There was a day when my “self” came crashing down around me. It hit me as a physical blow. The shards of who I once was slashed my body; my stomach contracted, I labored to breathe, my heart froze to ice. I went to the desert under the night stars, fell to my knees and placed a palm on the sand. “Mother, I need you,” I cried out.

The sands before me shifted. One head lifted, then another, then the great beast with seven heads roared up before me, rising into the sky many times my height. She rose with him, riding his back in triumph, Babalon the Great Mother, voluptuous in her scarlet gown, bearing in one hand a cup filled with blood and in the other hand a sword. “I refuse no one,” she said. “When you call me, I will always answer.”

The heads of the beast slavered. Seven pairs of eyes raked my trembling body. “Mother, I love you,” I said, “but I fear the beast. Can you descend from him?”

“Why should I leave him?” she said. “He is my power, I wield him.”

The heads snapped the air all around me. I said, “I fear he will kill me.”

“He will kill you,” she said serenely. “You will die. Your death was doomed from the moment you were born.”

“Is that day today?” I pleaded.

She laughed. “Face him,” she said.

On shaking legs I pushed myself erect, clenched my fists at my sides, and stared into the eyes of one head. That head softened and nodded. Emboldened, I stared down each head in turn, until the beast stood before me quietly.

The Lady who rode him said, “Why have you called me?”

“I am broken,” I said.

“Come to me,” she said. One of the heads lowered to the ground. Hesitantly I stepped onto the flat skull. As it began to lift I staggered a little and then regained my footing. The head lifted until I was high enough to look directly into her eyes. She said, “Ask.”

My tormented heart longed for peace. “Can you take my pain?” I whispered.

“The pain you feel is my gift,” she said.

A red haze of anger flashed through my body. “Why should I love you?” I shouted at her. “If your gift is pain, how can I trust you?”

“My gift is life,” she said. “It is all my play. Joy, pain, pleasure, death, friendship, sorrow, separation, union. All comes from me, all returns to me.”

Her words sparked in me a flash of insight. “If it all comes from you, then it can go to you. Can you take my pain?”

In response she held out the cup to me. “Give it to me.”

I studied it for a moment. “How?” I said.

“Hold out your hand.” I held out my left hand, palm up. Another of the beast’s heads struck at me, biting down onto my hand, piercing the skin so it bled. I jerked and cried out in surprise and pain. She held out the chalice again. I held my hand over it so that drops of blood fell from my palm into the cup. As the blood dripped from me my stomach softened, I could breathe deeply again.

When the pain was gone I was hollow, empty. I lifted my eyes to her, pleading without words for comfort.

She offered me the cup again. “Drink,” she said.

The gleaming chalice roiled with blood. It repulsed me. “You want me to drink that?” I said. “Blood?”

“Blood is life,” she said. “The amrita of the cup is renewal.”

I took the cup, lifted it to my mouth, and then balked as the scent of metal choked me. “DRINK!” she roared, and the beast’s heads lifted and hissed, and terrified, I choked the contents down. When the cup touched my lips the scent transformed to honey. Delicious intoxicating wine flowed down my throat.

She took the cup from me and laid it aside on the beast’s great back and set the sword beside it. Her two arms gathered me into her, cradling me against her. My heart cracked open, finally, blessedly, released. As the ice of my heart melted I relaxed into the deep delicious softness of her body, held in love, filled with love, drowning in love.