A Journey of Healing

When I was invited to engage in this Novel writing challenge on Instagram I jumped at the opportunity to generate a story line, weaving its direction on a daily basis, using random Tarot and Oracle decks that called to guide the journey.

The Hero

Who is the hero here? Is it the writer who set an intention to write some dark dark fairy stories for this challenge? Is it her working altar space or the incense adding to a mood? Or perhaps it’s the resources she has gathered over years! 

Ultimately the hero is the process of coming to the page and engaging on a daily basis, trusting that there is a force assisting the creative process. 

By way of introduction meet Grieselda. She is the Heroine of this story. You may well. wonder when she became the forlorn figure we see, bent double, wearing a crown of thorns and consumed with regret? 

Be patient! Almost all will be revealed eventually.

What we can say at this stage is that it all began at the beginning when, instead of being the child she thought she was signed up to be, she suffered five of Pentacles style deprivation at the hands of an avaricious mother. 

Her mother had used a sperm bank so she never met her father. Her mother, a priestess in an unusual cult, only wanted to mould a child in her shape. Devoid of any maternal instincts she was, instead, totally obsessed with her own standing in that group of dubious characters and she regarded Grieselda as a stone around her neck.

So one day, when. Grieselda was only eight, she insisted on her learning, as she had done, via the school of hard knocks. She sent her into the woods with no shoes, bare thread clothes and a box of matches. 

Out in the woods Grieselda tried to sell matches to get basic food but well!!! You may think you know how it all went but there were many turns of fate, that we. will uncover with time, that shaped her. 

So we begin! We have to start somewhere!

Dressed in the blue, of the clearest waters that fill a nearby lake, Griselda sat with downcast eyes, wearing a crown of the thorns that had pierced her heart. She felt trapped, ensnared in a gilded cage of regrets. Her head bowed she was as depleted of energy as a recently bankrupt billionaire. 

Immersed in a world of pain she sat counting her sorrows and missed opportunities, only to be jolted from her revery of misery by the sound of a deep throated voice. An old gnome materialised, offering her a Talisman. It was a decidedly scary door knocker purported to provide some protection.

Before she could respond the gnome morphed into the form of Belphegor, non other than one of the Lords of Hell. Clearly, this Lord who presides over sloth, had arrived to disrupt Grieselda’s voluntary isolation. He didn’t mince words. He said that by the law of the Cosmos fours invoke the earth sign, pointed to the four swords that were acting as a kind of shield and told her that if she sat cross legged in a lotus position, she would invoke the support of Mother Earth. According to him this was the pose oracular women adopted and we all know how famed the Sibyls were.

Betrayed by others, familiar with strangers bearing gifts in fairy stories, skeptical about oracular incantations, Grieselda met Belphegor’s gaze and pointedly asked for some formal identification of his status and what she would be expected to be do in return for his gift and sage advice.

A wind sprang up, a low rumble echoed in the distance. At first it was barely discernable, Grieselda heard a faint growl that seemed to come from the belly of the earth. Dark clouds gathered like an army about to launch an attack, the earth opened and a hooded figure emerged.

Grieselda blinked! Belphegor had transformed himself into a Crone who simply said “Come child! I will ferry YOU down the Alpha, the river of birth to meet the Sphinx”.

Clearly this was an offer one couldn’t refuse. Grieselda understood that the journey would throw up challenges, but to travel on the river of birth filled her with an unfamiliar optimism.

The Journey Down the River of Rebirth Begins