The Rite of Spring: The First of the Cock

The Rite of Spring: Fragment 19

The First of the Cock
in which Tan pays a visit to the Incarnate God

My name is Tan; I am First of the House of the Cock. That's not due to any special merit on my part - rather, I think of it as an elaborate joke on the part of the God. The inwardness or it was this. I grew up as a shepherd lad in a poor village near Sunsetfoot. I was an awkward, lanky sort of lad, and far from being a success with the girls of my village, was treated as a figure of fun. So I spent more and more time up on the hill with the sheep, and came down to the village more and more rarely.

One day, when I was already a man, a Priest of the Cunt came to the village, to teach the young folk about sexual hygiene and birth control and that sort of thing, just as they do every year. On this occasion it happened to be Kiara, who is now one of my closest friends. It seems that someone made a joke about the size of my cock. Kiara was interested by this, and came up into the hills to find me. When she explained why she had come, I was so confused and embarassed that I couldn't get the thing up. Still, she was very kind to me, and we shared lunch and had a pleasant talk, and then she went away again.

It would be untrue to say I didn't think anything more of it. I dreamed and fantasized about her continually in the weeks that followed. But I didn't expect anything to come of it. Anyway, some weeks later, two very serious old men came up the hill. They wished to measure my erection. Once again, I could not get it up. So they left me with a pan containing warm beeswax, saying that I should arouse myself and make an impression in the wax. When they came back half an hour later, I had duly made the impression. They examined this, taking numerous measurements and talking very seriously. After they had done this, they asked me if I would like to become a Priest of the Cock. Well, it is well known that priests of the Cock get laid quite a lot, and the idea of getting laid had been giving me no peace for some long time, so I said yes.

All this may lead you to suppose that I have a cock of enormous size, but this isn't so. It's larger than most, but no more so than by the proportion that a tall man is larger than the average man. Anyway, they took me with them back to the City. So it was that I, at twenty three years of age, became a Priest of the Cock without ever having lain with a woman.

At first I found the whole thing completely terrifying. Fortunately, before I could run away in panic, I met Kiara again - I think she had come, or been sent, to help me. She lay with me, and was gentle, and did not mock; and afterwards she brought other women to me. But for my first four years in the House I worked mainly on irrigation, supervising the maintenance of canals.

Becoming First of the House was almost another accident. You might think that being First of the House was a great honour, to be given to venerable priests who have served the House well over many years; or else you might suppose that it was given as a mark of some remarkable act of virility, such as fertilising an enormous number of women in one rite. In either case you would be wrong. The First of the House must go to the God when the purple flag goes up, and must go swiftly. To go to the God involves climbing the Thousand Steps. Climbing a thousand steps swiftly requires fitness; but the Thousand Steps are misnamed - there are not one, but three thousand steps to climb. It is a traditional privilige of the Stomach to be born up the steps in a litter; and the Cunt has the same privilege when the First is with child. But we are expected to go up ourselves and alone; so the First of the House must be young and fit. But the First of the House must also speak with the God on behalf of the House, and that takes coolness and level-headedness. I was given the job out of the blue - I got back from fixing a broken windpump one day and was told I'd been elected; and that's really all there is to it.

Anyway, my involvement with the barbarian princess came about like this. It was a morning of the second Ear of the Cunt; just after the end of our own Month, which all the priests of this House spend travelling the land conducting the Rite of the Plough in all the villages that wish it. It is the practice to hold a final Rite of the Plough on the second Cock of the Month of the Cunt, and we were in the final week of preparation for that. I was to officiate, and I like to talk with, and if desired to lie with, all the celebrants of such a rite in advance, to help prevent nerves on the day. So I was talking with one of the young women when a novice called Urquirain, who was on watch duty, came in and said our flag was up. I ran down to the boathouse, and dropped into the skiff just as the oarsmen tumbled in, and we set off across the river. People who haven't been to the City won't appreciate the enormous height of the Front Gate; I remember how staggered I was when I first saw it. Anyway, I squinted up and saw that there were three flags up: a red, an orange, and our purple. And sure enough, looking down the river, I could see the skiffs of the Mouth and the Hand.

There's always something of a race in getting up to the Front Gate. It isn't just for the honour of the thing. If the God gets tired of waiting, there will be no audience. Anyway, the Mouth got to the doorstep first. We were second. I nodded to the guard on the doorstep, and ran to the steps. I always try to pace myself so as to take the steps at a flat run. It isn't easy, because I'm not called very often, and there's no-where else at tall or as steep nearer than the Rim. Consequently, I have to train on the flat, or up and down the stairs of the House itself, and we only have two hundred from basement to roof. On this occasion, I managed it, and got to the top first. That pleased me because Ruain, who's First of the Hand, is a narrow dried up sort of man who thinks of our end as depraved and sloppy. I didn't have long to think about that, though. I went straight across the platform, and into the left gatehouse.

