My “Puella Eterna” lies in my shadow. She is always lurking, stalking, always calling to move on, to the next place, the next stage, the next path.

She doesn’t have to know exactly where she is going, she will know when she gets there. She counts on her guiding star, and travels on.

 Once on the road she looks forward with positive anticipation. Adventure awaits her; encounters, different peoples, different ways of life, different countries; she marvels at it all.

 She never really knows what she is looking for; what lies in that mysterious future she is going towards, but she travels on all the same.

 But “the older she gets”, the wiser she is, the more she recognises that which she had sought and found was always the same.

 She has heard the hum of the outer spheres, the crinkling of the stars, the swishing of the galaxies and then she realised that wherever she is, wherever she goes, she is always in exactly the same place, under the same stars, in the same cosmos, and all that she sought is right here, wherever she may be.

 And what is it? It is that numinous presence that opens the heart to the wonder of the universe, to the singing of the gods and to the ecstatic experience of just being here!