The Temple of Cybele

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For the next several months, I have the honor of presenting some portion of a book by a very wonderful author, who I was quite fortunate to encounter recently. The book is "Ancestral Airs", and the author is Verda Smedley, from Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Trying to describe this work is not easy, because it very multi-dimensional and really unlike anything I have ever seen before. It presents a fictional tale set in the UK, during the mesolithic era... and although the specific characters are her own creation, their environment, lifestyle, and the sort of technology that they utilize is soundly based on excellent scientific research, in many diverse areas.

As such, we have a story which is both very entertaining and educational at the same time, making what could otherwise have been a terribly dry scholarly work into a very exciting journey. However, this is not simply a science-based sort of adventure novel, by any means. A significant portion of the story has to do with the spiritual aspects of the characters lives, and was carefully derived from personal observation of modern tribal societies, as well as what I can only call a rather amazing sort of "direct inspiration".

I would like to express our profound thanks to Verda Smedley, for giving us permission to present some of her beautifully eloquent and captivating work... and for opening a doorway into a timeless ancient world that few would otherwise have ever known.

"Ancestral Airs" by Verda Smedley

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In keeping with my belief that much more than what we know now was once understood I want to acknowledge the Ancient Ones who clearly saw what was coming and with complete devotion and love made prayers for us. Their words were sent out into the cosmos so that someday we would catch up to them. This is also true of the scholarship of uncountable people whose life’s work has or will remain with us or our descendents long after they themselves are gone.

I have tried to remember each and everyone of these individuals in my bibliography knowing full well that every book, article, lecture and opinion I have ever been exposed to helped me with my own understanding of the universe. Therefore, thousands are surely missing from the list. But certainly in the last twenty years I was deeply dependent on the genius of Maude Grieves, Marija Gimibutas, Francis Rose, Joseph Campbell, Daniel Moerman and Bertha Grove. Remembered also are Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse for their splendid effort as well as that of Barbara G. Walker. I am in your debt. Thank you for the extraordinary work you have done and the generosity of spirit required for sharing it with the world.

Among this pantheon of giants stands Jesse Shakespeare; immortal artist, Bardic poet and maverick publisher. His determination and devotion made manifest my own life's work. My gratitude is without measure.

"Part I: The Seedbearers" primarily addresses men’s medicine. I would be recalcitrant if I neglected to thank all of the men in my life that taught me how to perceive the world as they did. Many sacred lines were crossed to make this understanding possible. I regret that I couldn’t fully engage in all the male bonding to which I was privileged. Sorry. I am most finally female and women’s medicine requires its own story explored in depth in "Part II: The Life Givers".

Some of the practices described in Ancestral Airs are extremely dangerous and potentially deadly. In no way has it been suggested or implied that they be considered or attempted. This story has been offered as nothing more than a fragment of the otherwise incomplete historic record that remains to us. Not the publisher or the author is in anyway responsible for extrapolation that leads to reckless or hazardous application of this information.

Prologue

Ancestral Airs could have been a Temperate Zone story about hunter-gatherers. The species described certainly include some of the most ancient that evolved before continental drift as well as others that developed after it. But it is those that advanced in a local environment along with the ones visibly absent that suggest that Ancestral Airs takes place in a specific locale that is quite real.

As a story it could have been created entirely out of the study of history, geology, archaeology, mythology, anthropology, earth science or ecology. It could have been solely based on the consequence of glaciers on the intermittent migration of a people into and out of certain lands. I could have spun a fine tale simply from my investigation of mathematics. But it wasn’t.

I was in fact compelled to search through these fields to find validation for an experience I could not otherwise explain. Remarkably I found the greatest comfort in quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which suggest that my experience was highly and predictably possible and I wasn’t utterly mad.

