It ends

It ends in the light
once the last bull has run
through the gates of the ring
where the killing is done.

Great Poseidon, we mourn!
Sacred beasts, all mistreated
have been dispatched from this realm
in the end, all defeated.

We remember the light
and soul in their eyes
and the unanswered question
we can quickly surmise.

The vigil is over,
but the need is not sated.
For the bulls, for Poseidon,
We stand witness unabated.

I determined to observe the Vigil for the Bulls, and I made it out the other end.  What shape I’m in has not yet been determined.  Yesterday I thought it was today, and today I thought it was tomorrow, so it’s possible I either lost or gained a day somewhere along the line.  Once I catch up with myself, it will be easier to assess my condition.

During the time of the vigil, out in the world, a lot of people were gored by bulls, including a matador in another part of Spain who was killed.  During that same period of time, 48 bulls were run through the streets, then exhausted, tormented, and stabbed into submission until they were finally killed in a display of machismo that many Spaniards oppose passing on to the next generation, and 73% of Mexicans oppose.  During the vigil, I chose to look at this specific cruelty, rather than look away.  There is so much pain and suffering and injustice in the world, that it can be easier to turn aside rather than to let it all in.  This one, this time, I let it in.

During the time of the vigil, as is all-too-common during this festival, sexual assaults skyrocketed in the 24-hour party atmosphere.  During the vigil, while I did not feel able to fast, I practice abstinence, which was my personal counterpoint to the abandon with which some men threw themselves into the role of predator.

During the time of the vigil, the bull market in stocks passed a record, now second only to the one that ended in 2000.  One thing that ties bull markets together is the sense that they will never end, and to the fevered investors seem harbinger of a new economy where the rules are different; they always, in the end, are proven wrong.  During the vigil, eyes barely focused on the page I scrawled down the idea that the running — and the fighting — of the bulls is an act of hubris, for instead of reserving the first portion for the gods as it proper for a sacrifice, the entire life essence is sucked out to test the manhood (always, it seems, the manhood) of the human participants, who ignore the simple fact that with odds so stacked in their favor no possible honor or glory can come of such brutality.

I know Taureos better than I ever have before, and I also have a better understanding of the kthonic aspects of Poseidon:  Psychopompos and Kthonios.  In some ways, I have always known these aspects of his, but at the same time they are entirely new.  The sea gives life, and the sea takes life back into itself.  Such it is, such it ever shall be.

The only thing of which I am confident is that these pieces will come together in due course, even if it requires sitting vigil for the bulls again.  Tomorrow, I need ot redo the temple to lift that which descended upon it, but tonight I shall, for hte first time in over a week, be free to sleep through the night.