Blood Moon

The Dying Priestess Has A Vision of Her People’s Future

by Karen Shearer Voorhees

Every realization of depth comes with a terrible burden. Those who are permitted to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms—that was the bargain.

 Ken Wilber, “One Taste”

I know I will die in two days. I know where, and how, and who will drive the knife blade into my heart as the full moon rises. That is not why I tremble. I tremble for you, my people. What will become of you? I pray that you will catch the story my spirit is struggling to tell, and heed my warning, before my last breath leaves my body.

Sixteen long years ago you made me your High Priestess. As we have gone forward together in our great change from foraging to farming, I have served our new gods by loving and serving you. You, in turn, have loved and supported me — until now.

In this latest crisis you have turned on me.

I cannot blame you for your bewilderment. Our great change has not been easy. At times some of you have doubted, yearning to return to the days when we roamed in small bands on the bosom of the-earth-our-mother. Some among you have feared all along that our ancient spirits would curse us for leaving our old lifeways.

Still, until now we had always endured in the face of every challenge, even through the troubles of these latest years: drought, and roaming bands of displaced tribes, and unrest here in town.

But when the shadow of the earth fell upon our last full moon and darkened her face to blood, you, my people, despaired.

Lunar eclipse

“A monster is eating the moon!” one of you cried.

Within a heartbeat many of you flared in fright and took up the cry. The demons of terror and chaos spread like wildfire among you. A few cried out that the ancient spirits of the land had risen against us and cursed us at last. This fear too spread quickly.

Very soon I gave up trying to calm you with words alone. Instead I led you in songs and dances. You thought these were to strengthen the moon in her struggle against the demon that was devouring it as a snake swallows an egg. And that was true in its way, but the songs and dances I gave you that night were also an outlet for your frenzy, lest you go out of your minds with terror.

I helped you pace yourselves to keep dancing and singing for nearly half the night, until the moon came back again in her fullness. Then I helped you tell yourselves that your valor had vanquished the demon. As indeed it had, but the demons that night were in your hearts and minds, not in the sky.

I thought we had survived this crisis too, as we have survived so many others. But in the days that followed, our war-leader Batumivir cunningly stirred your fears again. It was he who incited you to demand that I go to the gods as a human sacrifice.

“Let our High Priestess herself go before the gods at the next full moon, and beg them to take us back into their good favor,” he urged. “Only our best will do!”“Let our High Priestess herself go before the gods at the next full moon, and beg them to take us back into their good favor,” he urged. “Only our best will do!”

I knew that his real purpose, unspoken and self-serving, was to be rid of me. I have long thwarted his will to dominate the town council. But I also saw your terror. And when you came to me and pleaded, I thought I saw a way out of my own secret misery.

When I said yes to you I, too, had an unspoken purpose. Rather than suffer any longer from the cancer that was slowly devouring my body, I chose a swift, clean death from a knife-thrust to the heart. I chose to leave you and abandon my struggle with Batumivir and his followers.

Now I see that this was self-serving on my part. Perhaps I too, like you, lost my courage. Perhaps this is why my vision failed me. I surely did not foresee what happened next.

How quickly some of you allowed the voice of my enemy Batumivir to seduce you further. Instead of pulling together, as I have taught you, you gave in to your fears once again and let him turn you against each other. In your distress you even listened to those who declared that we must turn time backward, and leave our farms to return to our smaller tribes and our old foraging ways.

You listened to those who would tell a six-year-old to go back to suckling at his mother's breast.

Then you listened when Batumivir made me the scapegoat for all that has gone amiss in recent years. More and more of you blamed me for leading you on a false path. When the brutal men of Batumivir's war band seized me, and abused my body for three days in the public square, none of you tried to stop them. Some of you joined them. Others of you, horrified though you were, enjoyed watching what they did to me.

My terror for you runs as deep as my anguish for myself. Few of you can see the unclean spirits that you have drawn to yourselves, but they are with you even now. By the deeds of these last days you have cursed and degraded yourselves for a long, long time to come.

My people! What will become of you?