I was never predisposed to any of the skills elucidated in New Age rhetoric. I couldn’t find anything new about it. No matter where we were in history we had been making prayers since we gave up the knuckle walk if not before. Rituals have certainly been around for a quarter of a million years and no doubt much longer. Every single individual born is psychic, prophetic and has a profound ability to heal themselves and others. Spirits are everywhere and everyone can hear them. Channeling. How absurd is that in light of the genetic memory contained within each of us. So I concluded I had no talent for any of these things beyond that which everyone was already endowed.

My only real gift, if it could be even called that, was a peculiar and no doubt inherent comprehension of soil composition, water availability, temperature and pH as the fundamental elements that determined what species evolved and where. I planted my first seed at three years old and was a “radical” environmentalist by twenty. I wasn’t searching for the meaning of life nor was I swimming in the deep waters of philosophy or spirituality. I was only trying to ascertain when we might have had it right and the point at which it all began to go terribly wrong. In short, I have always been a nerd. Imagine my surprise when my ancestors appeared to me in dreams insisting something quite to the contrary.

I wasn’t at all happy about it either. I had spent forty years entrenched in an entire array of scientific fields along side of the everyday struggle of growing up, getting married, raising children and contributing to their support. The dreams although extremely interesting were equally troubling not because of their nature but because of their persistence. I kept them an absolute secret for years until desperation drove me to divulge them to a friend in the strictest of confidence.

Although I had no penchant for “channeling” it never occurred to me that perhaps someone who was alive 6000 years ago did. And for whatever reasons he “dialed me up”. Ancestral Airs is the story of my experience, what was imparted, and the path I was to walk.

Contemporary society has discovered nothing. Ancient people’s grasp of observational astronomy and earth science was so vast we have little hope of rediscovering what had to have been common knowledge to them. This was the science of survival and was not witchcraft, superstition or heresy. Understanding the voice of a cloud or that of the air moving through the forest on any given day was critical information that could spell the difference between life and extinction for an entire tribe of people. They did not view themselves as standing outside of the circle looking in nor were they as arrogant as to think that they could improve upon, exploit or rise above the natural world. At that time man understood that within every feature of the biological world existed a spirit with which he could interact. As a species sharing an environment with countless others everything was intrinsically interwoven and therefore equally sacred.

Acute sensitivity to the world of which they were a part combined with their extraordinary minds (yes, they had the very same brain as we do), had to have led them to a working understanding of overlapping universes. Intersections created sacred places recognized not because some historic event had once taken place there but because the configuration of energy was both unique and tangible. They would have readily understood that universes were not just “out there” but were also layered on the earth as well. Each contained its own life forms, systems, awareness and knowledge. The inhabitants of these worlds, recognized as spirits and ancestors were distinct individuals with lives, consciousness and volition.

I am convinced that ancient people not only clearly understood the physics of time travel but also had the sophistication to apply it as a tool. The concept of time as the infinite present collapses the lineal idea of past, present and future. It speaks eloquently of their belief that both their ancestors and their unborn progeny were contained entirely in the present of their own lives. That made all of them as accessible as the Internet. No, they didn’t have time machines. Through cultivated awareness they had a unique genius for definable practices, objectives and destinations where information could be gathered to resolve survival issues.

There exists one profound difference between us. Ancient people did not compartmentalize their knowledge. In fact their ability to completely integrate it most certainly had to have created a level of spiritual awareness never again equaled. When spirituality became separated from the sacredness of being alive and living within the abundance of our planet we failed as a species.

"Such were the words of the Bards in the days of the Song; when the King heard the music of harps and the tales of other times. The chiefs gathered from all their hills, and heard the lovely sound. They praised the voice of Cona, the first among a thousand bards." Again, "Sit thou on the heath, O Bard! And let us hear thy voice.

It is pleasant as the gale of the spring, that sighs on the hunter’s ear, when he wakens from dreams of joy, and has heard the music of the spirits of the hill. The music of Cardil was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant, and mournful to the soul. The ghosts of departed Bards heard it." My life," exclaimed Fingal, "shall be one stream of light to Bards of other times." Cathmor cried, "Loose the Bards. Their voices shall be heard in other ages, when the Kings of Temora have failed."

            Ossian, Bard (Third Century)

Part I: The Seedbearers

Chapter 1

I am Gobetween, Clan Greihound, kin to the Twilight Women. Discarded daughter of the 20th century, I was snatched from the Unborn by a Greihound magician, Moondog. This story has been handed from life to life for 6000 years by means of the dreamtime carried in our blood. We are monomorphous, whirling in the spiral of Forever Now.

The Romans, on the heels of the Celtic invasion, marked the declination of our people. The reign of terror brought metallurgy and the horse, a disaster against which we had no viable defense. Innocence and isolation prevented the framing of an adequate response to the cascading destruction, making us an easy mark for disembowelment by the reprobation of the church. Disintegrating, our last dark and desperate effort was gruesomely glorified in "hero" stories rather than lamented as the impendent extinction of a fine people. What we did have, however, was diversity, kept hidden in the mist.

I have known a few others like myself, harbingers for the Ancient Ones, waiting for the death rattle of the oppressor. We have stared into that vacant socket repeatedly, apprehensively, and although the glue that binds us to this reality is spent beyond the struggle to remain flesh, we endure and when certain we will cover it with a shroud and be gone. There will be no malingering ascension. We proclaim the rebirth of our kind into the rapture and the Infinite Present.

My susceptibility to Moondog's seduction was the outcome of genetic happenstance resulting in my having more Greihound blood than the 20th century could tolerate. He insisted that my oblique perception was not a door locked against my entry into contemporary society, but the threshold of existence unencumbered by time.

To understand his intangible myth I had to shed the strangulating yoke of dogma. My assailant was not the Lamb of the Holy Ewe who tried and died living the beauty of the mystery, but the men who killed him, stealing his prayers to enslave the world to their will. They twisted the intent of his word and we were conditioned to believe that the expression of it was the sword wielded against everything distinct and wonderful in what we were. From intimate secrets to the chromosomes with which we had been endowed, those who plundered the Mother had decreed all heretical.

Repatriation required that I abandon all that had trapped me in a world, which would have preferred to relinquish me like an irreparably broken thing. Before I could appreciate Moondog's need to embrace me I had to cut the bonds that prevented me from reaching back to him. Once severed, my plunge was cataclysmic, unstoppable and accelerated until I exploded into antiquity.

He stripped me of everything from the pain of my childhood and the trivialization of my gender to the absurd oxymoron deviant sex. Moondog showed me the essence of divinity that lights each of our paths beyond the reach of disenchantment and unforgivable sin. In his sphere there was no judgment and therefore no need for a pproval. Every individual was valued beyond measure; the mere fact that one existed was purpose enough to fill a lifetime.

Moondog plied me with rhythmic certainty knowing that the circumstances of my life had slowly worn away my resolve to exist in it. Filling my emptiness with untenable madness, he camouflaged by his Death Clan demeanor, intruded into the ether of my sleep. His existence spilled over into mine and I misunderstood my trepidation as being a failing grasp on reality. With every appearance came increased pressure to let go and slip into his world. He challenged my desperate stand by pushing relentlessly against my weakened grip on the only truth I had ever known. And no matter how despicable, I fought for it as though it was worthy of defense and he my darkest adversary.

But he persisted and I learned to accept Moondog’s appearances with resignation. He called our entwined dreams blessings; I called them nightmares. He was unbending and I yielded, and as I did I grew to know him well.

My twin was of average height, lean but powerfully built. Even the abundance of summer failed to flesh him out in anticipation of the Winter Wait. If he hadn't been preoccupied with ritual obligation or inner darkness, I would have suspected he was always famished. He had a strong, square jaw, sensuous mouth and compelling dark eyes. Wavy brown hair was still discernible in what was primarily silver. Unlike most it was not long enough to braid. He kept it blended and just below his shoulders. His face and formidable arms and chest were weathered to a patina of light honey. Areas protected against exposure, I would learn later, were very light.

Moondog was both vital and fallen to ancestral dust, and I knew him as both. As the Ancient One he had come to ignite the remembrance of my lineage, of which he was a part. In doing so I was drawn in to close a gap opened by the death of his Twilight Woman, Snow Rose, securing my own birth six thousand years later. At risk was the survival of Clan Greihound and the ecstasy manifest within its practice made possible by her.

His teacher, Old Dog Dreaming Woman, gone to the Ancient Ones, had told him the legend of the dreamloop. This story suggested that an Ancestor could be petitioned to stand with him between Snow Rose’s death and the eventual birth of a female who would replace her. Myths were always based on real events but aspects of them were no doubt subtly changed, left out deliberately or forgotten. The memory of it contained in his own blood was nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of something he could not reach.

More troubling for him was the insistence that all of life was bound to natural order. In nature there was harmony and balance; there was also extinction, toward which inveterateness often bred complacency. Nowhere was this indifference more acute than with the Ancestors. Old Dog Dreaming Woman and Snow Rose saw it as a foregone conclusion that his clan would be expunged and any attempts to intervene were futile. He saw the dreamloop as a gift that, after generations of sedulous pursuit, could become a tool of extraordinary value. The path that led to foreseen disaster could be changed.

Challenging convention without the consent of every clan was forbidden. The infinitesimal difference between daring and desecration of tradition would draw suspicion and fear from his tribe. Standing before each council Moondog would have to argue that the people possessed volition and the ability to seek solutions that would in natural order not exist. Ancestral disdain forced him to retrieve a gobetween from the Unborn.

Moondog’s position was convincing but he secreted some doubts of his own. He never denied that sweeping toward Chaos had resulted in prolonged melancholy, a thin brume between him and all else. Days would pass before it would dissipate, and he couldn't dispel the feeling that the attraction substantiating his bond to reality was reluctant to return to him. All his attention came to bear on the possibility that the Unborn were figments of his imagination and did not otherwise exist; or more confounding, that they did indeed exist but only because he dreamed of them. The dreamloop, made possible by his discipline and my inherent predisposition, disintegrated my perception of linear time and I was left embracing the Infinite Present of the spiral. I also came to understand that beneath his tenacity resided a weariness, an unfathomable fatigue, and that with all his prestigious mysticism the endless offerings of his spirit and flesh to the rapture were slowly eroding his life back to the Ancient Ones.

When I met Moondog I was approaching forty with a twenty five pound advance toward becoming a Crone. My love affair with tobacco made my clambers to the Greihound den breathless struggles. The wild pack was real and so was my fear of being attacked by them. Although assured that they knew their own kind, I did not have the courage to venture out alone at dusk or daybreak. There was nothing about these circumstances that had any of the drifting character of a dream except the dreamtime itself. The ground was solid under my feet, the water icy and the whispering forest deeply fragrant. The den was smoky and cold and Moondog was very warm to the touch.

I was sucked into a ritual whirlwind. Clan Greihound was tireless in its pursuit to draw back the Veil. Their protocol was strict and their disciplines required decathlon endurance. Even the younger ones had the deep, bone-tired aura of the Divine.

Mother Earth was the only temple at which these ancient men ever worshipped, offering their flesh and lives to the shrine of Creation. No plant, animal, man or god could touch the beauty of Clan Female giving birth to the newborn, rebirth to the dreamtime. Unimaginable to them was the possibility that their women would ever be neglected, enslaved, brutalized or burned at the stake; or that the flesh that embodied the sacred was repulsive at any age or evil in any expression. The illusion that women could be controlled was irrelevant to a society that believed that the children belonged to the Life Givers. Women had inviolable mysteries and endowed their consorts and sacrificial sons with clan magic. Some rituals were integrated, many not, none secret, most incomprehensible, all requisite.

(~ End of Chapter 1 ~)

We will present Chapter 2 of Verda's book next month... in the meantime, if you would like to email her with any questions or comments, just click on this link:

Email Verda Smedley

Priestess Jean