interpretive human interest, grounded in antiquity

Look now to the walls of Gobekli Tepe, born of stone and sweat. 

All around, pillars are carved with beasts, their teeth bared, their bodies tense. And every beast is watching. You feel animal energy stirring in you. Wild. Raw. Untamed. AH - the center columns, taller than three men, foot to shoulder.

Twin sentinels, they rise in pairs— T-shaped, arms bent at their sides, hands clasping over their bellies. They wear decorated belts and fox pelts. Mystic carvings at their throats, they are full of presence. They stand above all that happens below, oblivious and unperturbed -- not as beasts, but as something else.

Are they the first leaders? The first priests? Or gods, drawn in man’s image?

By shaping these great columns, by enclosing them under roof, by harnessing echo and sound —magical spaces of mystical communion and ritual have been made. They will draw the great tribal gatherings for centuries.

Ah but . . . Humans have begun a dark parting . . . stepped away from their closeness with nature, and into something new. Could they know that there would come an ending --a burial of these sacred spaces? Would they guess how many women would later climb that hill to pray for the babies in their wombs? Will they hear the hoofbeats of and clashes of migrations and conquests that will come to pass on this sacred land, as they stand pillowed and hidden beneath the soil?

Armies and wise men would pass here; Dervishes, refugees, Magi, and those whose blood would pass to descendants across the globe

Great Spirit would have many names in this place.

You stand in the circle, between beasts and pillars. Between nature and invention. Between memory and becoming. Do the stones honor gods…Or do they honor men?

Who are you, when you shape the world?

Who are you, when you lift stones and begin to farm your food?

Who are you, when you make echoes that never existed before?