None of the men who were beating me meant to kill me. They’d meant me to live two more days, until the next full moon. Batumivir knew better than to deprive you of the promised thrill of a human sacrifice. And you—in your innocence most of you still thought my ceremonial death would win you back the gods’ favor. When Gorin struck the blow that broke my rib, he was more horrified than anyone else.

When my rib snapped, and its jagged edge pierced my lung, and all the muscles of my torso clenched in spasm, and my breath stopped, and my spirit leaped out of agony into the light… it’s hard to go on, even in thought. My spirit weeps as I remember how eagerly I entered the tunnel that opened before me. How grateful I was to die.

My people, I wish I could tell you this: we are so much more alive outside our earth bodies than in them. I wish I could tell you. But then, if we knew, none of us would want to stay in our bodies at all. Maybe that is why, under the wisdom of the gods who guide us, we forget our true glory while we dwell on the-earth-our-mother in these vessels of clay.

I gather my courage and continue, struggling to shape in words the wonder that awaited me on the far side of that tunnel: the garden of the gods; the ringing radiance. Even the grass and flowers there are made of light, and of music and fragrance too. How can I describe trees that are as vast as hills yet delicate as gossamer, or living cascades that sing with the voice of many waters? How can I name colors beyond those our earthly eyes can see?

On a terrace ringed by fountains of nectar that filled the space with bliss I was received by beings of light. Mighty as they are, and puny and flawed as I am, they greeted me with tenderness and with absolute, unconditional love.

Their cleansing light washed through me. I knelt in spirit and surrendered to its scouring. In the face of such acceptance there is no place to hide anything, least of all the rage and horror that were reverberating throughout my body of light. The jagged shards of my rage sliced through me like knives as the gods drew them forth from me: an agony greater than any I had yet known. It took an utmost effort of will to release my darkness into those searching hands. But the pain passed, in a moment it seemed, and then I was entirely at peace in the presence of these glorious beings.

So it was in truth more their doing than mine that after your betrayal, and three days of torment at your hands, I did not ask the gods for vengeance, or even for justice. In that garden of light I asked those beings of light to forgive what you had done to your High Priestess. Then I recited to them your prayers for mercy, exactly as you had begged of me before Batumivir turned you against me.

The gods had to help me with this too. They reached out and held me with their strength ere I finished, or I would not have made it through.

When I fell silent, everything around me had become even lovelier. A golden mist now filled the terrace with a sweetness I could taste and feel as well as see. It was joy, joy bursting forth from these godly beings. They were that pleased with my feeble effort to forgive.

They used no words at all but a pure, shaped essence of meaning that is impossible to mistake. It flowed into my understanding in swirls of unearthly music. In human words, what they said to me might run thus:

“You have opened the way for us to show you our hopes for your people. When you have seen what you are about to see, and have understood the choice that lies before them, you will be given a choice of your own. You may remain here with us. Or you may return to your earthly body for two days, and there complete the full moon ceremony you and your people have planned, and then return to us.”

A veil seemed to lift. Off to my right I saw a lane of majestic trees like nothing on earth. Between the trees floated a row of exquisite, shimmering globes, each one larger than my own body of light.

At the invitation of the gods I approached the first globe. Vividly in my mind’s eye I see again the images therein: humans roaming the earth in small bands, clad in furs and coarsely woven garments of grasses. Even now as I lie here, once again in my earthly body, my every breath a struggle, the images in that globe seem more real to me than my own flesh.

My understanding expanded as I gazed. I knew this globe to be showing me the earliest age of humanity, when we lived much like our animal brethren but with fire and simple tools. How uncountably many years we lived this way! But, even so long ago, we have something beyond any other creatures. Images arise in our minds. And we have words for these images: few and simple at first, but with these words we can act in packs as never before. And more: we can imagine and make new tools that befit new environments. At times we even trade our goods with other tribes. We are more adaptable than any other beings, even our near-human cousins.

I watched for what seemed a long time, fascinated at the fierce, primal joys and pains of our days, and the terrors of the nights we spent close-huddled around our fires.

Each of these globes was to show me another age of humanity: this lay clear in my understanding as I moved on to the second. Yet for a while the moving images here seemed no different. Humans are still foraging on the face of the earth-our-mother. But as we spread far and wide in our small bands, changes come more rapidly. As the years pass, we make ever more elaborate tools and weapons and garments and dwellings.

