Oracle of Necromanteion.

 

A poem about spiritual survival exploring whether losing faith (in anything) opens you to inner darkness.

Where temptation and despair work quietly in isolation, hardening the heart.

But it also promises that virtue is a choice, not a rule, and belief can be personal.

Suffering can be crossed.

Transformation is possible, and if you choose rightly, you don’t just survive.

You get to run again.

Title.

 The Oracle of Necromanteion.

(A lone voice whispers)

He who walks without the most holy of ways will never return.

Until they have learned not by sin be swayed.

As true as new trees are made.

By lay played.

In so many wet, insidious ways.

By those hidden in the chasms.

In the faraway stars.

For people like you gathered here today. Should be careful.

For without faith.

In any form.

The nearby Darkness can always open a small gateway to sin.

And if that abyss is opened.

Revealing Desolation's fatal sandstorms.

It gets so much harder to let hope crawl in.

So, O'Ye. O'Ye.

On the yellow beaches.

Beseeching.

O 'Ye Gathered round me.

To the worthy few.

I summon by the power of the Purple Flame.

Virtue.

By the Divine Will of your choice of God.

To guide you.

Amen.

Through Acheron.

To the blue Stargate.

So you can once more run. 

(C) Copyright John Duffy

Art by:

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl in 1898.