It's always a bit awe inspiring coming into the presence of the God. We don't see the God; there is a curtain across the audience chamber. Both the curtain and the walls are plain white, unadorned. Cushions had been laid out for us to sit in, red and orange and purple, on the plain stone floor. I sat on the cushion, very upright, and brought my breathing back to steady. It's not just the climb; it's the presence of the God that makes it hard. Ruain joined me, and Sunach of the Mouth, closing the door behind him. I've never seen anyone from the gatehouse.

Then the God spoke. I waited patiently, because the subject of the meeting was the God's instructions arising out of the latest of the Ear's weekly reports. Most of this was directed to Sunach of the Mouth. Only a few cases were discussed. I knew that the practice was for the Mouth actually to make its own judgement except where specifically directed. I didn't recognise the case which was to concern me when first it came up. The God said:

"I have heard of a young woman who speaks of me in the feminine, against custom. This is not a serious matter, but if it is ignored may increase tension between the devotees of the Houses of Light and the Houses of Pleasure. There will be a public, but symbolic response. She will celebrate the Rite of the Plough in the Theatre on the Day of the Cock coming. My Hand will deliver her to my Cock this evening. My Cock will ensure that both the physical and symbolic aspects of the rite are completed. My Mouth will announce my will in this."

With that, we were dismissed, and went out of the gatehouse into the bright sunlight of the top landing. My colleagues started down at once, but I crossed to the parapet, just above where the gate stream emerges from its conduit to plunge three hundred and seventy manheights into the pool on first landing. From there, the city is spread out below you like a child's toy, or a map. I watched the roaring column of water glitter in the sunshine, and, out on the river, a great three masted ship that seemed the size of my little finger. I thought of the judgement that had just been given.

You must know some history to understand the reasons behind it - or at least what I believe to be the reasons for it. The Incarnate God is, as an object of common worship must be, to some extent a compromise figure. Far back before the beginning of history, the Place was occupied by a number of different peoples, with differing beliefs; and this was a major cause of dissention. The devotees of the Incarnate God saught to pursuade all the peoples that the Gods that they worshipped were all aspects of the same divinity, which manifested itself in the world in the form of the Incarnate God. Over time, all the other cults came to accept this doctrine, partly because they were persuaded of the truth of it, and partly because they saw the economic benefits that followed from the ending of the religeous wars. But it remains a fact that our cults are different, and see the God through different aspects.

In the old days, in the Ascendency of the Eye, the doctrine the the God was male was, I think, widely held. This doctrine had, and perhaps still has, great attractions for those cults - especially the Eye and the Mouth - which celebrate the rational, the intellectual aspect of the God. For them, the mysterious drives of emotion and sexuality and generation, and the hidden mystery of the conception and development of new life within the body of the woman, are frightening and challenging. After the Coming of the Yachorach, Kiar forced the acceptance of the possibility of a female aspect of the God, and in doing so humiliated and brought about the downfall of the Eye.

It seems, however - and of course all this happened so long ago that many of the accounts that were written at the time are lost, or else are so damaged with age as to be hard to decifer - that the God herself prevented Kiar from imposing the doctrine of the essential femaleness of the God, and instead developed our mordern doctrine.

My House has never had any difficulty with the idea of a female aspect to the God; after all, our concern is in precisely those mysteries wherin the female and the male join. Clearly, these mysteries cannot be fulfilled unless both genders are present. It is because we represent the rutting, priapic God that we know that God must also be nubile, fertile, female. The plough is incomplete without the furrow. For us the balance between these two aspects is obvious, inevitable.

But among the old Yachorach priesthood it did not seem so. For the them God was only female; new life grew within her by her own act, without seed. So the doctrine imposed by the God was, in its way, a signal that the power of Yachorach, too, was limited; that the Mare Goddess was simply another aspect of the one God.

It is that doctrine of compromise that has enabled all the peoples of the Place to live together peaceably, and gradually over the years interbreed and merge and become more and more one people. Of course the Yachorach do still to some extent maintain a separate identity, but you only have to see a pure-bred Iachaorach from beyond the Rim to realise how much even the proudest of the Yachorach have merged with our other peoples. And this must be the way forward for us that the God has planned; that we should gradually fuse into one people, undivided by religious difference.

But any revival of the doctine of the female God would be a challenge to the Eye, particularly, and to other Houses as well; certainly the Mouth, probably the Hand, possibly the Ear. A challenge to which the Eye, at least, might well respond. It would lead to confrontation, perhaps to rioting. It had to be nipped firmly in the bud. The means chosen did, I supposed, seem wise. It was not an unkind or harsh punishment - indeed, to take part in such a rite is generally seen as an honour. Yet it made a clear display of the masculine aspect of the divinity. It was the fact that my House was to, in effect, administer a punishment that I found hard; it is not something we have been accustomed to these many generations. Logic - not a thing my House is famed for - told me it was the right judgement. I started down the steps.

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