In the light of the moon, the blade of the knife flashes briefly before plunging into me. Then the void opens up and dancing across the face of the waters, there appears a goddess. From the steps of her dance comes the structure of the universe, seen most perfectly in the apple, which if cut open horizontally will reveal the five pointed star of Venus, symbolic of the love with which creation is bound together but also of a goddess' search for a faithful lover. The apple is thus the fruit of immortality and after it has been cut open, my body cavity is stuffed with apples.



[29]

In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, emerged naked from out of the chaos; but finding nothing to stand on, she separated the sea from the sky so that she might dance upon its waves. Dancing thus over the face of the waters, eddies swirled about in her wake, which then joined together to become the North Wind. Aware that she had created something apart from herself, she turned around and caught the wind. Rubbing it with her hands, the wind became the great serpent Ophion. As Eurynome continued her dance, Ophion coiled himself about her limbs so that the two became overcome with desire for one another and coupled. In due course Eurynome became a dove and laid the Universal Egg. At her command Ophion coiled himself seven times around the egg, so that it broke in half and all the things that exist tumbled out. Then the Goddess set a titan and a titaness to watch over each of the planets and instructed Ophion to rule over the sky and send rains whenever the earth become too dry. But Ophion so vexed the Mother of All Things by claiming to be the author of the universe that she was forced to banish him to the dark places below the earth which were later to become the kingdom of Hades. Ophion's place was taken Uranus who would gaze down fondly from the sky, showering Eurynome's secret clefts with rain so that they became fertile valleys flowing with running streams.
Like Eurynome at the beginning of time, we gods during the Dark Ages, had little to rest our feet on. What maintained us during that long night was paradoxically the very institution which had originally sought to ban our worship. Being essentially a Roman creation, the Church was organised in a Roman manner and its Bishops were members of the upper and learned classes who knew that civilisation began first and foremost with the cultivation of the olive and the vine. Despite wave after wave of looting and pillaging, as Franks, Vandals, Goths and Visigoths swept over Europe they maintained an organised system of agriculture. Such men knew the pastoral eulogies of Vergil and Horace and judged their attempts at preserving civilisation by the same yardstick. Many of the early saints are credited with initiating the cultivation of the vine into their Dioceses, for wine was as integral to their sacraments as it is to mine. Were it not for their efforts, we gods, not seeing ourselves reflected in the plants and fruits sacred to us, would have dwindled away to pale shadows, for gods need men just as man needs god. Only Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things can survive the chaos out of which the world was born.



[30]

After the first sack of Rome, I was accused by many gods, not only of having caused impotence among the Roman aristocracy but also of being responsible for their moral decline. Some even dared to suggest that I had supported the Christians in the hope of becoming myself, the one true God. But Roman men had always oscillated between revering the stern moral attitudes of their forefathers and the desire for a freedom unfettered by morality. Their women on the other hand, after centuries of slave-like status, when they did finally achieve emancipation could hardly contain themselves. Among the many women of the Roman nobility who literally took to the streets in search of sexual gratification, were no lesser personages than Julia, an emperor's daughter and Messalina, an emperor's wife.
Although it must be said that the Maenads had left few things untried during the celebration of my rites, this had little to do with the defiant decadence of the later Romans. The self-abandon of the Maenads was a manifestation of my divine presence but the wanton indulgence of the Romans was nothing other than a statement of arrogance, insulting to all gods and in defiance of all codes of conduct. Such arrogance, like Ophion's, had to be crushed and Augustus introduced a number of legislative measures to try and curb the spread of sexual vice. Meanwhile, Latin poets were encouraged to praise the peace and stability brought about by Augustus' triumph at the end of the Roman Civil Wars. Vergil's Georgics, an evocative summing up of the toils and rewards of country life, shows the nobility and moral fibre of those who worked the land.
But the rift between public values and personal indulgence was only to be inflamed by such propaganda and legislation. On the Rosta of the Forum, from where her father had announced the implementation of his laws against sexual vice, Augustus' only daughter would hold wild parties. During the day, she would pick up men in the Forum and have them make love to her there at night. Compared to Virgil's Georgics, Ovid's Art of Love is a deliberate parody in which hard work is rewarded not by the satisfaction of having lived up to the ideals that had made Rome great but rather, by sexual liberty and an impudent complacency at having outwitted traditional morality. In the Art of Love, the only "ideals" propounded are those of the pleasure-seeker and satisfaction of the ego is the only objective. Augustus could hardly be expected to put up with this for long and after an incident in which the Emperor's grand-daughter was discovered with a nobleman, demonstrating before a number of spectators, passages from the Art of Love, Ovid, as a witness and accessory to the crime was banished. Almost eighty years later however, it was Rome's satiric poet, Juvenal, who was to be banished - for daring to criticise the moral laxity and corruption that governed the imperial capital.

