Depths of Love
Love is not one warm pool; it is a staircase that descends. Each step is darker, hotter, tighter. When you walk it with care, it is a sacred descent into power. When you stumble, it becomes hell.
Level 1 — The Ember
At first love is an ember—soft heat on bare skin. It wakes your senses, makes you notice the air again. People call this the “honeymoon,” but I call it permission: permission to imagine more. It is gentle, and because it is gentle, it is safe. Lose discipline here and you drift; keep discipline and you decide whether to climb down one step farther.
Warning: If you ignore small boundaries at the Ember stage, you plant tiny hooks that will rip skin later.
Level 2 — The Flame
Drop one level and the ember becomes a flame. The heat now shapes you. Choices feel urgent. You plan, you merge your schedules, you test loyalty. The Flame is beautiful, but it can blister. In hell this is the circle of lust: always hungry, never full. If you feed only desire, you scorch what you meant to cherish.
Strict advice: Keep one hand on your own spine. Give, but never give your core. I had to learn this the hard way. You can’t give all of you away and leave nothing for yourself
Level 3 — The Furnace
Another step and love is a furnace. This is where we take oaths, marriage, blood, business, or shared secrets. The heat here can melt iron and fuse two lives. In hell this is the circle of greed: wanting the beloved to be yours in every direction. The moment you treat a person like a prize, the furnace door swings open, and hate crawls in disguised as possession.
Blade of truth: If you cannot stand alone in the dark, do not promise forever in the light.
Level 4 — The Blade
Deeper still, love sharpens into a blade. Every shared memory is now an edge; every word can cut. Lovers try to carve each other into perfect shapes. This is the circle of anger. Here, love flips fastest to hate because precision meets disappointment. You hold the knife. The question is whether you perform surgery or slaughter.
Shaman’s rule: Speak the wound before you wield the knife. Silence here is the devil’s toolbox.
Level 5 — The Void
The last human level is the Void. Love has become the only law you recognize. You would trade kingdoms or commit crimes to keep it breathing. In hell this is treachery, because total devotion invites ultimate betrayal, by them or by yourself. When it is torn away, that energy that once fed life now poisons it. That is why the deepest hate lives next to the deepest love: both demand your whole soul.
Plain verdict: If you abandon your own essence in the Void, you resurrect as a ghost fueled by revenge.
Beyond — The Starless Deep
There is a place lower still, where no human language reaches. Shamans call it the Starless Deep. Here love and hate are the same current, just flowing in opposite directions. Few make this descent and return sane. I have walked it. I learned: the current obeys attention. What you stare at expands. Fix your gaze on betrayal, and it births endless mirrors of pain. Fix it on truth, and the current calms, even in the dark.
as a woman who has loved, hated, then loved again, each time wiser, tougher, cleaner. The staircase is real, but it is not a prison; it is a path. Walk it awake. When it gets too hot, choose higher ground. When it gets too cold, descend with caution and ritual. Remember: the same fire that can forge gold can also burn a kingdom to ash.
Choose the forge.
Walk in power.
