Last night I dreamed of my sisters, the initiated and uninitiated, the Maidens, the Mothers. I dreamed of my blood sister and I dreamed of my spirit sisters, on this Earth and beyond. They folded like a prism collapsing into itself, distilling themselves down into one woman who contained them all. I was following her, padding barefoot along behind her, a child tugging on her sleeve.

“Hey,” I whisper, “I was thinking, since we’re all here…. “

She looks down at me, and she is tall and upright and strong and calm. Her arms are bare, lean and tan and muscled, full of wood to lay into the pit dug deep into the soft ground.

“Um. Well, I was thinking that maybe we could do a ceremony together. A ritual. Burn wood and herbs and speak a wish into the smoke. You know, since we’re all here.”

My sister kneels and places grey, weathered sticks into the pit, crossing the pieces so that they form a star. I can see that her face is changing. She is shifting from the Maiden, to the Mother, and now she is the Crone, and now with a beard covering her cheeks and chin. She wears the face of everyone because she wants to, and because she can. She looks at me and speaks with a multitude of voices.

“The Mother is tired of your ceremony. It is drivel. Small talk. It is hollow and false. Your smoke has no substance.”

I look at her, and now I see my own face reflected. I am a child wearing heavy, smeared make-up, mascara pulled down my cheeks from my tears, red lipstick messy across my mouth, and a fake beard pasted onto my chin. I see this reflection of myself in her morphing face, and I step back, unable to bear it. I crouch low and with a sweep of my hand I pull all of the masks away. I sit back on my heels and I watch this woman prepare the fire for sacred ritual.

I am still hoping someone will come along to save me. I’ve been toying with the idea of slipping into the Underworld again. I know it so well there. It’s all about survival and transformation and there’s really no time to breathe or think because everything there is life or death. I am considering sliding again into the darkness, my delicate creamy freckled wrist with its messy white scars, almost invisible now, presses dramatically against the sheen of sweat on my forehead, my eyelids flutter and I glance around to see who is nearby to notice that I’m getting so close to the edge. Who is there to pull me back.

The Earth around me rumbles and my sister lights the fire. The Earth is asking me to deepen. To plant myself. To become rooted in her. To defend her. To make myself safe, and then make her safe. And in response I am spinning and twirling near the edge of the abyss, considering.

When I wake up from the dream, it is clear. This dream pulls me back from the edge. My sisters pull me back from the edge. My own archetypal Mother pulls me back from the edge. They summon me to rise, to mature, to finish rescuing myself, and now that I’m awake I understand what ignoring this clarion call would mean. I understand the desecration that it would be to descend again into darkness simply because I cannot bear to face myself in the light. Going into the Underworld is sacred transformation, not a party trick. If I enter again, with no integrity, no responsibility, a coward, I will not emerge. I will not survive. It will take me. My life will pass unlived, an empty sacrifice.

And so I claim the prize, myself, hard won. And in doing so, I claim my dark, and I claim my light. I am the initiated, after all and after what I’ve survived and transmuted, I am wrought, forged, tempered. No one else is coming to rescue me, of course. I gather my Handless Maiden self into my lap and hold her close and bear her agony into my body. I draw my sword and step fully out of the Underworld and as I do, I pay the toll, my pound of flesh. I cut away my weakness, my victimhood, and my helplessness. I pay the price and all sales are final.

In exchange for this sacrament, I ascend. I transform into the Mother. I step forward and take my place at the fire, my sisters standing with me.