Pork	Wine
Bread	Myrtle Berries
Pine Kernels	Pepper
Stock	Casings

Chop the pork as finely as possible and grind in a mortar with a small amount of bread steeped in wine. Mix in the stock and then add some bruised and crushed young myrtle berries, along with the pine kernels, and some ground and bruised pepper corns. Stuff into casings, or roll into balls and wrap in stomach membrane, before sautéing in a little reduced wine.
Prior to their importing pepper from India, the Romans had used the native myrtle as their prime seasoning. But with the arrival of pepper, the use of myrtle berries was only to survive in old fashioned dishes such as this recipe for isicia ormentata. Pig's intestines meanwhile, were not only used in the making of sausages but also as a means of contraception.

[31]

Throughout the Medieval period, the world was seen as something to escape from and people were taught that only by following the inner light, could they escape from the Kingdom of Darkness. The Bacchic formula of death and resurrection, of my dying in order to give my followers a glimpse of the divine, was taken over by the Christians in the belief that they could use it in order to attain salvation. The mystic letters I.H.S., standing for in hoc signo, or in hac salus but also being an abbreviation for Iacchos, the cry uttered by my followers as I approached Eleusis, were interpreted by these followers of Christ, as standing for Iesous Hominum Salvator and were used as an abbreviation for Jesus. Despite this usurpation of my rites and symbols, it was however the belief in Christ as Savour of the World, that gave men hope during the darkest hours of the Dark Ages.



[32]

Like myself, the roots of the Christian phenomenon go back further than first appearances would suggest. After conquering Greece, the Romans decided to have themselves educated and were instructed in the arts of philosophy and rhetoric by Greek tutors. Poetry they learnt, was the ultimate form of rhetoric. More musical and philosophical than prose it was the ideal form for them in which to consolidate their country's military conquests. At the end of the Civil Wars, Maecenas, assuming the role of Minister of the Arts and Propaganda, was responsible for encouraging both Virgil and Horace to celebrate such themes. Impressed by Virgil's Bucolics, he then selected the poet for the more specific task of writing something that would help encourage the "back to the land" movement which Augustus was trying to foster.
Roman rulers had long been aware that the large numbers of land-owning small farmers in Italy, were not only the backbone of the country's agrarian economy, they were also the main source of recruits for the army. However the protracted nature of the Civil Wars had caused widespread neglect and devastation of the land. Despite the fact that soldiers who had supported Augustus were given small farms in return for their services, many of them proved incapable of farming and simply sold out to larger land-owners. Inevitably the big farms got bigger, while the number of small farmers declined. Instead of employing freedmen to till their fields, the larger land-owners would simply buy slaves who, not being free, were exempt from military service. Freedmen thus tended to graduate towards the cities, leaving the country-side to be divided up between those who were already rich.
It was this unhealthy trend that Augustus was seeking to combat and for which task Maecenas saw Virgil as being uniquely qualified. The result was of course, the Georgics, praising the joys and nobility of the rustic life, and the bounty of the Italian soil. But while poets struggled to do justice to the themes suggested to them, the rationalism and sophistry of the Greeks were slowly stripping the world of its divine nature. Whereas previously the world had been seen as a divine process in which all moral questions were answered by oracles and haruspixes, now textbooks on farming spoke only of investment and profit. In thinking for themselves, the Romans were really only thinking of themselves and by the time the fire of Rome's vice had burnt itself out, only something as radical as Christianity stood any chance of finding acceptance. After the outer world had been defiled by endless ravings of debauched depravity, there remained only the inner world of the guilty conscience. And it was precisely here, by teaching that Christ had died, not in order to reveal himself to his followers but in order that his people might be forgiven, that the Christians successfully twisted my teachings to suit the sickness of the age.



