The Curse of Cassandra
The Archaic Allegory Volume XL
What of a foretold fate is right? What of it that makes one believe, is it disillusioned delusion that there resides a power bigger than us or is it purely the fear of now and the stress of tomorrow?
We pay less attention to the massacres around us and more to the priest, the pandit, the man of god who tells us everything will be alright. We prevent not the swords from slashing deep cuts, rather, we make our bed in the blood that is spilled.
The threads of many colours responsible for weaving sweaters for the children of tomorrow are now of one single colour and yet, the eyes open not. Yet, the man sleeps still. Yet, the swords cut deep.
For would a man who believes, be deemed foolish and the man who does not, be deemed an extremist? With what vocabularies would you frame a sentence such that would make change the belief system of a man who has nothing left to lose and believes only in prophecies foretold?
With what sword will you slash the back of the man who has suffered a million cuts by life, all deeper than any wound inflicted by any sword?
Ladies & Gentlemen, let us walk across the tunnels of time for a tale told ages ago yet still foolishly believed in, to this day.
The god of prophecy, Apollo has laid his eyes on a priestess, a woman of many charms, a woman who makes Earth beautiful using her two arms. Apollo finds himself charmed and demands to have her be fated to him, to have her be devoted to him.
And just as all men who have dared to love foolishly, Apollo too, wishes to drape her in blessings, ornaments & powers. Oh, how innocent men become in love. If only roses grew in battlefields, wars wouldn’t have been so brutal.
Perhaps a different shade of red would have prevented merciless killings and shivering death.
The priestess who lived in Troy, daughter to the King Priam & Queen Hecuba of Troy, Cassandra. Her hair were a different shade of red, a different of shade that in future, will attempt to prevent the greatest war.
Apollo madly in love, promised gifts of many kinds to charm Cassandra, powers that would seem exorbitant for a mere mortal but as we all know, even the innocence of children pales in comparison to the innocence of men in love.
Apollo promised Cassandra that if she were to dedicate herself to the god and become his for all eternity, he would grant Cassandra the ability to foretell prophecies.
Cassandra would have been able to see into the future and foretell prophecies and in return, she would grant favours to Apollo.
Oh, the ability to see the future, what a curse & a blessing at the same time.
Bewitched by Apollo or perhaps, the greed to see tomorrow before it arrives, Cassandra agreed to be fated to Apollo and celebrations birthed as the divinity merged with mortality in yet another innocent tale of love but if only the end were so simple.
As Apollo granted the ability to foretell prophecies to the priestess, Cassandra refused to grant any favours to Apollo and went back on her word. This angered the being divine.
And a god in anger would lay ruin to all that he himself created as tears of remorse that would be shed later would fail to bring back all which that was lost to wrath.
Since Apollo could not revoke the power he blessed Cassandra with, he resorted to the darkest side of all divinity, curses. He cursed Cassandra that any of her prophecies foretold would not be believed by anyone. Her concerns regarding the future would have her be deemed as a village idiot, none would believe even a word uttered by Cassandra in context to tomorrow.
A different shade of red could have prevented wars but fate desired something else. Fate craved the brutal taste of blood, a different shade indeed.
The dark horse imbued with curses lit on fire ran into the village of glee and burned it all to the ground. Perhaps, in the end, what the madman says is true:
Love can be merciless, brutal even. A man who loved at the start, by the end inside a grave he would be seen in.
Before the fall of Troy
The Trojan War could have been prevented had those hungry for violence just listened to the priestess.
Cassandra foresaw that if Paris went to Sparta and bought Helen back as his wife, the arrival of Helen would forge a pen that would write the fall of Troy in a manner so brutal & dramatic that no page ever painted in history would forget it.
Despite multiple warnings, Paris went to Sparta and bought Helen back and the people of Troy rejoiced, they danced with glee. Foolish were the people of Troy and even more painful than their stupidity was the face of a helpless Cassandra.
A woman blessed by the divine who will never be able to persuade any being. She would foresee the downfall of empires and would scream & weep by the giant gates as the guards would kick & throw her out. And even more merciless were the people.
The words they uttered to disrespect the priestess made cuts as deep as the pacific ocean, she screamed for their aid but was discarded.
And I wonder, what is true hell if not being able to save another despite your access to a cure? They brutally die as you watch them suffer, you weep at nights as you fail to save another.
During the fall of Troy
Not only that, as the people of Troy celebrated with the Trojan Horse and danced all night, Cassandra tried to warn them about the presence of the enemy inside the horse but alas, her warnings were to no avail.
Tired after so many attempts at waking the masses up, Cassandra took matters into her own hands. She took an axe in her right hand and a burning torch in her left and ran towards the horse to slay the Greeks herself but she was stopped by the Trojans.
As the Trojans feasted & hurled insults at her, Cassandra was forced to watch a massacre she could have prevented and inevitably, she blamed herself for all skirmish.
And now the question begs, is a glance in tomorrow a curse or a blessing?
In some versions of the myth, after the fall of Troy, Cassandra sought shelter in Athena’s temple where she was brutally dragged & raped by Ajax the Lesser.
All for a divine power.
A fate so brutal that even tomorrow shivered as today showed its true colours and the prayer made yesterday to make tomorrow less painful failed as tomorrow came and as it showed its true face, came a realisation that it was only the today that showed its true colours yesterday. It has returned but is even more brutal now and oh, the prayers have started again.
Perhaps, tomorrow would be better. But who knows?
And with that, we reach the end of this tunnel of time, Ladies & Gentlemen. We see light in distance, tomorrow looks beautiful but again, the light we see, is it really light or just a train coming at a really high speed?
I guess we’ll have to wait for tomorrow, eh?
We’ll meet you next SATURDAY in yet another tunnel, under a bright blue sky.