Charlotte woke the next morning with a dull grey fear in her heart. She was covered in sweat and felt she had to take immediate action to flee this dangerous situation. The thankful, secure feeling of the Beltane ritual was gone, along with the joy about her meeting with Christiane, and the experience of feeling the energy flow deblocked in a woman who was a complete stranger. Now only fear and a dull, terrible desperation filled her mind. Last night’s dream was clear in her mind and the memory of that led her once again to feel the horror she had experienced in her dream. It was rare for her to remember her dreams so vividly.
She tried hard to wake up completely and to shake off the dream. With a lot of effort she got up. The dream seemed to have pulled the ground out from underneath her feet. She took a hot shower until she felt warm. Then she sat down to meditate. Once she was relaxed, she became aware of the grey, dull void in her abdomen. She tried to send light, love and warmth into her belly and this seemed to ease the greyness a little, but she remained emotionally very unstable.
The days that followed exhausted her. She dragged herself through each day, feeling deeply unsettled. If she was scheduled to coach new groups during the day, she almost panicked in the morning, feeling totally incompetent. It was a surprise to her that the coaching sessions seemed to be successful, no doubt due to her routine. The days cost her a lot of strength and energy and she was always glad to retire in the evenings, thinking her bed a safe place to relax. But once there, the dreams tortured her: again and again, images of Sarah appeared in her dreams.
Christiane called her for two more treatments. Once they met for a long walk through the frosty autumnal forest. Anona ran around them happily. She was perfectly obedient and Charlotte could feel the beginning of a loving connection growing between owner and dog. The long walk relaxed Charlotte and they walked in silence most of the time, only interrupted by short dialogues about their respective jobs, the nature around them or several times about Anona. Christiane told Charlotte that she had started a Tai Chi course. To begin with she talked slowly and haltingly, but she soon became more animated telling about her experiences and the people she had met there. After the walk, Charlotte once again gave Christiane a treatment and she could feel that the energy in her now flowed more constantly and that her heart chakra seemed to be slowly warming up.
The next few weeks passed quietly for Charlotte, her projects and group mediations running smoothly. She didn’t have that much work and so she submitted herself with self-discipline to a very strict sports programme and meditations mornings and evenings. By keeping this routine up she came slowly back into her own. If not for those nightly dreams of Sarah, she would have said she felt very well. These dreams deeply unsettled her and she felt herself in a very unstable emotional balance.
Then one morning Charlotte once again awoke soaked in sweat and with a terrified trembling in her soul. Images of black leather boots, stamping brutally in step, burnt behind her eyelids and reverberated in her ears. She curled her body tightly but the soaking-wet nightie clung cold and wet to her body. The fear became dull and she knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Her troubled mind started to bombard her with worries about the work piling up on her desk and apprehension of her next presentation. She started to sweat again. Sighing – almost whimpering – she got up, took of the wet nightie, had a wash and rubbed herself warm with a towel before pulling on a warm and soft sweater. Then she lit a candle in the kitchen and made herself a cup of Pai Mu Tan tea.
The soft, hot taste in her mouth calmed her but once more the images of violence caused by people in uniform passed through her mind. She remembered women crying, children desperately sobbing, and men laughing cruelly. There was also one cutting and harsh woman's voice. But the images seemed to be slipping away, the sounds she remembered becoming diffuse. The more she tried to grasp them, the more her memory seemed to empty, until all that remained was a cold, torturing fear.
Charlotte shuddered. She lit an incense stick before the figurine of the dancing Shiva. Then she sat down in front of the white Tara in her meditation room and asked for inner peace. Cleo came in and climbed onto her lap and leaned against her belly. This small body managed to emit an astonishing amount of warmth and Cleo seemed to fill the cold empty void inside her with her warming purring. Charlotte sighed deeply, laid her hands on Cleo’s body, and closed her eyes. Although she did not really manage to concentrate, all of a sudden she felt the inner peace she had hoped for. Deep inside her there was still tension caused by fear, which made it impossible for her to concentrate fully and to let go, but nevertheless she felt peaceful enough to meet the day. Today was 31 October, Samhain, the darkest of the Celtic annual cycle feasts. As this feast was about accepting the darkness inside and outside, it was very important for Charlotte to celebrate with other women. She decided to join Barbara’s group, who always celebrated Samhain in a cave in the middle of the forest.
That evening the women gathered in the forest. There were a lot of them and Charlotte blended into the group, almost unnoticed. Despite greeting those she knew and embracing some of them, Charlotte realised that most of them wouldn’t remember her later. Her power totem in the east was the fox, whose abilities she could trust blindly. Due to the way he could blend into the shimmering twilight at the edge of the woods, she would be able to melt into the group almost unnoticed. She would be seen but wouldn’t be noticed.
When the women had all greeted each other, they started walking into the woods. Charlotte once again marvelled about all those women walking without hesitation into the pitch-black darkness on a very muddy path. They turned left in the woods and slowly started to climb down through the rustling leaves, step by step. Nobody spoke. A profound silence fell over the forest, broken only by the rustling footsteps and the occasional murmured warning of a slippery log, a big stone, or a dip in the path.
Once in front of the cave they came to a stop. Its entrance opened black and silent before them, like a huge dark throat. Charlotte shivered. Everyone filed into the cave and squatted on the floor, close together. Slowly but rhythmically, they began to beat the drums. At first it was subdued but soon the beating of the drums vibrated throughout the cave and filled it completely. The darkness was so complete that they couldn’t see each other’s faces. Darkness, a void, the bare, cold earth: only the rhythmic solace of the drums gave them hope.
Then the drums stopped. Silence. Nothing. The women kept silent too, everyone lost in her own thoughts. Samhain. Remembering those who had died this year. Thoughts about loss and mourning during the year. The void, darkness, coldness, winter, death. Seeking to honour and respect the ghosts and peers. Respect for new beginnings, which could only issue from death.
One after another the women started to talk now. Some spoke hesitatingly, several full of sorrow, others more loudly and decisively. A few managed only a subdued whispering. They spoke about their losses in the past year, of death and dying, illness and inner difficulties. They talked about growing old and old age, of fear, of their struggle to accept death, illness and age. Others talked about the hope of the promised new beginning. About their hope that the circle would fulfil itself, their struggle to understand that from pain could grow happiness, and from sorrow and suffering could grow life and joy. Often you could hear their doubts. The big question, why did it have to be like that? Why was it necessary to have disease, old age, sorrow, desperation?
It fell silent again in the cave. It seemed to Charlotte as if the goddess kept her silence about this eternal question, the one that hovers over mankind and was now also hovering above the women in the cave. The cave silently breathed blackness and dampness. Charlotte hadn’t shared anything about herself, had kept silent. She could still feel the fox inside her, watching out of sight. And her heart totem, the lynx, seemed to stand beside her, also very quiet and secretive. Charlotte snuggled against the stone walls of the cave, protected by her warm jacket so she didn’t feel the cold. She thought about her fears, about those frequently returning nightmares. Should she share those? She made contact with the earth beneath her and closed