[33]

After Eurynome and Ophion had moved to Olympus and the goddess had set a titan and a titaness to watch over each planet, I appeared in my first incarnation as a god of vegetation and was given the office of King of the Year. At the end of each year came the Day of Liberation, when I was tied to an oak tree and ritually slain. Dancing around me the goddess' priestesses would chant a sacred charm:

White Barley Goddess, Deliveress from guilt, Lady of the Nine Heights, Queen of the Spring, and Mother of the willow, Ura, reeve the Immortal Ones racked on your oak and taunt them in your wild dance, Gathering the Children of Circe under the Moon as the fearful-faced Goddess of Destiny you will make a snarling noise with your chops.

The Nine Heights refer to the nine precipices of Mount Aroamia which overhang the gorge of the river Styx. The phrase "Queen of the Spring", points to the source of the river but also echoes the reference to the goddess' pallid complexion, as the Styx is formed from the snow which even in mid-summer may be found lying in the clefts of the Nine Heights. The willow was sacred to Hecate and Persephone, these being the subsequent death aspects of the Mother of All Things. The Immortal Ones are the Kings of the Year, the personifications of myself, while the Children of Circe are the priestesses who carry out the sacrifice.
Correctly danced the steps of the dance trace out the pattern of a labyrinth, which brings the dancers by twists and turns, gradually towards the centre and the object of sacrifice. This is the labyrinth that appears on an Etruscan wine-jar found at Tragliatella. Two heroes are shown riding away from a maze. One is the King of the Old Year with a demon of death perched behind him, the other is his successor, the King of the New Year. On the other side of the jar the story of their escape from the maze is depicted. The unarmed King of the Old Year leads a procession of seven soldiers, who are armed with javelins. Then follows the King of the New Year with a spear. The seven spear-men are labelled "winter" and represent the seven winter months of the Etruscan year, after which the new king will be disarmed and slain like his predecessor. A priestess of the moon is warning the King of the New Year of his fate and is offering him an apple, which would spare him the trials of the labyrinth. However another woman, Ariadne, is leading the king towards the labyrinth and instead of accepting the apple, he boldly holds out an egg which she has given him, a symbol of resurrection and the generative power of the dance. Next to the priestess is written, Having pronounced, she sets free. Only after having proved his loyalty to Eurynome by showing his willingness to submit to her will and die was the king deemed fit to reign. At the end of the year, when he was slain, my spirit would enter into him and his blood would flow from his body like must from the grape. Then the power of the dance would ferment within him and after being interred in the black earth, his spirit would rise again, to be absorbed into the multiplicity of my being. The king would thus become one of the "Immortals", while I, having subsumed into myself the Spirit of the Old Year, would have once again succeeded in defining myself as one who achieves unity through diversity.
With the invention of wine, the sacrificing of the Year King was no longer necessary, as the spirit of each year was incorporated into my being through the treading and fermentation of the grape. The dance of the priestesses therefore became the dance of the wine-grower treading his grapes. Now, although Eurynome's power has waned and wine-growers have long forgotten the steps of the dance, the words of the prayer and the movements of the dancers are so deeply ingrained in me that they have become a part of my being, enabling me to conquer death and preserve my memories of the past.



