CHAPTER 11
Mother Dolor dreams an especially disturbing and horrific dream, a deeply sinful dream—one that convinces her that she is doomed to spend eternity in hell. Most times her dreams are quite ridiculous, sometimes simply stupid, then, of course, all being occasions for sin—this being so as all Catholics are taught that dreams are the playground of the Devil...his playmates being incubi and succubi. She knows quite well what a mortal sin is, consisting of Grievous Matter, Full Consent of the Will, and Sufficient Reflection. Here, in preparing to confess this dream she weighs, assesses, and delivers final judgment upon herself. For its content is Grievous in that it was about copulation in an orgy of males and females. Then, it has to be her Willful consent for why else would God let the Devil into her dreaming? Certainly He, as Good Father, as Just, wouldn’t let her be tempted unless she wanted to be tempted. Finally, Sufficient Reflection—this dream has lasted too long, recurred too many times, has seeped into and thoroughly polluted her waking hours. It’s shadow has eclipsed the sunlight of reason. Verily, Mother Dolor dreams and so commits a Mortal Sin! Her room reeks with the odor of hellish sulfur!
Yet, how could she ever confess it? Be bold enough to describe it in all its depravity of thought and feeling? It was all just so distasteful, so ugly, so vile. Every time she thinks about it, it makes her skin crawl as if with a burrowing of bugs...recalling a frightful memory of strolling through a forest, she just a girl under ten, walking not too far from her home—Was it, again, not her own sin?—when the hard shelled insects appeared as almost out of thin air...she not then stopping to consider it a conjuration but knowing it as such later on—there, bugs and the clicking of their shells...a sound which made mockery of the tiny voice, that of her weak conscience, so it had been, so now she feels—I cannot confess.
In great sorrow, draping her veil to cloak her teary face, Mother Dolor departs the chapel.
On her knees in her convent cell, a small nook being all that she needs while on this Earth—merely a hard beaten earthen box with a harshly cut slit of a window for air. Air not for light, for the light enters as if betraying a secret...a moldy light cast upon a straw mat centered on the floor. Her single luxury being a crude, rough-hewn oaken bowl...rim splintered and foul mouthed which serves for her impatient nightly relief. Then, the Bible...all true luxury for the worthless sinner!...that Good Book granting her the assurance—the Good News!—that He, God the Father Almighty, was here to protect her against all evil. If so, why do I so dream?
Of import, Mother Dolor was, as all her religious Sisters...all called “Mother”... are—semi-illiterate. Knowing just enough to read the Word....its Gospels and Epistles being their literary primers. Most wondrously, a Good Book from the Father Almighty made known to them through His consecrated Sons—priests, who were themselves, her Father. A sacred, precious Script which was hers to touch and whose holy pages she was blessed to turn...knowing as she turned that the deeper mystery of life unfolded and promised her Redemption...a final escape from this sinful life on Earth, this Vale of Tears! Life on Earth meaning simply to live-to-die in grace, for only when she would be released from her sinful flesh, only then would she truly begin to live...eternally in the bosom of the Father. This, said the Holy Scripture, so also said Father Seraphim, as he told all the Mothers, “This sacred book is your redemption.” And so it was.
Tonight, she could not touch this Holy Book, not read a word of scripture...knowing from her dreaming that she is a harlot of the Devil, Father Lucifer, Brother Sin...knowing herself as idolater, for in her dream Satan stood before her, soon bent his knees and knelt down before her, then threw himself prostrate, all the time lifting up his voice loud and clear—“Gate of Salvation! Throne of Majesty! Font of Wisdom!”
Does the Evil One need to shout other blasphemies for me to convict myself of a mortal sin?
Lucifer repeats these three ejaculations of praise and worship. Sadly, no more than His words are needed for Mother to plumb the depths of her fateful depravity. In her mind the images Satan evoked alight upon her body...there, her pubis is the Gate of Salvation...her belly is the Throne of Majesty...her breasts the Font of Wisdom!
Alas, her doom is sealed—“The devil like a roaring lion roams about seeking to devour you...” so do the words of the evening Compline prayer condemn her. “Leo rugiens circuit....” which, every night, floats over the grating that separates her and all Mothers from the chanting monks. Daily, does Mother hear—so she knows so clearly...she has been devoured!
