You chose to seek your Guardian Angel leaving Maria by herself for the
summer which stretched into winter and then spring.  You are so obsessed
with your quest you forgot to return and celebrate Beltane with her. Now
some things you just don't do if you want to live life right.

You know what they say, that it is better to have loved and lost than to
not have loved at all, right?  Well, let's put that saying to the test.  
  Guess what?  While you were out searching with such nobility and
aspiration to evoke your guardian angel or whatever,  Maria took a fancy
to someone else.  I mean, with all those rituals requiring the combination
of masculine and feminine energy, it was bound to happen.  As a priestess,
she can not really do her job without a counterpart.  
   You are no longer part of the equation.  The sacred joining has been
broken.  Her heart has taken shelter in another's heart.  I am sorry, but
this was necessary for my plot.  
  Who am I, what narrator of a myth like this can get away with being so
casual and indifferent to the needs of his characters?  I could discuss my
reasons with you in elaborate detail marshalling compelling arguments
of absolute persuasion, but I am already being wordy and when you explain
too much you lose that feeling of wonder and mystery.  
  But let me just say to speak in a cliche that life is not fair. Life is
a learning opportunity.

Out of despair at the beauty that has walked out of your life so casually
almost without a seocnd thought, you find yourself wandering in dark
foliage like Joshua Trees in a desert while it is snowing.  You are soon
lost and near freezing.  You sit on a rock and low and behold you have
this vision, no foolin: 

Prologue to a New Myth

With their legs dangling in a pool on Mt. Olympus just outside the visible
spectrum of light and with an occasional splash to emphasize a point,
Aphrodite, Athena, and Diana sit arguing about whose powers are the
greatest.  You ask, "Didn't this discussion occur about three thousand
years ago in ancient Greece?"  Ah yes, my friends.   But at that time, it
was Hera instead of Diana and the argument was over who was the most
beautiful.  
    You recall? The three goddesses required a neutral third party to
decide the issue for them.  So they chose Paris, a mortal.  Each goddesses
offered Paris a gift to choose her as beauty personified.  Aphrodite won
out.  She gave Paris the most beautiful woman on earth.  The result was
the Torjan war which Homer recounts in the Illiad and the Odyssey. 
    Great poets appear one or two every thousand years.  The cycle renews
itself and the ground is now fertile for another voice, one more powerful
than all others before. After all, the goddesses are bored with war.
These days they think of themselves as the mistresses of human passion,
that is to say, of our character, fate, and destiny.  That's right, my
friends, even goddesses can fall victum to human reason and mortal
conceptions--it happened one day around that pool in the sky as they sat
reading what Carl Jung had written about each of them.  Beware.  When
vanity and reason collide, vanity has the advantage.
    But there is one other Presence here and the three are not aware of
Her.  She is the Goddess of the Earth.  And She also grants a gift of
passion after Her own heart to the one whom the three goddesses would
torment, tease, and confuse to settle their dispute.. 
    Let's listen in now on the conversation. 

Aphrodite: I say let us turn again to a mortal to determine who is more
powerful.  
Athena:  That did not work last time.  Mortals are whimsical
and their desires rule over them. Their judgment is worthless in my
opinion. 
Diana: Yes, but there is an option.  This time, instead of choosing a
mortal among the living, let us create a mortal after our own image.
Athena: You mean a woman with three distinct personalities or with three
separate sources of inspiration like unto the Wiccans with their threefold
goddess?
Diana: No. It has to be a man and our powers will dwell within him as
three separate 	passions."
Aphrodite:  I see your plan.  No external gift to bribe him.  His choice
will be based on his 	own instincts.  His own body will be the
battleground this time around.
Diana: In this way, we shall see which passion is strongest and dominates.
By his choice 	and his life, we shall know beyond all doubt whose
inspiration has the greater clout. 

The three goddesses bargained and strategically designed every aspect of
their creation, every facet of his incarnation.  After days of
negotiation, they finally gazed upon a human being born in modern times.
But this was all preliminary.  Now the time has come for the three to slip
inside this man's soul their individual ecstasies--the essence of their
inspiration. 