[34]

In my cellars, little remains of the Medieval Age. Of the wines made then, it was hoped only that they would keep up until the next October. Whether red or white, they were inevitably cloudy mixtures of youthful freshness and fundamentally unstable.
To guard against crop failure in any one variety, most wine-growers would have a number of different vines. The different varieties, often in varying stages of ripeness, would then be trodden randomly together; and if it was white wine that was wanted, the white juice would be bucketed into barrels to ferment. Red wine was more complicated in that it involved leaving the juice and skins to ferment in a vat. Often the grapes were trodden in the vat and not infrequently treaders were suffocated by rising carbon dioxide, as the grapes fermented. After fermentation, there was seldom time for racking and the wine was sent off to the taverns as soon as possible. Though wine-presses did exist, they were costly pieces of equipment and were hardly necessary for the short-lived kinds of wine that were being made. Only when durability is the aim, is a wine-press a necessity -in order to extract the extra tannins and in the case of red wine, extra colour. The role of the wine-press in the Middle Ages was therefore limited to extracting more juice form white grapes and more wine from the fermented red grapes. All this was despite the fact that vin de presse was noted for its inferior quality as compared to the vin de goutte that ran free from the vat. Nevertheless wine-growers were prepared to pay with a proportion of their crop for the use of a wine-press, usually saving the skins in order to make piquette, the medieval equivalent of lorca.



[35]

Despite the general carelessness with which Medieval wine was made, in twelfth century France, Cistercian monks in Burgundy succeeded in making a number of important contributions. In the process of reviving neglected vineyards and planting up new ones, the Cistercians carried out numerous experiments dealing with all aspects of the wine-grower's art. They planted different vines, experimented with pruning, took cuttings and like the Romans, grafted one variety onto another. In their wine-making and above all in their tasting, they were meticulous.
Their most important achievement was to give a precise definition to the meaning of the word cru. In order to ascertain the differences between the grapes from different patches of land they would make numerous small batches of wine. Some fields produced recognisably aromatic wines, others were more robust. It has even been suggested that they would taste the soil, in order to try and find out where its qualities changed. As soon as a field had been recognised as consistently producing an identifiable flavour, they would mark it as such on a map. They also noticed that some fields were more liable to frosting than others and that different fields were ready for picking at different times. Once they had built up a picture of the flavours characteristic of their area, it only remained for them to decide on the proportions in which the grapes from the different fields were to be combined, so as to produce a wine that, from year to year, would have an identity of quality and flavour. Of course, the yearly differences between vintages can never be completely negated but what the concept of the cru did do was provide a common ground that linked the different vintages of a particular vineyard, so that even mortals could make comparisons between the wine of one year and the next. By the same token, by maintaining an identity through time it also enabled the different vineyards to differentiate themselves from each other. Needless to say these differences were soon to find themselves expressed in names and prices and the words of the medieval wine-lover were at last able to find consistent products on which to focus.



[36]

Not wishing to suffer death and destroy everything she had created, Eurynome, as the Great Mother gradually began to lose her power as her strength was sapped by all the things to which she had given birth. But I, by submitting myself to death am able to return to the beginning and rejuvenate myself. After Ophion's fall, Uranus like Ophion, began to become vexatious to the Great Mother. But Eurynome no longer had the power to depose her insubordinate son and lover, and so she therefore persuaded the Titans, her sons by Uranus, to revolt against their father. Lead by Cronos, the youngest, they clambered out of Tartarus where Uranus had confined them and surprised their father as he slept. Using a flint sickle Cronos then castrated his father, who prophesied that his son would in turn be overthrown by a son. In due course the prophesy fulfilled itself and Eurynome retreated further into the background of the Olympian tapestry, transferring her powers to the Demeter, the goddess of cornfields, who in this new role became known as Hecate. But after her daughter, Core had been abducted and tricked into spending six months of the year as Persephone, Queen of Tartarus, Demeter passed this role on, dividing it between Persephone, Diana and Phoebe, who were thus known collectively as Hecate. As a goddess of the Underworld, Demeter/Hecate was concerned with birth, procreation and death. As an earthly deity she was the Lady of the Wild Things, while as a goddess of the sky, she was the moon, waxing and waning with the seasons. It was to her that I would be sacrificed at the year's end and to her that the priestesses would chant their sacred prayer. Even in Roman times the importance of sacrifice was not underrated and traces of Hecate and the sacrificing of the Year King may be seen even in the polished lines of Virgil's Georgics.

