I have written a review of Goddess Marquesa’s video “Eternal Love Spell” before, but as I was watching it for the thousandth time the other day a thought occurred to me that I feel compelled to share. As I surrendered to the Goddess’s mesmerizing trance, I felt the usual waves of intense pleasure wash through my body, mind and soul. The delight when She declares “My will is stronger than your will” is acutely poignant, I can always feel the truth of those words in my bones. Her will ravishes me, I can feel it pulling me apart and putting me back together again like a jigsaw. Then She notes matter-of-factly, in a gorgeous, lilting sing-song, “you loooooove Me.” It is an instant of utter joy and realization,the perfect marriage of thought, feeling and being. Her voice becomes the musical embodiment of my very experience. I don’t hear Her words in that moment, I am Her words. My identity is extinguished, and I am reduced to a throbbing, pulsating quantum of love-energy, a fire that is fueled by and composed of pure adoration of Goddess Marquesa.

This time, even as I was held in thrall to this ecstasy, it occurred to me that it is wrapped in and driven by a paradox. I would love Goddess Marquesa just as intensely if I never heard the words, but it is Her power to utter the words that inspires my love in the first place. It is precisely because She knows, in the deepest and most essential sense, that She compels our love, that Her beauty, power, charm, wisdom, creativity, and depth make it impossible to do other than love Her, that we are helpless before Her enchantment. If the words were not true, no amount of utterance would make them effective, but because the words are true hearing them makes them doubly so.  So do I love the Goddess because She commands me to, or does the fact that She knows to command me make me love Her? The only answer can be “yes.” I can’t unwind this mystery, I can only thank the Goddess from the depths of my heart for granting me such bliss.