Dark Predator (Dark 22)

He had never admitted his need of anyone before. He felt her move in him, that impossible light, so warm, so filled with an emotion he could never hope to understand. The feeling overwhelmed him, and as always he was tempted to push it aside, but not now. Not this night. He slipped his hand between their bodies to feel her welcoming liquid. He was large and entering her was always a stretching burn for her. He didn't want to take a chance of hurting her no matter how eager he was to be inside of her.

He stared down at her face, wanting to watch her every expression as he slowly pushed into her body. He felt her tight sheath, velvet soft, giving way for him as he invaded. All the while she poured warmth into him. Love. He felt surrounded by her. Home. He had truly come home. When he had buried himself to the hilt, touching her cervix, rocking both of them, he stilled, his hands reaching for hers, fingers threading through hers.

"I will make you crazy sometimes, Marguarita, but I swear I will try to please you. I promise you with all my heart, give you my word of honor, that I will always do my best to make you happy. There are some things I am not certain I can change."

She smiled up at him. I have not asked you to change. Only to merge your life with mine. There are good things about my world if you're open to them.

He withdrew and plunged deep, watching her eyes glaze. He loved that look on her face, that wild shock of pleasure. He loved knowing he put that there. Once again he went still. "I have brothers, you know that. When we are with them, I will not be able to be far from you. I need you to connect with that emotion I have so long been without."

A slow smile teased her mouth. Teased his mind. I don't think that will be a problem.

He was well and truly lost and he was grateful for that feeling. He began a slow, sensual assault on all her senses, sharing his mind, sharing the building pressure, the exquisite pleasure. She would always be his world. He would have to share her with this world she lived in - and loved - but for her, he could manage.

He bent his head and took her breast into his mouth, his weight on his elbows now. This will be our base, but we must travel, Marguarita. Together.

I am depending on that. I rather like the things your hands and mouth and body do to me. I'm addicted to you. But more than that, Zacarias, I'm very much in love with you. I want you to take me with you.

He felt her love inside of him, bridging all the broken connections for him. Surrounding him. Making it all right to be who he was, damaged and maybe a little broken.

He kissed her as his hands took possession of her hips, lifting her to him in preparation for a wild ride. You are the only person I will ever love.

And that was his truth. He finally belonged somewhere - to someone. Marguarita was his home.

To rightly understand Carpathian healing chants, background is required in several areas:

1. The Carpathian view on healing

2. The Lesser Healing Chant of the Carpathians

3. The Great Healing Chant of the Carpathians

4. Carpathian musical aesthetics

5. Lullaby

6. Song to Heal the Earth

7. Carpathian chanting technique

The Carpathians are a nomadic people whose geographic origins can be traced back to at least as far as the Southern Ural Mountains (near the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan), on the border between Europe and Asia. (For this reason, modern-day linguists call their language "proto-Uralic," without knowing that this is the language of the Carpathians.) Unlike most nomadic peoples, the wandering of the Carpathians was not due to the need to find new grazing lands as the seasons and climate shifted, or the search for better trade. Instead, the Carpathians' movements were driven by a great purpose: to find a land that would have the right earth, a soil with the kind of richness that would greatly enhance their rejuvenative powers.

Over the centuries, they migrated westward (some six thousand years ago), until they at last found their perfect homeland - their susu  - in the Carpathian Mountains, whose long arc cradled the lush plains of the kingdom of Hungary. (The kingdom of Hungary flourished for over a millennium - making Hungarian the dominant language of the Carpathian Basin - until the kingdom's lands were split among several countries after World War I: Austria,Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and modern Hungary.)

Other peoples from the Southern Urals (who shared the Carpathian language, but were not Carpathians) migrated in different directions. Some ended up in Finland, which accounts for why the modern Hungarian and Finnish languages are among the contemporary descendents of the ancient Carpathian language. Even though they are tied forever to their chosen Carpathian homeland, the wandering of the Carpathians continues as they search the world for the answers that will enable them to bear and raise their offspring without difficulty.

Because of their geographic origins, the Carpathian views on healing share much with the larger Eurasian shamanistic tradition. Probably the closest modern representative of that tradition is based in Tuva (and is referred to as "Tuvinian Shamanism") - see the map on the previous page.

The Eurasian shamanistic tradition - from the Carpathians to the Siberian shamans - held that illness originated in the human soul, and only later manifested as various physical conditions. Therefore, shamanistic healing, while not neglecting the body, focused on the soul and its healing. The most profound illnesses were understood to be caused by "soul departure," where all or some part of the sick person's soul has wandered away from the body (into the nether realms), or has been captured or possessed by an evil spirit, or both.

The Carpathians belong to this greater Eurasian shamanistic tradition and share its viewpoints. While the Carpathians themselves did not succumb to illness, Carpathian healers understood that the most profound wounds were also accompanied by a similar "soul departure."