Above all, worship the gods, paying your yearly tribute
To the Corn-goddess -a sacrifice on the cheerful grass,
Just at the close of winter, when spring has cleared the sky.
Oh then the lambs are fat, then are wines most mellow,
Sweet then is sleep, and rich on mountains lie the shadows.
Let all your labouring men worship the Corn-goddess:
For her let the honeycomb be steeped in milk and mild wine,
The mascot led three times round the young crops -a victim
Feted by all your fellows accompanying it in a body:
Let them call her into their houses
With a shout, and let nobody lay his sickle to the ripe corn
Till in her honour he's placed on his head a wreath of oak leaves
And danced impromptu dances and sung the harvester's hymn.

Although corn was the emblem of Demeter, it was also offered to Diana as a symbol of life springing from death. Diana was born of Zeus on the titaness Leto, who was the daughter of the two titans, Coeus and Phoebe, to whom Eurynome had originally given the task of watching over the moon. Diana the huntress, was thus the grand-daughter of Phoebe, while Persephone, also a daughter of Zeus, was her half-sister. Demeter meanwhile, had always had a death aspect, even before she acquired the role of Hecate. In Arcadia she was known as the black one and avenger and as such, was accompanied by a snake. Among her sacred plants are the myrtle, asphodel and narcissus. It is therefore hardly surprising that I, as the one-time victim of these sacrifices, was often said to have been born of either Demeter or Persephone.
Nowadays Hecate is only honoured by those farmers who reap and sow according to the phases of the moon. The waning moon not only dictates when to sow and prune but also governs the racking of wine and the laying down of it in barrels. Few Tuscan wine-growers will be easily persuaded to pick their grapes under the influence of a waxing moon or even risk transferring their wine from the vats into barrels, if the moon's disk is not already waning. It is therefore little wonder that I, like the hare, am associated with the moon, while my half-brother Apollo, has become indelibly linked with Phoebe's brother, Phoebus, the titan of the sun.



[37]

The Renaissance was literally a time of rebirth and awakening. For me it meant above all else, the reappearance of a wine that could, like the wines of Ancient Rome, be aged. This was brought about, not by the reading of classical texts on wine but rather through a trick, which it was discovered, initiated a second fermentation in the wine and removed the organic sediment. Being born into the Olympian order first of Semele and then from out of Zeus' thigh, I was often known as the Child of the Double Door. But now, through the Tuscan system known as governo, this became true of wine as well. The resulting Chianti as it was later to be known, had fluidity and sparkle as well as a robust flavour that could be improved with age. Ageing meanwhile, was now possible in the glass fiaschi, that were being produced throughout Tuscany. Sealed with a layer of oil, that on opening was removed by a deft flick of the wrist, these straw-covered flasks of blown glass soon became typical of Tuscan wine, while the skill of her glass-makers became so advanced that it is a Florentine, Salvino D' Armato (d. 1315) who is credited with the invention of spectacles.
The problem which lead to the development of governo was unfinished fermentation, partly because the natural yeasts were not capable of converting all of the available sugar into alcohol but also because of unclean barrels, which harboured a host of micro-organisms that attacked the yeasts and made the wine unstable. Even today the popular taste in Italy is for red wines that are sweet and fizzy. The trick of governo was, after the first fermentation to add a fresh batch (between 5-10%) of half-dried grapes. This brought about a second fermentation in which the yeasts consumed the remaining sugar and purified the liquid of the organic materials that made it cloudy and produced sediment.
When governo worked it resulted in a dry, stable wine called Vermiglio if it were red and Vernaccia if it were white. If it didn't work, the result was merely a second, incompleted fermentation, in which case the wine could be described as "youthfully fresh" and sold in just the same way as if the governo procedure had not been used.
The principles of governo were first recorded in 1364 by a goldsmith, Ruberto Bernardi who recommended that black grapes (including the dark Trebbiano which no longer exists), should be dried in a cellar and then mixed in with the wine. However his friend, Giovanni di Duranti favoured white grapes which had been dried in the sun before being crushed and boiled in a pan. Nowadays, those who still use governo usually use a concentrated must prepared by wine-growers who specialise in its production. Though the practice of governo is a trick, it is however a trick which enabled me, the Child of the Double Door, not only to take part in the flowering of the Renaissance but to be at its very hub.

