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Cave of the Sibyl.

Last spring I traveled to the hometowns of my mother’s grandparents in Italy to learn about where i come from and the deep history of Mediterranean. Before heading to Casal Velino where my Grandmother’s parents were from I took a detour to a very sacred place. Just west of Naples on the West Coast of the Italian Peninsula is the ancient Greek settlement of Cumae. Its timeline stretches back to at least 730 B.C. The Roman poet Virgil describes the earliest myths connected to the founding of Cumae and its importance in the Greek and later Roman culture in his epic poem the Aeneid. Many of us are familiar with the story of Daedalus and his son Icarus who despite his father’s warnings flew too close to the sun and melted his wings made of wax. What I didn’t know was Daedalus continued to fly until he reached the Italian coast and landed at Cumae. There Apollo the god of the sun, music, and healing came to him in the form of a white dove and told Daedalus to construct a temple his honor. Along with a great temple to Apollo overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of the Minotaur, built the Antro della Sibilla, the cave of the Sibyl. I approached the enormous keyhole shaped archway carved into the volcanic bedrock with awe and reverence and heard a large group of Italian school children passing through, so I went off to the right, to see some of the later Roman constructions first. I started taking photos and there I saw him, the white dove, shy at first. Coyly half hiding behind a stone in the rock walls,. I recognized him. I knew Apollo himself came to guide my footsteps to this very place and knew that it was his way, the voice of the ancestors telling me, Yes, please come and listen, you are on the right path. I walked in to the trapezoid shaped, deep passage into the earth. This is where the Sibyl, priestess of Apollo would gain her prophecies and speak them to the pilgrims that came to understand their destiny. Her priestesses translating the oracles into hexameter verses. I slowly walked down that corridor, feeling the depth of the sanctuary, the untold numbers of pilgrims that come seeking the Oracle, seeking some kind of answer or direction in their lives. I sat and played and allowed the music to fill the resonant caverns and Temple spaces, allowed it to seep into my mind and change my thoughts, to shake up my mental space, and open the doorway into a higher level of perception. A space where I’m not thinking in words but allowing the emptiness to be filled with the echo off of the temple walls. To play in the sacred space is to be part of an orchestra. One member of a beautifully composed opus moving through time and space creating a connection that one can ride to different states of consciousness. A way of communicating with earth, sky, rocks, time, ancestor spirits, and various parts of your own psyche that does not reside in the language center of our brain. I played for the Sibyl and Apollo, the one who keeps the heavenly motions in order with the harmonies on the strings of the lyre. That mystical force that binds all of the worlds into the same underlying omnipresent, organizing force that is eternal and needs no validation other than its own existence. As I played into the silence of that place, all of the collective prayers, hopes and dreams and sorrows could be felt in the dust on the floor, and in the carved walls of the temple, just as the thousands of broken pottery shards littered about the ground under every footstep. I stood up into the hall, and walked down that ancient corridor. My footsteps, and the sound of the harp resounding into every corner waking up the memories of the sacred ceremonies held so long ago. The magical strings breaking the long silence of centuries of nonbelievers, walking the halls of the most sacred places as tourists to witness some piece of forgotten history, and not understanding the value of being part of the LIVING history. I laid down my prayers and music as a fresh coat of paint on those temple walls to let the spirits know that their descendants venerate and honor them, and honor the gods. And that no time has passed between the last ritual and this, because faith in the eternal is eternal, and all that come to understand this are part of the one and can never feel alone. When the song was complete, and the last cord still hung in the air, reverberating through time till the next pilgrim comes to pick up the strain, the Sibyl whispered into my ear, my oracle. listen deeper.