The Goddess Chronicles

Here am I, Aesacus, flying, then diving, then reemerging, repeating a pattern that has defined my own personal hell for millennia. I was not always a cormorant, nor did I choose to be one. My story is a footnote to the history that I will tell here. If I am honest, my mortal life was not much more heavenly than today’s existence. Born a bastard to Trojan royalty has its perquisites, but I always thought of myself as a half, and not always the better half. As a son of Priam, the greatest of Trojan kings, I am half-brother to Hector, Paris, Helenus, Diephobus, all deceased and all great heroes in the first “war to end all wars”. I am half human and half nymph. My mother is Alexirhoe and my grandfather the god, Granicus. I have never felt particularly divine. Rather, I always felt less, not quite human, not quite good enough to be a god. It is my divinity that exiled me to this endless cycle of flight and fishing. Any human who threw himself off a cliff for the love of a woman would be, appreciatively, smashed on the rocks below or if unlucky, hits the waters of the Mediterranean, suffering the slow death of hypothermia eventually swallowed by Poseidon. But I am so “fortunate”, that I was snatched up by Tethys and transformed. So, here am I, flying, then diving.

That explains what you see of me now. What you don’t see is who I really am, or perhaps, more accurately, was. I may not feel any different on the inside, but you cannot see my heart. My divinity not only banished me to an existence of repetitive immortality such as makes Hades seem a blessing, but it gave me the gift of seeing the future. I have been since childhood an oracle, a seer. My most famous prophesy was delivered to my stepmother, Hecuba, at the dawn of the birth of my brother Paris. Where she saw a flaming torch, I saw the destruction of Troy. I implored them to kill the child, but my father and stepmother were unable to do the deed. The rest is as they say, history. It was then that I felt it best to depart Ilium and head to the countryside to live with my mother’s family. It was by the river Cebren I felt whole, no longer a half, and there I met my lover, one of Cebren’s daughters. Had she not died a tragic death at the hands of the serpent, I might not be writing to you today.

Now begins the tale that I need to tell. It is a story that can save souls, but only if the reader is more courageous than Hecuba and Priam. Humans hold on to convenient falsehoods, primitive beliefs. One of these is the idea that divinity lives outside of themselves. The gods you worship today are not much different than the ones of my days in the woods outside of Troy. By keeping them, exogenous, man can talk of fate, bad fortune, the gods conspiring, the gods angry. The truth is that the divine lives inside each of us, not only a sad bird like me, the grandson of a river god, but inside any living thing – plant, tree, fish, bird, mammal, even humans. Divinity is not in equal proportions in all individuals. It is my job to see the extraordinarily divine, what we might call a god, and contrast with those with no or miniscule quantities. Mine is the curse of the seer.

My father lived in an extreme patriarchal society in an era much different than today. We cannot and should not judge him by contemporary standards. He was a great king with large appetites. He had many wives and many concubines. The lot gave him over fifty children. I knew each of Priam’s offspring to some extent or another, and in the knowing, I came to measure who was god-like and who was an imposter. My brother Hector, was a great man in every way, very divine. My brother, Paris, not as much, beautiful but arrogant and superficial. For the most part, my various half-siblings were what I might refer to as worshipers. They were neither gods nor imposters. They would be, if not of royal blood, what we refer to as the rabble. Their names are largely forgotten, their existence, a candle lit and blown out as if on a birthday cake.

The story of Hector and Paris has been told across the eons by different authors in different languages. This is not their story. This is the story of another sibling, Helenus’ twin sister. Helenus, like me, has the gift of prophesy. Unlike me, he does not come by it naturally, but rather was taught that skill by his twin sister, who was imbued by the divine.

My sister taught me much about distinguishing gods from imitators. She had wanted to be the virginal high priestess at Apollo’s temple. Even as a young girl, she was uniquely different. First, she was a child so beautiful that as she matured, she was compared to the goddess Aphrodite. She had many suitors and all that saw her fell in love with her. None of this was of any interest to my sister who was as intelligent as she was outwardly stunning. She was more than smart, she had an ancient wisdom. Early on, she had made the decision to commit her life to serving the gods. She felt a kindred spirit with them. I suspect that she and I were close because she could sense some spark of divinity in me that even I could not feel.

I asked her how she could so accurately see the divine. I will paraphrase her response.

