“Wild creatures are dancing in the woods.  Like furies from Ancient Greece they hurl themselves, whirling human torches of ecstasy and lust.  They are dancing to unheard music, for the pipes of Pan are beyond mortal ears.

Dionysus has set his men to catch them, for here the Rites of Spring know no bounds.
The women are wild.  Their hair flies.  Their arms and legs are thrown askew like gnarled oak trees.  They wear tattered green garments which rustle in the wind and their feet beat a pounding rhythm in harmony with the tempo of earth.  This creates an hypnotic drumming effect which keeps the dance continuing and leads it on to its final crescendo.

Philomela is sent awhirl with the force of the dance, till, at the point of climax she is left twirling at the center, whilst the others thread around her.

Weaving lyrically through the dull thudding of bare feet on bare earth comes the silvery serpentine song of a rare nightingale ~   a bird of paradise of paradise indeed.  And from on high, lifting the song to alternate peaks and undjulating troughs of cadence and contrast, come piercing jets of white sound, shooting high into the stars from the base of the beating of drums.  It is like a high-pitched flute – for divine ears only.

Some of the women leave the earth and are transported through the air, weaving a sympathetic dance to the mimed melancholy of the Cyprus and cedars, while others float golden in the glorious light of the Sun, suspended in an amber ether between heaven and earth.
The silver and the gold thread around and through and between and below and above each other in perfect harmony.

It is a festival of goddeses moving in response to unheard music, huheard, at least, to mortal ears.

Philomela continues to spin ~ around and around and around in the center... or is she the center?
It is like the dance of the whirling dervish, seemingly endless.

And, when the festival had finished, Philomela, as she span, could hear its echo  ~ whispers reverberating, it seemed, from the dancers themselves:

“When we reach the peaks of musical possibility we find we cna go higher still”, said one.

“Once we have transcended the narrow boundaries of what is thought possible, there is no limit”, said another.

Then cam a chorus of whispers.  “When we stay close to our own true nature, we may harmonize with others who do likewise, though there may be worlds of difference between us.  Those of us who stamp out the rhythms of the earth in wild abandon express ourselves fully.
We stamp out patterns in the cosmos, just as those who make music in fore ethereal realms likewise trace through space, creating cosmic spider webs of pure and ethereal sound.

Each of us is true to her own nature and thus becomes perfect in what she is.  Music belongs to the world of the wondrous.  And when we vibrate in harmony to cosmic rhythms and melodies, we become more than we think we are, for thus we draw down the power of the gods and become one with the golden chain of our good.

An entry into the world of aesthetics is a doorway to another dimension where the confines of narrow egotism, habits and opinions are seen for what they are – as if from a great distance – and thus dissolve and faaaaade awaaaaaay...”

Sowith the approach of dusk, did the chorus fade, and Philomela’s spinning slowed to an ebb.
Her limbs were failing her, so she lay down on the grass and gazed at the expanses above – elated, content.”