Or perhaps, the title should be “echoing sepulchral shadows”, or “echoes of sepulchral shadows”. For some reason, a melody with the phrase “lions and tigers and bears, oh my” comes to mind but that was from an allegorical fairy tale translated into film, first black and white and then in color, and this is quite a bit different, and not allegorical at all. Nor is it metaphorical. Indeed, at least in parts, it’s clearly historical. At least in part, it’s inspired by some of my son Alex’s work, although not by his novel The Old Breed: Haxan. A shameless plug, I admit it.
The place name “Jericho”, apparently originally “Yəriḥo” (although the concept of “originally” is, of course, as suspect as it is relative), is believed to derive from either the Canaanite word “rēḥ” meaning fragrant or from the Canaanite lunar deity Yarikh once worshipped there. In Jericho, in the land that during more recent millennia has been called Palestine, in the part of Palestine now referred to as the West Bank, within a cavern, there’s a special spot, perhaps ten meters square (although it’s actually sort of round, or perhaps sort of spherical might be more accurate), “sort of” being the operative element. It’s reputed to be the oldest place continuously inhabited by Homo sapiens on Terra although not necessarily inhabited by the living. A number of places in Africa, however, would surely dispute the foregoing, as might a number of places in Asia and in the Indian Subcontinent. Perhaps even in the Americas.
Be that as it may, that special place within the confines of Jericho is deemed sacred not, only to adherents of the three fratricidal branches of the Abrahamic family of religions, but by the shades of what might have been among the first humans to imagine and thus empower proto-deities tasked with protecting us, … mainly from ourselves. Thus, truths better left untold may well dwell there, … muttering.
Within that tiny circle resonate the primordial shades of presences who consider themselves a “family” of sorts. Guardians of beginnings and of endings. Of many, many beginnings and of many, many endings, although, many of the endings are indistinguishable from beginnings and many of the beginnings seem to meld into earlier endings, kind of like a spiraling Worm Ouroboros.
It’s a comforting spot for the souls of ancient gods and for the spirits of their ancient priests and priestesses and for the ghosts of the select among their ancient followers. In short, it’s a comfortably haunted spot, haunted by souls and spirits and ghosts who, in some cases, realize that their former hosts have expired while in other cases, they refuse to acknowledge their expiration. Still, generally, it’s a friendly sort of haunting, more like a cohabitation.
Dreams there tend to be astounding and hard to forget whether one would want to forget or to remember them. Lately though, they’ve tended towards hyperbolically apocalyptic themes featuring trumpets blaring and four terrible dark-winged equestrians charging.
Dead gods sometimes corporeally congregate there. Indeed, all but one of the seventy sons of divine Ēl still meet there in Divine Council from time to time, although sometimes, they merely gather to play and wrestle and gossip. To gossip about the incomprehensibly irreconcilable doings of their sons and daughters, and of their sons’ and daughters’ sons and daughters and so on, ad infinatum. And of the course, they gossip about the deranged conduct of their missing sibling and about the echoing conduct of his purported followers. That particular sibling struck out on his own a bit longer than three millennia ago and, asserting that he is a “jealous god” has done his best to eliminate all echoes of divinity other than his own. Rumor has it (although with rumors one can never vouch for their accuracy) that the remaining members of Ēl’s Divine Council have taken to heavy metal music although melded with ancient Middle Eastern rhythms. Could be I guess.
Anyway, “ancient” is a relative term there.
To many of the elder gods, the most ancient of the primordial echoes we the living sometimes recall are still little more than the yelps of young interlopers. What the eldest of all gods think, the ones who were hoary long before the advent of divine Ēl, none living elsewhere now know, although there, in that primordial habitation, echoes of their voices still sometimes seem to resonate, to resonate among the darkest shadows. Dusky shadows from somewhere beyond the realms of time and space.
Interlopers have always arrived there in waves. They still do, as though drawn by a primordial gravitational well. Indeed, for many, many millennia, many interlopers have found themselves trapped there by a strange event horizon and then, have found themselves drawn into tiny but very complete universes, or perhaps multiverses, although the correct term may be more akin to a sole omniverse. Evidently some sort of spell is involved, or magic, or miracles, or arcane laws of physics. Those concepts are difficult to distinguish there, primarily differing, like beauty, in the eyes of the one doing the beholding.
Syncretism plays there at times. Meddlingly melding echoes of personalities long gone into new souls, souls that then scatter to the four winds, left free to find their own mischief, mischief bereft of memories and of guidance. An amalgam that may explain why we find ourselves where we now seem to be.
But who knows.
The “family” does not share its secrets, or its intuitions or its suspicions. And if any of its members dared to do so, no one would believe them or, perhaps more accurately, very few would believe them and they would probably be considered no more than peculiar conspiracy theorists by their peers.
In Jericho: where the genocidal Hebrew leader Joshua once murdered so many and where mayhem and murder echo still.
_____
© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