Upon reaching the diagnosis of "soul departure," the healer-shaman is then required to make a spiritual journey into the netherworlds to recover the soul. The shaman may have to overcome tremendous challenges along the way, particularly fighting the demon or vampire who has possessed his friend's soul.

"Soul departure" doesn't require a person to be unconscious (although that certainly can be the case as well). It was understood that a person could still appear to be conscious, even talk and interact with others, and yet be missing a part of their soul. The experienced healer or shaman would instantly see the problem nonetheless, in subtle signs that others might miss: the person's attention wandering every now and then, a lessening in their enthusiasm about life, chronic depression, a diminishment in the brightness of their "aura," and the like.

is used for wounds that are merely physical in nature. The Carpathian healer leaves his body and enters the wounded Carpathian's body to heal great mortal wounds from the inside out using pure energy. He proclaims, "I offer freely my life for your life," as he gives his blood to the injured Carpathian. Because the Carpathians are of the earth and bound to the soil, they are healed by the soil of their homeland. Their saliva is also often used for its rejuvenative powers.

It is also very common for the Carpathian chants (both the Lesser and the Great) to be accompanied by the use of healing herbs, aromas from Carpathian candles and crystals. The crystals (when combined with the Carpathians' empathic, psychic connection to the entire universe) are used to gather positive energy from their surroundings, which then is used to accelerate the healing. Caves are sometimes used as the setting for the healing.

The Lesser Healing Chant was used by Vikirnoff Von Shrieder and Colby Jansen to heal Rafael De La Cruz, whose heart had been ripped out by a vampire as described in Dark Secret .

You lie as if asleep, without beat of heart, without airy breath.

I offer freely my life for your life.

My spirit of light forgets my body and enters your body.

My spirit of light sends all the dark spirits within fleeing without.

I press the earth of our homeland and the spit of my tongue into your heart.

At last, I give you my blood for your blood.

To hear this chant, visit: .

The most well-known - and most dramatic - of the Carpathian healing chants was . This chant was reserved for recovering the wounded or unconscious Carpathian's soul.

Typically a group of men would form a circle around the sick Carpathian (to "encircle him with our care and compassion") and begin the chant. The shaman or healer or leader is the prime actor in this healing ceremony. It is he who will actually make the spiritual journey into the netherworld, aided by his clanspeople. Their purpose is to ecstatically dance, sing, drum and chant, all the while visualizing (through the words of the chant) the journey itself - every step of it, over and over again - to the point where the shaman, in trance, leaves his body, and makes that very journey. (Indeed, the word "ecstasy" is from the Latin ex statis , which literally means "out of the body.")

One advantage that the Carpathian healer has over many other shamans is his telepathic link to his lost brother. Most shamans must wander in the dark of the nether realms in search of their lost brother. But the Carpathian healer directly "hears" in his mind the voice of his lost brother calling to him, and can thus "zero in" on his soul like a homing beacon. For this reason, Carpathian healing tends to have a higher success rate than most other traditions of this sort.

Something of the geography of the "other world" is useful for us to examine, in order to fully understand the words of the Great Carpathian Healing Chant. A reference is made to the "Great Tree" (in Carpathian: En Puwe ). Many ancient traditions, including the Carpathian tradition, understood the worlds - the heaven worlds, our world and the nether realms - to be "hung" upon a great pole, or axis, or tree. Here on earth, we are positioned halfway up this tree, on one of its branches. Hence many ancient texts often referred to the material world as "middle earth": midway between heaven and hell. Climbing the tree would lead one to the heaven worlds. Descending the tree to its roots would lead to the nether realms. The shaman was necessarily a master of movement up and down the Great Tree, sometimes moving unaided, and sometimes assisted by (or even mounted upon the back of) an animal spirit guide. In various traditions, this Great Tree was known variously as the axis mundi (the "axis of the worlds"), Ygddrasil (in Norse mythology), Mount Meru (the sacred world mountain of Tibetan tradition), etc. The Christian cosmos, with its heaven, purgatory/earth and hell, is also worth comparing.

It is even given a similar topography in Dante's pine Comedy : Dante is led on a journey first to hell, at the center of the earth; then upward to Mount Purgatory, which sits on the earth's surface directly opposite Jerusalem; then farther upward first to Eden, the earthly paradise, at the summit of Mount Purgatory; and then upward at last to heaven.

In the shamanistic tradition, it was understood that the small always reflects the large; the personal always reflects the cosmic. A movement in the greater dimensions of the cosmos also coincides with an internal movement. For example, the axis mundi of the cosmos also corresponds to the spinal column of the inpidual. Journeys up and down the axis mundi often coincided with the movement of natural and spiritual energies (sometimes called kundalini or shakti ) in the spinal column of the shaman or mystic.

My brother's body is a lump of earth, close to death.

We, the clan of my brother, encircle him with our care and compassion.

THE END