In the Shrine Of the Vulture

Catal Huyuk

Catal Huyuk 6150 B.C.E.

By: Theresa C. Dintino

The room is quiet. I sit on the smaller platform. The larger one, the one smeared with red ochre is hers. Its pattern of red spirals inside black lozenges stretches flat across it; as though she pulled it up this morning after she got up out of it, neatly folding up the corners and edges with her long fingered hands, allowing none to hang over. As though she said to me, as she was arranging her long brown hair into a plait upon her head, “Soiree, the sun is up and so are we.” As though she stood over me, her calm browning face looking down upon me, smiling and said, “Come, there is much we must do.”

Light filters in through the windows high up in the outside wall. It trips down the rungs of the ladder which leans against the opening in the roof. Her long, slender feet step upon it as she leaves for morning meal.

They will be waiting for me. They will be watching me as, dressed in ritual attire, I walk to the place where her bones lie, clean and ready. It is my lead they will follow as I gather her into the basket, transporting her to the Shrine of the Vulture; returning her to the Goddess.

Being a Priestess in the Shrine of the Vulture is one of the highest honors to be bestowed upon a woman in our village. Today, it is one I would gladly give away.

From a young age, we were aware of one another. Born in the same year, we both possessed towering height. Always, in a crowd, I would find her sunlit brown head bobbing above all the others, equal only to mine. Always I knew she was looking for me.

We are the two tallest women ever to have walked the Konya plain. Some say we are the tallest in all of Anatolia. That, however, we were not inclined to believe.

When we walked, side by side, down the narrow path between the fields of wheat and barley, searching for fallen vulture feathers, people would stop working and watch until we were well gone by.

Behind us on a small hill sat the connecting buildings of our village, below that the river. In front of us stretched the long, narrow path between fields leading to the towering twin cones of her mountain of molten liquids.

When we donned our vulture masks for sacred ritual, the feathers rising high upon our heads, almost touching the ceiling of the shrine, mourners fell to their knees in awe.

It was during our initiation into our roles as priestesses that we became friends, since then sharing a room, and even a shrine, until now. Until She took her back. Of course She wanted her back.

Everyday, as the vultures pecked at her delicate skin, her long, strong legs, the porous flesh of her horned womb, I would sit with her. I would bring gifts of tumbled obsidian, small woven figurines, baked breads—anything to help her endure this most difficult transformation. I would kneel with my head down praying, the hot sun beating down upon my rounded back, the ground beneath me wet with tears.

She takes whom She wants when She wants them, making a meal for herself of the earthly flesh She has previously bestowed upon them. She ingests them back into Herself, Her long, wide, wings tapping the ground clumsily, as She transforms what was only days before a divine being, a person of noble character; my friend.

Though we wore the same thick fur parting in winter winds; the same thin white dresses flowing in summer breezes; though we were the same height, age and stature, though we carried the same title within our community, it was always clear to me that she was more. I adored her grace; the way her feet landed softly upon the dirt, flecks of dust brushing up from between her rounded and smiling toes as we carried jugs of water from the river to the cave of the Goddess for sacred blessing.

When mourners approached her, she would stand still, one arm reaching up to hold the handle of the vessel of water upon her head, listening; never once revealing its weight. It was I who make them notice, shifting weight between my legs, alternating arms raised to the vessel. It was me they would be looking at when they would say, “I have kept you too long. Your load is heavy.”

She would neither agree nor disagree, only smile and bid them farewell. I would sigh at the relief of moving on. She would begin walking again as though we had never stopped, resuming our conversation from the exact place we had left it.

Though more committed and trusting than any of us, returning the young presented her with the greatest challenge. She would retreat to the hills in solitude at these times, returning clean and prepared; willing. Her power was riveting in these rituals, her dark brown eyes swallowing us in deep trance.

In the evenings we would sit by the small hearth we had pulled into the middle of our room, weaving sacred passage baskets; baskets to carry life known to life unknown. She would often speak of our work, always considering it, always trying to be better at it. She was the role and the role was her. No distinction could be made. She would work with a mourner until she was confident healing had begun; sometimes stretching months into years.

I never ventured beyond what I had been taught or what was expected of me. Often I did not understand what she was doing or her reasons why. I let her believe that I did.

The times we journeyed together to Her caves in the Taurus mountains to gather stalactites were the only times she left the work behind. By the second full day of walking, much of the seriousness would leave her. She would follow me into bubbling streams kicking and splashing, wear crowns of flowers, dance with the deer.

