Contents: preface

Nine Days and Nights

In the beginning when indigenous man dwelt upon the Earth, it was a garden paradise under the watchful eye of the gods. This period was a Golden Age... until, a rebellious angel led us to a fall from grace and we lost the innocence of Eden. After this descent, an admixture of 'demi-gods' and earthlings created a new, materialistic civilization and prosperous, powerful empires flourished. The good gods looked on... interceding whenever possible to assist mankind through what had become a tortuous existence.

After the gods had convened, Zeus inflicted a severe punishment on the surface dwellers. He unleashed a mighty thunderbolt and in a single day and night of torrential rain, earthquakes and tidal waves, a deluge engulfed the lands and mankind was virtually annihilated! When the waters receded the continents were unrecognisable, where there had been land there was now sea and seas, desert and fertile fields were entombed in permafrost. The Atlantic was no longer navigable and the few, scattered survivors were isolated.

People had been reduced to a rudimentary lifestyle, amongst the ruins of their once resplendent cities, but they each retained some memories of their lost heritage and their history and cosmogony became our 'myths.' Many cultures, supposed to have developed independently of each other on opposite sides of the globe had counterpart heroes, and deities corresponding to nature's elements,

only their names were different and this global pantheon dramatised similar stories, including floods.…

Every nation the World over shares legends of fire-breathing dragons, titanic sea serpents and magical winged-beasts. Ancient mariners were lured to their deaths by the haunting melodies of sea-nymphs, while giant squids lurked beneath the murky depths. Odysseus, the hero, on his return voyage from the Trojan war, sailed on the current of Oceanus to the 'house of the dead,' at the boundary of Earth to speak with the ghost of his departed mother, and that of Tiresius and Lord Agamemnon. When he passed by the isle of the bewitching Sirens, who would entice him into the abyss, Odysseus plugged the ears of his men and was tied to the mast to hear their sweet singing, without plunging to a watery grave.

Orpheus, the celebrated poet and musician, saved his companions on the Argonautic expedition from yielding to the Sirens, by playing magical music on his golden lyre. Taught by his muse-mother Calliope, the dulcet tones of the minstrel could calm the waves and send dragons to sleep. But Orpheus, in his inconsolable grief at the death of his lover Eurydice, pleaded with Zeus for permission to visit the underworld and beg for her release. The rulers of the lower-world, seduced by the ravishing music of Orpheus, restored Eurydice to life and allowed her to follow him home, on the condition that Orpheus did not look back until they had reached the land of the living. Orpheus could not resist and turned his head to see his lovely wife... Eurydice uttered a cry and vanished forever from his sight, to the world below.

All mythologies refer to an underworld, the domain of the gods, (where mortals occasionally ventured) which scholars presume to be

an imaginary location but it was clearly portrayed as a geographical region, with access in specific areas. How could so many diverse peoples, deemed to have no prior contact, conceive of a separate world beneath the Earth’s crust... unless of course, it was real?

Egyptians called it Amenti, or Duat, the land of the dead and it was a place where souls were judged in the Afterlife, by Osiris, the god

of renewed life, represented by the imperial dragon. Described as a valley, bordered by mountains with a river harbouring serpents and demons, it had secret gateways in the east and west, guarded by sphinx. In the papyrus of Nebseni, (The Book of the Dead) it was shown with a canal, at the end of which is a boat, containing a flight of seven steps, the symbol of ascent.
It was also the source of the Nile, as the visionary Akhenaten's hymn to Aten declared: 'It is in the underworld that you make the Nile. And bring it forth at your will. So that mankind might live.' The spirit of Osiris, rose up yearly with the life-giving innundation from three fountains at the Equator.

In Greece, the netherworld called Hades, meaning unseen, was also the realm of the dead, which was well mapped as a mirror image of the outer world (as above, so below.) It had plains and mountains with deep cave systems but so far beneath the surface, an object dropped would take nine days to land. Reached by the River Styx, after paying Charon the ferryman, it was divided into the regions of Erebus and Tartarus, where Minos and his brother Rhadamanthus were judges.

Those who had been good and virtuous were destined to remain in Elysium, a land of bliss and perpetual sunshine with gold, mineral riches and treasures guarded by griffins. There was the Asphodel Fields where the souls of men remained in limbo or became birds and the Punishment Fields, where it was the destiny of evildoers to endure damnation, scourged by the Furies in the darkness of Tartarus, the deeper part where no light shines and all waters originate. All rivers flow into the chasm of Tartarus and flow out of it again. The worst offenders were those who had sinned against the gods themselves, with the greatest crime of all being abuse of the gods' hospitality.
At the confluence of the deep Acheron and the river Styx in the land of the dark Cimmerians, hidden in vapour and cloud, Odysseus

had discourse with the ghost of Tiresias by necromancy. He invoked the dead by digging a pit, into which flowed the blood of an unblemished black ram. A black sheep was sacrificed in honour of Zeus, Hades and Gaea, the primeval prophetess and source of the vapours which influence the seer. This practise is still prevalent in some countries, such as Haiti.

