Initiation at Beltane by Tamarin Laurel

Entering Ezmereld

I came to myself, standing--as if I had sleepwalked here from somewhere else and had suddenly awakened to the world around me. Behind me, a winding path led through trees and up to a low sweep of stone stairs. I stood upon them before the arched doorway of a large stone building. Carved dragons entwined their way up both sides of the doorframe to meet each other high overhead. They looked down at me from the second floor level. As I watched, the dark green and oak of the iron bound door swung slowly inward upon a dark space within.

Itchy with anticipation, I dropped my eyes to the floor and watched as the door’s slow movement revealed first a green-stockinged foot, then sheer gossamer robes in a paler green floating over red undergarments. In them, a blond-haired teenager leaned against the wall with a quirk of a half smile on his face and a look in his eyes that acknowledged the amusing inappropriateness of either his clothes or his role.

He pushed away from the wall and straightened his stance and face. I looked questioningly into the bright blue of his eyes. There was a deep, reverberating quality to the words I then heard. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard them only in my head. With a force that summoned all the listening ears of the universe, a voice said, “Before you is set an open door. Will you step across the threshold?” 

“Yes,” I answered in a small voice. And I stepped into the building beside this strange greeter. I wondered, as I did so, what exactly was supposed to happen to young men who answered “yes” to this challenge.

“Now what?” I whispered to my guide.

“Come this way,” he said in a perfectly normal voice. I trailed behind as he followed maze-like markings on the mosaic floor of the large entry hall beyond the dark portico, wandering, twisting, and covering little distance through the round, skylit hall.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“Because someone chose you to be here,” he answered casually over his shoulder, scanning the floor for a pattern obscure to me.

“Who chose me?”

At this he looked over at me, surprised. “Your benefactor must be a secret for now, if you do not know who it is. But I’m sure you will learn the answer in time.”

“Well, why was I chosen?”

He grinned. “The answer to that question is always ‘For qualities or potential you have exhibited.’ But I bet you’ll only say that you don’t know what qualities or potential you’ve displayed, so you won’t find this answer very helpful, will you?”

“Okay, just tell me where I am.”

“This is Ezmereld, University of Esoteric Knowing, which includes the School of Tranformations, Otherworld Seminary, and Academy of Applied Magics. Or Sot, Os, and Aam, as they are also known.”

He came to a place near the center of the room and stopped, looking down at the pattern on all sides. He seemed to be stuck. Shrugging lightly, as if dismissing this dead-end problem as of little consequence, he proceeded across the floor without regard for any pattern. I followed.

“Sit here,” he directed me, pointing to a bench along one wall. I sat. He went further along the wall to consult a directory and computer terminal, his robes fluttering behind.

My bench was near a fountain in the wall. A bas-relief statue of a merwoman poured water from a chalice containing a leaping fish. The water rushed down into a wishing pool glittering with coins near the floor. I reached into my jeans pocket to see if I had a coin to wish on. I came up with three copper pennies and a silver dime.

I held one of the pennies. “I wish I knew what I was doing,” I said hopelessly, and tossed in the coin.

“I wish somebody would tell me what’s happening,” I said to the next, and tossed it out to the waiting pool.

I rubbed the third penny between my fingers and considered the skylight far above me as I wondered what else I wanted.

“I want to understand who this guy is,” I thought. At first the question was about the guy who greeted me. I could also mean the mystery person who was my benefactor. But then I realized I could just as well mean myself. Before too many other questions piled upon this pitiful penny, I tossed it in the waters.

Now only the dime remained. I looked at it, glinting brightly. It was mesmerizing to tilt it back and forth, catching the light at different angles. All the rest of my questions-- or at least ten of them wrapped up in this tiny silver bit? how to sum up the rest of my questions in life? The flashing brightness drifted my attention away to an inward scene. All the rest of my questions? They are a sea, and I am just a small boat drifting far from solid land. The sun flashed off the ocean waves in spots as bright as the dime. Ahead, I saw a figure half-obscured by the brightness. As I reached for the image, I caught myself from falling forward off the bench.

It was just a daydream, or I was sleepwalking again. I dropped the dime out of my closed fist and listened to its plunk into the water, watching as it dropped beneath the surface. The wish that went with it was only a wordless longing to know.