120g Stem Ginger preserved in Syrup
1 Chicken	Olive Oil
280g Dates	1 Tbsp. Sugar
100g Pine Kernels	1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1 Egg	1/2 tsp. Mace
150 ml White Wine	Ground Ginger
75 ml Verjuice	Cloves
50 ml Lemon Juice

To make verjuice: take transparent, unripe grapes and pound in a mortar to release the juice. To preserve verjuice (literally "green juice"), boil and then ferment.
Stuff the chicken with a mixture of dates, stem ginger, 2 tsp. crushed cloves, 50g crushed pine kernels and 1/4 tsp. ground ginger, binding them together with an egg white. Insert some cloves under the skin of the chicken, baste in olive oil and roast. When ready a sauce should be prepared, using 50g pounded pine kernels, a pinch of ground ginger, white wine and verjuice. To this, lemon juice, sugar and an egg yolk are added together with the cinnamon and mace. After mixing the ingredients together, bring to the boil and the liquid will thicken into a sauce.
Preserved ginger is made by boiling the stem in a syrup while it is still green. Older stems may be crystallised. Roots symbolise principle, branches diversity. Like the moon, roots are hidden and are only found in the world of manifestation when actively sought after.

[38]

From out of the foam caused by the splash of Uranus' genitals as they landed in the sea at Cape Drepanum, there arose, floating in a sea shell, the love goddess Aphrodite. Though she caused much scandal on Olympus, during the Middle Ages she became shy and demure so that with the coming of the Renaissance, she was well placed to play the role of the Virgin Mary. Moreover, having a constellation in the stars that corresponded to the time of harvest, she soon acquired an ear of corn and was able to assume many of the attributes of Demeter/Hecate. Of her the neoplatonist philosopher, Marsilo Ficino, wrote, "Venus, that is to say Humanity... is a nymph of excellent comeliness, born of heaven and more than others beloved by God all the highest. Her soul and mind are Love and Charity, her eyes Dignity and Magnanimity, the hands Liberality and Magnificence, the feet Comeliness and Modesty. The whole then is Temperance and Honesty, Charm and Splendour. Oh what exquisite beauty! How beautiful to behold!"
For the Renaissance magnus, we gods were the Spiritus through which the Soul of the World, the Intellectus, was linked to its body, the Corpus Mundi. Like the Ancients, Renaissance philosophers saw the sympathetic arrangement of signs and talismans as invoking the spiritus of the gods to whom they were addressed. To obtain a long life, Ficino recommends that the following image of Saturn is engraved on a sapphire, "An old man sitting on a high throne or on a dragon, with a hood of dark linen on his head, raising his hand above his head, holding a sickle or a fish, clothed in a dark robe." For the curing of an illness, he advises the use of "A king on a throne, in a yellow garment, and a crow and the form of the sun." To promote happiness and strength of the body Ficino recommends an image of Venus, dressed in white and yellow, holding apples and flowers.
Also following in the footsteps of the Ancients, Renaissance philosophers saw knowledge of gods and the World Soul as being attainable through various states or degrees of enthusiasm. The first of these was poetic inspiration, under the guidance of the Muses. The second was the intoxication with which my Maenads were acquainted, being brought about by my own divine presence. The third kind of enthusiasm was the fever of prophecy, guided by Apollo, while the fourth and for Renaissance man, highest form of inspiration, was that of love. Concerning this fourth furor, Agrippa wrote, "As for the fourth furor, coming from Venus, it turns and transmutes the spirit of man into a god by the ardour of love, and renders him entirely like God, as the true image of God." Just as this fourth furor enables the spirit of a man to be transmuted into the image of a god, so for a god, it enables him to transmute himself into the image of whatever he may choose. While most gods used this fourth furor in order to change themselves into the forms of animals as a means of furthering their amorous adventures, I was the only one who used it as a means of seeking death in order that I might die and be born anew.
In his commentary on Plato's Symposium, Ficino asks, "Why is Love called a Magus?" his answer being, "Because all the force of Magic consists of Love. The work of Magic is a certain drawing of one thing to another by natural similitude. The parts of this world, like members of one animal, depend on love, and are connected together by natural communion." It was this natural communion, first with Eurynome and then with Demeter, Hecate and finally Venus, that although it brought about death, enabled me to return back to the moment when Eurynome first danced naked across the waters of the void. Then when I was slain, from the embryo of an idea I would be drawn back to life, as Ophion cracked open the Universal Egg and all the things that exist tumbled out.



