Kingdom of Eternity

Once I was asked when he - Dionysus - first came here.

Who can say? I should have answered, for what is time to the kingdom of eternity? There are only hours of the day, seasons of the sun and cycles marked by the passage of the moon.

Most vehemently have I been warned by the Saints to never fall beneath the sway of time, because that would bring death to all prophecy. The pendulum might swing, but such as I must remain above it in a state of perfect balance.

Daily am I reminded that time is of no consequence and fate unfolds precisely as the gods command it. When this occurs is immaterial, the potential for all action being ever-present. We are chiefly concerned here with what is infinite, although men so often desire to make fixed points for the dead books they call history.

“For this reason”, my guardian Saint Timocrates informed me – quite pompously, in fact – when I questioned him on the matter, “the Amphictyonic League has taken it upon itself to regulate all calendars of the civilised world that we might subjugate for perpetuity the menace of time at the centre of the Earth.”

For the sake of the initial inquiry, however, it was sufficient to say that Dionysus comes at first sighting of the Pleiades, accompanied always by Euterpe, whose hypnotic sounds will soar over Parnassus from flutes poised like spears of moonlight on the muse’s lips.

What happens then, who can say? It is one of the mysteries we cannot share easily, for like dreams in the stillness of the night, memories of those days are as mist in the fire of morning.