Aphrodite, with a smile of guile as sweet as Spring, Beltane, heartbreak,
longing, and need, leaned over him as he slept.  She planted a kiss upon
his lips. What poet has metaphors for this?  In that touch was lust as
intoxicating as the DNA molecule's desire to divide and to reunite, tinged
with an endless craving for gratification--amid a sea of bliss suddenly
the terror of whirling toward birth, the pain of gasping for the first
breath, and the warm comfort of arms, chest, and breasts. Aphrodite was
waging the needs of the organism for satisfaction are power enough to
define and to bind the essence of love. 
    Aphrodite then spoke: I have made him a Satyr.  Lust will rage within
him like a volcano.  He will burn with desire until he knows only I can
satisfy his soul.

Athena: Not so. My light shall chart his course in life.
    Athena then placed her hand on his forehead and spoke: "By the power
of wisdom burning eternal and bright, without beginning or end,  this
quest shall determine the path of his life, this ideal shall he make
real--the highest love permitted to mortals he shall reveal. He shall be
not a Satyr but a centaur as wise as Chiron who gave his life that a god,
Prometheus, might attain freedom.  Heart to heart, soul to soul--my
blessing and wisdom shall he know.

At this point, you might wonder what is left to our Huntress, Diana. What
sensuality, touch, or words could she speak that would weigh the scales to
her advantage? Well, let us have a look..

Diana:  I pity you two.  You Aphrodite are so vain to imagine lust is
enough to win love's heart.  And you Athena envision dreams so noble and
refined that men must sacrifice joy and all natural desires in seeking to
attain them.  
   Then Diana place both her hands upon his heart and said: I place within
him my wild purity more hungry than lust and more necessary than any
vision quest.  The forests shall he know.  The trees will share with him
their dreams and the secrets of their souls. But this is not all.  The
light of the moon and also its darkness will inspire him.  The tides, the
songs of the seas, and the turning of the seasons will confide their
mysteries to him.  He will take the highest dream and yet as flesh to
flesh express my love--wild, pure, and free, for I take satisfaction in
the hunt and also the flesh of game I claim.  In the end after a lifetime
of wandering, he shall be neither Satyr nor Centaur but like unto Orion in
the sky above transformed from mortality into immortality by virtue of his
honor and his nobility. 

As if this isn't enough contrary passions to rage for domination in one
soul, as I mentioned, the Goddess of the Earth appeared after the other
three had gone.  She touched him. She sang to him.  And then She spoke and
said, "Earth, air, fire, and water shall he know--he will taste and
partake of their essence that he might dream my dreams like no other
before--he shall know my innermost desire--to have children who see
through the eyes of the stars and their hearts shall sing the songs of the
constellations.  And when these children speak they will speak with my
voice--with vowels of lightning, thunder, whirlwinds, and volcanos
exploding and consonants of rain, clouds, rivers, seas, mountains, trees,
precious stones, deserts, and all dreams that have been or ever shall be.  
   "But before he can wield this power, before he can champion my cause,
he must know my silence as old as the world and my tenderness which
nourishes all life on earth.  The needs of the body he shall gratify in
due season.  The ideals of the spirit shall he cherish and pursue.  And
the wild purity of forest and ocean this too shall be with him wherever he
goes.  But in the end his Muse will guide him and the Song of the Universe
shall he sing, for My beauty is upon him. I have spoken it.  It shall be
so.


Your options at this point:

You have heard of the near death experience.  You die and then come back
to life.  Well, that's nothing at all.  In this option, you die out of
despair.  Love is gone and visions like the one above which would
compensate, consolate, or offer recompense in some way mean nothing at
all.  The person you were is gone.  You have died to life and to death
both.   You are reborn not as a human being on a quest but as a man who
walks with ease through multiple dimensions of reality.  Because he has
nothing further to lose, he has no fear and so nothing can block his path.
And to be honest even the demonic stand back when he comes near--he is
like a law unto himself--the mark of Saturn is upon his brow.

Another option?  I am working on it.