Starbook by Ben Okri

Author:Ben Okri [Ben Okri]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781407022550
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

CHAPTER SIXTY–FIVE

About initiations we ought to be silent. They are often sacred and private events. What rituals are wrought there belong to the initiated and should not be bared to the irrelevant scrutiny of a curious and sensation-seeking world. People destroy the power of initiations when they reveal them to outsiders and to those who are not undergoing such rites. Noble initiations ought to have great silence and a ring of fire around them, so that the initiated may undergo the rites of their transformations in the power of that intense space. Initiations within are silent and unseen; so it should be for those who make the ritual changes from darkness to light, from boys to men, from girls to women, from chrysalis to butterfly. Wisdom ought to guide these processes of the liberating being.

About the maiden's initiation, though I saw it in the book of life, I shall be silent, in my revealing kind of way. I shall conceal by revealing. She passed through it with great pain, difficulty and suffering. She dwelt alone for seven days in the cave of transformations. She was buried alive for many nights. She gave birth to herself in her death and emerged from the earth in a disordered, disorientated state. She ate nothing but herbs and water. She dwelt among the rocks and awaited the goddess. She recited the prayers of light that had been given her till she broke down and wept a whole day. Then she felt like dying and lay down on a white rock to die in the blazing sun, with her lips all broken and her mind quite cracked. And a blaze of light encompassed her and in the light there was a bird and she followed the bird into the heavens and wandered in halls of pure white glory. Then she saw a prince waiting for her at the door of golden splendour, and he reached out his hand and she held it, and together they entered the chamber of angels. And they were silent there among the angels and they were both one and happy and perfect in their bliss beyond the wildest dreams of mortals. And they dwelt there in perfect love and harmony for an eternity; and then time tugged at her and she found herself alone, listening to the whispers of the goddess in the hall of the Holy. She listened a long time to whispers that were not words but beyond words; and then a flash of red light fell upon her and she awoke and found herself in the cave, alone, with girls who had changed into women singing outside, calling her to come out of the cave to be a woman now and give birth to a new world.

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