### Amanita 19
*
In Cerynea’s glinting woods, the hind did glide—
A golden flash, by Artemis supplied.
Fed on ambrosia, quiet in her tread,
A sacred deer the gods had gently bred.
Eurystheus, ruler wrapped in petty pride,
Threw Hercules to traps from which none hide.
“To seize this hind,” he whispered with a grin,
“Shall earn the goddess’ wrath to do him in.”
But Artemis, sharp-browed with silver gaze,
Found Hercules mid-chase through laurel haze.
She, too, a child that Hera’s hate had bruised,
Heard Hercules, and found herself amused.
He said he’d free the beast, no harm intended,
And Artemis, her judgment lightly mended,
Let him pass—for mortal hands might hold
The sacred, if the sacred spirit’s told.
*
Now deer, they gather ’round the storm-capped firs,
Enchanted by the red-capped Amanitas’ spurs.
In Waterleidingduinen, where I’d seek,
The deer had always beaten me, so sleek.
Amongst the bramble thickets, there I yearned,
Yet every scarlet dome by teeth was turned.
To touch a deer—this challenge soft and near—
Requires a stillness that dissolves all fear.
I dared the silent trial, touched no leaf,
And felt arise a quiet past belief.
One meter’s space—a breath away from grace.
In that small gap, my trembling heart found place.
*
Shahmaran—the serpent queen who sings
Where underground the hidden wisdom springs.
They call her Jemlia in shadowed nights,
A sultaness in caves of dreamlit rites.
No proven lore of mushrooms in the well,
But secrets often in the damp roots dwell.
In drought-scorched lands, the only fungal breath
May rise where shade drinks from the mouth of death.
And there, among pale snakes with quiet eyes,
A wanderer fell from golden honeyed skies.
Tasmasp—forsaken, hunger-wracked and torn—
Was nursed by Shahmaran in cavern born.
With serpent tail and human face of light,
She wrapped him in eternity of night.
She taught him what the blood forgets to tell,
Of stars before their names, of how they fell.
*
Yet longing like a pin inside the soul,
Made him desire again the mortal whole.
She bid him go—but swore him to the vow:
To never speak her name above the brow.
Return he did. But illness plagued the land,
And with it, brutal orders from command:
“Bring forth the one called Shahmaran, at speed—
Her flesh alone can serve the Sultan’s need.”
They searched the bathhouse, water turned to glass,
The ancient spells exposing what would pass—
His skin turned scales, his guilt a gleaming dew;
They dragged him forth, the hidden truth in view.
They found her then—the queen of warmth and night.
Before they took her life, she spoke of right:
“Eat serpent flesh—your healing shall arise.
Eat human flesh—your kingdom swiftly dies.”
The Sultan feasted—serpent flesh adorned.
Tasmasp, in grief, the human part had mourned—
And ate it, poisoned by her final trust.
The Sultan perished, sinking into dust.
Yet Tasmasp lived, her ancient truths retained,
By broken promise, deeper truth attained.
*
Aphrodite once, in older tales,
Had legs of serpents winding through the veils.
Herodotus inscribed the tale of yore—
That Heracles across a foreign shore,
Met such a woman—scales below the waist,
A goddess of the past, in myth encased.
In Anatolia, Shahmaran is this—
A healer’s breath, a dreamer’s serpent kiss.
Some say that Lokman Hekim, sage and pure,
Learned at her side the secret of the cure.
She paints the walls where maiden dreams begin,
In Eastern rooms where silence grows within.
The keeper of the threadless, glowing years—
Her image sanctifies both birth and tears.
*
Argimpasa, her name beneath the stele,
A chthonic spirit with a snake’s appeal—
Reflects the storm in Aphrodite’s hue,
And bears her name’s strange riddle, bright and true.
Apatura—the breaker of the waves—
A goddess rising from the earth’s old caves.
And if you read her name through myth’s delight:
ALPHA ROD ITE bows into your sight.
A rod—a stalk complete with earthen weight.
A mushroom in the alphabet of fate.
Not toads, as Western tales might dare propose,
But serpents guard the place where fungus grows.
The winding tongue, the hiss beneath the bark—
Conceals the path through psychedelic dark.
And Heraclitus, flickering divine,
With thoughts that sparked like serpents on a line—
Spoke truths like spores, elusive, shimmering bright.
Perhaps his thoughts were born in mushroom-light.
*