The dead of Erebus flocked to the pit and Odysseus kept them at bay with his sword until he had spoken to the seer Tiresias, who drank of the blood, before he prophesied. Tiresias spake; ''For whomso of all these spirits departed on earth, Thou sufferest to drink of the blood, he will tell thee the truth, But whomso thou grudgest will silent return to his place.'' So saying, the spirit of Lord Tiresias tells Odysseus the way home and then 'enter'd the mansions of Hades, his oracles told.' Acheron is also the name of a river in modern Greece, still reputed to give access Hades.
Hel was the goddess of the Scandinavian underworld, called Niflheim. It was a land of mist in the far north, surrounded on all sides by the River Gioll, and entered through a cave. As queen of nine worlds, she divided the dead into categories, the righteous went to a place of heavenly bliss but transgressors were condemned to torture. Hel, the daughter of Loki the trickster, was half black and half blue and lived in the dark, damp, dank region beneath the roots of Yggdrassil, the World Ash.

Yggdrasill is the Tree of Life, which the Aesir, (gods of Asgard) say is invisible but without it's support everything would disintegrate and explode into infinity. Odin wishing to acquire the secret of the runes, had to endure terrible sacrifice and physical torture hanging from a bough of Yggdrasill, over the fathomless abyss, for nine days and nights. He gained universal power, which he used to benefit gods and men.

In Slavonic religious beliefs the dead returned to the womb of Moist Mother Earth by embarking on a journey across a wide sea and money was placed in the grave to pay the passage. Or the spirit may have to climb a steep mountain made of iron. This celestial 'other world' of eternal goodness was situated in the rainbow.

The entrances to the subterranean world were on the banks of the Ocean (vortices) and at the edge of the circle of the Ocean, (the poles) there were also crevices and openings in the floor of the Earth. The Alcyonian Lake in the swamps of Lerna, in which Heracles fought the Hydra, was used as a portal to Hades by the wine-god Dionysus when he rescued his mother Semele from the underworld. The heroine asked her illicit lover Zeus to reveal to her his true nature as storm god and was burned up by the awful glow of that revelation. To retrieve Semele from the nether regions, Dionysus went to Lerna and dived into the bottomless lake.

Soon, with a warm wind on their backs, the crew set off on foot to explore. Their first experience in this terra incognito was rather alarming. A peculiar roaring sound could be heard overhead... suddenly, Nathaniel and Barnaby were engulfed by flames as a flying creature swooped past! Nathaniel was relatively unscathed but the Captain was quite badly burned and in the panic, he lost the precious sextant given to him by Captain Cook. Mystified, they returned to the camp for first aid. When Barnaby had sufficiently recovered, the men resumed their trek northwards and luckily found the sextant glinting in the sunlight on the plateau where the unfortunate incident had occurred.

Each step they took exposed more mysteries. Heading along a ridge of volcanic peaks they came across a clutch of huge eggs, one foot across, nestling in warm ash. They marvelled at what type of bird this nest could belong to and collected specimens. The men lay in wait all night for a glimpse of the mother, but she never returned.

In the Old Testament, God created sea monsters on the fourth day and they occur in the folklore of most native coastal tribes. Since then, serpents have been witnessed throughout the 'Seven Seas,' some are said to reach proportions of ninety feet! The Papyrus of Nu says; 'There is a serpent on the brow of that mountain, and he measureth thirty cubits in length; the first eight cubits of his length are covered with flints and shining metal plates.' (Osiris knew the name of this serpent.)

of an animal believed to exist only in myths. Further bemused, they witnessed a display of fiery lights in the sky. The following day revealed the source of the baffling flames. Dragons! No-one dared move... only Kelly whispered, ''it is a dragon, m'lud.''

As they set up camp beside the forest, a movement in the trees alerted the men, and yet another new species emerged. They came crashing through the campsite. Large flightless birds up to twelve feet tall, (like the extinct giant moa) with no fear of humans, apparently never having met them before. Apart from the havoc they wreaked in the camp, these inquisitive birds were completely harmless, and when Nathaniel had reorganised his materials, they posed for the artist!