| ISIS MAGIC ONLINE BOOK CLUB PALAEOLITHIC GODDESS - 3 |
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| "NIAUX" I am travellinging in southern France with a group of Goddess women on a Black Madonna/Mary Magdalene tour in May 1999. It is raining and the red poppies bend and glisten in the fields. We are spending the night at a riverside hotel on the rushing Auvergne River and plan to go the next day to Montsegur, a Cathar stronghold, and then to Notre Dame de Sabart where there is a chapel to the Magdalene. In the hotel lobby we find brochures about the Palaeolithic caves in the area - there is even a "Palaeolithic Park" where the famous cave at Lascaux with its many paintings is reproduced. Deborah Rose, one of the tour leaders, has been in this region before and knows of the nearby cave of Niaux. She has tried on previous trips to visit it but with no luck. "Just try calling," says Judy Farrell, my travelling companion. So Deborah does and amazingly we are able to book for the next afternoon. In the morning we travel up into the mountains where the Cathar fortress sits high on a peak, isolated. We decide not to leave the bus due to the rain and instead listen to a meditation lead by the other co-leader and my sister Priestess, Catherine Wright, nicknamed 'Catharama' earlier this morning by Judy based on a brochure she found in the lobby about a local production called "Cathar-ama". The Cathars were the 12th century group against whom the first fires of the Inquisition were lit and Montsegur is where they walked down from their peak and into the fires of martyrdom rather than surrender their beliefs which included a feminine divine principle that the Church of Rome didn't. The rain which has kept us from walking in the mud doesn't stop us from leaving the bus to eat lunch and we wander through the deserted village of Monsegur finding, this being France, an inn with a delicious lunch. Thus sated, we go down this mountain and up another to the Niaux cave. Enormity is the feeling that comes over me. There is an enourmous vulva shape about the mouth of the cave, sheer cliffs, and water drips everywhere. We wait for our guide and when she appears, flashlights are sparingly passed out and we zip off into the cave. We do not use the very ancient entrance but enter through a heavy door in a different location. Our guide races like a mountain goat without flashlight into the deep dark. I scramble to keep up - the floor is wet and waffle-patterned in many places - we go through some narrow passages - what I remember most is rushing along. We reach a place where there are red hand prints and dots low down in a passage. Then we come into a very large open area. We must turn our flashlights off and can see only what is illuminated for us by the guide. Bison painted 13,000 years ago. I am in awe in the presence of something so humanly ancient. I am so far removed from these creatures and those who painted them and yet am moved as if there were no distance. I am not overly fond of caves but have raced into the center of this one. I notice that there is a bronze plaque attached to one cave wall, no doubt commemorating a recent discoverer, but no light is shed on this graffiti. When we emerge from the cave - the journey out being, like many journeys, easier going than coming - the rain has cleared and across the valley we can see a small chateau, isolated on a green peak. Our group of Goddess women have journeyed unexpectedly to the heart of the Black Mother, the Earth Herself, visited the he/art of our ancestors, and emerge reborn into the brightness and colour of the Green Mother. We proceed down the mountain-side and into the presence of the lovely Magdalene, for whom one of the Palaeolithic perods seems to be named, and Notre Dame whose presence is still so common in this area that She is referred to on signs as just "N.D." Laura Janesdaughter |
| Image taken from Our Prehistoric Past, Denis Vialou |