In this second era we are becoming self-aware, though, again, at first we do not realize it. Our dreams and imaginings have always mixed fluidly and interchangeably with our psychic senses, and with our bodily senses as well. In the spirit-life that speaks to us from every rock and bush and bend in the river, we also see our own sentience reflected back to us. Now we are beginning to distinguish between them.

Our wisest leaders, our shamans, help us live and move in this sometimes wondrous, sometimes terrifying world of spirit-matter.

And we are using language in more complex ways. In this age of humanity we begin to see patterns, and to seek meaning in them by way of stories. We see patterns in the stars and tell stories about them to each other. We make stories about the living spirits we sense in everything. We see our world as filled with magic and beauty and so we create art and music. We tell stories about our origins. We bury our dead with rituals and prayers.

My people, this is the lifeway many of us knew in our own childhoods and youths, before we settled into our new farming towns. But at least five more globes still awaited me! What would the gods show me in these? I seethed with eagerness to find out.

When I moved on to the third globe, I saw vast numbers farming on a scale so immense I was staggered. How far the spread of farming can take us if we follow our new gods into this new era! You will find this hard to believe, but I see great wild beasts tamed and harnessed to till our fields and carry our burdens. Humanity multiplies and spreads like never before. Larger towns appear, then splendid stone cities. It is as if the-earth-our-mother herself is rising up and taking new shapes to shelter these new societies. So many styles of craft and culture! So many songs and stories!

In this third era of humanity we are becoming aware of our own capacities. But, just as with our sentience, at first we do not understand that these capacities are innate in us. For a long while we see them reflected back to us in our stories of gods and goddesses. By invoking our gods in prayer, we are learning to call up our own powers in a deliberate act of will. My heart smiles to see how the rituals that priests and priestesses create in the gods' honor will help us gain further control of our own impulses and abilities. This enables us to live and work close-packed in ever larger communities.

I watch as diverse tribes come together into larger groups. City-states arise and then, as millennia pass, great empires.

Goods and ideas will be traded far and wide. Even as terrible new diseases strike in the crowded cities, and spread along trade routes, fewer adults die of hunger, or violence, or exposure. More young children die, but of those who live to grow up, more live to grow old.

While I see much in this third globe that makes me rejoice, there is also darkness along with the light. Certain forms of savagery lessen in this era, yet many brutalities are only increasing. I see great warlords protect their peoples from random violence but their rule is often oppressive. Some are far worse than Batumivir. Warfare is less frequent but much larger in scale. Most horrible of all, slavery becomes commonplace.

Still, in spite of all the brutalities, some people are living longer, and some better, than before. The new songs and stories give meaning to the lives of the men and women of these times, and sometimes joy.

The fourth globe, when I place my eager attention there, shows great stone cities so huge they stun my mind. Around them stretch cultivated fields beyond reckoning. Written language is mastered, then metal work in bronze and iron, then coinage. Wind- and water-power are added to human and animal power. How vastly these enhance the works of the human mind and spirit!

Ever more individuals are reaching great heights of spiritual realization on the high ranges of Truth. A few of them dare to share their inner treasures with the masses; great religions take shape. More and more, the people are becoming aware of their own innate sense of moral law. This they project onto their new divinities. The new religions spread far and wide.

Side by side with the moral codes fostered by these new religions, the empires bring forth codes of civil law. At their best they bring in a new order that advances civilization to another level. New forms of family, polity, and society arise. Ever greater cities and ever greater civilizations spread across the planet.

But the price paid for this move into an era of law is also very high. Literacy spreads, but as it does, the openness to subtle energies that we’d all known in the dawn of humaniaty fades even further. My heart weeps as I see the foraging peoples dying out wherever the great civilizations touch them. Wars rage on a scale Batumivir could never imagine. Driven by the shadow side of the new religions, people persecute each other in the name of their single gods. Women are subjugated instead of respected. Slavery and oppression spread even more widely than before.