I heard footsteps echoing across the rotunda and looked up from the pool to watch the woman who approached. She stopped to confer in whispers with the boy who had answered the door. Her close-cropped head bent down to his shorter frame. Then briskly she came over to me. But in contradiction to her veneer of efficiency and poise, she wrung her hands in discomposure and smiled at me awkwardly as she said, “I was supposed to be the one on door duty today, not Lou. My name is Shirrin. Are you he? The young student they were expecting to come here?” she asked, waving her arm vaguely around at “here.” A book and gift shop window looked out on the entry hall, displaying an odd assortment of occult wares. Several corridors radiated off from the hall, and a staircase ascended the far wall to the higher floors. I noticed that the teenaged Lou had disappeared.

I didn’t know how to answer her. A sense of panic prickled through me as I realized that my sudden awakening from seeming sleep had not returned my regular waking memories. I didn’t know why I was here. I didn’t know who I was, or even my name. My plain jeans and T-shirt didn’t give me any clues. And I certainly didn’t recognize “here.” My mouth opened like that of the fish in the fountain, but no answer came.

The calmly nervous young woman shifted slightly from foot to foot, wondering what to do with me next. She watched my rising panic anxiously. Finally I managed to say, “I don’t know anything about myself, my name, or where I’ve come from.”

Attempting to soothe me, she suggested, “Maybe you were snatched from elsewhere.” Her tone implied that this was common enough. But I was not soothed.

She looked up with relief when a dark-bearded man passed through the hall from one corridor to another.

“Professor Janus,” she called over to him. “I think this is the new student we were supposed to watch for.” The professor’s dark eyebrows lifted in interest over his deep brown eyes, and he changed course to come over and join us.

“You were expecting me?” I asked Shirrin.

“We were told to expect a new student, yes. I don’t yet know if that is you.” As Janus came near, she addressed him. “I’m new at being Doorkeeper. I know there’s supposed to be some kind of test if the one at the door is to become a student of Ezmereld. But I got confused--so many different kinds of tests were explained to me. If he doesn’t know if he’s the student we’re expecting, how do we know?”

“Well,” began Janus thoughtfully, “it is true that many things can serve as a test. When I am testing new students, I look at two things: their abilities of perception, and their ability to move energy.”

The Test

As Shirrin and Janus stood discussing my fate, several other people were drawn over by my unfamiliar face. Three people emerged from the occult gift shop: a young couple, and a youthfully mature man they called Adair. Adair was the occult store’s owner, and had intimidatingly piercing eyes offset by a genial and laughing manner. It took me a lot longer to pick up on the others? names: Merlin, a very tall, long-haired guy in black, and Krystal, a good-looking young woman.

A woman in black leather swung through the front door, pulling off a motorcycle helmet. She looked like some mixture of preppy, biker, and Goth. She had a small, delicate tattoo on her bare shoulder, wore studded leather and chain jewelry, and had stroked dark eyeliner onto an otherwise bare face. Skull beads were woven into several dark hair wraps that dangled below the bush of her dark, frizzy hair.

Each had a different test in mind for me. Adair stated, “You can never have a proper test if the person knows it’s coming or is being interviewed by someone they know is important. They’ll be on their best behavior, and the test won’t accurately reflect how they’d act the rest of the time. I think you have to measure people by all the little actions that make up their lives. And by just reading their souls.”

“Yes,” agreed Shirrin. “I just read people, and know whether I’ll like them or not, even before they say anything specific about themselves.”

Merlin shook his head at Shirrin’s approach. “I think what people say about themselves is just words, and you need a test of action. And it should be an unannounced test, like Adair says. Like in the book I just read, where the guy was thrown into a situation of having to battle ogres, in order to save this woman he didn’t even know...”

It looked like Merlin would readily have gone on to narrate the whole plot of the book, but Krystal interrupted him. “Maybe it could be an unannounced test like in that faery tale of the three brothers. Each of them in turn is asked by a poor, ugly, old woman to share his food with her. The first brother has the most to share, but refuses, and he meets an unpleasant fate. Then the second brother has less to share, but does the same as the first brother. And the third brother has the least to share, but gives it to the woman, and she tells him where to find a buried treasure. I’d have paid attention to the fates of the first two brothers, and not done as they did either.”

“Or, perhaps,” added Janus in his thoughtful way, “it would be a test of the interplay between the destiny of the crone (or whoever is the tester) and the destiny of the one tested. I would look for the omens that attend upon the meeting between the destiny, or myth, of Ezmereld, and the myth of our young visitor here.”

