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Sunday, 8 December 2013

THE CRYSTAL IS SINGING: THE ANCIENT PRE-INCA LEGEND OF THE LOST CHORD

This story, as presented by me now, may seem to my readers somewhat fanciful, like something straight out the pages of a novel, or one of those tales of the silver screen portraying the exploits of an Indiana Jones. Well if you like that kind of thing, fine, but what I have to tell you here is nothing like that at all. It is more interesting perhaps. Perhaps more strange. Sure the facts are rooted in legend… A lost party of early Spanish explorers disappearing without trace high in the Bolivian Andes… A search party stumbling across a half crazed survivor clearly gone native many years later at the edge of the jungle… His fevered account of a great calamity that saw his friends cut off from civilisation forever.  All of it scarcely believable and with it too the horror of cannibalism. Words tumbling from the lips of a sick, dying man. Almost incoherent, as Joachim de Souza’s Journal recorded, except for that brief final light in his eyes and those words, rasped out for legend by someone who’d heard, someone who’d seen something special.

De Souza’s Journal is clear so we can now only wonder. THE CRYSTAL IS SINGING were the words that came from his lips! The young explorer then tells us how, startled by such seemingly incomprehensible revelation, he bent over the man only to find his arm powerfully gripped. Raising his head the man stared directly into his eyes, repeating the words with a force and power that came unexpected… THE CRYSTAL IS SINGING… before falling back dead on the matting inside his hut.

The Journal itself is stored in the archives of the Spanish-American Institute in Madrid and is available for consultation by researchers and scholars should the Director find such a request reasonable. Understanding it is relatively straightforward given that it is an account of his experiences given by the explorer himself. Even so, geographical location then was not at all that it is today and makes little sense set against the advances of our modern technology. What is undoubtedly puzzling, for it seems to come out of nowhere, is his account of meeting this individual and those singular almost magical words about crystal. What on earth does it mean? De Souza himself comments on their strangeness but makes no attempt to consider the matter in depth. From the perspective of an 18th century Spanish explorer it’s all too simple enough. He writes down what he’s heard.  The man’s dead and cannot be questioned. Why bother then with any conjecture? Intriguing as the words seem speculation can only be pointless. Gold… silver… precious gems and territorial acquisition, these things he understands! Singing Crystal? Well the man was indeed feverish. Desperately sick.

Time perhaps for a little digression. Most of us know about the 16th and 17th century Spanish intrusion into central and South America and their conquest and despoliation of the civilisations they found there. We all remember those magical sounding names from our history lessons at school. The Aztecs and Incas, Pizarro, Cortes and Montezuma. The grim Conquistadores and the tribes and civilisations they laid waste in their Conquest and Colonisation of Latin America! Words and names we associated with another part of the planet known for its mighty rivers and jungles, giant snakes and spiders before we forgot them and went out with our mates for a lager! For many of us though those names and places came to mean something. Conjured up something else if you like. A single word describes it all… Adventure!

There were of course many expeditions into Central and South America besides those of the Cortes and Pizarro. Mostly of exploration and territorial discovery rather than plain simple conquest for loot. The school history books only recall the big names. Those that reconfigured the Continent in their image as they carved out Spain’s Imperial portfolio in brutality and blood. Others, equally interesting, are perhaps more the subject of scholarship than anything else. When I first became acquainted with Olivares’ weird muttering I wondered at first whether I’d heard right. De Souza’s Journal had recorded his search for the lost expedition of Manuel de Fraga that vanished in the high Andes somewhere near the border with Peru. After weeks spent traversing high plateau de Fraga found himself in a singularly barren region. The few Indians they came across barely co-existing with nature, speaking in a dialect that none of them knew. Gifts of food helped open a dialogue. Slow, laborious at first as he records, but gradually by signs and gestures they learned of a great earth tremor in a region of mountainous peaks not too far to the north. Travelling there proved tedious but it was only then that they learned for themselves. There far below was a vast scene of desolation. A whole series of gigantic landslips had engulfed dozens of valleys, burying them in a terrain of rock and ice and cutting them off forever from the outside world. Here then was how Manuel de Fraga’s men had met their end. Later, much further, on they’d encountered Olivares.     

Somehow he’d survived. Perhaps having been on a ridge somewhere as an out-rider he’d avoided the great cataclysm. Been left on the other side and avoided the fate of his comrades by descending eventually to the forests below.