Gods provoke worship. They do not seek adoration, but they incite it. The godlike embody the qualities of charisma, brilliance, energy, innovative thinking. They are frenetic idea generators. But, like the gods across all eras, they are flawed with all the foibles that define being human. Gods do not transcend humanness, but they have a certain wisdom that is not tied to experience alone. Gods do not necessarily know they are gods, but are keenly aware that they are different from most people and even when innately humble, sense they are something more. They always carry themselves with a confident demeanor. Gods have a self-assuredness that is calming to all they encounter. They are heroic and have an inborn understanding of universal rights and wrongs. Although charismatic, gods typically describe themselves as introverts. This makes sense, especially if they are unaware of their god-ness. When one feels different, alien, it is natural to withdraw into a comfortable place, which for gods is the superior intellect of someone they can trust, themselves. There is more to it than just introspection. There is a reserve in gods that is not unfriendly, but a deliberate holding back. Gods are immortal, not in the sense of physical mortality, but rather their spirit lives on in the people they touch because they reach them so deeply. Their godlike qualities are present early and they never stop being gods.

Who wouldn’t want to be a god? - All that attention, all that adulation, all the prizes, even if reluctantly or unknowingly. There are those who imitate the gods. They have no staying power. It is this characteristic which so clearly separates them from the gods. Whereas, gods, effortlessly, emanate energy and invigorate all with whom they interact, imitators produce the opposite effect. These imposters are so concerned with their own self-aggrandizement that they suck all the energy from any room. Imitators are the anti-gods. They are unaware that they lack the essential qualities. To be fair, imitators are generally unaware. Imitators are pretenders, inherently liars. They lie to themselves and then rather than portraying the “real” person become an actor playing a role. But life is not theater and while the people who befriend imitators are living actual lives, the imitator has a contrived existence.

When she concluded, I thought to myself, “then there is my kind”. Like all prophets, I am driven by passion, but the full consequence of passion has eluded me. The concept of passion is a difficult one indeed. The word passion comes from the language of our invaders, the Greeks. It means to suffer. Thought-provoking that a word is derived from cause and effect, that is, one has an all-consuming desire about something or someone, and the result is that he suffers. The suffering results from foregoing all else in pursuit of the object of the passion, much like my chase and love of Hesperia. Equally interesting is a tension both physical and psychological between passion and reason. How often does one rely on the left brain, a constant comforting companion? Reason is like a blanket of goose down. It envelops, providing not only warmth, but also security. In contrast, passion is sitting on the hearth of a fire burning too hot. Passion trumps all. Even as one calculates and cogitates, assessing what is right, what is best, all is futile because passion is a hurricane. Everything submits.

I listened closely to her words and recalled them on my descent from the darkness of my grief to the light of the hereafter, hurling down towards the sea. It was then that I finally set aside my desires, focusing instead on what others might need. I had to reach that point in my life where I was content and not in a constant state of pursuit. At that moment, it was only gods to whom I was drawn, passionately. That was when Tethys plucked me and metamorphized me into this winged creature you see before you.

Extraordinary divinity in people is rare and getting close to gods even more challenging because of their nature. The imitators so completely outnumber the gods. Imposters’ hubris obscures our perception of what a god might be. The first step to knowing the divine is learning those attributes that are godlike. My sense is that the first god discovered, it is easier to identify another. However, as I look back over the ages, I cannot say that I ever knew more than a few. Imitators, I knew aplenty. They always raised a certain ire in me which today I can attribute to their being false gods, but, early on, would have to be written off to “gut”. Now, having the clear contrast with gods, it is easy to see them for what they are, charlatans. I referred earlier to gods’ nature. I now know what I never understood until freed from my human concerns. A primary difference between gods and imitators is that gods are uncomfortable with adoration and imitators revel in it. Gods shroud themselves, carefully protecting self. Imitators reveal all. One wonders if gods know that we cannot withstand the heat and light of their radiance fully exposed. Imitators, burdened by a fading luminescence, light no heat, hope to turn up outside fires, leaving nothing to the imagination. Gods, on the other hand, provoke imagination by disclosing little to nothing. Gods are vivacity, executed with subtlety, life itself.

