PIERCING THE VEIL: “HERESY” Ain’t No Crime

By JILLIAN KRISTINA

The dark holds vast worlds within its skeletal arms, realms teeming with entities who rise from stories told over and over again until they sink into the bones of a place, stories dripping with the blood of those foolish enough to defy and defile that which is most vulnerable. These tales have teeth adorned with the stripped flesh and widened eyes of their latest victims, frozen in a haunted, almost devoured state, because why finish them off? Why end their suffering? No. The memories of the land scream from the soil as a constant reminder and proclamation of what awaits those who would trespass on these ancient, sacred grounds with poison in their hearts and murder on their hands.

“Why did God let her live if she can’t even do what she’s good for?”

In Didier Konings 2024 fever dream, HERESY, alternately titled WITTE WIEVEN (White Woman), we enter a stark world of religious fanaticism in a remote Dutch village bordering a looming forest. Frieda (Anneke Sluiters), wife of Hikko (Len Leo Vincent), has one goal: to bear a child. Time after time, she and Hikko have tried, and still, she bleeds. She enlists the help of Father Bartholomeus (Reinout Bussemaker) to create a fertility test using herbs from the edge of the forest and her own urine. She is to bury the bowl containing the mixture, and when retrieving it, if it is full of worms, she shall have her answer.

“Almighty, eternal God, Through your grace, fulfill the desire of your servant and turn the shame of infertility away from me…”

Meanwhile, her closest friend. Sasha (Nola Elvis Kemper) is forced to publicly forgive a man named Gelo (Leon van Waas), who has beaten and violated her. Gelo, of course, is absolved, while Sasha is forced to endure his presence in the village, a ghoul lurking on the fringes, always waiting to pounce.

“I feel hollow. Maybe I’ll go into the shadow of the forest. Perhaps that’s better. Disappear into the fog.”

And this ghoul has zeroed in on his next victim. It’s no secret that Frieda and Hikko are struggling to conceive, so Gelo descends upon Frieda, brutishly offering his services. Frieda’s refusal is a flashpoint.  She is a woman who stands up for herself, who pushes back, who refuses to succumb in the name of what she should be doing – what she should be good for.

“Lord, You have compassion for the suffering of the barren. Give with grace, so that Your servant may fulfill her true duty in this life. Let her go out, and help her bring a child into this world.”

Frieda finds herself again drawn to the edge of the woods. Standing alone, she feels the creeping presence of an essence most vile. Gelo stands at the ready, poised to attack. She flees into the trees, the darkness and mist enveloping the two as the pursuit leads them into the forest. The eyes and spirit of the wood receive them, watching, inching closer, witnessing as the barbarian crashes down upon her, tearing at her, growling and gnashing as she struggles to fight him off, ripping the cross from her neck and replacing it with his savage hands. 

Now, the strength and might and rage of the wood rise. Now, Frieda finds an ally in a most unlikely and misjudged place. Now, Frieda will not be punished or shamed for being a woman. She will be supported and saved. She will live to tell the tale, but her story will fall on deaf ears and maligned townsfolk, brainwashed by doctrine and the rantings of a delusional priest. Such barbarism weaves itself without subtlety throughout the small village, even touching the hearts and tongues of women who have fallen under the spell of such misogyny and cruelty.

“What in God’s name is a woman doing in those devilish woods? You bear the curse and curse those around you. No woman has ever returned alive from that forest. She doesn’t have a single scratch on her. The barren one conspires with the Devil.”

Scrutiny falls upon Frieda, with only concern and fear for what has befallen Gelo. When the villagers venture into the woods to find him, well, they witness firsthand the flex of the forest. They see vengeance. They know the truth of terror because the earth exacts her revenge with precision. She knows the evil that whispers in men’s hearts. She sees the savagery play out on her soil, under the canopy of her trees. She sees, and she protects. She splits the perpetrators apart, intertwining their putrid remains with the very branches whose shadows drive the weak and fearful from her sanctuary. She leaves them as a warning – and a promise.

