put down the ball of authority and took a sip of water before continuing to speak. “With you all I want to chronologically review the development of our current religious patterns starting with its primal tribal beginnings.”
“Three million years or so ago mankind started his transformation towards homo erectus which claimed the honors of being at the top of the food chain by about 300,000 B.C. These early relations of ours lived their religion rather than studied or analyzed it. This shaped their sensibilities significantly in a different mode than ours.”
He put his notebook down and started to walk about the room as he formed his words, “Fifty thousand years ago men were conducting funeral rites which were expressed in ideographic signs that are still understandable today. These symbols grew into an oral tradition and then translated into printed vestiges which announced their notions of being, meaning and truth. Even today the early quests of these cavemen are still thought to survive in our deep consciousness, although many of their insights and virtues have been urbanized by our industrialized society.”
Andrew knew he had our total attention as he could feel our eyes move with his body language. “Ten thousand years ago mankind left their caves where ocher paintings depicted their domestication of fire and the tribes evolved from food gatherers to flesh eaters. Next the shaman leaders conducted blood rituals that transformed their followers from hunters to herders using their magical and mythical powers of persuasion. As the millenniums passed by these forefathers of ours would progress from sticks and stones to iron and bronze technologies, but our biggest modern day mistake is to assume that these later developments mean better when discussing religious values. These earliest relatives of ours led lives unencumbered by external devices.” He paused to make his point. “The Neolithic tribe’s experience was not influenced by television, radios, books, movies, opinion polls or newspapers. These peoples had their own oral traditions which kept them connected to a primal cosmology, where as within they could enter into a mythic world that was experienced in many different ways.”
“Everything to them was a religious ritual. Their hunters entered the earliest mode of their archetype and became as one with the beast he sought out to kill, and thus gain its powers and the protein of its meat. The animal’s skin became as his own, and during these ritual mergers past memories became the living now and then.”
“Their limitless reservoir of knowledge was connected through non-verbal channels which would draw them into the world of the others’ heads and homes. The hunters would become embedded in the life of their prey. These ancestors of ours also knew to shelter and protect their tribe’s sacred stories, for if the living legends were sent into a lifeless script that was set to written stories, then the hunter’s soul and spirit could also be imprisoned in those words.”
It was at this point I remembered a caving experience I had while exploring an unopened cavern in Belize. During an extended vacation some local Indians I met took me up a small mountain on a horseback ride. Clearing a path as we rode the youngest of the group explained they had come across a huge cavern that deep within had a passage sealed with stones and a mound of broken pottery scattered in front of it. They had showed me some of the shards which appeared to be burnt and carried the scars of smoke, and other pieces that looked almost new.
After hours of cutting our way to the top through razor grass and thistle bushes we were rewarded with the sight of a huge lush bowl of green foliage that was bigger than a football field. Being a novice spelunker even I could recognize the markings of a collapsed cave roof that by the height and girth of the trees now growing in it must have fallen in hundreds if not thousands of years ago. I also noticed that the sides of the crater were pot marked with dozens of cave openings as the Mayas led me to one of the remote cave fronts.
I had brought several flashlights because the Indians had told me earlier they had only explored in as far as the daylight allowed them to, and they didn’t have the money for batteries and lights to go any further.
This exploration started out as a Sunday adventure, but by the end of the day it would forever change my definition of primitive. After oohing and aahing at the dripping stalagmites, stalactites, soda-straw crystalline formations, and ducking under the thousands of bats which clung to the low ceilings, we came upon the stacked stones and broken pottery. We gathered many of the larger pieces and two matching pieces proved to be most interesting. One side was covered with ancient soot and the other side was clean. There were also discernible piles of ashes and it quickly became apparent that the pottery had been thrown into a fire as an offering of the artists year’s best work to the gods in the next cave room. The ancient Indians believed the attention of the cave gods could only be gained with fire and smoke, and thus the blessings of the cave’s spirits be received, and the ashes were all that remained of the firewood that had to have been hauled into the barren cave.
As interesting as this discovery was, nothing could have prepared us for the next sight once we removed enough rocks to crawl within. The weekend before the Mayas had removed only enough rocks to allow the hidden cave to breath and thus allow any poisoned air or captured spirits to escape before we entered the room. After a hole big enough was made, the Indians allowed me to enter first either out of superstition that soured spirits still may be within or the fact that I brought the flashlights and candles to see by.
The interior room held pottery jars the size of small barrels and many three-legged bowls containing dried seeds. All of us were truly astounded and I started taking some pictures of the artifacts to preserve the site’s integrity. Hours went by as we continued to examine the red, black and yellow colors of the symbols and signs covering the containers’ clay outer surface. Almost accidentally, the oldest Indian of our expedition, who was named Moses, came upon some smeared paintings in the furthest back reaches of the cavern. The drawings were painted with red ocher and black ash and if you sort of closed one eye and squinted with the other, the childlike sketches appeared to be a Jaguar and hunter that had been depicted about five times each in increasing shadows and definition. It almost looked as if the first attempt was only an outline, and each following and slightly overlapping attempt became clearer in nature and color.
That is until the flashlights started to fail. I only had brought one backup set of batteries, but several thick wicked candles. We still were not ready to leave yet, so I set one of the candles in front of the wall with the drawing so I could still study the ancient sketch. With the Indians standing at my back we all were starring at the symbols when the fast burning candle’s wax melted away from the core. Next the over length wick started to smoke heavily and flicker and strobe in intensity. Our gazing of the figures was abruptly interrupted as Moses first crossed himself and after saying a silent “Hail Mary”, we all also saw what he did.
The intenesity of the candle’s strobe now turned the still life cave drawing into a moving picture. With each flicker of the candle’s wick a portion of the picture moved forward as if trapped in a film’s frame. The Indian depicted in the top right of the picture now repetitively stabbed up and down with a spear into the body of the Jaguar who was drawn dying in the lower left. The still life picture became as animated as any motion picture as our eyes were now as trapped to the ancient drawing as the Jaguar was to the Indian’s spear.
With goose bumps now formed on my arms from my memories, my attention returned to what was being said. Although in the back of my brain I still wondered if this story’s ending was why many tribes’ members still refuse to be photographed. Is it because their ancient folklore stories revealed to them that the images of their spirits and souls could be captured by the cameras? But I would not interrupt this meeting with my daydreaming, although I might share this story with the others tonight around the dinner table or bar.
Andrew’s voice came back to me as I heard him say, “These tribal hunters lived with no priests or churches. They only had their dream-scape. Here time was not linear moving in a straight line; nor backward or forward or even cyclical forever repeating the karma of past or present. The tribal time was always eternal now of the divine creation. They lived in the world of its original condition without encroachments or enfeeblement which mismanages the messages of our supreme ancestors.”
He took a deep breath as he said, “These practiced rituals assured that standards would not slip or be slid aside for