India, Cont.

(The Divine Bull sadly looked down and slowly tossed his head, showing one crescent horn and then the other; while Kali, yielding and implacable, displayed a mother's love by ignoring the rebuffs and waiting patiently for the Aryans to take root and become farmers.)

Doubtlessly, the terrible power of the native shamans awed and intrigued the Aryan priests, the Brahmans, who, as notable impresarios of ceremony and masters of imitative magic, knew a good ritual when they saw one. Time and again they had demonstrated the extent of their skill. Regularly, in one memorable extravaganza, they even orchestrated the sexual intercourse of their queen with a sacrificed, dead horse. (With liturgical showmanship like this, it is no wonder that the Brahmans would eventually have all India at their feet and liking it.) But though the horse ceremony was inspiring, the extent of its vicarious participation was limited to individual arousal, ingenuously if not ingeniously resolved. Kali's priests, however, officiated at cosmic fornication, brutally and collectively actualized by all, except one, of the communicants. The Rig Veda sang pretty hymns to lovely Dawn. But in Kali's choir, screams of orgiastic ecstasy saluted the divine form. This competitive challenge could not be long ignored.

There was, however, another form of native worship that fascinated the Aryans. Here and there, from the Ganges River valley and delta to Burma and as far east into South China as they cared to explore, they encountered ascetics... men who disdained the society of their fellows to explore a solar system that existed within their individual bodies. Yogis they were... who drew the moon-fluid back into themselves and experienced the extraordinary bliss of orgasm without ejaculation. Though impoverished and emaciated, they were yet the extravagant hosts of some mysterious, inter-cranial satyricon; and their serenely smug expressions confirmed that behind their eyes there was indeed a divine union being consummated. These yogis were fearless, supremely self-controlled, indifferent to cold, heat and pain and oblivious of even the necessity to breathe regularly. They were strange men with even stranger powers. And power, of course, was something the blonde observers could understand and thoroughly respect.

And then, after years had passed and the Aryan invaders had completed their conquest of northern India and settled down to become country squires, they became apprentices of that mystic power, students of that new theology which explained without solar hegemony the politics of divinity.

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