“But I don’t have a myth. I’m just an ordinary person,” I said, startled into this claim of self-knowledge where I’d thought I had none.

“I think we may be defining the term ‘myth’ differently. I do not mean tales of gods from long ago and far away. I mean that subtle tapestry of hidden forces that makes up the fabric of one’s life. This I call one’s mythic life. We may not be aware of our mythic lives at all times, but we all have them.

“Since all choices in life can be a test, shall we just start with several choices?” He didn’t wait for agreement before he continued. “Here, in the little altar sheltered under the chalice of the fountain, there is a place to set a votive light. Do you wish to light one?”

“Yes?” I answered, fishing for the expected answer instead of plumbing the depths of my own desires.

“Over here there are candles of many different colors and styles. Choose one, and light it.”

I got up from the bench, and went over to the place he indicated. I picked out a slender, yellow pillar candle. But there weren’t any matches with the candles, so I just stood holding it, not sure what to do next.

Janus prompted, “Now you must choose the flame to take your light from.” He waved the onlookers to move back so I could see the sconces burning around the fountain. To one side, a bowl of lamp oil burned before a statue of a lionheaded woman. On the other side was the statue and lamp of a bullheaded woman. And upon the head of the water-bearing merwoman of the fountain sat a crown shaped from a winged sea serpent surrounding a third lamp of flame.

“You have the candle in your hand. Move it to a flame,” he prodded, while I stood inwardly debating. Finally I lit the candle from the flame before the bullheaded woman.

Janus stayed my arm before I placed the candle into the niche behind the falling water. He said, “Now, before you set it down, you must understand that this act of lighting the candle carries an associated meaning. There is always an associated meaning to our ritual actions. You might light the candle to carry outward the flame of some inner fire within you. But if you do not look within and see a fire there, look outside yourself. Hanging on the walls of this hall are representations of the Thirteen Treasures. Look around the room until your eye is drawn to something.”

The room had a lot more than thirteen items. I wondered how I was supposed to tell the treasures from the rest of the décor.

“What does your eye come to rest upon?”

There was an antlered animal-head mask mounted on the opposite wall. I pointed at it dubiously.

“Ah, Herne, the Spirit of the Greenwood, whom the Witches honor. Take your lit candle over there and hold it up to him, then set your candle in the niche.” I did this, feeling foolish. Everyone watched me quietly, even reverently, through these motions. I felt relieved when I’d finally placed the candle behind the falling water. But seconds later I jumped out of my skin at a sudden loud noise behind me, like the belling of some huge stag. I spun around to see that the biker chick had put on the mask of Herne and was blowing on some kind of horn inside it. The belling sound filled the chamber and made me jump a second time.

“Do that again,” suggested Janus. “Spin around at the next bell, and let your eyes find something upon the wall.” He then signaled for “ Herne” to trumpet again. I closed my eyes and spun away from the sound. As its reverberation died, I opened my eyes and they fastened upon a triangle of thick glass in a small metal door covering a dark opening in the wall. When I pointed to it, Janus said, “Ah, the woodstove. Or, to use a more mythically appropriate name, the fireplace, or the athanor.

“Once more.” The horn sounded and I leaped around. This time my eyes came to rest on an open book set within a wall niche under the stairs. This, too, I indicated, and Janus nodded, saying, “Good. Good.” He waved the biker out of the mask and away.

“What does it mean? Why is it good? Did I pass the test?” I asked confusedly.

“Well, it was not a test to pass or fail,” said Janus. “It was only a test of your affinities, and you indicated some of them. That is good, in a general sense, because you now know a few things that will be useful to you. What exactly is indicated by your choice of these items will only become clear in time.

“Sometimes the three chosen omens relate to your past, your future, and your ever-now. For instance, Herne might touch your life from out of the dreamtime, or the ever-now. That would leave, for instance, the book to indicate your future, and the athanor indicating something of your past.”

I just blinked at this pronouncement without response. If this was true, I certainly didn’t feel transformed into something useful in the athanor. I felt burnt out by that alchemists’ furnace.

Myth of Ezmereld

“Now,” continued Janus, “you may want to just wait a while for some omen of response to your actions. Perhaps you would like to scry in the candle flame, or the fountain waters, for some vision?”

“Scry?”