THE CRYSTAL IS SINGING… I’d read De Souza’s account in Madrid but was left puzzled. Almost enthralled by the words. What did they mean? They sounded like the raving of a madman, that is until I thought further. The word CRYSTAL was used in the singular, Crystal, not crystals! This wasn’t some raving about crystals per se but crystal itself. Quartz Crystal perhaps or Rose Quartz. Some type of crystal but what? Interestingly enough this particular location in the Bolivia-Peru Andes region was never noted for containing any reserve of Rose Quartz or Quartz Crystal itself. Certainly not in any historical record through mining. Such reserves are to be found elsewhere, mainly Brazil which has in modern times produced large quantities of massive Rose Quartz but rarely in the form of crystals which are indeed classed as scarce. Quartz crystals on the other hand are commonplace in that country. Rock crystal however is another story altogether. It is comprehensively massive with no known crystal habit. Brazil possesses a certain amount but nothing compared to deposits found in the Peruvian high Andes and those of Bolivia as evidenced in the cultures of ancient civilisations found in those areas such as those who preceded the Incas, and in Mexico the Aztecs. Skulls carved from rock crystal not only feature in legend and form part of their history but have come down to us today as the modern products of artists and craftsmen. They were not simply features of legend but indeed formed part of ceremonial ritual.

Such ritual and ceremony is not a matter directly concerning us here. Its importance and the use made of rock crystal however points to the existence of such deposits available for use so that when I became aware of De Souza’s Journal and Olivares dying words the existence of the mineral in such abundance took on an added significance. THE CRYSTAL IS SINGING… I again tried to make sense of it all. Fortunately an extraordinary discovery came to my rescue. It is sometimes the case that those investigating and exploring the legends of ancient civilisations almost lost to our modern era can search for clues months even years on end without finding any connections or any real meaning until suddenly, purely by chance they come across something that seems insignificant and is almost put by then in a moment of unexpected inspiration a flash blinding intuition hits home and with it a real joy of insight.

It happens to all of us reader. To you and to so many others, and it happened to me. I’d been rummaging in the basement archives of the badly run down Museum of Ethnicity associated with one of the University departments in La Paz, the whole place covered in dust and many ancient tablets and manuscripts there long unattended. It was simply an old habit, fuelled by a deep personal curiosity, to thumb through just about everything. See what I could find as it were. Anything, anything might turn up. It was my own personal philosophy. Part of my character. I just didn’t know what I might find. It had of course happened to me before, time back when I’d been rummaging through some old packing crates in the basement of a warehouse in Bulawayo, South Central Africa that belonged to a friend. Suddenly I saw something and out of one I pulled a whole series of beautiful, perfectly crafted miniature axes and spears that I knew were important. They turned out to be the ceremonial regalia of the last King of the Malagasy. My friend needed dollars and let me have them for just a few hundred. There they’d been at the bottom of a crate. Something he’d got hold of and forgotten years back and was now only too glad to have the money like it was for free!

The same kind of thing happened in that dusty old basement in Bolivia. With the light not all that great I began going over the tablets pertaining to the old pre-Inca civilisations. What the hell they were doing there was a mystery. Obviously they’d all been collected many years earlier and dumped. There’d obviously been revolutionary changes of Government, curators of museums coming and going. Disappearing when new regimes put in their own people who couldn’t be bothered with the work of the old, so collections of yester-year were left to gather dust and be quietly forgotten. It was in such a situation that I found myself. A nice little gift in someone’s back pocket and there I was, sitting on a wooden crate like the curious gringo I was then unexpectedly the whole cultural history of a people in tablet and script! Great mountain peaks, valleys, displaced rock and boulder moraine along with the story of what hit me as an extraordinary legend recorded long, long before Christ, the Assyrians, Babylonians or anyone else!

Talk about staggering! It was like I’d had a rush of blood to my head, stepped out of the crease and hit the bowler for six right over the stand! There it all was! The great eruption and avalanche! The deep powerful rumbling from the bowels of the earth and the Legend of the Singing Rock Crystal! I could scarcely believe what I saw. Almost immediately Olivares’ words came to mind… the great earthquake and eruption and the lost expedition of Manuel de Fraga high in the Andes! The connection I’d chanced on was inescapable.

… The great tremor far back in time and the cataclysm so many centuries later were the same seismic phenomena. Passing through the rock crystal deposits it had created a wave which, when finally released, sounded an extraordinary almost magical chord. A singular note so powerful, so intense, that it seemed nothing human. A great cry as it were of the spirit, straight from the depths of the earth…

At first it seemed barely credible but the facts as they stood were irrefutable. Thanks to a dying man’s words and the clues from ancient pre-Inca tablets I had established a historical timeline linking Rock Crystal and the seismic activity of the region with the authentic musical note inherent in the culture of its people. A continuing Lost Chord like a voice into the past now rediscovered as the authentic note of its song. Olivares wasn’t so deluded after all. He’d escaped the great cataclysm of his time only to die in the jungle and in his last words he gave up the clue. The crystal was indeed singing and had he been with his comrades down in the valley he would never have survived to give up the secret that led to my discovery in legend.

As for myself I hope that one day I might have the good fortune to be somewhere up on those peaks, safe from any disaster, so that I might hear and likewise marvel at the deep wondrous sound of that ancient lost chord. It’s unlikely, but adventurer that I am I always like to think that there are possibilities!

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