It began around the time of my Saturn Return, which of course will surprise no one. Saturn can be a ruthless sonofabitch. I suddenly began to feel called to a billion and one (<--- slight exaggeration!) goddesses... and none at the same time. Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it. I was a bit like a crow, attracted to each shiny bauble that caught my black eye but equally as likely to just forget about it and move on when the other eye saw a glimmer. I made a list the other day in true Virgoan fashion and realized that there are ten--TEN!!-- goddesses that I'm feeling drawn to. Having been a one goddess (hell, one DEITY) witch for most of my life, this is, um, new. And uncomfortable. And making me batshit crazy.
I figured that maybe when Saturn was done with me things would fall into place. I was okay with change (on helluva remarkable statement from this Taurus Moon, for sure). I knew that I might not come out on the other side with the divinity to whom I had devoted so many years and so much life energy. I thought, maybe, I'd end up with someone darker or more Saturnine or just something different. After all, I'm not 11 anymore. I thought maybe I'd even come out with more than one deity demanding my attention, though that sounds far more arrogant than it felt at the time. I was just biding my time.
But it didn't work out that way. Saturn left Virgo, and I was still left with a mess that seemed impossible to slog through.
So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I began to make offerings and devote my extra time (ha!) to study and asked that there be a definite sign that someone--anyone--was going to claim me.
Cue crickets.
(Okay, okay. That's not completely true. My apprentice wanted to give me a reading with his new Goddess Tarot and the culminating card happened to be my matron goddess. Of course, the reading had nothing to do with my crisis of faith, so I've been talking myself out of that particular "sign".)
But, amazingly, this post has nothing to do with goddesses at all. tee-hee! During the same time that I was struggling to puzzle all of this out and sitting quite comfortably with my relationship to the Stag King, someone else entirely decided to step in.
I'd done a bit of a ritual, a simple thing really, and asked that I receive some message or answer to my dilemma in my dreams that night. Dreamwork has always figured prominently in my practice, going back to the days of listening to my beloved grandmother telling her dreams to the walls when I was a child. That night, there was no vision of a goddess. There was only Dionysos in all his typical ecstatic, wine guzzling, devil-may-care glory. What? The? Fuck? Now, in all fairness, I'd been reading a book that included a little blurb about Dionysos and had quoted said passage on my Tumblr. So I shrugged it off.
Fast forward a bit. (In fact, I need to go back to my Tumblr and see just how much time has elapsed because it's been quite awhile.) It is the night of the last full moon before Samhain. I am dreaming of a man who constantly changes form. He is dangerous and alluring at the same time. He literally unzips his facade from the top of the head down and steps out a completely different person. In the end he is wearing a jewel green-toned poet shirt and has thick, but short, black hair. I think he is flirting with me, but he may be trying to kill me. I wake as I'm saying the name "Dionysus" aloud. My husband had just gotten out of the shower and heard me say the name very distinctly. (He thought I was dreaming about another man. hahahaha! I suppose I was, in a way.)
He hadn't introduced himself to me in the dream. Somehow, in that borderland between dreaming and waking, I apparently just knew.
This may be nothing. This may be a passing thing or a way for my mind to think of something other than my lack of input from the female divine. I don't know. But I haven't been able to shake it, and that means something I suppose.
I'm a bit frightened, I'll admit. I'm kinda hoping that nothing comes of this. I am decidedly NOT a Dionysian kind of person-- at least, not if my version of what that means is correct. Sure, I love a good bout of ecstatic trance as much as the next witch. I'm prone to dancing wildly and singing at the top of my lungs whenever the hell I feel like it. But I was also dubbed The Ice Queen in high school and college (not because I didn't put out but because I can be a stone cold bitch and have chronically cold extremities). I don't drink, like, AT ALL, though I've made mead and beer for others to consume. I hate the taste of wine. Don't even get me started on sex.
But none of that will matter if it's where I'm meant to be.
