She Who Must Be Obeyed

[Hav­ing suc­cumbed to the sud­den swell of a ring­ing sound in my ears, I imme­di­ately found my self stand­ing out­side my body, look­ing a bit like the Lil­liput­ian who first dis­cov­ered Gulliver’s pon­der­ous body lying ship­wrecked on the isle of his Self. As I stood back to take in the full mag­ni­tude of my body, I thought I spied the earth instead. While I stood there, I saw a great body of land rise up from the earth, like a spirit from its own grave. As this form­less mass took on the man­tle that nor­mally cloaked the earth, I beheld a great and holy spirit, a woman of mag­nif­i­cent beauty.

“Who’re you?” I asked as I bent down on my knee and bowed my head in response to some inner urg­ing to pay my respects to the remains of this aspect of the Orig­i­nal Being.

“I am She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Great ‘n’ Holy Spirit you seek—the Eve of your man­hood,” She unabashedly proclaimed.

“How might I best serve thee, O Wis­dom?” I begged to know.

“You must put an end to this abuse of my body by you ‘n’ your fel­low coun­try­men,” She demanded.

“And what abuse is that?” I asked as if I didn’t already know.

“Look!” She com­manded as She opened up Her man­tle to reveal the most hideous scenes of man’s per­ver­sion of par­adise upon which I’d ever laid eyes.

Pass­ing out, I came to, back on the air­ship, just in time to pick up where I’d left my com­pan­ion, amidst the more sor­did details of his life.]