Canon 37: The Seventh Contest - Against Inossa

After Kinurea was overthrown, Inossa came forth, daughter of Heimos by Isabel, a common woman of the camps. She was blind and without tongue, yet her worshippers cried loudly in her stead: “Here is Inossa, goddess of love and fruitfulness, mistress of the womb and the battlefield alike. She is the fire of desire, the strength of mothers, and the fury of women in war. None may stand against her passion.”

But the truth was bitter. For Heimos himself, knowing not his own child, had once nearly yielded to her embrace. And when she stretched forth her hand in seduction, her father cast her down, removing her tongue so she might not speak and cursing her eyes with darkness that she might not gaze upon him again. Thus her followers worshipped a goddess of shame, made mute and blind by her own corruption.

Still, the people trembled, for Inossa’s rites were of frenzy and blood: women cried out in madness, lovers joined in reckless abandon, and warriors smeared their bodies with red clay before rushing to battle in her name.

Then Gamasiel stood and declared: “This is not love but lust without measure, not fertility but barrenness of the soul, not war but slaughter without justice. The true Giver of life is the Forgotten God, who grants children by His blessing and victory by His hand.”

At his words, the revels turned to ash, and those possessed fell into silence. The women of Rath cast down their clay and saw that no fruit was born of Inossa’s womb, nor did her armies prosper. For her eyes were sealed and her tongue stilled by her father’s curse, and her worship was emptiness.

So Inossa was defeated in the seventh contest, blind to the truth, silent before the Word, remembered only as the shame of her own house.

No comments:

Post a Comment