My half-sister and I had few disagreements, she, judiciously, maintaining the cloak of privacy. One of our examinations, however, underscores the point. Because of her beauty and intellect, I thought she should be placed in a higher position, like the pedestals supporting the statues in the temples for Athena or Hera. She, fervently, maintained that there should be no plinths and people should be in constant motion performing acts of kindness. People are not columns of cold stone, she would say. She told me that only vain frauds flock to the dais like finches to a bird feeder in the winter.

Repeating, real gods do not seek worship. Being revered is essentially the opposite of who they are. They have so much confidence in themselves that reinforcement is unnecessary. It was that confidence, my sister’s undoing. The attention of the throng belonged to our sister-in-law, Helen. She was judged so beautiful that a fable was told that she was a daughter of Zeus, which if true would make her, like me, half human and half divine. Trust me, I knew Helen and there was nothing even remotely divine about her. When the poets wrote that beauty was only skin deep, it was Helen they had in mind. She was a weak-minded seductress, insecure, and like so many insecure people, narcissistic. She constantly needed to be told how fantastic her attractiveness. She demanded worship, a prototypical imitator. Later Marlowe did history a disservice by proclaiming that she was so beautiful she launched a thousand ships. Politics were much then as they are now. The Greeks were spoiling for a fight. Helen and Paris conspired, unknowingly, to give them one. That is the real story of Helen of Troy told by someone who knew her, too well.

In contrast, was my sister. She had an exquisiteness so completely different from Helen’s. Later descriptions of her were surprisingly accurate. She had dark wavy, bordering on curly, hair and the deepest brown eyes. You could look in those eyes and see god at the bottom of the pool. Her beauty was so profound that, in her presence, men were struck dumb and later could not explain why. She had an inner beauty of such magnitude that she owned every room into which she strolled. She was radiance. Apollo was a lascivious god and was a master seducer. Apollo is the god of music which explains his allure. Even in our contemporary times, the musician is a great seducer, with charms to sooth the savage breast and all. Apollo knew what he liked. Every gorgeous woman was a potential conquest. He made my father look like a faithful husband. Most stories we know about Apollo’s sexual adventures relate the few times when his advances are spurned. He is known to have at least 72 consorts and even more children. He is the god-protector for ones like me, that is, he is the god of truth and prophesy. It was he who gave my sister the gift of divine sight. Some contend that he really loved her, she so deeply enchanting, but love or lust, the gods are vengeful. Apollo, like all on Olympus, did not take well to rejection. Conquest comes so easy that any rebuff is an affront of massive proportions. In my sister, all Apollo saw was an extraordinarily beautiful human woman being haughty, daring to think of herself as superior to him. What he didn’t see, blinded by her radiance was that she was every bit as divine as he. I am not sure she even knew herself. She was royalty, but her parents were mere mortals, so how could she be divine? I was the only one who really knew the truth. I had seen it in her from the moment of her birth. Perhaps, her mother, tired of the infidelities of Priam, had a dalliance with one minor deity or another. But, I don’t believe god is infused in a child via coitus. Certainly, Priam’s intercourse with my mother failed to spark the deific in me, except leaving me with a steady diet of fish, crabs, and mollusks. God-ness must come from other sources.

My sister refused Apollo’s advances for the most honorable of reasons. She wanted to serve as his temple priestess and pledged to retain her virginity. Blinded by the covetousness that only a woman can bring on a male, god or otherwise, he either could not or would not acknowledge her choices. Women in her time were not allowed to say “no”. In that way, she was a pioneer, perhaps seeing the day in the future when women were increasingly empowered. But, this was Priam’s era and seduction was as often rape as gentle coaxing. Apollo punished her in the one way that would drive her insane. He turned the gift he had bestowed into a curse. It is why in her wisdom, knowing she was losing her mind, she taught her skills as an oracle to our brother Helenus.

It is the benefit of being a native of the Middle East, where what is referred to as Western Culture meets the Far East. Therefore, I was exposed to Chinese philosophy. China was far advanced in uncovering hidden truths. The Greeks were barbarians in comparison. Even Egyptian civilization, as ancient as China’s, lagged the Chinese in development of medicine, health – physical and mental, spirituality, and philosophy. I knew what I was seeing in my sister, but it still was beyond any experience with any person. I was confounded.