[39]

In the Medici Chapel, Michangelo's Night shows a goddess about to awake from her sleep during the Dark Ages. Though the face is serene and peaceful, recalling the Venus/Madonna figures of Botticelli, the body is contorted as the deity rests her head against the back of her right hand, while embracing a grotesque mask and supporting herself with the other arm. Beneath her legs, as if emerging from the womb, is an owl, while at her feet lie a bundle of Persophone's poppies. The diadem of the goddess' hair is adorned with Phoebe and Diana's crescent moon, along with the star denoting her godhood. Thinking of the goddess he had created Michelangelo wrote:

My sleep is sweet, but it is sweeter yet to be mere stone
In times when injustice and dishonour reign;
To hear nothing, to feel nothing, is my good fortune
So do not wake me. Speak quietly.

The statue represents the sleep of Venus as she slept through the Middle Ages, unconsciously embracing the attributes of Hecate, before awaking to greet the new dawn as Venus, Hecate and Virgin. Thus it is wholly appropriate that one of the statue's breasts should bear more resemblance to the form of a quince than to that of any real breast, for quinces like apples, are sacred to Venus. In the Ancient World they were called cydoneis but were also known as Apples of Dionysus and the slumbering goddess of the Medici Chapel, with her quince breasts, is awaiting the rebirth of the Child of the Double Door, who was to inaugurate the Renaissance.

Quinces

Sugar

Quarter the quinces, cover with water and simmer until the fruit is tender. Then mash into a purée and push through a sieve. Weigh and return to the pan adding to the purée half its weight in sugar. Over a low heat stir until the sugar has dissolved, after which the mixture can be boiled until it thickens and becomes a thick paste, capable of holding a wooden spoon upright. Then pour out into a tray and when it has cooled a little, with wet fingers work it out flat as in the making of gnocchi. Once cool the paste should be left to dry in a plate warming oven or airing cupboard. After twenty-four hours it can then be cut into squares and dipped in sugar. The cubes should be stored in an airtight box with rice paper and two or three bay leaves between each layer. Kept thus they will improve with age and should keep for anything up to a year.
Sugar was brought back from India by Alexander the Great and the "sweet reed" was grown in the Middle East and North Africa. Known to the Romans as saccharum, with the advent of the Dark Ages it was forgotten until Crusaders found a sweet "spice" for sale in the markets of Jerusalem. As in Roman times, it was at first used only for medicinal purposes but by the twelfth century was available throughout Europe and had made its way into the Italian kitchen. Following the Portuguese colonisation of Madeira, the island was planted up with sugar cane which grew so well that between 1470 and 1500 the price of sugar in Europe was halved. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the island was the world's largest producer of sugar. Prior to the increase in their availability, sugar and spices were sold by apothecaries, who also prepared and sold the fruit comfits to which merchants of the Renaissance were so partial.

