Beyond the Cavern of the Seven Sleepers
That’s a line from one of Robert Graves poems, and referenced I knew not what until I googled it.* In it’s context it clearly meant something to overcome, and I thought maybe a seven headed dragon or something. But no, the Seven Sleepers is a famous medieval story. When the Roman’s were persecuting the Christians, seven youths took refuge in a cave, and the Romans sealed them in it. They went to sleep for two hundred years! And when they awoke, without aging, and left the cave, they found Rome transformed into a Christian nation.
That’s a fine tale, but the no aging part has caught my eye.
In the Terminator films, when they begin, Arnold comes from the future enveloped in an energy time traveling bubble of some sort, and when it drops him off it leaves a circle of fire. Now, on first seeing this, I thought of magic circles. Magicians make magic circles, and there’s one famous one in particular, Honi the Circle Drawer.
On a whim I looked him up too last nite, and in his story he goes to sleep and doesn’t age for seventy years. (His story is that he sits stubbornly in a circle until God makes it rain—Honi is a Rainmaker).
Now, that’s odd, and there’s a movie, Flight of the Navigator, where a kid goes to sleep for a number of years and wakes up in a future time.
I could fill in the steps of how I leapt around here, but that’s for another time.
But the no aging thing, and traveling forward in time, that’s right out of Einstein, the Theory of Relativity, and traveling at light speed.
A curio, that’s what I call these things!!!
That’s a line from one of Robert Graves poems, and referenced I knew not what until I googled it.* In it’s context it clearly meant something to overcome, and I thought maybe a seven headed dragon or something. But no, the Seven Sleepers is a famous medieval story. When the Roman’s were persecuting the Christians, seven youths took refuge in a cave, and the Romans sealed them in it. They went to sleep for two hundred years! And when they awoke, without aging, and left the cave, they found Rome transformed into a Christian nation.
That’s a fine tale, but the no aging part has caught my eye.
In the Terminator films, when they begin, Arnold comes from the future enveloped in an energy time traveling bubble of some sort, and when it drops him off it leaves a circle of fire. Now, on first seeing this, I thought of magic circles. Magicians make magic circles, and there’s one famous one in particular, Honi the Circle Drawer.
On a whim I looked him up too last nite, and in his story he goes to sleep and doesn’t age for seventy years. (His story is that he sits stubbornly in a circle until God makes it rain—Honi is a Rainmaker).
Now, that’s odd, and there’s a movie, Flight of the Navigator, where a kid goes to sleep for a number of years and wakes up in a future time.
I could fill in the steps of how I leapt around here, but that’s for another time.
But the no aging thing, and traveling forward in time, that’s right out of Einstein, the Theory of Relativity, and traveling at light speed.
A curio, that’s what I call these things!!!
*In googling about I noticed a connection of Camelot with Seven Sleepers, and tracking that out found that legend has it that King Arthur is asleep in a cave with seven sleeping Knights of the Round Table, and that theses seven represent stars in the Big Dipper, or Ursus Major, the Big Bear--are they all sleeping in a bear cave?? They await a day when England is in peril, when they will awake and come to aid. This may be what Graves' is about. A neat thing is that the Round Table may represent the revolving night stars. That's cool! This will get it's own take/post!!
Oh, I should ad that there is a juvenile Christian book series based on the Seven Sleepers...in the book the juvenile heros awaken in a post apocalyptic world to battle the evil Sanhedran. I dont know how the Sanhedran receently regenerated, or at least an attempt by some theologians, takes to that!!
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
May 17, 2007
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