They Are Only Words

(Sibyl comes via Latin from the Greek word sibylla, meaning Prophetess ~ she can reach forward and back thousands of years by her voice by the aid of the goddess.)
This story is based on true events.*
THEY ARE ONLY WORDS
"They are only words" said the King to the Sibyl (or Prophetess) who stood before him offering nine of her books for sale for 300 pieces of gold.
She stood before him, hauntingly beautiful. Her eyes were deeper than any abyss. She wore an earth colored dress, wrapped in a mid-night blue cape studded with stars.
This old woman, in a voice of magnificence, energy and power said to the King:
"Yes. Words. Words that begin the night before the sun was born and narrate a sacred history of ancestral memories and all of the wisdom of the ancients. Words create and destroy in a multitude of meanings. I tried to paint a picture of words so precise, so perplexing that all would understand and see perchance my paint dripping from their hands. I wanted to invoke a feeling and a love for the quest for the fruits of the inner life ~ that individually and collectively they could have an experience of the deepest significance."
"It is preposterous that you ask such an enormous price," said the King. "I am lead to believe that you are a madwoman."
"Three books ~ if you do not attend ~ are burned together in the end ~ Three books you do not desire ~ to be exalted in the fire." she chanted.
Before his eyes, the Sibyl burned three books and asked the same price for the remaining six books.
Now the King was totally convinced that she was a madwoman.
The smoke from the fire of the burning books rose and she spoke as if her voice was a vapor from the flames:
"A psychograph sets out the picture of the soul. Is there a soul? What is the fate of a Soul after Death? Does a philosopher whose thoughts transcend this world commit so absurd an act as dying? Or do they disdain to die and only disappear? Is there an apocalypse of the world within? Are we wonder workers? Can we be two or more places at the same time?"
The King shook his head signifying a 'no' to the enormous price of the remaining six books.
"Three books if you do not attend ~ are burned together in the end~ Three books you do not desire ~ to be exalted in the fire." she cited again.
And the Sibyl proceeded to burn three more books before his eyes and the price for the remaining three books remained the same - 300 pieces of gold.
With spiritual determination and a mystic force the Sibyl pointed to her remaining three books and to the King and said:
"To you then who have absolute power, I speak, in hopes that you might love wisdom ~ the ways of wisdom and words of wisdom and not lead your people astray. What is to become of a world without wisdom? A world without imagination, forgiveness, inspiration, poetry, art, intuition, music, dreams, visions? Who will explore the unknown and communicate the incommunicable? Who will attempt to speak of the ineffable and the incomparable beauty of love and wisdom? Who will adhere to the maxim: Know thyself?"
The King immediately changed his mind and bought the remaining three books for her original asking price of 300 pieces of gold.
These famous Sibylline Books were kept in the Capitoline Temple in Rome and consulted in emergencies by the Senate. But they were burned along with the Temple in 83 BC.
Why? I do not know. They are only words.

©Aurora Terrenus, 2006


* The oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl composed nine books and she offered them to Tarquin the Proud, the last of the seven kings of Rome. She did burn the books in threes until the King bought the remaining three for her price of nine books. The three books were burned in 83BC along with the temple. Modern archaeologists are satisfied that they have identified her cave at Cumae.