Following the Sun

by John Hanson Mitchell

  Torg had a pet egret that had been pacing around the tiled floor as we talked. In between drinking bouts, Torg spotted a gecko on the wall and swatted it to the floor. His sharp-eyed pet was on it in a flash, its spearlike beak darting and its wings propelling it forward. The egret held the gecko squirming broadwise in its bill for a second and then deftly flipped it around and swallowed it headfirst.

  “I do not like to kill,” said Torg. “But is this not life? You eat, you are eaten.”

  Torg offered to take me around the reserve in his Land Rover to look at some of the blinds he used. As we were leaving, he mumbled something about bringing someone along and pulled up to a little stucco house. A svelte Spanish woman opened the door and leaned against the jam with her arms folded. She wore the wide-brimmed Cordovan sombrero and high boots and tan riding pants and had the large, hooped golden earrings of the local women. In jest she threw her hip to the side and lifted a shoulder when she saw Torg. “What is it that you want, big boy?” she said in Spanish. (Torg and I had been conversing in English.) He politely introduced her to me as a fellow researcher named Mercedes and the three of us crowded into the Land Rover, with Mercedes in the middle squashed over onto Torg, thigh to thigh.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around on the rutted roads, stopping at blinds, counting egrets, watching the flights and flocks of gadaney ducks, whimbrels, spoonbills, storks, herons, eagles, and kites, and admiring the great cumbersome nests of the increasingly rare Iberian eagles that bred there. At one point while we were walking, another little pack of devilish boars broke out from the brush and crossed the road.

  “Run,” said Mercedes. “Danger. Save me Torg.”

  Torg nodded seriously and looked away.

  Toward late afternoon they gave me a ride out to my hidden bicycle, and I walked out to the road and headed south for Torre de la Higuera. On my way to the road, there were some mean-looking dark clouds in the south, and by the time I got back to my place, heavy rains began to fall. They continued to fall throughout the next day so I rode down to a bar on the coast that had the luxury of central heat and spent the afternoon drinking hot chocolate, trying to warm up. The weather station on the television in the bar pointed out that there was a cold wave throughout Europe, and heavy rains in the south.

  For another two days the rains continued and I stayed on in my little cubicle in the Quonset hut surrounded by blue-clad workers, trying to warm myself at the charcoal brazzeros, which provided the only source of heat. Finally, rather than endure this stillness and cold any longer, I set out for Seville to return to the warm bosom of my old pension near the post office and the motherly care of Anna.

  Three

  The Virgin and the Minotaur

  Holy Week had begun in Seville and the streets were jammed with dark processions.

  Beginning on Palm Sunday an atmosphere of gloomy sanctity pervades this normally ecstatic, hand-clapping city and a religious sensibility settles over the towers of the Giralda and seeps downward into the squares and narrow streets. Even in the Triana district, where the gypsies live, especially here in fact, there is an aura of spirituality. Everywhere, lining the sidewalks and crowding into the streets, families dressed in their finest dark clothes push toward the squares and plazas in front of the local churches, waiting for the arrival of the processions of penitents who emerge from the open doors of parish churches throughout the various districts of the city and proceed through the streets, carrying towering floats depicting scenes from the last days of Christ. Here, in bright, realistic costumes, are Roman soldiers, hideous bleeding scenes of the crucifixion, complete with ruby blood drops, and the most popular of all: the bejeweled, silken-gowned statues of the suffering Virgin, some adorned with pearl tears. The floats are preceded and followed by lines of robed, medieval figures dressed in peaked witch hats and hooded masks pierced with eye slits, and led through the labyrinth of narrow streets by marching bands of coronets blaring out Moorish tunes in minor key. Here, in our time, is past time. There is an ominous, dark air to the event, a remembrance of the Grand Inquisitors and the rigors of the Inquisition.

