365 Days of Discovery, Part 1

As a follow-up to my blog “A Call to Miach“, I offer the following two-part dramatic piece that I wrote giving an alternate view on the death of Miach, as interpreted from the lore.

Diancecht: “Be gone!”

Miach falls dead under his father’s fatal blow to the head

Airmid: “I bury you, brother. You, who were the greatest healer; sadly, there is no one to heal you. Is there anyone to mourn? Who will ever know? Our father, great but cruel; proud, but jealous, could not tolerate the thought that not only were you his equal, but you were his better as well.”

Airmid: “Into my arms, brother. No cure can heal you now. I will carry you to the edge of the world which is where you will be safe. There you will be free; free from a father’s jealousy; free from a father’s threat; free from a wound thrice inflicted and twice recovered. I know that while you will be gone from this mortal plane, you are a God after all and will continue to help heal from the land of the Ancestors and from the land of the Shining Ones, though those here among the living and vital nature spirits will need you most and will call to you today, yea, and call to you tomorrow, yea, and call to you every day until Lir reclaims the land and submerges all in his primordial and infinite waters. Waters that flow on the land and you will be there; water that flows underground, and you will be there, water that flows into the stars at night and you will go there.”

Airmid: “For surgery was your strength, my brother, and none could surpass you, not even our father. At the end, you healed yourself, not once, but twice, until his wretched sword did cut short a life that should still be here and vital. But how can it be that a God can die? Do we attain, sustain, and ordain ourselves to a world fraught with material pitfalls and fatality than even we Gods cannot escape? We live forever; it is true, but perhaps not in this form and not in this place. How can this be? Will all our powers, great and true, how is it that this has come to pass? That father strike son, three times wrong, and thus change vitality to mortality and then to leave his torn and lifeless body like a husk upon the ground? Does thus the healer fail in their appointed task and cause more pain in stark reversal of one’s calling and creed? The world changes too much on this day.”

Airmid: “I walk, wearily, almost lifelessly, holding my brother, my mentor, my friend, he in my arms, light, lifeless, broken into halves where a whole once lived and breathed and flourished. I hold him up to you, Belenos Bright, and I ask that you warm what remains of his mortal shell and he diffuses into the three realms and surrounds us all who care to feel, to call, and to recollect. Grant, O the Many Gods, that from this senseless death that some good may arrive, arise, and sustain for all the great works that he did. Let spring forth from this tragedy some semblance of gift or miracle that some balance may be restored. To one who healed all give the rest of us something with which to heal ourselves at his physical absence.”

Airmid: “Here, here beside the ocean where all life began, I put you to rest my brother. Let this red cloth hold your body and let me wrap it tight so that it may hold your body together as one. Red, like the blood of the Mother; red, like the blood of your patients; and finally, red, like your own blood. I bind you in the cloth of this world as we prepare you, in essence, for our appreciation of you in the next world.”

Airmid places stones around the place where Miach is laid to rest

Airmid: “Now, brother, I surround your body with these stones, selected by my hand, to encircle you, to protect you, to mark you off. Lir will watch over you for all time to come. I will cover you with my cloak so that you will be warm, though I doubt that warmth preoccupies you in any way now. Yet, to ease my soul, I will cover your body with this cloak. It is a magical cloak, and may it bring blessings your way.”

Airmid places the cloak over the body

A breeze arises from the Ocean and whirls around the grave of Miach. From this breeze, Miach’s voice is heard

Miach: “Worry not, my sister, my Healing Goddess, for while I cannot stand next to you in the flesh, I can still be next to you – always – in the spirit. What does location matter if one can be anywhere? We are fooled as Gods sometimes, fooled into thinking that we have powers and abilities in the corporeal world when in fact we have powers in whatever world we find ourselves. Do not grieve for me because I have greater things to bring into being and I also will continue my work, whether I am on this plane of existence or not. I am not so easily dismissed or destroyed.”

Airmid: “I have heard your words and I will look for those greater things that you have promised. I will hold vigil over your resting place this night and will keep you company, although as I see now, it is my company that you have kept. I will light a bright fire under the fires of the skies, bright lights that punctuate the sky and give us pause to think and dream and wonder. Countless are the Shining Ones that watch us from above and guide us in our days.”

Airmid: “The fire now lit; the flames cast long shadows against the stones of Miach’s grave. As I watch the movement, I recall so many scenes, acted out by shadow and light against the backdrop of this place, this grave, this time. It is one of the ironies, one of the mysteries of life that we Gods may come to some end, some finality, and some cessation on this plane. I do believe Miach when he says that he will continue his work, wherever he may be. One does not need to see a God to pray to him, for it is rarely so that people see the very divinities to which they address their needs.”

Airmid: “Flicker, flicker, flame; what is the nature of the Gods in this world, in any world? One day we are and then we will be, never thinking of an end, never thinking that an end is even in the remotest of possibilities. How odd is it for a God to die? How impossible is it for a deity to come to some death? I cannot understand it in the depths of my being. Yet these battles we have seen of late, in an around Mag Tuired, have bent the fabric of the very reality that we have come to understand and enjoy. How can one explain that Gods are falling in battle by the hand of their enemies? How can one explain that Gods are falling to the sword by the hand of their own family? How has it come to be that we are so inured in this world that we can be injured at all even fatally? This I cannot comprehend.”

A raven lands on one of the stones of the cairn

Raven: “I thought it might be time for my appearance, as with a passage so recently noted. While it is my usual practice, or so it is said, to come to claim the dead and to clean their bones, this one is different. This one did not live or die in the usual manner of mortals and his job is far from over. My appearance is not as premature as it is unexpected. I come not for your brother, my dear, as much as I come to you. I can see that these events weigh heavily upon you and that you have many questions which remain unanswered, unsettled, and unspoken. They are powerful questions precisely because they have no answers, no place in this world.”

Airmid: “Morrigu, Mother, you come to me, dark as night, when I am feeling dark as the night that surrounds me, dark as they night that engulfs Miach, dark as the night that I cannot see past. I know that we live in many dimensions and on many planes, but I always thought that we would continue here on this plane. Yet now I see it is not so and that this continuity is somehow twisted or flawed and I cannot comprehend that my brother – a God – could be here, vital one moment and bereft of life, cold, still, unmoving, the next. I know he exists in other planes – he has visited me here, speaking from the wind blowing from the west across Lir, the great ocean. So, I know that it is not merely voices that I hear, it is HIS voice. He is there, yet I cannot extricate myself from here.”

Next: 365 Days of Discovery, Part 2