Ralph and the Pixie

‘Not all,’ the Thane told him.

Finally it dawned on him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered that as part of growing up, he had mastered himself, and that part of that mastery was over fear. He had grown toughened to the truths and experiences of war, had fought for his life, had experienced situations where he was certain that his own death was inevitable; but throughout, fear no longer had a hold on him.

Until this very moment.

The Earth Mother was anathema to the Netherworld. Her presence kept it separate, sublimated, subdued. But if the Earth Mother were to be cut off from Her creation, then that anathema would vanish, as though it had never been.

The Netherworld:

In its way, the Netherworld was akin to the Earth Mother; it was possessed of Feminine and Masculine polarities, inextricably intertwined, balanced, one unable to exist without the other. Yet it was not simply an inversion of all that was the Earth Mother: were that the case, then it would in fact represent another; a Sister, as it were, to the Earth Mother, or Brother to the Earth Father. Nor were they like to the two sides of a coin.

As difficult as this may be for mortal creatures such as we to grasp, the Netherworld was the Earth Mother, just as the Earth Mother and the Earth Father were one and the same. But, as the subconscious chaos of primitive urges and passions are sublimated in our own minds, so, too, were the elements of chaos, destruction, impulse and instinct sublimated within the psyche of the Natural World.