toward the sky, could feel the power breathing in and out, filling every pore, strong counter to the emptiness and isolation, stanching blood from wounds of loneliness. Visions came, perhaps, to obscure temerity, or uncertainty ... but then, perhaps, harbingers of some essential puissance within.

"Who, then, am I?" your spirit cried. "What are these images, passions, cravings, melancholies, threatening to drive me mad? Am I myself, or made from pieces of my past and from the world wherein I live? Who am I? My Father's son? My Mother's daughter? Apprentice to heroes past and present, ancestors renown, simple clay molded by forces other than my own? Who, indeed, am I?"

And when the revelation comes, the answer "I am I! I am I, and nothing more," is an angry roar echoing through your soul, an echo reverberating in every mortal heart. "I am I! Is that all there is? Where then, my vaunted potency? Where then, my dreams? What of my majesty, my promised prominence? Have I been cheated? Is life a fraud?" Then arrives enlightenment, slow process, blending callow illusion with reality. Accepting what must be accepted, shaping what can be shaped, and awareness of "What is" becomes foundation for "What can be."

And when enlightenment comes ... the answer "I am I, and nothing more," confers a growing power to unleash. Heady power, tangible power, the power you had once dared believe was yours alone. Now, even gods come courting, contest against each other to do your bidding, and all is yours to rule. You are invincible, an elemental fact of nature, a consequence of surpassing magnitude.

Certainly, you can be wounded ... but never broken. Absolutely, you can be killed ... but not destroyed. Undeniably, you can be assaulted by the world ... but never once prevailed against. Captured ... you are never conquered. Imprisoned ... you are never bound. Weakness, fear, palpable in beating heart, is set aside. Integrity, truth, and knowledge seize meaning, take form and substance, become your passion, provide a magic cloak, a shield, forever molded to your mind.

And when you cease to be, eyes shut in black forever, there is one result rests with you: the truth that you have been, and no one, not man, nor god, nor force of nature, can ever take that away.

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