One day before my unfortunate plunge, I was on the road from Troy to Babylon. I met an old woman from the Orient. She professed to be a Qi Gong master. I have met very few Chinese men and even fewer women from that part of the world, especially, traveling alone. I had never met a Qi Gong master, man nor woman. We talked for a long while and she was infinitely wise. I told her about my sister and my sister’s life. In explaining her, I focused on how she was different, in an astonishing way, from any person I had ever encountered. “I think she is markedly divine. More god-like than any person I have met. However, she is my sister, I have known her since she came into this world, and I love her like any man loves a sibling. How can I be sure? How do I assure my objectivity and confirm her status?”, I asked. This old exotic woman appeared to be the one person who might know the answer. I found her words startling. I have done my best recalling what she said (acknowledgements to Qi Gong master Cathy Mu - her words in italics):

Ageless Beauty: A Goddess has a Divine, Angelic, and Universal look no matter what ethnic background she is from. A Goddess is fit, healthy, and naturally beautiful from inside out. She has a radiating and inspiring glow on her face constantly with sparkles and light in her eyes. Her face and body do not appear to age with time and can even age in reverse. A Goddess has mastered the Secret to the "Fountain of Youth".

I had related exactly these thoughts in a dozen different ways right down to the fact that the passing of years did not define her true age. I spoke at length about her eyes, the light that emanates from them.

A Goddess radiates Kindness, Compassion, and Unconditional Love. She loves and respects all beings including all humans, animals, plants, and other forms of life. She is kind and non-judgmental. A Goddess exudes the energy of passion, authenticity and enthusiasm, which is attractive, inspiring, and contagious. She has a certain “quality” that everyone gravitates to but cannot necessarily name “it”.

Exactly, that indescribable essence that is attractive to everyone even though we are bereft of the words to capture “it” either for her or someone to whom we are attempting to describe her.

A Goddess is naturally in a state of joy, peace, gratitude, and happiness, no matter what happens in her life. She loves fearlessly and serves altruistically, wanting nothing in return for herself. She welcomes all life experiences with a smile as they come along. She works through difficulties gracefully with her feminine courage and dignity. She does not try to avoid or suppress pain as she deeply understands that every and each of life experiences, including the seemingly painful ones, happens for a good reason, and is part of her spiritual journey for greater wisdom and enlightenment.

These words are so much better than any of mine. What I describe as my sister’s stoicism is so much more, accurately captured here. I do love my sister’s smile, in all its forms, each variation communicating an emotion a bit different.

A Goddess is abundant in resources. She does what she loves and loves what she does. She knows who she is and what she is here for (with clarity on her life purpose). A Goddess is creative, independent, genuine, and authentic. She has learned the Universal Principles of Abundance and Prosperity, and lives and works in alignment with the principles. As a result, she is abundantly rewarded financially so she has the resources to live a fulfilled and meaningful life while being in service of others with her unique gifts and talents.

Although, most of her words were on target, I am not sure that I am completely on board with how “abundantly rewarded financially” was expressed by the wise one. My experience would be articulated differently. My sister knows how to use whatever resources availed to her and make them appear abundant. She finds satisfaction and prosperity each day with the materialistic rewards she achieves. She lives out life with clarity of purpose, leveraging her gifts, not passively rewarded by some outside force. Rather, she is the proactive force that finds joy and happiness with whatever fruits she gathers.

A Goddess is masterful at what she does, but remains humble and curious like a child, so she is always learning, growing, expanding, and evolving continually. She is open-minded and open- hearted towards things she has yet to learn. Her mindset is consistently positive and uplifting, seeing good in everyone and everything in every situation.

My sister was not satisfied with learning and growing for her own benefit, but insisted passing along her gifts to her twin, Helenus, he able to make good use of them. Helenus struggled to keep up, she relentless in her pursuit of knowledge and the need to share it.

I portioned out a bit of my mutton to the sage which she gleefully washed down with a few measured sips of wine. We stayed together for a while, until she had grown tired of my company. I could have listened to her for days, but she provided her wisdom to each in moderation. As she moved down the road slowly, but with determination, I could only thank the gods for what she had given me. I knew with certainty what I had always suspected, my sister captured the essence of a goddess.

