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HER UNDERGROUND

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An eco-friendly mystery by:

Donna Marie Giancola & Undine Celeste Pawlowski

And the formula of the Eleusinian mysteries is as follows:

"I fasted;

I drank the draught;

I took from the chest;

having done my task,

I placed in the basket,

and from the basket into the chest."

Beautiful sights indeed, and fit for a goddess!

~Clement of Alexandria, 3^rd century

PROLOGUE

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In the beginning there was the Goddess; infinitely vast, holding all things in herself. She was, is and will always be the Creatrix of everything that was, is and will ever be. One day, the Goddess spun a spiral moving within her and out of this spiral gave birth to luminous spirit and physical matter. Their names are countless, but her children have come to be known as god, the father, and mother earth, or the spirit plane and the physical plane. The Goddess then looked upon her children with such happiness and explained that without love nothing perfect would come, that the art and craft of creation is one that must have pure and perfect love. Thus with perfect and pure love came the first children deities of Heaven and Earth: north, east, south and west, also known as earth, air, fire and water. Upon the land as it was, they made the first of trees. The tree grew high and its roots grew low and it was luminous and physical. The tree itself has been known by many names, but has come to be known as the world tree or the tree of life and knowledge. Once they completed their task, they looked into the Goddess and asked if what they created was good. She replied, ‘Everything within me is as I am.' *

ELEUSIS, GREECE, 585 B.C.E., ...THURSDAY

The women stood in a close circle inside Demeter's temple. The altar fire made of cedar and ewe logs lit the backdrop of the cave walls. The opening stood towards the east as the harvest moon rose high in the night sky, illuminating the secret ceremony below. Hand in hand, heart to heart, all stood ready for the magical rite, each knowing what they did now they did for future generations. It was true. The time had come. The ways of the Mother Goddess were coming to an end. War and violence were taking over the earth. What in modern times was referred to as the "golden age" of Greece had not fully matured, and yet, some could read the signs that foretold the tale of the changes to come. It was both the beginning and the beginning of the end, and even though this next cycle would last thousands of years, it was doomed to self-destruction and obliteration of the earth ...unless these women did what they came here to do.

For centuries, high priestesses had been coming to this sacred mountain spur in Eleusis. Ceremony after ceremony had been performed in this underground cave situated high above the Aegean Sea. They came to celebrate life's mysteries, to thank the Goddess for the harvest, to transform and receive her power. But tonight, the celebration was of a different kind. They poured the libation and gave offerings of barley and wheat. They stood sky-clad as the night air blew through the fire, their skin reflecting the amber glow. Their faces revealed little emotion, but their eyes shone brightly with tears of joy, laughter, and sorrow too. This was not a sacrifice but an offering of hope and courage to protect the earth. They placed the ring in the fire. The ground shook. They began their incantation.

"We were, are and always will be as she is! Breath for breath, life for life, around and around the cycle is bound."

Stones and rocks fell from over head. The ground shook under their feet. The earth trembled and shook their hearts. The cave opening began to collapse, imploding upon itself. The women stood still, holding fast, never breaking the connection and knowing that their strength was in each other. The earth closed in around them, embracing them in darkness. This was not the tomb of their death. This, they created, was to become the portal for life.

Historians would not treat them kindly, but that's their misinterpretation, intentional or otherwise. The rites of the Eleusian mysteries celebrated illumination and en-light-enment in a living metaphor, as with the spark of a flame in the dark of night or with a jolt of ecstatic splendor which later would be called "shameful" and "licentious." But they were not ashamed, nor even fearful. They invested no energy in dark negativity. Joy and love are true reflections of divinity, so they drank the draught and filled their baskets, preparing for the next cycle to come. Those women dared to feel the living pulse of the cosmic spiral.

Today, Demeter's temple still remains on the top of Mount Eleusis. Standing silent, it appears a mere tourist destination, but ancient magic never wanes. If you pay attention, you can still feel it.

CHAPTER 1

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THE BIG DIG

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 2009 C.E., MONDAY

"Your honor!" Alex protested along with the sound of the gavel, reminding her that she was in contempt as she continued.

"These families should not have to put up with a public transportation station encroaching onto their sacred lands!" But the judge disagreed and his decision was final.

She had never lost a case before. Now, while riding a crowded train back into downtown Boston, she had a headache and was trying to make sense of the senseless outcome. It was her last ditch attempt to keep the tribe's sacred land sacred. It didn't work. She hated that she had to patronize the same transportation agency that just bested her in court, but it was the only way she could be sure to get to her class on time.

Bam-bang! The deafening sound rocked the train, pulling Alex out of her thoughts of defeat.

I should be used to this by now, she scolded herself for being shaken. No one else seemed disturbed. For more than five years, the perpetual pounding of the Big Dig had vibrated the city with sounds of construction workers digging deeper into the earth. But Alex still hadn't gotten used to it and each plunderous sound reminded her of the arrogant ideologies espoused in court that morning by her opposing counsel. She shuddered to think that such a disruptive scale of construction was now sure to invade the sanctity of an Indian reservation. Sitting alone in a train full of strangers, she couldn't help but glimpse certain parallels between the judge's disregard for tribal tradition and the gutting of the earth underneath her. Her own observations made her uncomfortable. Alex had always been quite conservative, torn between her upper class breeding and her humanitarian ideals. She mustered her concentration and thought instead about today's lecture.

Dr. Alexandra Martin was a law professor at Suffolk University Law School for as long as the Big Dig had been pounding. She enjoyed the leisure and academic freedom her career afforded, while still enabling her to provide pro bono representation for some of the local Tribes around New England. The benefits Alex attained from being the daughter of two renowned Harvard scholars were accompanied by an internalized voice tending towards tradition, duty and sacrifice. She inherited her mother's poise and her father's lean, angular body. His emotional distance, however, imprinted a yearning for approval that often prevented her from hearing and following her otherwise keen intuition.

Today's lecture will be on Property Rights and International Law, she thought. Realigning her posture against the stiff plastic seat, she drew the connections she hoped her students would make between land, law and government. She wondered whether this particular group of students would make the same mistakes that the judge made this morning, or appreciate that indigenous people's property and knowledge have been stolen again and again, throughout history, in the name of law, religion and progress.

The Big Dig rumbled again, bam-bang! For a moment Alex lost her balance on the edge of the seat and reached out to grip the passenger bar in front of her, knocking another passenger with her elbow. He didn't seem to notice.

The Big Dig was known as the largest urban works project of its kind. Attempting to alleviate the above ground congestion, it rerouted traffic underground so that overpasses became underpasses, bridges became tunnels, and what was above ground was now below, or soon would be.

Like everyone else, Alexandra Martin knew that the sound of the digging and the banging was the inevitable side-effect of progress. Each boom-bang held the promise of better days to come. But the chaos caused by the transition had stamped itself upon the unconsciousness of residents, commuters and tourists alike. The Big Dig had literally become the pulse of the city and lately, it had been stirring in Alex a creepy, anxious kind of angst that she, on principle, preferred to ignore. Given her own peculiarities and her chosen field's emphasis on Cartesian logic and quantifiable rationality, she was well equipped to dismiss the subtler energies that were accelerating within her.

* This re-telling of the Goddess myth is an adaptation of the re-telling told to us by Alexander Mulherin in 2008, emphasis ours.