  The floats are not drawn by motorized vehicles but are carried on the shoulders of men obscured behind heavy purple drapes surrounding the platform. The great challenge of these processions is to navigate the high, wide floats around the sharp curves and corners of the narrow streets, especially the Serpiente, the main street, where crowds push and gather and cheer the float onward. Occasionally the carriers of these weighty platforms rest, and at these times from underneath the dark drapes sweating men emerge, their shoulders and white undershirts stained with blood from the weight of the floats, their heads wrapped in white protective towels. Exhausted, half-shaven, these are the mules of this ancient ritual, the true penitentes.

  These processions lumber through the streets from Palm Sunday to Easter, and during this time the whole city comes to a halt. The event is organized by parishes or confraternities of men from different districts who meet throughout the year to plan and collect the funds to maintain the floats. All of the floats are elaborate, and whenever they are brought out from a church for their procession, crowds gather in front of the doors to watch. At these times, or just before, a woman will sing a saeta, a haunting aria to the Virgin. This song is also performed in a sad, minor key and, by tradition, is sung without electronic amplification and the crowd remains silent in order to catch every phrase. Of all the fifty-two confraternities, of all the processions and of all the many Virgins in the city of Seville, the most famous is the Virgin of the Macarena, who spends most of her life in the parish church of San Gil. The saca, or bringing out of the Macarena Virgin, is to most Sevillanos the pinnacle of the Holy Week, but in typically Spanish fashion, it is an event that occurs, not at some convenient daytime hour, but late at night, usually around one or two in the morning.

  I had been to a number of Holy Weeks in the past, but since I was back in Seville on the day they were to bring out the Virgin of the Macarena, I decided to go again. Unfortunately, this year the event was scheduled for four in the morning. It had rained much of the day and I had caught up on sleep after dinner at my usual hangout, a place called the Alcazares, and I wandered over toward the square, stopping for a sherry now and then, and taking several coffees to keep myself up. In front of the small white church there were thousands of people. Soon a hush fell over the crowd; the front doors swung open and there she was, dressed all in white, her jewels and crown glittering in the spotlights. She stood unmoving, while from the left side of the plaza, the figure of a small woman appeared on a balcony and all eyes turned. A deep silence fell on the crowd. Never, in my experience, had so many people remained so still. The small woman extended her arms toward the statue. The air was frozen. And then the saeta—the arrowsong—pierced the damp air and flew toward the heart of the Virgin. It began in mid range, soared to a high note, and then dropped back to contralto, and wound through the crowds. Then the Virgin began rocking and twisting; she angled through the double doors and moved into the square. The crowd parted as she flowed through the plaza and disappeared down one of the narrow streets.

  Solar fanatic that I am, I could not help but notice that the golden halo fixed at the back of her head glinted and gleamed in the light, very like the sun.

  Mary was the virgin mother, the descendant, we are told by the mythologists who study this sort of thing, of the ancient goddess of the earth, not quite banished to obscurity by the male gods Zeus and Jehovah. But although she may be an earth mother, the Magna Mater of the old paleoreligions of the Iberian peninsula, her most resplendent feature, and one that characterizes the Virgin and her child and all the Christian saints, is that golden halo of sunlight, an ancient remembrance of the source of all religions.

  None of this is surprising. Spain, although one of the most Christian nations on earth, retains some of the most primitive elements of the old primordial pagan religions, filled as it is with sacred processions, in the sty
le of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the Panathenaean processions to the Parthenon and Bacchanalian celebrations in the form of the Feria, which follows on the heels of Easter.

  When I first came to Europe, out of the cold strictures of the Protestant north, I landed in Algeciras, and somehow, quite by accident as I recall, ended up in Seville in the middle of the Feria celebrations. I was nineteen years old and not unfamiliar with wild parties, but this was a party that began at dusk and went on all night, and every subsequent night for the next ten days. The event rivals, maybe even surpasses, some of the great festivals on earth—the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Rio, and the Palio in Siena.

