Where the Devil Licked the Land
Where the Devil Licked the Land
The call came particularly late at night, but an hour in which those who know me know that I am still up, reading some book or another. Recent events had conspired to reveal a plot of land formerly inaccessible. The wildfires that tore through the Portuguese mountainsides had opened up many nooks and valleys that had been festering with 3 meters deep of bramble, placing their hidden treasures beyond the reach of anything other than extensive land clearing. Such was no longer the case, though the land itself was charred to the ground and coated in ash.
My contact in the area had survived the fires relatively unscathed, their property seeing only superficial damage, but many had lost homes, towns without power or local mobile towers for days, sometimes weeks. Yet in his voice I could sense on the other end of the line an excitement.
16 hours later and I was standing in a queue at Stansted airport, hoping to be back before the end of the weekend. Over my shoulder my trusted leather bag with a change of trousers and a couple of clean shirts, as well as various tape measures, and other field instruments. I have always been one to travel light.
The winding journey to the mountainside to meet my contact involves subways, coaches, trains, and taxis all in a continuous stretch further into the wilds of Portugal.
Upon arrival the sun was just setting, and beyond a quick bite to eat I was exhausted from travel and turned in to bed unnaturally early, as has become my habit in readjusting my normally nocturnal habits to those of village people and farmers.
Early the next morning a car took us to the village nearest our rural destination. Access roads from the village were heavily blocked with fallen tress, their outsides covered in a coat of charred black. We instead walked over slanting grey lifeless terraces filled with holes that were once trees whose stumps had burned straight into the ground.
Eventually we managed to find ourselves in a valley, isolated from much of anything else, with steep sides and a winding nature down the mountainside carrying water from a small creek. Three buildings, which we had previously spotted from much higher up the mountain earlier in the year, were now fully exposed.
We trekked down the terraces into the valley, some which had beautiful ancient staircases made of thick jutting schist stone sticking out of the sides of the terrace walls, many other walls crumbling and broken with the traffic of boars.
The landscape around us was apocalyptic, blasted hillsides of crumbling terraces covered in the charcoaled remains of olive and fruit trees. Their skeletal remains like claws against the darkened winter sky. Winding snake like over the ground were black grape vines burned to a crisp. All of the standing fruit trees appeared to be dead, bark split open under the pressure of intense heat, exposing the bright cream insides of the woody flesh. The larger trees burned several meters up, with the ancient cork oaks likely the only potential survivors of this place where the devil had licked the land.
The first building was extensive, and while we poured over the stone we found almost nothing in the way of the apotropaic markings we hoped to find. The primary place they seem to often be is near the doorway, and the fire had gutted the roof off the building causing the front wall to crumble into a pile inward.
The second building yielded the kinds of vertical markings, a kind of counting system, that seem to date to the mid 19th century. There were only two stones with such markings, and one was irregularly place in the building low along the south wall, meaning it may have been reused from a much earlier structure.
It was near to the third building, which was not much more than a ruin, that we discovered something rather fantastic. Just before sunset we found a water mine, two meters high and 80cm wide or so roughly cut into the mountainside near a crumbling ruin. It was cut at a slant toward the north, its face coming open at an angle against a rough stone escarpment below the terrace of the ruin.
Near to the mouth of the entrance on the inside was a series of star shaped symbols scratched or carved into the natural schist wall of the water mine. A pentagram and a hexagram, both of crudely done character, along with a date of the year 1782. Unfortunately our cameras were of nearly no use, as the markings were far enough inside the water mine, and the day so late, that they were barley illuminated. I made some rubbings with a bit of charcoaled olive tree and a page from a notebook I brought along, though I am hoping to go back and get better images with artificial light.
The presence of sino-saimão symbols at the water mine is particularly exciting. Water mines are associated in Portuguese folklore with the mouros, or local fairy traditions. If such symbols are near to the entrance it is possible that the cavern holds even more interesting things within.
Much of the practical magic in the Book of St Cyprian centers around the concept of revealing hidden treasures and overcoming their guardians. The folk belief is that when the Moorish people were driven from the Iberian Peninsula they placed their treasures in hidden niches in the rock, under certain trees and in water mines, and then enchanted them with a mouros guardian to keep them safe.
Unfortunately my stay was only for the day, and the next morning I was headed back along that reverse path of taxis, coaches, trains, and subways to the Porto airport. Hopefully the land will stay relatively exposed with the coming spring and I will be able to dig deeper into the water mine mystery.
