The Eclipse Priestess: What We Hide in the Dark
An eclipse is a strange thing.
Nothing actually disappears.
The Sun is still there.
The Moon is still there.
Everything is exactly where it was five minutes ago.
And yet, for a moment, light is gone.
Which is probably why eclipses have terrified humans for thousands of years.
We are remarkably comfortable with darkness when we know where it came from.
Night?
Fine.
Turn off the lamp?
Fine.
Watch the fucking Sun disappear in the middle of the day?
Apparently the gods are angry and somebody should probably sacrifice something.
But maybe eclipses disturb us for another reason.
They remind us that something can exist even when we cannot see it.
And humans are terrible at this.
We like visible things.
Proof.
Answers.
Nice clean explanations.
We want to know who we are, what we're doing, why we're doing it and preferably where this whole ridiculous operation is going.
Then life occasionally puts a giant black circle over the answer.
Great.
Now what?
Maybe that is where the priestess belongs.
Historically, the priestess was not simply someone who knew things.
She stood between things.
Human and divine.
Visible and invisible.
Known and unknown.
She was comfortable at the doorway where everybody else wanted a fucking instruction manual.
And that is what makes the gold across her mouth interesting.
She sees.
But she does not explain.
Because perhaps not everything we understand needs to be immediately turned into words.
Some things need to sit in darkness for a while.
A decision you aren't ready to make.
A version of yourself you're quietly becoming.
Something ending before you know what replaces it.
We hate these spaces because they look like nothing is happening.
But an eclipse isn't nothing happening.
It is alignment.
For one brief moment, enormous things that normally occupy completely different parts of the sky fall onto the same line.
Darkness is simply what that alignment looks like from where we are standing.
And maybe some periods of life work exactly the same way.
You think you've lost the light.
Maybe something has simply moved in front of it.
The light didn't die.
The answer didn't necessarily disappear.
And you don't have to rip the universe apart trying to find it.
Sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is stand there like the fucking priestess.
See what is happening.
Say nothing.
And wait for the light to return.
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