  Feria begins, as did many of the exuberant celebrations of the pagan world, with the sacrifice of a bull toward dusk on the holiest of the holy days in the Christian year, Easter. The Sunday corrida before Feria is the command performance for Sevillian society. The women don their prized antique mantillas and traditional spotted and frilled dresses, lay on much make up, and gleaming hooped earrings, and brandish elaborate Goyesque fans. The arena is packed on this day and a restless air of excitement spins through the stands. The major-domos arrange to get the best matadors for the Seville corrida as well as the wildest, most dangerous fighting bulls from the Miura or Romero fincas. Water men circulate with pottery jugs of water, begging gypsies mill outside the Roman amphitheater hawking red carnations, and the arena is filled with the sound of brass bands playing off key over and over again the old bullfight favorites, such as “El Gato Montes.”

  Then, into the center of the arena, stride the gladiators, dressed for the occasion in their bright, solar-inspired “suits of light” as they are called, holding high their weapons. They are followed by lank, padded horses bearing the high-speared picadores, and as the band plays the grand procession circles the arena, salutes the majordomo, and then retires behind the barricades.

  Just before the gates open to allow the bull into the ring, a tension settles over the crowd. Silence descends and waits like a crouched cat. Suddenly, out into the bright light of the bullring, the hunch-shouldered black Minotaur charges, with his great spearpoint swinging horns, his shiny coat and his gleaming bright hoofs. He halts in mid arena, paws the sand, his eyes searching, his enormous horned head turning left to right, looking for the enemy that has trapped him in the small corral over the past few days. He trots around the ring, sniffing the air, pawing and snorting, and then, as bulls will do, he selects an area of the open space, his so-called querencia, or favored site, which he will defend to the death.

  Following this spirited entry, the sacrificial rites begin. The altar boys, or arena workers, scurry here and there in their blue coveralls and red bandanas, the acolytes and monks, in the form of the light-footed banderilleros and the horsed picadores, circle and dance, and then, the high priest himself, the trim, sword-bearing killer of bulls, steps out.

  He walks with the grace of a cat. Straight-backed, slippered, and gleaming in his suit of lights, a feminine, ballerinalike killer, light footed and deadly. He starts with the great red cape, tests his victim with nonchalance, as if he himself could never be killed by the snorting, horned Minotaur, who charges down on him again and again, his head lowered to better hook his opponent. Having tested his victim, the matador priest ends this act of the drama with a swirling flourish of his red cape and the acolytes move in to weaken and enrage the beast. The banderilleros jab colorful barbed darts in his shoulders, ducking and dodging his flashing horns as they do so. Then the horse-borne picadores lance the bull’s neck muscles as he charges repeatedly into the sides of the padded horses, occasionally lifting them off their feet. Finally, with the beast prepared for sacrifice, his priestly nemesis returns, this time with the sword and the small cape. There follows now the final dance of death. The bull continues to charge, continues to attempt to kill, until, standing sideways, his sword lined up on his arm, the killer priest shakes the muleta and the bull charges in for the last time.

  The matadores, the good ones, kill cleanly, going in over the horns and spinning away just before they are hooked. The dark, bloodied Minotaur staggers, sways, and collapses in the sand in the yellow sun of the afternoon.

  The crowd, if they are pleased with the sacrifice, will call for a reward. The altar boys cut the ears, sometimes even the tail, from the sacrificed beast, and then, still cool and collected, as if he had not himself faced death in the afternoon, the matador struts around the ring, bearing his awards aloft, and exits, his work completed.

  Little wonder that this primitive rite has been the subject of much literature.

  The bullfight is now a much-despised ritual, a brutal, even barbaric event in the eyes of the modern world, and I suppose, in the end, it’s indefensible. But in my callow youth, caught up as I was, even then, in the richness of ancient rituals and primal gods and goddesses, I perceived the bullfight in historical terms. As far as sacrifices go, especially when compared to those of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures, this one was somewhat balanced. For one thing the sacrificial animal, while fated to die no matter what, still has a chance to defend himself and even do some damage to the priests and their acolytes.

