On Día de Muertos Rosalía came home
after the candle-light procession
and the block party
and she made offerings
of fruit, cake, honey, milk and wine
at her ancestor shrine, as well as
some marigolds, sugar skulls and cerveza
she’d picked up while she was out.
Sure, it was kitschy and a bit outside
the tradition she practiced,
but Bacchic Orphism was all about
regional strains and syncretic blending.
Besides, her maternal line appreciated the nod,
and maybe it would get them to stop nagging her
about attending Mass; they didn’t expect her
to give up her worship of Dionysos and Hekate,
they just wanted to make sure she stayed
in good relationship with Mary and los Santos
since they were the ones who truly mattered
in the Catholic pantheon.
After she was finished with her devotions,
including lighting some incense for Hestia
and the household Agathos Daimon, Rosalía
moved on to her operative shrine
where she conducted all of her magical ceremonies.
It was covered in red, white and black altar cloths
with candles in the same color scheme, herbs,
offering dishes, representations of the Toys,
other ritual tools (particularly those dedicated to Hekate)
and a genuine human skull she’d picked up
with legit papers from an oddities shop for a steal,
since they were going out of business
as a result of the gentrification bust
once all the hipsters moved on.
So far the skull had mostly been decorative
but tonight she planned to put it to good use
in the performance of a modified version
of Crowley’s adaptation of the Bornless Rite,
which she preferred the more evocative title of,
the Invocation of the Heart Girt with a Serpent,
because that sounded Starry Bull as fuck.
And it was, just not in the way she expected.
After she finished the whole:
I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the Feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire!
I am He! the Truth!
I am He! Who hate that evil should be wrought in the World!
I am He, that lightningeth and thundereth.
I am He, from whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth:
I am He, whose mouth flameth:
I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light:
I am He, the Grace of the World:
“The Heart Girt with a Serpent” is My Name!
part, she added in this bit from Georges Bataille:
Man has escaped from his head just as the condemned man has escaped from his prison. He has found beyond himself not God, who is the prohibition against crime, but a being who is unaware of prohibition. Beyond what I am, I meet a being who makes me laugh because he is headless; this fills me with dread because he is made of innocence and crime; he holds a steel weapon in his left hand, flames like those of a Sacred Heart in his right. He reunites in the same eruption Birth and Death. He is not a man. He is not a God either. He is not me but he is more than me: his stomach is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster.
And that’s when John the Baptist
possessed by Orpheus
possessed by Asterion the Black Sun
entered her apartment,
followed by
a troop of Neapolitans
who lost their heads
and now reside in Purgatory.
All of them, at once,
wanted to speak through the skull
creating pandæmonium and silence
in Rosalía’s head.
The whole book,
which she hasn’t read
because it hasn’t been published yet
(or has it?)
played out behind her eyes,
and when the mental movie finished
she ran to the toilet
and threw up a great mess of margarita.
That’s when she blacked out,
but apparently kept going
because when she woke the following morn,
head feeling thunderstruck,
or like someone drove a red Taurus through it,
she discovered strange smells,
candlewax and wine everywhere,
dried yolk on a couple walls,
and every single shrine was piled
with plentiful offerings,
and her refrigerator was empty
again. Sure, it had happened before
(Spirit-work or a developing
neurological disorder; who knows?)
but even for an Orpheotelest of her caliber
that was a lot of ritual
for just one.
She would have given herself a high five
(they don’t have Hallmark cards
for occasions like these)
but her head felt like those eggs must have
after colliding with the wall.
“This is your brain;
this is your brain on Dionysos.”
