The Hymn of the Shattered Vessel

The Hymn of the Shattered Vessel

An Invocation to the Liberator and the Wild

To be spoken in the dark before dawn, or in the hush after the storm, when the hands still tremble and the heart remembers it is yet beating.

Hear me, O Lysios—Liberator,
O Twice-Born from the ash and fury of the Titans’ rage,
You who were torn like seed cast upon the black earth
And gathered again by love’s immortal patience—

I am scattered.

My bones are loose syllables.
My breath stumbles over the ruins of its own name.
My life lies in fragments
Around the feet of my undoing.

Eleutherios, Unchainer of knots no mortal hand can loosen,
Come not robed in triumph,
Not crowned upon the mountain of my victories—

But descend here,
Into the valley of my tearing-apart.

I have drunk the false wine;
It soured to ash upon my tongue.
I have danced the frenzied dance without the god,
And morning found me broken in its merciless light.

But You—

You know the way back from the underworld.
You who have walked the corridors of dismemberment
And returned radiant.

You lift the thyrsus crowned with pine and honey,
You who can strike sweetness from stone
And summon fire from exhausted soil—

Be my physician now.

Not to erase these scars,
But to read them as sacred cartography.
Not to condemn the hunger,
But to consecrate it—
Transforming desperate grasping
Into the open palm of holy receiving.

Dionysus, Bearer of the Liquid Light,
Teach me the sober ecstasy.

Teach me to be drunk on breath alone,
Intoxicated by the thunder of my own pulse,
To stand outside myself
Not by fleeing through the bottle’s oblivion,
But by entering the temple of my own soul.

I am ready to be re-membered—
Bone to bone,
Breath to breath,
Shard to shining shard.

Gather me.

And You, O Pan—All-Embracing, Goat-Footed Lord,
Pulse of the wild ravine and whispering pine,
Heart that beats in the fox’s throat
And the trembling flank of the deer—

I have known Your panic.

I have felt that nameless dread at 3 A.M.,
The wilderness of the mind without a lantern,
The howl that rises as if from inside the skull itself.

Yet You do not mock this terror.
You are the god who transforms it.

You whose pipes carry the note
That calls the scattered flock home,
Whose breath turns chaos into cadence—

Ground my feet
When the earth feels like water beneath me.

When craving becomes a hurricane, be the mountain.
When shame becomes a cage, be the meadow beyond the bars.

Teach me that my instincts are not beasts to be slaughtered,
But creatures to be shepherded with wisdom.
That the animal within me is not profane—
But holy.
That this body, even in its trembling withdrawals,
Is a shrine of telluric flame.

Walk beside me through the thicket of my own anxiety.
Show me that the straight road is not the only way—
That the goat-path, the crooked ascent, the sudden clearing
Are also corridors of the divine.

Pan, Shepherd of the Lost,
Let Your laughter shatter the echo of my self-condemnation.
Let Your presence thunder through my ribs
As proof that I am not too damaged
To be claimed by the wild.

Together—
You who are not opposites but twin flames of liberation:
One who dissolves to reveal,
One who roots to sustain—

Walk with me through this initiation.

I do not come clean.
I come bearing shards—
Masks split open,
Poison drained but not forgotten,
Hands still shaking from the sight of the abyss.

But I come.

And that is enough.

That is the first step of the Mystery.

Turn my brokenness into the thyrsus.
Turn my panic into the clear, unwavering note of the pipe.
Let these scattered pieces become a mosaic—
A soul burnished by fracture,
A vessel luminous because it has been cracked.

I do not ask to be cured of my wildness.
I ask to be initiated into its rightful power.

Not to be tamed—
But to be true.

O Dionysus, transmute the vinegar of regret
Into the wine of wisdom.
O Pan, transform the wilderness of fear
Into the pasture of abiding peace.

I am the Twice-Born.
I am the Initiate.
I am the shattered vessel
That will hold more light
Because it has been broken open.

Walk with me.

I am ready.

Io Liberator! Io Pan!

The scattered are gathered.
The lost are found.
The wild is made holy.

So it is.
So it shall be.