  It is argued that the Spanish corrida evolved from the bull cults of Crete, and the story of the Minotaur and the Cretan bull leapers. According to the accepted history, originally promulgated in the early twentieth century by the English archeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the Minoan culture was associated with bull worship and one of the rituals of this veneration involved a dangerous dance in which young athletes, men and women alike, would leap over the horns of a charging bull, sometimes arcing over the horns and the bull’s back in elaborate somersaults. Evans believed the ritual was associated with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.

  Arthur Evans freely interpreted the wall paintings of bull leapers that he uncovered at Knossos as evidence of these legends, attributing the story and the bull cults to the indigenous Cretan culture with no influence from contemporary Greek or Egyptian ideas or myths. But the latest explanation, most recently put forth by the archeologist J. Alexander MacGillivray, is that the bull images in the palace of Knossos are in fact images of the constellations, and the bull-leaping frescoes represent Orion the Hunter confronting the constellation Taurus, which contains the Hyades and the seven sisters, the Pleiades. The leaper, MacGillivray argues, is the hero Perseus. He somersaults over the back of the bull to rescue Andromeda, who had been chained to a rock to be sacrificed to a sea monster.

  According to MacGillivray, the configuration of stars depicted on the wall paintings would occur at the end of the agricultural year in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Crete. The images of the bull leapers served to recall the astral calendar and were used for both time keeping and navigation. The recurring image in Cretan art of two steep peaks, which Evans interpreted as the horns of the sacred bull, was a known contemporary symbol for the horizon in Egypt. MacGillivray argues that both the Greeks and the Egyptians strongly influenced the Minoan culture, and that the horn imagery is a solar calendar. The twin peaks mark the two solstices and the valley marks the equinox. Furthermore, the famous double ax symbol that occurs throughout Cretan art and that, incidentally, is the origin of the English word labyrinth (from the Greek word for double ax, labros) symbolizes, according to MacGillivray, the equinox. The vertical shaft, in the center of two equilateral triangles, represents the equality of day and night.

  Actually there is an even earlier solar interpretation of the bull cults and the story of the Minotaur. In 1905 a German scholar, basing his theory on his translations of early Greek place names, believed that the Minotaur was a stand-in for the sun, and the monster’s mother, Pasiphae, was the moon. To trace the wanderings of the stars, astrologers used the labyrinth in which the famous Theseus story plays out.

  This view fit nicely with theories that related the early depictions of spirals and mazes engraved on cave walls and on Neolithic stone artifacts to the passage of the sun as it spiraled around the ea
rth during the four seasons.

  The bull fight is only one of the Spanish Easter rituals that evolved out of ancient traditions. Although the official date for the celebration of Easter was set by the Christian church in the ninth century, the early festivals associated with the Resurrection previously took place at the time of the vernal equinox and were tied to pagan fertility and agricultural rites. Among the ancient Greeks, the first day of spring was connected with the cults of Adonis and his Phrygian counterpart, Attis. The beautiful boy child Adonis was loved by both Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Zeus resolved the conflict by decreeing that Adonis should spend winter in the underworld and summer above ground with Aphrodite.

  His Eastern counterpart, Attis, was a young shepherd boy beloved by Cybele, the Magna Mater, or Mother of the Gods, the greatest of the Asiatic goddesses of fertility. Like Jesus, Attis had a miraculous virgin birth. Both Attis and Adonis died young. Adonis was killed by a wild boar, and in some versions of the myth Attis castrated himself and bled to death beneath a pine tree. The tree became his symbol and was brought out during his festival day on the twenty-second of March. In Greece the death of Adonis was commemorated on earth by the blood-red windflower or scarlet anemone, which sprang up from the earth in those places where the drops of his blood had fallen.

  Both Adonis and Attis are reborn each spring and their death and resurrection were celebrated in Greece and later in Rome in a mixture of mourning and festivity. Waxen images of Adonis or Attis were paraded through the streets, accompanied by music and cymbals and singing. In Rome the cults of Attis and the followers of his goddess lover Cybele developed ecstatic processions in which celebrants danced wildly through the streets, working themselves into a bloody frenzy of lamentation. Priests of the Attis cults sometimes castrated themselves during these frenzied processions.