The visions in the fifth globe are stranger yet but I can still make some sense of them. Here are cities like crystal clusters as huge as hills. Inconceivable numbers of people live in them. Deep thinkers are discovering some of the spiritual laws that govern the natural world. We use our new grasp of natural law to amazing effect. Steam, then bitumen, then even lightning -- all are harnessed to put vast power in the hands of ordinary folk. Unliving devices carry people and goods everywhere, almost effortlessly — even through the air!

In this era, the worst of the brutalities begin to decrease. Slavery largely vanishes from the earth. I rejoice to see most children born alive living to grow up — and most of them live to grow old! Astonishing!

And just as wonderful: we begin to reach out to each other through subtle devices that let us speak instantly over great distances. Some societies even begin to take responsibility again for the well-being of every member.

But, side by side with incredible prosperity among some of the earth’s peoples, others are trapped in poverty and misery. We wield weapons of godly power while our wisdom is still all too human. War is less frequent, but when it happens it is devastating on a scale unthinkable in earlier ages.

And the great wild places of the earth are beginning to sicken.

The sixth globe shows me networks of fairy lights all over the planet, brighter than the stars at night. I gape at the sheer beauty of it. Vast knowledge is available to vast numbers of people. Many are using this to improve the material quality of life for more and more of the populace at an ever-faster pace.

Even better: more of the brutalities are being overcome. While much remains to be done, ideals such as tolerance, fairness, justice, and well-being for everyone begin to spread globally like never before. New forms of spirituality overflow the vessels of tradition and flourish, in spite of wide-spread cynicism.

And here is the greatest wonder of all. Among the countless marvels I am witnessing, this is the one that makes my heart sing with joy. In this age I see the multitudes finally begin to understand what only a rare few have seen before this: we all, everyone everywhere, really are one tribe, one people, one family, sharing one life on this beautiful oasis in space.

This new blossoming of awareness, like the ones in earlier eras, spreads slowly at first, then begins shaping entire cultures.

But as before, the cost for these advances is high. With great effort we have pulled back our aggressions into smaller, less devastating wars, but war there still is. Dire poverty lessens rapidly even as I watch but it is still widespread, with its ghastly toll of suffering. And even while poverty is lessening, and increasing numbers of people have an ever-higher quality of life, human population is suddenly mushrooming as never before. There are now so many of us! And we have harnessed so much of the natural world to our uses that we are affecting the entire web of life — even to the very climate.

The need to address these problems globally is dire. Yet some self-serving leaders are still able, like Batumivir, to exploit the fears of the people and lead them into dark, destructive regimes that preach hate and suspicion instead of tolerance and unity. Such regimes pull us apart and take us backwards at a time when, more urgently than ever before, we need to move forward together.

Are we learning fast enough? Will we suffocate the web of life upon the-earth-our-mother, and with it ourselves?

The seventh globe held marvels even stranger than before.

Some of the cities are becoming as beautiful as forests. No, now some of the cities are beautiful forests. The buildings are immense trees, grown under conscious control by those skilled in such crafts. The great city centers are now living, garden-filled wonderlands that tower as tall as mountains. Each of their interwoven branches can contain an entire town. As they grow, they draw dangerous vapors out of the air and cleanse the atmosphere. They harvest sunlight and wind for energy. The thousands of millions of people who live in these vast sky-cities grow so much food in them that we are able to reduce the amount of land under cultivation.

I see the rate of human population growth slow and stabilize and begin to decrease, as all women everywhere gain full control of their own lives and bodies and fertility.

In this seventh age of humanity, dire poverty is finally abolished from the earth. So much is done by unliving devices that many can devote the work of their days less to life's necessities, and more to health and sports and spiritual growth, and culture and learning and caring for each other.

After several disasters, we finally harness our will and slow the heating of the planet to a pace that averts all-out catastrophe. Bitumen-based energy is replaced by cleaner means that I cannot grasp even with my wide-expanded understanding. Easier to see is how we plant vast numbers of trees to reforest the planet and draw ever more of the dangerous vapors out of the air.

As the pace of new learning and new skills continues to increase, we grow wiser and more skillful in our use of resources. The natural world begins to recover, slowly at first, then more quickly. Even as population growth slows and reverses, populations continue to withdraw from the country-sides into the immense, sky-reaching cities. More and more of the surface of the earth returns to wilderness, meticulously monitored and tended by those who delight in the natural world.

