Keeper of the mysteries, she reveals beneath her robe a book of knowledge, offering understanding of what is hidden by the veil behind her. Serene and regal, the image of feminine grace, her strength is receptive and intuitive—a woman’s way with the world. She passes on what wisdom she gathers from high and low, which can bring forth both enlightenment and darkness. Her number, two, indicates this duality—as well as that of thousands of other ironies, coupled like male and female.
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The Priestess ~ 2 ~
I strolled off down the midway toward the sideshows, and came to a tent in front of which hung a banner picturing a bearded and tattooed busty brunette in skimpy clothes, with a huge snake wrapped around her. I dug seventy-five cents out of my jeans, and from a wiry teen with a bushy Afro and round brown face, I bought a ticket for “Isis, Queen of the Amazons.” Pushing aside the red velvet curtain over the entrance, I warily went in. The tent, about twenty-foot square, felt way too warm inside—heated by a rattly pair of electric space heaters, and insulated with heavy drapes, purple, blue, and red, hung in pleats along the sidewalls. At the far corner on a low triangular stage, a tiny old woman sat cross-legged like a swami upon a pile of rugs and pillows, her peaceful face half hidden behind a silvery white beard, which, like the wavy hair on her head, fell to her collarbone. A silky red robe with gold trim hung loosely over her shoulders, revealing a black leather bikini and a patchwork of tattoos. On her lap lounged a seven-foot snake, as thick as a fire hose. Her gentle eyes peered up at me from her book. “Come in, dear,” she said, singing the words in a kindly manner. I shuffled over in front of the stage and gawked at her. The fine curls flowing from her dainty jaw and thin lips were, for a fact, rooted in the wrinkles of her face. Swarms of tattoos, faded with age, covered her wrinkly skin, partly bared by the robe and bikini. The snake raised its head and turned its gaze to me. I took a step or two backward. “Oh, he won’t bite you,” she warbled and smiled. “My name is Isis. Would you like to look at my tattoos? I can tell you all about them.” “Okay.” “Here, sit down on the edge of the stage,” she said—and I did, on the side away from the snake’s head. Then in a melodic voice, chiming in rhythm to the words of her story, and likely told a thousand times, Isis rendered her tale. “My first husband was a great tattoo artist. I met him on the boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1928, and we got married a week later. He died in a car crash in ‘49. Bob Dodd was a wonderful man, and he loved tattoos, and for twenty years he decorated my skin with his art. All of my tattoos are by him, done with the utmost care and thought. My skin is etched with his allegory of the life of the world. My husband was not only an artist, he was also a mystic. And what these tattoos contain are the symbols of his contemplations. “My feet carry the whirlwinds of the suns that gather the cosmic dust into fire, earth, water, and air.” She uncrossed her legs out from under, leaned back on her hands, and lifted toward me one tiny foot, then the other, for my look-see—their tops dizzy with red and black spirals, their un-tattooed soles blue-veined, flakey-white, and starkly contrary. “At my ankles are the crystals of formation.” There—the flesh puffy and the tattoos drinted and stretched—was drawn a zigzag geometry of cubes and diamonds, shaded to appear 3-D. “My calves and shins depict the birth of the world.” Though she didn’t shave her face, Isis did shave her legs. On the left splashed a blue wash of waves of water. And on her right leg, craggy brown volcanoes burned red with lava. She slipped the robe off her shoulders, and stood up in her bikini—her slender make still in pretty good shape, but for its elderly swag. With both hands, she raised the snake high over her head, and chanted, “On my knees, the spark of life. On my thighs, its birth.” Jagged black and yellow lightening bolts wreathed her knees. Low on her scarce thighs swarmed a mess of puny one-celled things, with and without tadpole tails, like in a biology book. Halfway up they came together into living blobs—green on her right, and blue on her left. Then higher yet, nearing the edge of her bikini bottom, the shapes turned into fish, crabs, starfish, and eels, swimming up and over her left hip. And on her right side, gnarly roots grew out of the green shapes below, stems weaving upward and branching out into a jungle of red and purple flowers. She slowly turned all the way around, the snake still held high. Girdling the small of her back, a spider’s web tangled up all sorts of beasts and birds doing all sorts of things—a tiger killing a lamb, a grasshopper biting a leaf, a bird swooping down on the grasshopper, a grazing cow suckling a calf, horses humping, rabbits hopping, hummingbirds tending a splash of flowers that grew from a dead dog. “On my belly lies the Garden of Eden.” Out from under the top of her bikini bottom, a thick tree reached up into the sag of her belly and branched out over her ribs. Aside the tree, posed in the raw except for fig leaves, stood Adam and Eve, each with one hand pointing at Isis’s belly button and the other gesturing upward. Around the tree trunk, a horned dragon coiled. Apples and pears hung in the lower branches, but as the limbs reached outward over her ribcage, there also hung books, tools, weapons, pots, wheels, fiddles, and trumpets. And above, reaching down for these fruits, stretched the arms of a canopy of entwined men and women—Isis’s swaggy bubbies weighing the leather bra down onto them. She lowered the snake to her waist and turned halfway around, saying, “My back bears the labors of mankind.” There, swarms of tiny stick-figure people built up larger and larger buildings, which in turn were drawn smaller and smaller—grass huts with totem poles to log houses and stone idols, then palaces and temples and pyramids, and across her shoulder blades were cities, bridges, and skyscrapers. And above all that flew airplanes and rockets to the tops of her shoulders, which were spangled with stars, and moons, and planets with rings. She turned to face me, and sat back down cross-legged onto her pillows, draping the snake on her lap, and said, gesturing to the black bra, “My left breast has the New Moon and the Evening Star. My right breast, the Sun rising with Mercury. And the signs of the Zodiac lie hidden under this yoke. “My heart carries the signature of the man of my life, the artist of this masterpiece upon me—my love, Bob Dodd.” And there tucked into the fold of her cleavage, across a heart tattooed in red and blue, was Bob Dodd’s bold signature. “Above my heart are the three interpenetrating astral planes of heavens and hells—those of the ill, the healing, and the kingdom of health.” A swarm of devils, ghosts, and angels, wove a bizarre shawl over her chest and up and down her arms. Her wrists and hands had no tattoos. “And on my neck lies the ultimate meaning of life—veiled by my beard.” I could make out only a few lines and colors through her well-kept curls. I waited for more of her tale, but when she just sat there smiling at me with her calm eyes, I realized that the show was over. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand |
