When it becomes apparent that the only way to appease Ungit’s wrath is to offer up a sacrifice, the King of Glome consults the high priest of Ungit concerning the rites necessary. The priest describes how there must be an “Accursed” in the land, someone who has offended Ungit greatly, and until he or she is sacrificed there will be no peace. The priest goes on to say that the Brute will take the Accursed and lie with him, and that a “devouring” will take place. For, the priest tells him, it is said in the sacred language that to lie with a woman is to be, in a way, devoured.
This depiction of the Holy ties into so many of the things we’ve discussed this semester—it’s amazing how they all come together. I don’t remember where it was, but I remember reading once that ever time we engage in an act which is vital to us, we have the opportunity to draw near to the sacred, because each vital act was a sort of sacred magic which wards off death. As the priest of Ungit speaks, the acts of eating and sex become synonymous and furthermore tie directly into the ultimate experience of the sacred.
I see in my own life that there’s truth in the idea that when you become deeply unified with something or someone, you and they begin to have less and less identity apart from each other. As you digest your food, it ceases to exit outside of your growing muscle and flesh, and as you become deeper and deeper in friendship or love with someone your lives begin to overlap so much as to become closer and closer to one. Is true unity losing your identity in the interest of wrapping it up in something else? When I imagine that, dying and finding not that I continue to exist as an individual but rather that I “meld” into a greater Being, I feel some regret. Is that because it’s good and natural to desire identity, or is that my own selfish pride in imagining that my ‘self’ is important? I’m not sure.