“Scrying is an arcane word for looking. It’s related to the word ‘descry’: to catch sight of, or discern, distant or obscure things. It is typically applied to the kind of seeing done with the second sight, using a gazing tool such as a crystal ball, dark mirror, water, or flame.”

Watching my face, it was clear to Janus that I had no clue how to follow his suggestion. Instead, he turned his quiet, lizard-lidded gaze to Shirrin and said, “You might wish to elaborate on your job as Doorkeeper, and say something about the threshold upon which our guest now stands, and the myth of Ezmereld.”

Shirrin was momentarily flustered by this unexpected task, but quickly settled, folding her hands before her, and began to recite earnestly.

“Ezmereld was founded and named by Ezmer the Younger, who was a Witch, in honor of her father, Ezmer the Elder, a great philosopher and student of the cosmos. It has become the premiere place for anyone with a destiny to learn to fulfill that destiny.”

“Doesn’t everyone have a destiny?” I asked, interrupting her.

“Well, that’s a philosophical question for debate, but whatever the answer, the people who come to Ezmereld are relatively few. Currently, the triad of departments probably has over 700 students: about 300 on site, and the rest abroad.

“To either side of us--here on the first floor--are the Creation Department’s living quarters and teaching areas.” She leaned forward to add, “It is also called the Priest Department, since its main focus is priestly training.

“On the second floor, the living quarters of the Magic Wielders wing is on the east side, and the Arts Department wing is on the west side. Above that, some of the faculty live on the third floor, and the governor’s penthouse is at the top.”

“Why don’t you tell him the Founder’s Tale?” suggested Janus.

“Oh,” said Shirrin, dropping her tour-guide mode. Janus only stayed long enough to hear Shirrin begin the story.

“Well,” said Shirrin, “Once there was a far away and obscure piece of countryside. No one lived there except the Faery Folk. Well, not really no one,” she interrupted herself. “There was a small village of people, and scattered farms and homesteads, but I mean there weren’t so many humans around that they did much to mask the presence of the fey spirits of the place.”

Someone crossing the entry hall caught sight of us and came over to ask, “What’s up?” This man seemed to find my unfamiliar face as unusual as I found his appearance. He was tall and slender, with wispy blond hair thinning back from the curve of his forehead, and he stood somewhat stooped. I couldn’t tell if it was just a habitual slouch, or one caused by cradling his arms around the wide-bellied lute he strummed as he strolled over. The man wasn’t exceptional in his person, but I couldn’t believe strolling minstrels were usual. Or at least, I was sure they were unusual in the settings I was used to, though I was still at a loss to say how I knew this. His ornate velvet-and-satin tunic over hose certainly was a contrast with the T-shirts and pants that the rest of us wore.

Shirrin took a moment out of her story to explain to the man what was up.

“We think this is a new student who was expected to arrive. We’re waiting for the fountain to answer us with some omens about his suitability for one of the departments. I was just starting to tell him the Founder’s Tale. Maybe you could help me when I get stuck, Liam, since storytelling is your skill, as a bard.” Liam nodded, and took a seat on a nearby stone bench. He gave a theatrical sweep of his arm to indicate that Shirrin should proceed with the story, then returned to strumming background accompaniment on his lute.

“The Fey were said to be quite untamed around here, but Ezmara--that’s the commonest name used for Ezmer the Younger,” added Shirrin, interrupting herself again, “Ezmara was attracted by the untamed feel of the place when she traveled through it one day. There was a spring where she liked to go to meditate, in a scrubby grazing field on the slopes of Titans? Ridge. She found the deep sources of the spring helped her to reach deep sources within her self. And one day, while meditating there, she decided to found a school for magic. This was the birth of Ezmereld.”

Shirrin relaxed her stance for public recitation. She seemed to think she had said enough. Smoothly, Liam took over the narration, still accompanying the words with his lute music. “The tale is told that one day when Ezmara walked along Titans’ Ridge, she met a woman standing beside her favorite spring, and asked her name. ‘I am the Lady of the Fountain,’ responded the woman. ‘I will show you to the place that feeds this spring, if you desire to know it.’ Ezmara did long to know this, so the Lady called her trusted servant to them. This servant was a fey creature, known to take on different guises. On this particular day, it appeared as a small white dog, and led Ezmara into a hidden cave beneath the hill.

