Free The Circle of Sappho by David Lassman Page B

us tonight, this night of the full moon, and see us for who we are – your devoted servants, made flesh to perform acts to venerate your honour and take part in devotional recreations that bring glory to your name. We ask you in all your wisdom and reverence to accept our latest additions to our Circle and thus return our number to its whole.’
    Elsa tipped a little more of her cup’s contents onto the altar and then drank the remainder. She turned to observe the Circle, as each girl mirrored her actions. Once this had been completed, honey cakes were placed on the altar and burnt; the sweetly scented smoke permeating the air, rising upwards towards the goddess. The liquid the girls had drunk now began to make them feel woozy and light-headed, yet at the same time, liberated. It was not an unpleasant feeling and any earlier anxiety or fears they may have had disappeared with the smoke.
    At each gathering, it was tradition that one of the ‘muses’ gave a performance appropriate to the discipline she represented. Tonight it was the turn of ‘Terpsichore’ – the muse of dance – and after more incantations had been uttered, the girl stood up. Instruments which had been brought were now played; a slow, rhythmic and melodious refrain started proceedings, to which Terpsichore began to dance in time, her movements both fluid and natural. As the music’s tempo increased, so did her movements, until the point where the music and dance became as one, interchangeable as the dancer began to sing Sapphic poems while she danced. The musicians, along with the rest of the girls, now joined in, dancing wildly as they played. The performance had reached such an intoxicating state that the girls shed their nightdresses so as to feel the empowering moonlight fully on their pale-white and exposed skin and to experience completely the liberation from dancing naked in the open air.
    While the scenes of wild abandon continued, Elsa, who had remained with her cloak covering her body throughout the whole ceremony, moved forward and taking Anne by the arm, manoeuvred her across to the altar and then up onto it, on her back, once more. Elsa let her cloak slip onto the ground and now, also naked, climbed onto the altar and then on top of Anne. She began to move her body up and down the other girl. As the movement became ever more rapid, Elsa began another invocation.
    ‘Oh, Aphrodite, we honour you in the name of Sappho, the high priestess of love, poetess of the senses, seducer of the innocent; by engaging in the veneration of the flesh, I call on you, oh Goddess of love, beauty and sexuality, to witness this act in your name and that through the coming together of these two bodies, in physical union, we pay the ultimate tribute to you.’
    As Elsa’s movements became ever more rapid her feet began to push Anne’s legs apart. The supine girl did not offer any resistance as she lay entranced and motionless, as she had been throughout the evening. The girl on top of her, however, had begun to thrust her body back and forth and on one of these movements, Anne’s body jerked and she let out a moan, as if entered.
    ‘We pay tribute to you, Sappho,’ exclaimed Elsa, as she continued thrusting, ‘and your tradition of physical love between women.’
    One of the other girls stopped dancing and looked over to the altar. Shocked by what she now saw, she stormed angrily across towards it.
    ‘What you are doing is not part of the ceremony,’ she shouted. ‘You are making a mockery of our sacred meetings.’
    Before she could reach the altar, Gretchen stepped in her way and grabbed her. The girls wrestled with each other momentarily before a blow to the face from Gretchen sent the objecting girl to the ground. The other girls stopped to watch, equally horrified at what they were witnessing. By now Elsa was cloaked again and stood by the altar. She looked contemptuously at the assembled girls.
    ‘Do not look so appalled,’ she said. ‘You are