Oki-usa and the Black Rock

What breathes through the tale

Apr 09, 2023

What breathes through Oki-usa’s tale

What follows is not a symbolic interpretation of the tale, exiling it in a single narrative. There is a unique symbiotic dialogue with the tale’s living layers that is yours to feel, sense, and travel through. The following words are mythical, historical, and place transcontextual information that resonates with the tale pulsing realm.

Archaic Sanctuary of Endovelicus

This tale was born after a trip to the archaic sanctuary of Endovelicus, at Rocha da Mina1, the black schist rock over the Lucefécit stream, in Alandroal2. This sacred entity from pre-Agrarian Iberian mythology is the guardian of wild places. Its matrix is Ataegina, also a pre-agrarian goddess of local mythology, the natural force of seasonality that affects and intertwines with the place. Endovelicus is the Lord of Death, Dream and Medicine. He is the primordial, black as the fertile earth, the Lord of not knowing and of the mystery that guides us. He resides not only in the mountain, but in the Rock and the waters of Lucefécit that flank its original sanctuary which, according to Iberian ancestral mythology, were the first to be created, retaining the living memory witness of all that was and is.

The rock is Black Schist: it is a metamorphic rock that speaks of the ancestry of the earth and the fundamental, and slow, cycles of transformation and metamorphosis. Its antiquity makes it an entity without an archetype, later syncretised with Aesculapius (who in Greek and Roman mythology, is the god of medicine and healing) and Hades (subterranean god of the underworld in Greek mythology, the place where the souls of the dead go). In the tale he is represented by the black rock that calls and seduces Oki-usa.

Moon Temple, facing west, at the deep waters of the Atlantic.

Temple of the Moon or Dolmen of Adrenunes

Queen Oki-usa, herself a goddess, dwells in the Temple of the Moon or Dolmen of Adrenunes in the Sintra Mountains. This dolmen, temple or gateway is a hybrid between a granite outcrop and early human construction. The granite that makes it up is a plutonic rock formed by the solidification of magma at great depth. Its name derives from its crystalline, granular texture. As a hard and ancient stone, Granite speaks of deep transformations invisible on the surface, of internal and abyssal revolutions.

Oki-usa

Her name, Oki-usa, represents the “Lady of “Sunset”, devouring mother of the setting sun”3 and her temple, now a ruin, is located at the top of the mountain range facing west. The love story between the Queen and the Black Rock becomes entwined in the romance between Ataegina and Endovelicus, where she seasonally gives herself to the wild, fertile and black ground, not being kidnapped or raped for that to happen. Ataegina, like Oki-usa, retains her dignity and sovereignty, even in surrender and entrustment to metamorphosis. Oki-usa represents the pre-agrarian goddesses who never banned the worship of the local guardian spirits.

Oki-usa is therefore a shamanic traveller, her pilgrimage being a magical, visionary and ecstatic journey, archetypically initiated by passing and following the river, the water border between worlds. This border represents purification through water to cross the sacred borders, such as is still used today in the Christian rituals of birth and baptism. Water has been considered, since ancient times, a vehicle for the individual's transformation and metamorphosis.

The Queen undertakes a journey of regeneration and profound metamorphosis, like a shamanic Soul flight, equivalent to the descenso ad infernum, or a chthonic journey. There is a similar concept in ancient Celtic tribes, the mythical Magic Cauldron, red in colour, representing the setting sun and the twilight journey westwards across the waters in deep spiritual rapture and provided by the descent with the setting sun into the Atlantic Ocean, in the direction of the sacred and mystical west.

The deep cave has been used as a temple-uterus-tomb since Palaeolithic times. Her entrance in the cave also has an ancestral symbolism, as rock art in caves serves the same role as the membranes of thresholds and transitions, from which the other world can penetrate this one or through which the shaman can enter other sacred dimensions.

Oki-usa and the Black Rock are, in this tale, otherworldly lovers, and may also be considered doubles, for each is an immaterial part of the other. The idea of the double was widespread throughout classical pagan antiquity, also called the Wild Twin, Daemon or Guardian Angel.

Promontorium Sacrum - S. Vincent Cape - Algarve, Portugal

The tale also has two more archaic and wild entities: the Crow and the Serpent, full of symbolism in Iberian mythology, with ancestral connections to the western seaboard. The Crow, with its presence in the legend and coat of arms of the city of Lisbon, as with its connection to the so-called Promontorium Sacrum, the "Port of the Crow Gods". The Crow is traditionally known as a source of knowledge, wisdom from the darkness, being related to ecstatic states, from where it was believed the most valuable wisdom originates. Likewise, they have a deep relationship with visionary dream-inducing mushrooms, often being depicted with pieces of mushrooms in their beaks, commonly called crow's bread.

Finally, we have the powerful Serpent, Ophiussa, not only the name given by the Greeks to this sacred territory, but also the name of the archaic tutelary deity of this place—an ancient zoomorphic and chthonic goddess who dreams of us at every moment.