I stand up and bow to the East, land of light and rising sun. I bow to the West, land of darkness, setting sun. I raise my arms high above me in triumph and adoration of Her power. I bend down and come up wearing my Vulture robe. It hangs around my body loosely, reaching down to my knees. When I lift my arms to put on my mask the feathers I have attached to the sleeves spread themselves into wide wings. The vulture’s beak extends out from the middle of my forehead. Feathers stand tall upon my head.

“I must leave this place soon,” she said to me one day. We were collecting obsidian from the deposit area below Her mountain of molten liquids. My fingers picked through the dirt and debris until they landed upon a shiny black clump of rock.

“Leave?” I said, holding the rock up to look at it in the light.

“You will have to take my place. It is you they shall look to after I have gone.”

“Whatever are you talking about?” I said, looking at her.

“That is an absolutely unacceptable question from a Priestess in the Shrine of the Vulture,” she said, calmly, still picking at the ground.

I stood up quickly, spilling the obsidian findings from my lap. She looked up at me, her hand guarding her eyes from the sun.

“I cannot possibly,” I stumbled over the words that were there but unformed inside my head. “I could never do what you do. I am not good like you.”

“You are the one they shall look to when I am gone,” she repeated, continuing her work.

We returned later than usual that day. The sun was setting behind the cluster of white buildings that was our village, sinking into the waters of the river below it, spreading pink across the fields around it. I walked slowly, dragging my feet in long scuffs behind her, my dress stained black at the center.

I climb the ladder up out of my room. I cross three rooftops, fold myself into the entrance of the fourth, descend the ladder into the Shrine of the Vulture. I build a small fire in the hearth. It sends light throughout the cool room, exposing its red floors and wooden beams. I light a sage stick and begin to cleanse the space with it. I reach it up high into the corners where she told me things often get stuck. I walk it past Her horned womb which extends out from the wall. Red meanders encircle its rounded base. Long, flowing crescent horns reach up out of it in adoration.

On the larger platform, below the mural of flying vultures, the basket I have woven her sits empty, ready to receive her. I kneel before it, standing the sage stick into its hole in the floor and pray. The vultures’ enormous red wings sway and shift behind the smoke which swirls in front of them.

I walk the dirt path toward the excarnation hut, her basket extended out upon my arms which stretch far in front of me. People stop what they are doing and follow behind me. The procession becomes larger and larger until it turns into a crowd. As I dance my Vulture dance around her bones of pure clean whiteness, the crowd makes itself a circle around me. I raise her off the ground, her fine, long arms, tender, rounded head, and lay her in the curved position of life’s beginning, life’s end.

“We must contain their pain,” she said to me one night as we lie beneath the stars, bright and sparkling in the absence of moon. “We must take it into us and, like the vulture, digest it, returning it to them as something new; something useful.”

I lift the basket and stumble, almost dropping it. A woman I do not know catches its falling end, handing it back to me gently. There is no where for me to put this pain which flows beneath my taut, expanding skin like so much caustic liquid.

Each night after I returned from the excarnation hut, I would sit weaving her passage basket beside the fire. I would weave and weave until my fingers stiffened; my eyes watering from the sting of prolonged openness. Then, I would undo the weaving, tearing at the knots with my teeth, and sleep upon the grass that I knew would hold her; would be next to her. I would rub my face into the scratchiness of the reeds I knew had touched her, my mouth searching for her—drinking in the smell she had left upon them.

The shadow of Her horned womb falls upon her bones lying peacefully within the basket below it. The basket’s edges curve up and encompass her. The white dove feathers I have woven into it offer softness.

Standing up and spreading my wings, I chant the song of return into this shrine filled with people. My body fills up with pain. Its liquid presence rushes though me like a cascading waterfall. My legs shake in weakness beneath me. Darts of agony hurl themselves clumsily into the backs of my eyes.

“Let it pass through you.” Her words lap soft against the outside of my ears. “You are the river. Waters must flow.”

“Where are you,” I say, though I know it is another unacceptable question that she would smirk at but leave unanswered. Still, it offers me humor. My heart widens in recognition.

I extend my arms out further. I breathe in, becoming the vast body of water that accepts things into it, letting them pass through Her, never changing Her own shape. The pain tinkles into pieces as it meets the tiny rocks which are a part of me. I breathe in again, send it surging downstream. A large, aching voice I do not recognize crawls out of me like a snake, arching back upon itself, leaving a ringing noise between the walls of the shrine. When it is gone and all is quiet, I open my eyes. My mourners’ faces are washed with relief.

In the spring, when the time comes to repaint the shrine, I shall bury her under the largest platform. Her bones I will anoint with red ochre. Within her hands I shall place the obsidian mirror of truth. Her presence will rise up from the earth beneath us, filling the shrine with towering height.