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You have kept me waiting again, my horned god, but I hardly mind. I have quite the imagination, you see, and I have been using it to plan our time together.

Should you meet me here like you promised, I will tie you to this thick-trunked oak tree; you will beg me to do it, but, rest assured, I will not keep you bound long.

The wolves are howling and the night is cold, but this Priestess’ ancient blood has reached a boil.

If those who pray to their vengeful gods could see me now, bare-breasted and shadow-hungry, they would bid the archangels to descend and carry me away; surely, if I spend one more moment here on this Earth, I will become the Devil’s bride and give birth to a sea of scaled minions who will challenge all they know to be true.

My love, shallow notions of divinity mean nothing to me, for I have tasted you. You are my darkest desires embodied, the shadowy yearnings I have kept safely locked away in my ballerina jewelry box since childhood. You are my blessed, beauteous beast, and, in this moment, you are all that I want.

Where are you? Must I nearly freeze before you show yourself?

In truth, I am barely shivering, for I have kept the memory of our last night together in these woods burning in my belly. You asked me to tell you my real name, and I did. You stripped me so lovingly and completely I could swear I was no longer wearing my skin, and you held my bloody raw heart in both of your hands and sung me a mournful dirge like it was a love song.

We spoke of the death-birth-death dance, the wheel of the year, and the impermanence of our flesh. I opened my arms and legs to your dark side in the purest devotion, and you saw me as Crone, Mother, and Maiden all at once.

I swear we birthed whole worlds from our sacred fusion that night, and I had never known an encounter with my shadow to be so cosmically generative, forbidden but fruitful. We did not break apart as the same two lovers who joined together, and our holy sex-prayer was the most soulful crucible of transformation I was ever gifted.

You are all they told me not to want, all they told me not to be. You are hedonistic and sensual. You are sinfully present and without machinations. You are irrational and emotionally volatile, and you are everything I used to keep hidden from the world.

Here, in this perfect hell, I have always been wild. I have no reason to stay small here, and no one rewards me for being a good girl. Here, in the realm of fallen angels, I am accepted into your warm arms as a freak and heathen, and you are permitted entry into the temple of my body as the Holy Shadow. Here, in the unmapped terrain of my feminine psyche, I am truly free.

When I leave you tonight, I will have to put my mask back on; it is thinner than it used to be, for sure, but I still carry it with me. The mask smiles to be polite when I am disgusted, keeps a frozen smirk in place when I want to erupt into a rage, and tames my wild just enough to keep me socially acceptable. My love, it is such an illusion, but each time I leave here, my mask has more holes.

With every flick of your tongue, you are breaking me open.

I have stopped keeping us a secret, you know. I have told everyone about your divine masculine majesty. I have been judged, and harshly so, for these scandalous visitations. I have paid for my ecstasy dearly, and been told of my devolved vibrations. They click their tongues and raise their brows in pity, but they never ask me to tell them why I love you; they have already decided I am confused and fragile.

Let them talk all they like, for I know why the Witch meets her Devil in the woods. I know the merit of shadow-walking, and I know that making sweet-and-sour love to the long-hidden parts of your soul, shunned and shameful as they may be, is godlier than any mechanical confession.

Come out, you toothy and long-nailed demon. Come out, and let me look into your black-mirror eyes while we dance under the Wolf Moon; I will scry my future from what is reflected there, and I will surrender completely to your twisted passions, for I share your holy fetishes and sanctified fantasies. Whisper-pray things that make me blush, and I will bless you with warm, holy water from my well.

I will bind you, then set you free. You will flip me over on the woodland altar and howl a spontaneous benediction in your frenzy, and then our breathlessness will be a grateful body-prayer to every long-forgotten deity.

This is our ritual, holy Devil. This is our Great Rite, and I know you will come. In perfect love and perfect trust, I have never been more certain.

***

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.

Latest posts by Danielle Dulsky (see all)

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