With Gelo’s fate sealed, Frieda is scorned, whipped, and cast out. She returns to the edge of the woods, where she buried the bowl containing the herbal fertility test. The worms squirm and slither in the urine. All hope drains from her heart and throat in an agonizing moan. It is at this moment that a pale, luminescent mist swirls up from the bowl, leading Frieda towards the trees. She enters the darkness and sees it populated with otherworldly forms and monuments constructed with bark and bone. And, most prominently, she sees an elemental, the essence of the wood, approaching her. 

This manifestation of the earth engaged Frieda, swaying and jerking and crouching to the ground, rhythmically pounding the soil in a primal dance, energy conjured and shared, a reconnection, a possession. Her eyes glow neon blue as the power of the elements comes rushing through her, feeding and nurturing her traumatized, depleted body. And with that, the elemental transforms into the White Woman, revealing herself and the awesome and all-encompassing power of the feminine, the moon and life itself. Water and bark flow as one, all things connected; life and death and seen and unseen and magick and might and the divine coalesce to create life of its own, within her, for her – the miracle of creation that lies within every woman, supported by the green, by the pulse of life itself. The whipping wounds vanish. Frieda is healed, refreshed, and clear, reveling in the unfathomable beauty of nature and what she now feels growing inside her.

Upon her return to the village, she is met with shock. She had been presumed dead. The residents gaze upon her in disbelief, sensing a new energy about her. A new strength. Father Bathomolomeus also notices that she was not reciting prayers at mass that evening…

“Do you still know your prayers?”
“I have never forgotten them.”

“Eternal, holy….”
“No. Almighty Lord.”

“And Anna, mother of Virgin Mary…”
“Stop. A prayer never begins with the woman, Frieda, but always begins with the Lord and only the Lord.”

She worships at a new altar now. Now, she remembers the truth behind the lies. The oppression that she can no longer tolerate. Here, she feels the power of truth surge in her chest. This is her compass now. This is her North Star.

“We no longer believe everything they say.”

Tomorrow, the New Moon crosses the threshold into Taurus. This is where the Earth, the physical, the material, all vie for our attention, both within and without. Our bodies and spirits rise with this lunation, pointing to what is both whispering and screaming for attention in our physical and emotional foundations. There is a quickening of the intuition, a stirring of buried secrets and suppressed rage that rushes forth, thanks to a conjunction with the fixed star, Algol. This star is the head of the mighty gorgon Medusa. This is where we meet the ancient wounds of betrayal and violation and persecution for merely existing – for being who you are. For being a woman. Whatever comes up now deserves to be witnessed, to speak, and to be released into the darkness of the moon herself. 

But the White Woman, the wood, rises up to protect and hold and heal, unconditionally, as all good mothers should. Commonly associated with the third card of the major arcana, the Empress, allows the Venusian mother archetype of this Taurus New Moon to support you in all the ways you know you need, and all the ways she knows you do.

A tarot reading, as an offering to the Moon, to Algol, and to you.

What are we leaving, walking away from for good, in favor of more expansive, sustainable, generative horizons? What version of ourselves remains at the threshold of this New Moon, an offering to the fixed star Algol, of the pain and persecution and betrayal we’ve all experienced at the hands of those who feared our power? This is a bittersweet passage, one that intertwines grief with celebration and renewal, a chance for an unhindered storyline to begin to form, one forged from water and fire, from incineration and rooting into the darkness. A new timeline awaits on the other side of this rising, one that will have its own triumphs and revelations and ruminations, because even though the moon is dark, she’s there nonetheless, reflecting the secrets and scars we hold closest to our battleworn hearts. The cosmic pools that swirl and spiral within us run deep, both revealing and concealing in due time. And yet, we still live, and walk, and breathe, and engage with the living world. We cultivate and curate that which speaks through these waters with our hands and minds as tools to create something out of nothing; material out of ether. We lean into these manifestations, a culmination of every spirit we’ve been and all we’ve yet to become. This is our work – the work of the heart – and the fire that burns there eternally, nudging us not to quit in the face of adversity, but to strengthen our resolve to keep going…. especially now. This is how we tend to both personal and collective wounds, by tending to the self, to the spirit. To the whisper that only we can hear, and then share with others who may be attuned to the language that seeks to be translated now.