[40]

At the end of the year, the priestesses of the Great Goddess would dress themselves up as pigs and dance around me in a circle, before stepping forward to recite their charm of death. The word circle comes from "Circe" which means "she-falcon", as falcons, traditionally birds of omen, circle above their prey, while the cry of the falcon is "circ-circ". The enchantress Circe had a cemetery at Colchis, planted with willows sacred to the goddess Hecate and it was she who turned Odysseus' men into swine. Pigs have always been associated with the Great Mother and the influence of the moon; and though seen as a fertility symbol they are also linked with death.
At the Eleusian Mysteries, the principal deities are Demeter and Core but Hades and myself are also present. Preparations for the festival begin on the sixteenth of Boedronion (which corresponds to September) at Agrai, a suburb of Athens, when all those who are unworthy are asked to leave. The day after, candidates are summoned to the sea-shore to purify themselves with sea-water and pig's blood. On their return, pigs are sacrificed and the Lesser Mysteries are declared open. Only those who have been initiated into these Lesser Mysteries may subsequently take part in the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis. Initiates are anointed with water from Ilissus and must then veil themselves in darkness. On the nineteenth day of the month, a procession sets out from Agrai, bearing the fair young god, Iacchus, who is of course, none other than myself. Decked with myrtle and bearing flaming torches of myrtle wood, the participants set out towards Eleusis. The men carry jugs, the women vessels on their heads, in which seeds and lighted candles are held. Along the way, many shrines are visited so it is not until evening that the procession arrives. The next morning the Greater Mysteries begin and the drama of Demeter's loss and partial recovery of her daughter is acted out by the celebrants in the form of a dance so complicated in its steps that the dancers must hold onto a rope. This dance is of course, the self-same dance that was danced at the ritual slaying of the Year King, the secret of whose steps are contained in the knots on Ariadne's thread. The steps of the dance drive Persephone down underground only to then resurrect her again as Core. The high point of the Mysteries is the silent exhibition of an ear of corn that has been reaped in silence.
Although Core had only eaten seven seeds of the pomegranate, it was enough for her to have tasted the food of the dead and from thenceforth, she was for six months of the year to be Persephone, Queen of Tartarus. It was at this point that Demeter bequeathed the role of Hecate to Diana, Phoebe and Persephone, so that Diana and Phoebe could act as guardians ensuring her daughter's return on the last day of winter. Then on the Day of Liberation the three would stand together as the Triple Goddess and accept the sacrifice of the Year King. With the inauguration of the new year, Core would be reunited with her mother and the two would wander together through the corn fields, until the harvest-time came and the corn was gathered in. Then it would be time for Core to become Persephone and once again join her husband in the darkness of his kingdom. These then were the things incorporated in the ear of corn, that great, admirable, and most perfect object of mystic contemplation. According to Varro, the Roman antiquarian and man of letters, "The pig is called in Greek hys, formerly thys, from the verb thyen, to sacrifice." However the reason for this is not, as Varro says that, "When men first sacrificed animals they began apparently with the race of pigs," rather it is because these sacrifices were carried out by women dressed as pigs. The first sacrifice offered to the Goddess was, of course, that of myself; under Zeus' rule however, I was to became an independent god, having my own Satyrs and Maenads as priests and the role of the pig was reversed. Instead of being a sacrificer, the pig was now the one being sacrificed and still to this day Tuscans, when expressing surprise or dismay, may be heard to exclaim porca Madonna! implying that an omen such as they have just seen or heard necessitates an immediate sacrifice to the Virgin as Hecate.

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