I set out to dedicate my performance of MacBeth as an offering to theWhite Goddess, the lunar mother of passion,  creativity, destruction, magic and madness that Robert Graves identified as the source of all true poetry. Like many supplicants I've been hoping that my offering would inspire the deity to smile upon me and to ease my way in my quest to honour Her and Her son Dionyssus. I asked why would the Goddess lead me to this door if she would not provide me the means and the way to accomplish this task? Difficulties continued to accumulate, til at last I was standing in the rain waiting for a bus to my opening night with a voice so ravaged by fatigue and over exertion that I sounded like Harvey Fierstein. 

Standing there I thought about my friend Risa Aratyr, who wrote a wonderful Celtic fantasy about 13 years ago called Hunter Of The Light. 

Risa's hero is the Goddess's Hunter, bound by a geis to chase a Sacred white stag for a year and a day and then bring him down to maintain the balance between darkness and light. I had never heard of a geis before Risa's book, but what I understand is that it is a sacred task that one must complete or suffer a broken soul. One should always consider this before accepting  any geis. Thinking of Risa's book and the hero's journey I finally remembered that the hero's journey is supposed to be an ordeal.

The rasping squawk of my voice was nearing the realm of stupid and had I an understudy, no one would have  let me go on. The show however must go one, and so I must go on like a hero bound by a geis which would break my soul should I fail.

I won't recount the entire saga of my opening night performance but just mention that I indeed finished the show, and what's more, though I felt a collective cringe from the audience  when I spoke my first line, I also felt very soon after the audience lean in to hear me in rapt attention.

I think now I do believe in the curse of MacBeth, and I do not fear it, for  now I understand it is intrinsic to the geis  that She requires if you are to taste the glory of this wonderous poetry.

Blessed be