In 1994, a cave was discovered in southern France. Entrance
obliterated by a rock slide ages ago, its contents had been left undisturbed
and protected from the elements for some 20,000 years. Filmmaker Werner Herzog describes this cave as, “a frozen
flash of a moment in time.” In his mesmerizing documentary, Cave of
Forgotten Dreams, he takes us deep into the
recesses of Chauvet Cave.
We enter through a steel door installed to protect the
delicate climate within. Our path lit only by a few battery~operated cold light
panels, we descend narrow stairs to the first of several large chambers. And
here, we get a hint of what is to come. In front of us, a section of wall known
as “the red dots” displays a collection of handprints from a single human long
since gone.
Traversing 2~foot~wide metal walkways suspended above a bone~littered
floor, our gaze touches the shimmering remains of cave bear, wolves, ibex,
horses, a golden eagle. Stalagmites, stalactites and draperied concretions like
fossilized waves glimmer as well. Archeologist and scholar of Paleolithic
culture Dominique Baffier explains that eons of dripping water have created
“crystals that glitter… rimstone calcite ridges have covered everything in
sparkling formation, a kind of cascade.”
Hauntingly beautiful. Yet this is not why we are here.
Chauvet Cave contains some of the best preserved and oldest known cave
paintings in the world.
“The paintings looked so fresh,” Herzog explains in his
heavily accented German, “that there were initial doubts about their
authenticity.” Radiocarbon dating, however, suggests the paintings were created
between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago.
As we move deeper into the cave, exquisitely executed images
dance against the hard surface of the cave wall~~rhinoceros, aurochs, cave
lion, bison, mammoth, cave bear, panther, and insects. One exceptionally
beautiful panel contains numerous overlapping horses, seemingly in motion, open
mouths emitting an almost audible whinny.
“The walls themselves are not flat,” Herzog explains, “but
have their own three~dimensional dynamic, their own movement, which was
utilized by the artists, (creating)…the illusion of movement, like frames in an
animated film.”
The dynamic beauty of the artwork, the dim torch~like
lighting, the evocative background music~~all these bring us a palpable sense of
the holiness of this place. There seems no doubt that these long~ago people
opened to Spirit here.
Herzog’s interview with one unidentified man elucidates two
interconnected concepts that give us a glimpse into the spirituality of the
people of Chauvet Cave. “Fluidity,” he explains, “means that the categories
that we have~~man, woman, horse…tree~~can shift. A tree may speak. A man can get
transformed into an animal and the other way around. The concept of
permeability is that there are no barriers…between the world where we are and
the world of the spirits. A wall can talk to us or a wall can accept us or refuse
us.”
While few in our modern world believe that a human can
literally become a bear, I suspect our experience of spirituality is not so very different from the painters
of Chauvet. A wall teeming with sacred art viewed in the darkened light of a
cavern deep within the earth still opens us to awe.
French archeologist Julien Monney tells the story of an
ethnographer traveling with an aborigine through the Australian outback. Coming
upon some decaying rock art, the native man immediately began restoring it. The
ethnographer asked him why he was painting. The aborigine answered, “I am not
painting. This is my hand, only my hand. It is Spirit who paints.”
All of life interconnected, fluid and permeable. Energy,
like an underground river moving through it all.
Quantum physics now confirms
this. Early humans already knew it. We all do, at least when we stand open and
in awe.
In awe and in love,
Loanne Marie
