Posted by: iris
It is midnight in the far North of the world. The sun has gone down, but a gentle twilight still glows in the sky. The young woman is dancing with her people around a roaring bonfire. Her simple robe falls, revealing a swath of tawny skin, the smoke of ash and elm swirls around her, enveloping her lithe forms in shadows. Music lifts your feet and your heart - a birch bark flute is lilting merrily, supported by the quick tap tap of a drum. When the musician stops to breathe, many voices take up the song, praising the goddess who gives life to the land, dancing luck and fertility into the earth. There are a lot of men - some are young and handsome, others scarred by the years, but they all move with the centered grace of warriors. There are women there as well, of all ages, from young maidens to wise women wearing furs and amber. They dance with the warriors or with each other, around and around the fire. For a moment you wonder what you are doing there - they all, whatever their age or form, have an inner glow that makes them beautiful. Then someone takes your hand and draws you into the dance. As you link hands with the others a shock of energy flares through your body. Now it seems easy to skip to the drum beat, moving faster and faster as you circle the fire. Together you leap over it, then, laughing, dance away from the circle into the shelter of the pine trees and still embracing, fall to the ground. The forest, the meadow, the faces of the dancers become a blur of color. The fire itself shimmers and flows skyward in a column of light. Passion mounts as you move together, spiraling upward with such intensity that you wonder if you will survive. As you offer it to the goddess, the ecstasy is released in a great yell, and with it consciousness whirls away as well. For a moment you try to halt at that moment of anticipation, then you can wait no longer. Sound vibrates through a hundred throats - a song, a shout, a name! "Freyja! Freyja!", you cry. Your spirit is opening, melting, knowing only desire. And the fire flares outward, shaping itself into the form of a woman whose body glows and whose hair whirls up like flame. Love flares outward, filling you as it fills the others, the earth and sky and all that is as the Freyja comes... based on Diana Paxson's essay
