“Bona Dea”

“Lending credence to the theory that one assumes different genders in various lives, my artist-self once caught, in reverie, the barest glimpse of a figure I ought, as a man, never to have seen. Quite possibly it was a buried memory from a life I had spent as a female, come to this one, in which I lived as a male. Very faint and distant, shrouded in veiling vapor, the comely figure of a youthful woman, a snake encircling one arm, a fully-laden cornucopia resting in the other, glided through my field of sight. I knew her to be Bona Dea, and reinforcing the idea that I might have worshipped her while living as a female, her true name came into my mind, the sacred name not to be pronounced among men and the uninitiate, Fenta Fauna. The figure faded and disappeared. As I returned to waking consciousness, I recalled that Bona Dea governed chastity and fertility among women; that being the case, I could not help hoping that her future travels would keep her far from my neighborhood.”