Part 16 (1/2)
CHAPTER XI
THE MAID OF DREAMS
Indian prayer is not the placid acceptance of thoughts comforting. The complete man is both mind and body--and all of him must work when the G.o.ds are called upon for work, and by fasting and exhaustion must the spirit path be made clear for dreams.
The first day Tahn-te had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him--the acc.u.mulated faiths of all the devotees in that place since the G.o.d was born!
As the sun went behind the mountain he knew the village herald was telling the people, and the leaders of Povi-whah would fast that night and send their thoughts to him. Po-tzah would fast although Po-tzah was not called upon by his position to do so.
And Po-tzah had said, ”Speak for our children to the G.o.d.”
He seemed to hear Po-tzah's voice, and the words repeat themselves in the dusk, and--stranger still--another voice back of Po-tzah's! it also spoke of children--through the chanted prayer he heard it--baffling yet insistent.
Then he knew it!
He knew it as the first shadow of the visions which the prayer was bringing:--it was the voice of the Ruler whose office he now held--the aged man who had once worn the white robe and said--”If she had not died--her children would be your children!”
The picture of Po-tzah's small brown babe came between him and the sacred figure on the rock,--a strange thing for the voice to suggest!
A little child--in the dusk--and--sheltering arms around it!
”Oh You!
Oh--Indwelling G.o.d!
Come to me!
Grey ghost--white ghost Why is the false enchantment?
Grey ghost of darkness-- White ghost of high hills Make way for sacred magic, Sink far your darkened spells!
O You!
O Indwelling G.o.d Come to me!”
In the dusk a shadow--or it might have been a drooping bough of the pinon tree--gave outline of a bent head above the outline of the babe--only a strange trick of carving on the gray stone, and swaying branches outlining a head--then the shoulders--then an arm about the babe! To the mind of the mystic it was the visible temptation of a black enchantment in the very presence of the G.o.d!--The strongest the opposing powers could send to man under vows of prayer and search for the spirit medicine of the highest thought.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SIGNAL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN G.o.d _Page 129_]
”Oh You!
G.o.ddess of the stars You--who gives the life!
Why is there for me false magic?
Mother mine of the starry skirt Why for me the darkened star?
I, Master of spells, call to you!
Ho:--there! It is I!
Green and black spirit of power Seek elsewhere your victims!
I seek the light--I find the light!
Mother mine of the starry skirt I find the light!