It was that lifeforce that led to her unfortunate existence which in turn resulted in her insanity, a sad tale, indeed! Being a goddess herself, even if unknowingly, she had refused Apollo. She felt herself on equal footing. Apollo retaliated, first by spreading the lie that she had agreed to his advances and then reneged. With that falsehood firmly implanted in the minds of the masses, including our family, he made it seem that her faithlessness permeated every word she spoke. Thus, when my sister offered the same warning that I had provided, of the impending destruction of our fair city, her advice went unheeded. My sister warned of the dangers that Helen presented. She even provided details as to how the Greeks would resort to the ultimate deception to gain access to the impregnable Troy. When Helen tried to disembark at the quay in Ilium after her voyage from Sparta, my sister tore at her hair and tried every device to prevent her entering our palaces. Truth was as clear to her as if the horse delivered, the destruction achieved, and the death of many we held dear a fait accompli. The mob besotted with Helen’s outer beauty and blind to the vast void beneath the surface, welcomed her in the most celebratory fashion. My sister was diagnosed dangerous and crazy, a threat to the community and herself. Even her father thought it best to have her locked away. She was eventually freed, but her life was lived out like so many, void of purpose except revenge. As she awaited the inevitable destruction of Troy and her family, she served as a priestess to Athena who greatly admired my sister’s deep wisdom.

After twenty-five brothers and our father were all sent to Hades in the razing of Troy, my sister was forced to submit to the enemy king’s lust what she had so carefully protected from Apollo. She was abducted by Ajax at Athena’s temple and brought to King Agamemnon who took my sister as his consort – to the victor go the spoils. Because of Ajax’s brutality towards her, some claimed he raped her. The fact is his assigned task was her capture. Regardless, the decision to pursue a high priestess under a goddess’ protection was a massive miscalculation. Agamemnon may have reaped the prize of Troy’s most desirable woman, but Ajax and the Greeks paid a high price when Athena destroyed many of their ships and the boastful Ajax eventually succumbed to Poseidon’s trident and the sea.

The family circle was now complete. Helen, who wrought so much destruction, provoking her brother-in-law, Agamemnon into action, had adopted a new family in mine. Now Helen’s sister-in-law was the “bride” of that brother-in-law. My sister’s motive for succumbing to this mere mortal king after spurning Apollo’s advances was retribution. She hoped to travel to Argos and bring the same ravages on that kingdom as Helen had brought to Troy. She imagined that her hatred, fulfilled, would bring the victory that had eluded Priam and his sons.

My sister died the most violent of deaths. She was axed to death by Agamemnon’s queen and that queen’s lover in the far-off land of Mycenae along with my nephews, her twin boys, Teledamus and Pelops. Each were murdered in the same way. All three were buried together, the divine with the two innocents. I was told by my mother that my sister was welcomed into the Elysian Fields by the gods because they saw clearly what had escaped the ignorant Trojan masses. She is righteous, honorable, and heroic. She is one with the divine and now she is home. On the other hand, here am I, flying, and then diving, forever, in awe of her. That is the irony. I, born from the gods, a prophet, slowly going insane. She, a prophet, declared insane, a god.

The epilogue for our story is how my sister achieved not only immortality in heaven, but also on earth. Even today, when self-evident truth is disregarded by the ignorant for its inconvenience, we attribute such prophesy as if spoken by her. We have learned little. Man has made my search for fish and other sea creatures increasingly futile. We watch as an ever more dangerous world is created not by the gods but by mankind, intent on destroying the planet, unheeding any warnings from today’s prophets.

The lesson for all of us to learn from my tale is that god can be found anywhere and god can be absent, as well. Divinity can exist in a little Albanian girl who administers to the poor in Calcutta. It can be found in the care a mother elephant gives her baby. The breaching of a humpback, powerful, controlled, and non-threatening is proof of the spectacular that is god. The silence of the forest and the rustling of a single tree speak to the power of the divine. That solitary orchid or wave of daffodils emerging in spring, each are immortals having emerged before man and likely to survive man. A lone red hawk and his mate returning to its nest, that same nest, every spring, raising a family, teaching the eyas to soar and then bidding farewell. They like me living a repetitive existence, but for a more honorable purpose in celebration of god. Like my sister taught her twin brother, we must train ourselves to see the gods and goddesses. Reach for faith and learn the signs, follow the light. It is only in this way that each of us can find our own Cassandra.