Grave challenges still arise. But as they do, I see them being managed by means of new skills and crafts that arise to meet them. A decent quality of life for each and every human becomes sustainable within a healthy life web upon the-earth-our-mother.

In this era, ever larger numbers of men and women are reaching the farther realms of consciousness. We grow in wisdom, insight and compassion. More and more of us begin to grasp how deeply we are all interconnected with everyone and everything at every level. As always before, this new awareness filters through to shape entire cultures. Life becomes beautiful and meaningful for more and more of the people.

As the natural world renews itself, the awareness of subtle energies in nature -- that which we all had in the dawn of humanity -- reawakens in more and more of us. And as it does, we find that this ancient wisdom has also been preserved for us in some regions of the world. The old magic comes back again in its best forms, without the narrow tribalism and occasional savageries of our foraging days. It joins and strengthens the later-arising forms of spirituality. Together they blossom into many beautiful lifeways.

Our subtle communication devices grow more powerful. They connect us on an ever-growing scale. We reach out and form interlinked clusters with each other in a network that swiftly spans the planet.

I watch, entranced, as we and our communication networks become a brain for the earth-our-mother.

Suddenly I feel a jump to an even higher intensity. I’m seeing differently, as if a new dimension is unfolding around me. I look back along the line of globes I’ve already visited. Somehow I am looking straight down upon that first globe at the same time I look out and back at it. How can this be?

Vertigo seizes me as I struggle to grasp how space shapes itself in this higher dimension. Now I am receiving impressions rather than visual images. It’s a struggle to shape these into any kind of story at all.

Here is the best I can do. This seventh globe is showing me a story about a possible seventh age of humanity upon the-earth-our-mother. But this seventh age is more than just a next new era. This globe begins an entire new cycle of ages in a new, second tier. It will repeat the cycle of the first six eras but on a new, subtler level. This is why I am seeing that first globe below me as well as behind me.

With this insight it begins to make more sense to me. In the six globes of the first tier, we humans awaken and grow in complexity of awareness. This seventh globe begins a whole new second tier in which the-earth-our-mother herself will awaken as a conscious being. She too will grow in complexity of awareness, in the same stages as we humans do in the first tier.

This planetary consciousness will emerge through us. Humanity will do more than become a physical brain for the earth-our-mother. We each will carry part of her consciousness too.

Nonetheless, we also continue to grow as individuals. Even as more and more of us take part in carrying a planet-wide consciousness, we continue to become more fully our unique selves. In this second-tier cycle too there will emerge among us ever new stages of consciousness, culture, science and society.

But in every one of those globes of the first tier, I had seen shadows grow darker even as the lights brightened. Such shadows seemed to reach far into this second tier also.

Maybe it must be so in every age. While we live on earth in these bodies of clay, we must cast a shadow whenever we stand in the light. The-earth-our-mother herself casts a shadow, as she did at the blood moon that hurled me into such horror.

With that thought, a terrible tremor shook me to my core. Might the shadows that emerge in this new, second tier be even worse than those in the first?

I looked searchingly to see. But the globes had all emptied. This contraction of fear had closed my vision.

I didn’t want to stop! There were more globes in this second tier! And I’d glimpsed even more tiers stacked above that. But when I strained to see further, it all dissolved into blinding light.

Then the vision changed abruptly. Now there was only one globe, directly in front of me. In it I saw only one image: a toddler. It was standing but wobbling back and forth, struggling to take its next step. It was either going to take that step forward very soon or fall down hard, backwards.

I knew at once that this toddler stands for you, my people.

Time seemed to expand as I pondered this image, and insights unfolded further in my mind.

Humanity will eventually emerge into the next level. Of course it will. Evolution is one of the great natural laws that drives manifestation — I’d seen that clearly in the fifth globe. Occasional backslidings are mere ephemeral eddies in the great river of Time. And, for so long as we are embodied in these vessels of clay, time flows in one direction and one direction only: onward into ever greater complexity.

So. In the larger scheme of the high gods, it is not so very important whether this particular wobbling toddler — you, my people — succeeds in taking its next step. If you do not break through to the next new era now, sooner or later some other community will.

