Steve Alten - The Mayan Resurrection

During the last ice age, water levels dropped, draining the caves. That allowed extensive stalactites, stalagmites, and other calcium carbonate formations to form within the karst geology. Eventually the ice melted and the sea rose, reflooding subterranean dwellings.

*

The Caves of the Hidden Woman, or Grutas de Xtacumbilxunaan, are located just outside Bolonchen, Mexico. A night after she had arrived in the village, Lilith Robinson, armed with lanterns, rope, a map, and spelunking supplies, followed her imaginary uncle down a rarely tracked path through the Mesoamerican jungle until she came to a rocky mountainside. Hidden among the foliage was an entrance to a cave.

‘What’s inside?’ Lilith asked Don Rafelo.

‘Your destiny.’

With the lantern clenched between her teeth, Lilith got down on all fours and crawled through the opening.

The glow from her light revealed a claustrophobic limestone tunnel, its diameter no larger than a manhole cover. For half an hour the teen continued on her hands and knees, forcing her way into the humid darkness until the tunnel opened to a cavern the size of an elementary-school gymnasium.

The walls of the subterranean room glowed fleshy pink in her light. Dripping sounds echoed eerily in the chilly air. Stalactites and stalagmites leaked calcium-laden water.

She turned as Don Rafelo appeared behind her.

‘Where are we, Uncle?’

‘ Xibalba Be, the road to the Underworld. We must descend five levels to reach Lucifer’s chamber, this is only the first.’

Lilith aimed the beam of her flashlight down a winding embankment leading straight into the bowels of the earth. ‘Down there?’

‘It is where he awaits.’

Tying off one end of a nylon rope to a stalagmite, she made her way backward down the slope, the limestone beneath her boots slippery, the cavern walls to her left glowing shades of violet and crimson in the lantern’s light.

She continued descending backward into the bowels of the mountainside, her exit disappearing above her light’s reach in suffocating darkness.

At 108 feet, the steep slope leveled out.

A heavy darkness crept in, surrounding her. Dime-sized drops of moisture splattered on her head, shoulders, and into the pitch. Soft rustling sounds appeared overhead.

Lilith directed her light at the source.

Bats. Tens of thousands of them.

‘They won’t harm us,’ Don Rafelo assured her.

And so she continued on, her scalp tingling from the moist bat droppings, her insides repulsed by the ammonia-like stench.

For two hundred yards she followed a terrain last visited by men more than eleven centuries earlier. Eventually she came to the mouth of the pit, the thirty-foot-wide hole’s depths disappearing into darkness.

Long ago, ancient cave dwellers had fastened a bamboo ladder to the hole’s near-vertical walls. As Lilith looked down, the face of the walls seemed to sparkle in her light, the limestone underworld transformed into quartz crystal.

Cool waves of air rushed up from the hole, chilling her face.

‘Uncle… I’m scared.’

‘Holes in the earth cannot harm you. Once your true father embraces you, as he embraced me, nothing will ever scare you again. You will know yourself intimately and see the universe in ways you never dreamed.’

‘Our Fallen Angel will speak to me?’

‘Yes. You will feel his presence as he slips inside your mind, you will register the reverberations of his power as he touches your soul, imparting his wisdom, guiding you as he has guided me.’

‘Lead me to him. I need to feel his love.’

Gripping the handle of the lantern in her teeth, she climbed down the ladder, her mentor following her into the heavy blackness.

Sixty feet down… Seventy.

Lilith stumbled as the ground suddenly reappeared without warning.

She was at the bottom of the pit, standing in the rubble from an ancient human sacrifice. Splintered bones crackled beneath her feet. Human skulls and their twisted vertebrae lay entwined by the remnants of jade jewelry and the remains of sacrificial cloths.

A thousand years ago the pit had been a freshwater cenote. The water had eventually drained, exposing the decayed flesh to the rats.

She turned to Don Rafelo. ‘Who were these people?’

‘Followers of the cult of Tezcatilpoca. See? His spirit points the way.’

Lilith’s light revealed a narrow passage-a drain for the cenote’s waters. Gathering her strength, she continued onward.

A tricky forty-minute descent through the winding tunnel led into another chamber, this one as vast as an indoor sports arena, its curved walls reflecting surface waters of a subterranean lake.

Don Rafelo pointed. ‘The fifth level. You have arrived.’

‘Uncle, the walls-why do they sparkle?’

‘This entire chamber is composed of quartz crystal. Crystal is a living organism, possessing trapped electrical energy. The walls sparkle with their knowledge.’

She followed him to the edge of the underground lake, its freshwater surface as clear as glass, the saline layer along the bottom enshrouded in mist.

‘The sacred cenote’s hidden waters,’ Don Rafelo said. ‘We are not far from the sea. Remove your clothing, it is time for your Baptism.’

Lilith stripped naked. Shivering from the cold, she stepped into the lake and sank, misjudging the translucent layer of mist separating fresh water from saline for the bottom.

She surfaced, coughing. ‘It’s freezing!’

‘Swim out toward the center. You’ll find a flat rock you can stand upon.’

Lilith swam into the darkness, her wheezing breaths mixing with the crisp sounds of splashing water echoing throughout the cavern. Reaching the midway point, her hands groped unseen rock and she pulled herself atop the slippery limestone rise, her teeth chattering, her head suddenly buzzing with electricity.

Surrounded by darkness and rock, Lilith waited, glancing back toward the lantern-backlit shoreline for guidance.

Don Rafelo’s long shadow danced in the eerie light as he chanted, ‘King of the Fallen, Commander of Hell, I have brought you your wife, Lilith, the Demon Queen, who presides over all Succubi, so that she may preside over your children, in this world-and beyond!’

In her dementia she saw fire ignite along the shoreline, the flames accompanied by a coven of Satanic worshipers, naked, save for their goat masks. ‘Hail the rebirth of the Succubus. Hail Lilith, Demon Queen!’

‘Speak to your master, Lilith. Beckon him to take you.’

‘Fallen Angel… it is I, your mistress, descendant of the Dragon Queen of Creation, summoning you from the fires of Hell. Reveal yourself to me, let me taste your existence. Guide me, so that one day, a child of mine might pry open the gates of Gehenna and release thee!’

The human brain functions by transmitting electrical signals from one nerve cell to another. These electrostatic brain waves have rhythms that can be segregated into four distinct ranges.

Beta waves, occurring at 13-40 cycles per second, are the most rapid and dominant of the four states, most often associated with anxiety, alertness, and concentration. As we become more relaxed, the brain shifts to alpha waves. Lower in frequency, (8-13 Hz) they are most closely connected with the first stages of meditation.

When calmness and relaxation deepen into drowsiness, the brain shifts to the slower (4-8 Hz) rhythm of theta waves. The theta wave state is associated with childhood memories, sudden insight, and creativity. It is also the state the brain enters during bouts of clairvoyance and prophetic visions, as well as lucid dreams and fantasies.

The slowest stage-delta waves-take over when we are asleep or unconscious.

Electromagnetic waves are always present in the atmosphere. Earth’s standing wave resonance averages 7.8 Hz. Electrostatic deviations, such as overhead power lines, can expose the brain to frequencies exceeding 60 Hz. Long-term exposure to such strong fields can lead to biophysical health problems originating at the subcellular level.