A legendary place in Spain: O Cebreiro

"First I'll give you a warning," Father Jorge said. The Jacobean Route is just one of the four roads. It is the Way of the Sword. It can provide you Power, but it is not enough.

• What are the other three? -
  -You know at least two: the Jerusalem Way, which is the Way of Cups or the Grail, will give you the ability to perform miracles; and the Camino de Roma or Camino de Bastos, will allow you to communicate with other worlds.
• Missing the Path of Golds to complete the four suits of the deck, I said in a tone of humor.
  And Father Jorge laughed.
• Exactly. This is the secret path that, if one day you do it, you can not tell anyone ... (1)
  
  The Strange Way of Santiago or the Way of the Sword. According to Paulo Coelho, it was precisely here, in O Cebreiro, where he recovered his sword; a sword that was handed to him by his Master, who was waiting for him inside the church of Santa María la Real, raised almost a millennium ago, by Frankish monks from Aurillac. An iglesuela, said with all due respect, created in an artisanal way based on stone, slabs and slate, materials that, however, maintain a humble but dignified balance, merging with the environment.
  
  A model that, in fact, determines the shape and structure of the sacred buildings in this section of the Camino, being the most representative temples, San Esteban de Liñares, San Juan de Hospital, and even on a larger scale, the church of Santiago de Triacastela. A model, in addition, that at the same time determines and characterizes the own environment of this sacred place that is the mythical Cebreiro: hard, generous in mystery and at the same time, evocatively beautiful.
  This is something that the pilgrim knows well, when he abandons the shelter and the verticality of Piedrafita and undertakes the ascent of a port whose overwhelming beauty is enveloped, even in the summer months, by thick mists that seem to arise from the very heart of those Ancares that are part of the mediatic geographic features known as mounts of Galicia; some mountains, which in some sections also share prominence with the neighboring province of León.
  
  It is also, then, from the depths of these valleys blessed by the mystery, from which arises, with all the force of the legend, another parallel and endearingly significant route: the Sacred Route, baptized thus, for being that which, starting from the village of Barxamaior, walked the faithful shepherd, in the middle of a terrible snowfall, to attend mass and whose faith, together with the little will of the then parish priest of Santa María la Real de O Cebreiro, conceived the realization of the Miracle of the Holy Chalice .
  
  A Chalice, and especially a Patera, 12th century originals that, exposed to the view of the whole world, still preserve, at least in the case of the latter, mysterious traces of corrosion in the central part, which indicate, when less, that after all, something unusual happened. It is not surprising, therefore, that in later centuries, great Masters of that vibrational universe of the spheres that is Music, like Richard Wagner, conceived the not insignificant idea of considering this place, like the Montsalvat or Mount of Salvation to which Wolfram von Eschenbach referred, precisely in his Parsifal. In fact, if the castle of the Grail had as custodians the Templars, the presence of these around this important mystical nucleus does not cease to be, also, something more than a casual anecdote.
  
  Nor does it seem casual, on the other hand, that curious effect that make up the sun's rays early in the morning, sneaking through the small windows, marking on the pavement the wounds of Christ or, at least, if we take the points of light as base of union of the imaginary timbers, the unequivocal shape of a cross. Of course, it is not a phenomenon as precise and calculated as the one that illuminates the capital of the Annunciation in San Juan de Ortega, but its vision, highlighted in the gloom of the nave, encourages and comforts.
  
  The beautiful image of Santa María, also Romanesque and wearing in her tunic the green color associated with the authentic Black Virgins - another fact to be taken into account, independently of the no less heterodox detail of the apple in the Child's hand - continues, lost part of his original hieraticism, with his head bowed, his black eyes fixed in that timeless moment in which the hosts turned into flesh and wine into blood.
  
  On this occasion, I could not see it because they were painting the chapel of the Epistle, but there it continues, very close to the resting place of Don Elías Valiña, the one who was the immortal parish priest of O Cebreiro and the great curator of the Camino de Santiago, the small image of a Santiago Pilgrim, with his tunic, also green, alluding - it is an opinion - to the primordial figure of the Great Mother.
  
  Image and color, that the pilgrim will find again, a little more than twenty kilometers ahead, in Triacastela and that could mark a very particular area of influence of this one, without forgetting another small detail, that there will be occasion to comment later, when the dice that determine the stages of this wonderful Initiatic Board that is the Way, make us stop, even for a few moments, in Hospital da Condesa and its also humble church of San Juan.
  

Bibliography:

(1) Paulo Coelho: 'The Pilgrim of Compostela. Diario de un Mago ', editorial license for Círculo de Lectores by courtesy of Editorial Planeta, S.A., 1998, page 60.

Related movie:

NOTICE: originally published in my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM, although the photographs are unpublished in Steemit. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com.es/2013/08/de-o-cebreiro-triacastela-magia-en-el.html

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