The old woman was heavily cloaked in black brocade, a tapestry of textures woven into her skin showing years of wisdom, experience and resilience.
Today she moved like one carrying a heavy burden on her shoulders, though for her it was within her soul.
This morning as she sat before her crystal ball, she sighed. It was a sigh of resignation rather than one of delight like she used to feel as each day began.
She was tired of what now felt like a circus show, reading for young hopefuls seeking prophesies of love and fame and fortune.
She was tired of using her gifts to feed avarice and vanity. ‘What beast is rising in the belly of human-kind?’ she wondered.
With numb resignation she closed her eyes. She began to drift into a hazy state between dream and awake, with no real purpose other than to wait for the next coin to walk through her door.
As her awareness lapsed between thoughts she was suddenly jolted from the centre of her body, fully alert in her psychic senses.
However, if you were to have peered past her curtains you would have thought her to be asleep or perhaps resting after a last breath had escaped her lips, transporting her to the next realm of the soul.
But for the woman, she was fully awake having entered a space of transcendence, into a plane where multiple realities lay in wait.
Before her appeared a golden harp, strings waiting to be plucked, anticipating the melody that would be unlocked. She stepped forward, one hand on her heart as the other reached out and caressed the strings.
A-minor resonated deeply from the belly of the harp, blurring the edges of the scene before her as brilliant red and golden hues began to envelope her. In the midst of the heat and swirling primal energy the woman felt a calm all the way deep into her bones.
She outstretch her arms, which transformed into a vast radiant plumage of wings, she threw her head back and cried out: “I AM THE PHOENIX!”.
At this revelation she wrapped her fiery wings around her and burst into a ball of light, she began spinning around herself, spiralling into her next incarnation.
Her light body, now shimmering like golden dust, began to gently flutter back down to rest and rejuvenate. A blanket of soft red velvet draped over her new form. All was still. All was silent.
Dawn came once again, the old woman began to stir in her seat. She awoke, looking around her dim room, her crystal ball, seemingly reposed in front of her – or was that a glimmer of an ember still smoldering inside of it?
The old woman suddenly began to chuckle, she stood up from her chair and began to shake and wiggle and dance letting her laughter build and fill the room with a vibrancy that had long been laying in wait.
Once again she sighed, but this time a sigh of delight, release and wonder. A sigh that revealed her deep inner truth:
“I am the Phoenix, bearer of hope and transformation. From the ashes I will rise again and again to birth my reality. And so it is.”