“This was not one of the caves that can be accessed from the basement passages of this school. Nor was it the cave that holds the Maze of Mysteries, which lies beneath the school. There are some who argue that it is only the changeable nature of the Maze itself that keeps the founder’s secrets hidden from us now; but my teacher says that this cave has yet to be found again.

“Nevertheless, in her exploration of the cavern Ezmara had visions not unlike those of maze journeyers. First she saw a sphinx, but as she drew near to it, the figure transformed into the goddess Isis, Mistress of Magic. Isis raised a wand in one hand and pointed to the sky. An arc of sky-fire shot down to the upraised wand, and sparks of light poured from it.

“Next, Ezmara was met by the god Hermes. He, too, held a wand. He held it horizontally between his two outstretched hands, and snakes encircled his forearms, watching the wand with vigilant eyes. Yet Ezmara dared to touch the wand extended towards her, and out of it poured a fine mist of water droplets.

“Last, she met the god Anubis, who stood beside a mighty staff set in the ground. Ezmara believed that she must pull this wand of power from the ground in which it was stuck. With much effort, she pulled it free. Out of the hole in the ground poured a host of shadows.

“With the staff in her hands, Ezmara felt its powers summon up twin dragons from the deeps of the cave. These were the sleeping powers of the earth in this place: the ancient spirits who rule and guard this land. One dragon took to the sky as lookout over the mountainous hills. It breathed fire as it flew, a beacon flame to seekers of wisdom, like a candle in the dark.

“The other dragon dove deep beneath the earth, there to guard the treasures in its cave. The first of these treasures was Ezmara’s book. In this book, she preserved the light and shadow and mist that had poured forth from the three wands. It is a mighty book of magic, still hidden from us. We call it the Hidden Book of Knowledge, and many who come to the school of Ezmereld search for it.

“Ezmara heard the sound of a bell, and found herself beside the Lady of the Fountain again. Because Ezmara was a Witch, she knew that a spell had been made. Three times makes a charm, goes the saying. She had heard the bell, and made the book, and lit the candle of the sky. But even Ezmara was not wise in all things, and so she asked the Lady, ‘What is to be fashioned with this charm?’ And the Lady answered, ‘You are to fashion a school of magic upon this place.’ And so Ezmara did.”

With a final flourish of notes from his lute, Liam ended this tale, and looked over at me expectantly. “Now tell me how you connect with that myth--what lesson you gained from it; what symbols or characters or actions particularly struck you?”

“I don’t know. Is this the test? No one told me I was supposed to be paying attention in any special way.” I felt at a loss for an answer, which was beginning to be much too common a feeling.

“Tell me about your myth, then, and I will see what correlations strike me,” offered Liam, trying to be helpful. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

“I don’t know that either.”

Shirrin jumped in to provide her theory that I was snatched from elsewhere. Listening to her this time, I began to wonder if “elsewhere” was a name for a concrete place. But before I could ask, Liam turned his attention back to me.

“I believe we always know more about ourselves than we give ourselves credit for,” he said. “I would like you to try the exercise of making several statements of identity about yourself. Start with the words ‘I am’ and then finish off the sentence with whatever comes to mind first. Go ahead. Try it now,” he encouraged, when I remained silent. Everyone waited expectantly for me to speak. Reluctantly, I tried it.

“I am a man lost in the world, who can’t remember his own name.”

“Go on. Where are you from?”

“I am from some world with a different reality than this one,” I snapped rather testily at this improbably dressed lute-playing bard.

“Why are you here?”

“I am here because someone sent for me,” I answered, remembering Lou’s hint about a mysterious benefactor.

“You see,” commented Liam, “you know several things about yourself.”

“Too bad those were his only answers, though,” added Adair from the crowd of onlookers.

“Why?” asked Liam. “What other answers might there be?”

“Since the items he pointed out before you came included a book, one answer might have been that his myth has something to do with discovering the Hidden Book in Ezmereld’s myth. He heard the belling of the Stag, and pointed out the book, and the flame of the athanor. It is enough of a correlation with the bell, book and candle in the tale to prompt us to ask what charm is made here.”

We all waited expectantly for Adair to elaborate, but he turned and departed down the same hallway by which I guessed Lou must have left, and by which I was sure the biker woman and Janus had left.

Excited debate sprang up among the remaining spectators. They got a thrill at the thought that my destiny might lead to Ezmara’s Hidden Book of Knowledge.

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