As soon as I grasped this, everything changed again. The globes and the garden and the gods all vanished. I seemed to be back in my earthly body but long ago, during my childhood, when my shaman teacher took me to the high mountains to watch trout struggle upstream to spawn. I seemed to be again in my eight-year-old body by the same cascading stream, standing on the same glistening boulder, holding onto the same overhanging fir tree, its bark rough and sticky with sap under my hands.

Breathlessly I watched a trout gather itself for its great leap up to the next pool, just as I’d watched it as a child. But this time in the lower pool I also saw, as if in one of those globes of vision, the foraging tribe of my early childhood.

Then I looked at the upper pool, so large and inviting. There under its surface I saw an image our town. But I saw it as it might be in years to come. Ripe, heavy grain stood ready for harvest in the very fields that you, my people, had only just begun to mark out when the blood moon changed everything.

Further insights unfolded in my mind as I watched that trout circle in the lower pool, gathering its strength. If it fails this leap for the upper pool and falls back, it will be bruised and exhausted. It may not be able to try for the upper pool again for a long time.

The meaning behind this vision given me by the gods shone clear in my mind. My people, if in your fear your shadow side prevails now, then you will fall back, hard. Your debasement under Batumivir will take you far into darkness and suffering for a long time to come.

The trout leaped! It landed slap across the lip of the upper pool, struggling with all its might against the down-rushing current.

Fast as thought, I reached out in urgent desire to nudge this trout up into the next pool.

Slam and I was back in my earthly body in an explosion of lurid pain. My chest muscles had relaxed from spasm enough to let me draw breath. The gods had granted me the choice I’d made in will though not in words.

By your time I’d been out of my body only briefly.

I have since learned that during those three days of outrage against me, you who remained my friends and allies had been gathering strength too, much like that trout circling in the lower pool. I am told that, when I collapsed unbreathing at Gorin’s blow, some of you arose and faced down Batumivir’s war-band. Then, when my body began breathing again, everyone backed off.

I thank the gods that it did not come to a fight among you. And I thank the gods for the care with which you, my friends, claimed my body and carried me here to safety, and are tending me now with such loving kindness. In spite of the pain at every breath I rest peacefully, taking joy in your company.

But the clash of wills in this town is not resolved. An uneasy truce holds between the factions. A third of you wish Batumivir to rise up and overthrow the town council and seize control. You who are of this mind believe you will prosper under the rule of this one strong man. You are deluded. The instant Batumivir has no further use for you he will discard you too, as he discarded me long ago.

At least it seems likely that I will live long enough to die again two days from now. No one, of any faction, is going to make a move until all can see what omens the gods may send at my ceremonial death. If you only knew how gladly I will go to it. The healers have done what they can for me but everything hurts. Breathing hurts most of all. Returning to this body was a far greater sacrifice than leaving it again will be.

I could have stayed in that bliss-filled garden. I came back to you because I want you to understand this, my people: your bright future is not yet lost to you. You can still claim it if you hold to your courage and go forward together. How much of wonder lies ahead for you if you go this way!

Or, if you give way to your fears again, and break apart into your former small tribes, you will fall backwards. You will go down the darker path that befits the darkness of your recent deeds. How much suffering awaits you if you go this way!

But the body to which I have returned is so broken I cannot tell you. Even if there were words or images in our earth-bound language to share what I have seen, I can barely draw breath to whisper a few words at a time.

I am unable to tell you how much the gods love you. How much they wish blessings for you. How much they hope you will choose the brighter path. They will love you beyond your understanding no matter what course you take, but they will not choose for you. Or perhaps they cannot.

And I cannot warn you about the choice before you. Of all the agonies I have suffered, this is the one that crushes my heart.

I do the only thing left. Though every breath I take is an act of will in the face of brutal pain, I set myself to keep breathing for two more days. When the next full moon rises you will see me go willingly to my sacred death. Maybe by this you will know yourselves to be forgiven; to be blessed by the gods. Maybe this will help you claim your courage and move forward, yes, forward, even as you hold on to the best of the old ways and bring them with you.

May you take courage in these dark times and move forward together into your bright future.

My people. How much the gods love you. How much I love you. I pray that you may be blessed, now and forever.