The lesson in this tale is this: there is no kind side to Me.

I dance a terrible dance.

I dance, and worlds are destroyed.

I dance, and stars are put out.

I dance, and the universe spirals apart.

The sliding of my hips calls forth the Deluge.

The treading of my feet brings down the kingdoms of Men.

The least gesture of my hand causes a generations' children to be born dead.

I dance upon the corpse of my husband, garlanded with white skulls. I kill in glad fury, and my red tongue laps up the blood of demons. I destroy in ecstatic frenzy to hasten this age of the world.

Look into my eyes, see the matterless void, the time that was and will be yet. I am the Black One—black as the moist grave, black as the tree blasted by lightning, black as the inaccessible cavern whose creatures are born eyeless; black as the crushing ocean, black as the sky before sun stars or moon, black as the Last and the First.

And if you would be whole, you must love me and welcome me to yourself as if I were the fairest lover. You must breathe in the air of the abattoir as if it were fragrant as jasmine, sleep among the ashes of the charnel house as on a bed of rose-petals, smile back at the grinning skull with kindness. For Death is no less holy than Life; and all that begins will end.