To whom could she repent this dream? What is preventing her. Is it Pride? Or hardness of heart? Or the enjoyment of this Lust? Or worse—the perversity of the thought causes her head to feel on fire, her stomach to dry vomit—Am I fearful that absolution will deny me this dream? Despite the impairment of her illiteracy, in her mind Mother Dolor could reason and reflect with the depth of the most subtle theologians: Origen, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, even the clever Augustine. But hers was a power of thought and an agility of spirit which she would never hear complimented, being that no one would have ever considered even for the fleetest of moments to discuss such lofty matters with her...for she was a woman. Thus, lacking any critical theological conversation, she does not even have a boundary against which to form an internal judgment, for no scholarly education has been hers, and infrequent were conversations among the Mothers other than about mundane, trifling matters. Moreover, she expected nothing beyond the trifling, and as such did not know what or how the other Mothers thought—knowing only Confession as spiritual conversation. In truth, Confession, itself, being but a verbally reported checklist of sins and an oral assignment of penitential prayers. Nevertheless, her mind was acute enough to grasp how vile a sinner she was because from the instant moment of absolution wherein the Gracious Father forgives her, so she knows in her heart that she instantly sins, again. She holds this as truth because she has heard preached so often that “Women are gateways to Eternal Damnation.” Amen. Father Seraphim.
Holy water is splashed all about. Our Fathers and Hail Marys are suppliantly uttered in each corner of her cell. She steps about in a mini-procession holding the Crucifix outward to all the evil spirits poised to pounce upon her. So armed. So disarming. So prepared, does Mother Dolor lie down, recline on the mat on her floor with the chilling fear all faithful Catholics so lie down each night that now she is about to enter into the realm of the Evil One. Into his realm of dreaming, of the fantastic, of the uncontrollable, of events out of time...of short gasping awakenings cold to the bone with profuse beads of hot salty sweat bouncing down off her face, her ears, her nose, her lips, her chin...spotting upon her chest and her arms and her lap and her legs and the ground. For dreaming was the time when the flesh—so was this dreaming, so had Father Seraphim instructed them—this the time when the flesh loosened its grip upon the waking world—which is the world of the Father because it was for men to know the Father in wakefulness, not dreaming. Alas! Did not Holy Writ reveal that it had been from within Adam’s dreaming that Eve had been drawn? Wasn’t this one of the great spiritual lessons, that “Dreaming is the evil brought by women. When alone, Adam had not dreamed. Had no need to dream.”
Mother weakly fights off the stealthy slumber, the weighty weariness, the flickering eyelids surrendering to the thickening darkness. As she drifts off, as she plummets back down into that torpid state from which Eve had been drawn—as Yahweh made Adam dream!—so does Mother grasp that it is the beauty and the pleasures of her feminine flesh which are the Devil’s tools and ritual instruments: the softness of her skin which whispers depraved but delightful enticements to dreaming men. In truth, that Satan takes the creamy softness of her cheeks, scoops up the milky droopiness of her ponderous breasts, swipes the sweetness of kiss from her quivering lips...does this and diabolically and fantastically seduces the souls of slumbering males, tempting them unto wet dreams, unholy ejaculations. How else but she and all the Mothers as other than temptations to dreaming men—sons
of Adam? For who are the succubi but women like herself? Women here on Earth—all mothers and Mothers—all these she’s but the minions of Satan. He who needed not devil women, for through fleshly women—Eve’s Daughters—so is He darkly and sinfully present to all men—tempting them, seducing them, fouling their minds and bodies. For when men sin in sleep—when they ejaculate their most treasured semen—Satan victorious!...so she knows—as all the Mothers know if not in word and thought then most assuredly in heart—that it is she upon whom they lay and rut and who sucks them dry of vital life. Vital life! Alas and damnation! Oh, the sulfuric odors of hell reek all about...for as Mother Dolor carries their precious seed within her unholy mouth so does she kneel before her true beloved, Archangel Lucifer—having turned away from her male dreamer, uprighted and tip-toed away from the mat...comes before the demonic altar of the Black Mass....squats and in so doing with her privy mouth spits out the splatter of her beguiled lover’s semen...there to be collected by Father Satan for Him to do as He pleases.
How could she confess this?
Doesn’t such knowledge of herself stand strong as her own condemnation that she is truly a Witch?
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