TARGET 091104

A Legend - True or Not?
Part 1: The legend



NOTE: This target is the first tasking of a more complex target. This session will be about an event that caused a specific location to be important. Next week's session will be to describe the present-day location, itself.

Siuce this target is the first tasking there are no pictures, web references, or identifying names of people or locations which might pollute your next week's session. That way, when you are retasked to describe the location next week, you will be able to go into the session as unpolluted as possible.

In this session, your only tasking is to describe the event of an historic event which is considered by some to be true, and by others to be a legend. Even highly documented real events can pick up "changes to the story" through time, and your task for this session was to describe the event, itself (which we know did happen), in order to compare it with the presently known accounts of the event. So, only the documented events of the legend of the event, itself, and the two people involved in the event were to be viewed. Let's see if what you got in your session confirms or contradicts the documented accounts of the event.




THE LEGEND

Back in 1754, a native indian woman from a small village often walked the six miles between her village and the neighbouring one. One day as she was making the journey, she approached the place where the trail passes down the steep sides of a deep gorge, across a river and up the other steep side of the gorge. Nobody ever liked this part of the trail, because there were stong beliefs among the Indians that a cave in the area was haunted. Beliefs in spirits and evil beings were strong amongst the indians.

She was carrying her daughter, a dumb-mute, in the Indian way, on her back, for safety, even though the girl was well old enough to walk on her own. By the time she had climbed part-way up the canyon slope, she was weary and sat on a rock to rest. (NOTE: Another version of the legend was that a storm arose, and she and her child hid in the rocks near the cave in order to get away from the storm. You can compare your results to the two versions of the legend.)

The daughter wandered up to the cave and began shouting (in her native language), “Mummy, there is a woman in here with a boy in her arms! She is calling me.” The mother was beside herself with fright, because the cave was said to be haunted, and this was the first time her daughter had ever been able to speak. The mother did not see the figures her daughter was talking about, nor did she want to. She grabbed the child and hastened on to the other village.

When she told what happened, nobody took her seriously at first. However, as the news spread some asked if maybe it was true. After all, the child was now able to speak. So clearly, something had happened.

A few days later the child disappeared from her home. After looking everywhere the anguished mother guessed that her daughter must have gone back to the cave. Those few intervening days, the daughter had often said that the woman in the cave was calling her. The mother ran to the cave to find her daughter kneeling in front of a picture on the wall of the cave. The picture depicted a strangely dressed woman carrying a child, and two strangely dressed men with partially shaven heads in attendance.

Fearful of ridicule and fearful of the commonly held supersititons about the area being haunted by spirits, the mother kept quiet about the picture. But frequently she and her daughter went back to the cave to place wild flowers and candles in the cracks of the rocks near the picture, as a way of thanking the woman in the picture for giving the daughter the ability to speak. Some months went by, with both mother and daughter keeping their secret.

One day the daughter fell gravely ill and died. To the objections of the people in the village, the distraught mother decided to take her daughter’s body to the cave to ask the Lady in the picture to restore life to her daughter. When she did, her daughter came back to life.

It didn’t take long for a crowd to gather. Early the next morning people from both villages went to the cave, wanting to check out the rumors of the woman in the picture for themselves.

THE DOCUMENTED FACTS

There are certain parts of the legend which were documented very thoroughly at the time they happened:

  1. The mother and child were real people who did live in the area.
  2. The young girl was born a dumb-mute and could not speak until the event happened.
  3. After the event, the girl could speak.
  4. Documents record that the girl did die, and then show that her life did continue later.
  5. The image is there, and was recorded to have been there at the time of the event.
  6. The event happened before the Indians were Christianized, and the image was there at the time.
  7. The image has been tested by credible scientists from universities and from the Church, and found to be either natural or made by some method which is beyond present capabilities, and far beyond capabilities of the mid-1700's.
  8. From the tests taken, the image is not painted on, but seems to be a natural part of the rock, with the pattern and coloration going deeply into the stone.

No feedback presented on this target at this week, because next week's session focuses on the same location, but at the present time. You will be asked to give physical descriptions of the location and anything located there. If you are curious, you may also want to do a session on the image, which will be shown in next week's feedback.



Many thanks to Dennis Streetman for suggesting this (and next week's) target.