The Path of the stars
The current Camino de Santiago has been since the dawn of time a trade route and an initiatory path of pre-Roman knowledge. Many legends, gathered around Europe, talked about an island in the Atlantic (the Dark Sea), it has many different names, but they all agree taht it was the place for those that had completed the journey of life. A place of happiness. The pilgrimage along the path of the stars is related to travel to the afterlife and the rites of passage.
The Way is marked by the Milky Way which ends in the constellation Canis Major with Sirius blinking in greenish o redish. The Celts worshipers of Lug, called the Milky Way, The rainbow of the God Lug. He was represented in mythology as a wolf or dog and a crow. Authors such as Plutarch and Aristotle talked of a route through the north of the Iberian peninsula wich transited Hercules. Other legends say that following The Path of the Stars, of the Milky way, you will reach the Coast of Death, in Finisterre (the end of land). Facing it is the dark Sea and The Island of Eternal Youth, paradise of the Celts (Tir Na Nog), where the sun died and arrived the souls of the dead.
Later it was a pilgrimage route to the place, where is said, the remains of Prisciliano, the heretic and druid Bishop of Avila, lay. He defended poverty as a virtue and the apocryphal gospels. He was beheadead at Trier in 385 as the creator of a Gnostic school of great influence for several centurys in the western part of the Empire, which proclaimed as a vehicle for salvation knowledge before faith. Legend has it that four years after his death, his remains were carried to Galicia by several of his followers, starting a pilgrimage route to these magical lands.
In the ninth century the pilgrimage was Christianized with the discovery of the tomb of the Apostle. It is said that the body of St. james accompanied by Athanasius and Theodore, arrived at the estuary of Iria Flavia, Galicia, on the Calends of August. The land was ruled by Queen Lupe, according to other traditions Lupa or Wolf, which at the beginning refused to accept the body. However when contemplating the miracle of molten rock in the form of a sarcophagus she accepted that the body be taken to the Pico Sacro (sacred peak) and buried in a place called Ark Marmor. It is said that the tomb of St. James was found by a hermit named Pelagius in the early ninth century, following the light of a star.
If the Codex Calixtinus, in his Liber Peregrinationis, is a primitive kind of tourist guide in which the French Cleric Aymerich describes in detail the places that the travelers will find along the route, it is said that the Game of the Goose, is a mysterious encrypted guide of the Knights Templar to make the return trip to Santiago. Based on the shell of the Nautilus with 63 boxes, it pinpoints the special places marked with signs and hieroglyphs, for stonemasons and master builders, in cathedrals, churches, bridges and cementeries. The Knights custodians of sacred roads were established along the way, taking care of the infrastructure and providing protection for travelers. Of their presence are many buildings, castles and mysterious octagonal churches populated with interesting hieroglyphs and cabalistic signs erected by the warrior monks. Our lady of Eunate, the church of the Holy sepulcher in Torres del Rio, The collegiate Church of the Virgen del Manzano, Castrojeriz, the big church in Villalcazar of Sirga, the imposing castle of Ponferrada with its 10.000 m2 or the castle of Villafranca del Bierzo. The medieval cemetiry of Noia with its bandstand, cruise and enigmatic tombstones are examples of their presence.
Today, ancient knowledge lost, most people still undergoes an initiation. It comes fron silence; you are with yourself along the Way, allowing yourself to go within. Walking with other travelers, now and then, and relating with them in, sometimes, forgotten ways. Sharing, helping, feeling a strong sense of community. Surrending to a new full experience of cleansing (dying) to be reborn again. The ancient Way ends in Fisterra looking at the sun as it goes into the Dark Sea. Some people burn something as a ritual of purification or just make a conscious act of acknowledgment of all the things left on the Way. Buen Camino.
