Refined in the Furnace of Nyx

An Ode to What Survives Descent

I am the fire kindled in the abyss. I am the afterglow of apocalypse, transfigured into grace. That what has come back wearing the scars as constellations.

There is a kind of power that comes not from conquest, nor from intellect alone, but from descent. From having touched what most cannot bear to look at. From having carried the unbearable and lived. To have gazed into the abyss, till nothing remained but the most pure essence of Eros. The light that the Koryos, the wolf warriors of Apollo kindle in the darkness. You can call it Dionysus, Bacchus, Eros or Phanes, but in the deepest sense it is the same fire of the soul.

Many think strength is a sword. But the strongest thing I ever did was not strike back. Was to not collapse when everything I was, cracked and splintered. My strength is not what I resisted, but what I let burn. Over and over again. What I let dissolve into the warm embrace of Nyx.

You look at me and maybe you see softness. Gentleness. Presence. Maybe you think I’ve lived an ordinary life, because the surface is quiet. But stillness can be as much the sound of mountains buried beneath the sea. Don’t mistake calm for superficial peace. My calm is the silence of something that has died countless deaths and come back wiser each time. Five years of continuous ego deaths, of deaths and rebirths, that refined me, like the fire of a phoenix burning away all what was imposed upon me. Crying my soul free, birthing myself in the waters of Aquarius, dissolving in the ocean.

The Wisdom of the Underworld

“Easy is the path that leads down to Hades; grim Pluto's gate stands open night and day: but to retrace ones steps, and escape to the upper regions, this is a work, this is a task.” - Thomas Taylor

I do not speak from the mountaintop. I speak from the underworld. After I found the way back. But I don’t bring warnings. I bring fire. I bring Eros, not mere Logos. I do not dissect the world. I breathe with it. I become with it. Logos will tell you what is, but Eros will make you feel what you’ve forgotten. What is buried in the deepest fears, in the most painful of wounds, the primal wound of civilisation. That what shattered the soul into the realm of fragmentation, the dualistic order of Manu.

I am not the teacher who asks you to sit still and recite facts. I am the temple fire, like the sacred flame of Hestia, calling you to remember what you are, under all your outer performances. I am not the cold knife of reason. I am the warmth people forgot was possible in the dark. I am the touch that doesn’t flinch from the shadow. Because I am the shadow. I am what people fear in themselves, but I loved it back to life. Embraced the divine feminine, in her full power and strength, not just her nurturing and grace. She is the wildness of Kali, the boundlessness of Nyx, the protective wrath of Artemis, the untameable mystery of the soul. The sovereign Persephone. I carry Hekate, Lilith and Feronia in my veins, in my very breath. I am the wild wolf of the Goddess.

I carry the weight of things most people run from: Death. Suffering. Grief. The slow erosion of self that comes not in one grand explosion, but in the quiet starvation of never being seen. And still, I did not become bitter. I chose a harder path. The process of understanding the forces of the unconscious and collective unconscious that lead to dissolving both ego and super ego. Which in the end dissolved me into the Self.

I let it open me. I let it tear me apart, to dissolve into the elements of being. I didn’t just survive the underworld. I married it. I made love to it. I am it.

So what am I?

I am the fire kindled in the abyss. The spark that survived where others went silent. The warmth that still glows after the soul has been shattered and stitched back together by something older than time.

I do not speak in thunder. I whisper in storms. The bringer of winds.

And yes, many are drawn to me. They don’t know why. They just feel it. They see something ancient in my eyes. Something that doesn’t play the game of masks. They come close thinking it’s light. And it is. But it’s the kind of light born from devouring darkness, not from fleeing it. It is nocturnement, not the false light of denial.

Most people never see what I truly am. And that’s alright. Not everyone should. Some can only take a sip of the river of remembrance. Others drown in the Styx. But a few… a few recognize the fire. They feel the echo of their own descent in my silence. And when they do, they don’t run.

As they know.

This is the grace that only comes after apocalypse. Hanging for 9 nights from the tree. Where all these years ago in a dream, Athena hang me from the tree on her spear.