Faces of the Goddess Magazine SGC 21

Hekate the Adversary
Jack Grayle
Moloch, sceptered king,
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought in heav’n; now fiercer by despair;
His trust was with the eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength; and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of god, or hell, or worst
He reck’d not, and these words, thereafter
spake:
“My sentence is for open war.”
Paradise Lost, Book II: 43-51, John Milton
John Milton was blind when he dictated
the passage above in 1667. He said his goal in
writing Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
was “to justify the ways of God to man.” To
that end he declaimed ten thousand lines to
his daughter, who transcribed them all into
what became his master work. This epic recital
stands as one of the monumental feats in
world literature, rivaled only by Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey, which were allegedly recited by
the blind bard nearly three thousand years
ago.
And yet for all its virtues, Milton’s epic poem
is not perfect, having a well-recognized flaw,
which is this: His fallen angels steal the show.
While he portrayed Michael, Gabriel and
the rest with great skill, ironically, Milton’s
arrogant Lucifer, brooding Belial, and
bellicose Moloch impress the reader much
more than their virtuous counterparts.
Take Christ’s promise to his heavenly father:
But whom thou hatest, I hate; and can put on
Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on,
Image of thee in all things, and shall soon,
Armed with thy might, rid Heaven of these
rebell’d,
To their prepared ill mansion driven down
To chains of Darkness, and the undying
Worm[.]i
22
The verse scans. The sentiment is stirring. But
how can it compare to Moloch’s snarl?
My sentence is for open war.
There is something in the line that makes
the blood sing. And more than that: it makes
the heart beat faster in sympathy to the
antagonist’s wrathful cry. Why should that
be? Why should the heart respond to defiance
more than to obedience? And yet it does. Such
verse does more than entertain and enlighten;
it enflames the reader’s spirit.
Very few characters in fiction can ignite the
reader with such fierce sympathy – and even
fewer characters in real life. When they do,
they are almost always loners, outnumbered
and outgunned; outsiders who speak with
open contempt to those with authority
over them. The context is almost always
adversarial.
The heroes (or rather, anti-heroes) of
yesteryear live on in our memories. And
presumably, the (anti-) heroes of our own
age will, over time, become known and
appreciated as well, as will the bloody banners
they fought under: The Red Star. The Crescent
Moon. The Black Dragon.
Dragon Lady
When I first met Asenath Mason, she was
not what I expected. I was attending the
International Left Hand Path Convention in
St. Louis in 2017, browsing through vendor
stalls outside the notorious Lemp Mansion, a
hulking edifice with a hundred-year history of
orgies and suicides that earned it a reputation
as one of the most haunted houses in
America.