The red flame flickers on the wall of the cave. Making the great elk move,
making the mastodont breathe, making the hunters race and kill. Watch them
seeking to placate and understand the world above. This they know, this they
understand: There is darkness, everywhere, outside. The dark is everywhere;
and through the sun comes up, and through the fires blossom, and are tamed,
the darkness is there. The darkness is waiting. And the things in darkness.
That whisper before before they feast, they are to be placated and persuaded,
they are to be loved and sacrificed to, they are to be prayed to and
distrusted.

In the nile delta the sands whisper of dog-faced Gods, azure scarab beetles,
tall shadow women, that pad like great lions across the dunes. Blood and honey
drips from their paws.

From far Chin and distand Chu, by the waters of the yellow river The dragons
are walking, discoursing in sage analects, 'revere spirits, but keep them at
distance'. The lords of the nine heavens ride chariots of orchids, and the wu
woman dreams of dark bamboo groves, the lord of the east comes to loosen her
robes of white rainbow. She dreams they ride in a fish-scale chariot, flanked
by griffins, and the paper kites are fluttering. When she wakes he is gone.
for a while she loiters, pacing to and fro. She dreams again: from meetings
and partins none can ever escape.

In the lands of olive and laurel, where the gods walk, we watch a soldier piss
around his clothes, lope away a wolf. --At the heart of every mystery,
whispers the twice-born boy, who rose from the dead. --Is the grain of my
corn, and the wine of my blood. Drama, vines and goat-feet follow him into the
world. The witch-queen always has three faces. Who waits at the crossroads,
for your sacrifice. Waits in the underworld, in the sacred groves, in the
moon. She sits beneath a dead king, hanging from a tree branch, and will show
you all manner of elegant charms. Abracadabra Abraxas...

People kill what they fear. They burned and drowned, and hanged those they saw
as witches, the devil's servants. The wise women and the cunning men, the
unfortunate, the lost and the strange. While in the forest and the high place
and beside the great stones, the old religions endured.