Grief is always a painfully slow experience for me to work my way through—grief for my non-human family members as much as for the human ones. Now, 2 months after her death, I’ve finished the third of three digital mosaics of my cat, Mari. Each image has been increasingly complex, each exploring deeper, less articulate levels of my grief. With the completion of the last picture, my farewell feels complete. My grief is taking up residence in memory and only occasionally flashing into the now.
“Mari: Doorway Into Forever,” image CL Francisco (2022)
I finished this first mosaic on the night of Mari’s death (“Mari: Doorway into Forever,” above). It was built on an earlier image I’d created more than 10 years ago (see below). In it I find myself grappling with the simple fact of her dying and moving beyond my reach.
“Doorway Into Forever,” image by CL Francisco (2012)
The second mosaic, “The Passing of Mari,” (below) I finished two weeks after her death. It reflects on Mari’s own awareness of her living and dying, and the natural place of both in the universe as we experience it.
“The Passing of Mari,” image CL Francisco
The third image, “Slipping Away,” (below) I finished yesterday. It reaches out toward yet further horizons, beginning with Mari’s intentional withdrawal from life and her brief return to my lap on the day of her death (using photos I took of her then). Beyond those beginnings, I tried to capture my sense that the flame I knew as Mari had already begun drifting away on another wind, into vast starscapes yet unknown to me.
Mari was one of two kittens I adopted after I lost the cat who later became Yeshua’s Cat. Since the-cat-who-became-Yeshua’s-Cat was actually named Morgan, I needed a more appropriate name for a cat from the 1st C Levant. Mari (named after the ancient city) kindly loaned me her name, as well as her insights as I wrote. She is survived by her littermate, Bacchus.
Almost 2 years have passed since I last posted any personal updates—2 years of confusion, anger—and grace. Most amazingly, I do NOT have Lewy body dementia (or any other kind of dementia, for that matter): that’s the warm, beating heart of my news. I am infinitely grateful that I won’t be walking that road.
I do have a few thoughts about my experiences in the hands of physicians.
Here’s the background, in case you’re just tuning in. Early in 2019, I saw a respected neurologist, and assumed—foolishly—that he would be a man of principles, skilled in the performance of his art. Feeling anxious and off-balance from the sudden changes in my life, I reached out to him in trust. He, however, did little but look to his own divine omniscience (or personal lottery hopper, whatever) for inspiration before burdening me, a patient he’d barely met, with a capricious diagnosis of a rare and deadly disease. Following up on another doctor’s preliminary sleep study, he took perhaps 15 minutes to administer a quick mental status exam and a standard connect-the-dots psych test and then delivered his extempore diagnosis full-blown, like Athena from the brow of Zeus.
Image CL Francisco
I’m still angry, although I’m trying to let it go. After all, a physician who believes himself a god could easily have contracted his delusion by just breathing the air of our culture. As long as we hail our physicians as god-like purveyors of medical miracles, doctors who lack confidence or crave power will cloak themselves in our expectations like the great Oz in his curtains.
But I must accept some responsibility for my willingness to be misled. No one forced me to accept this man‘s diagnosis as a truth engraved on the foundation of the world. I’ve known for most of my adult life that a diagnosis is simply an opinion—as reliable, or as dubious, as the person who offers it. That’s why we call a second diagnosis from a different doctor a “second opinion.” Still, in defense of my foolishness, I was anxious and off balance, and not thinking very objectively.
Image CL Francisco
And this is one of the huge ethical challenges of doctor-patient relationships: physicians encounter people at some of the most critical points in their lives, when they’re at their most vulnerable. We might even define patients as people experiencing diminished capacity brought on by poor health and the resultant anxiety. They come praying that a doctor will work miracles with his/her incomparable wisdom and skill. Patients are predisposed to be gullible: easy prey, in fact . . . except that doctors aren’t supposed to be predators (and most aren’t). Going to a doctor should never be a case of caveat emptor—“let the buyer beware.”
Image CL Francisco
So I’m back where I started. Angry. If I were a litigious person, I’d have sued him; however, I’m not, and I didn’t. I can only say what many others have said before me: in a more humane world, doctors would be required to experience—at least in some virtual sense—the conditions they would treat before being loosed on a world of suffering patients. That might go a long way toward eliminating a physician’s god complex.
Grace . . .
Grace intervened in late 2020, in the person of a wise and caring neurologist I happened upon during a phone conference she had with my husband. He mentioned my diagnosis in passing, and she asked to speak with me. By the time we hung up, I had an appointment to see her the next week. Two weeks after that, following a huge battery of blood and tissue tests, she confirmed her initial diagnosis of small fiber neuropathy (SFN) and started my treatment.
SFN is a complex syndrome with a staggering array of possible symptoms. I find the diagram below helpful in making sense of it:
There is no cure for small fiber neuropathy, but it is treatable, especially if caught early. Its progression can be slowed, and some losses may be recouped, although not completely. In my case, I’d already had two years of acute symptoms without any treatment before receiving an accurate diagnosis. Fortunately, I’ve responded well (if slowly) to therapy, particularly in areas of cognitive loss. I may never write another book, but I’ve recovered much of my vocabulary, my brain fog has lessened, and I’m remembering more of what I read. I can write letters and short essays (with the constant support of a thesaurus), and on a good day I can even edit existing manuscripts.
So, to all of you who have sent me messages of love and encouragement, I thank you! I may not have replied, but I’ve been warmed by your concern. I still don’t anticipate having much presence online, since I find writing of any kind exhausting. This post, for example, took three full days to compose, not counting getting it up online. I try to choose where my energy will be best spent. But I no longer perceive my life as a tragedy in process; I’m just aging, as every living creature does.
Image CL Francisco
I sometimes imagine these last few years as an expression of my physical uniqueness. Just as each of us has different fingerprints, and a distinct mosaic of genetic patterning, so every body slows down and wears out in ways that reflect a person’s particular life experiences and physical being. Our paths home will always take us by surprise, because no two are ever the same.
A note in closing: my 15-year-old grey tabby cat Mari, whose name I borrowed for the Yeshua’s Cats books, is dying of advanced renal disease. (The cat who inspired Yeshua’s Cat was actually named Morgan—an unlikely name for an ancient Levantine cat! So I used the name I’d given to one of the two kittens I’d adopted after Morgan’s death.)
Image: SDean@sdean.netImage CL Francisco
Mari and I are exploring the shadowy vales of aging and illness together. We’ve become unexpectedly close as her health has deteriorated. Sometimes I’m not sure which one of us is the woman and which the cat. My husband says that Mari has been my sea anchor for most of her fifteen years, and that she’ll take pieces of me with her when she goes. I’m sure she will, but she’ll also leave pieces of herself behind. Neither of us will be the same.
Image CL Francisco
Afterthoughts
What follows is an unpublished post from June, 2020, written 1 ½ years after I was erroneously diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, and 3 months before I began treatment for small fiber neuropathy. It was intended to be the 4th in a series of posts on Lewy body dementia, but it was shuffled aside in the excitement of a possibly new diagnosis . . .
Robin Hobb’s Memory Stone and Progressive Dementia
“I feel like a tree being ruthlessly pruned into a stump,” June 30, 2020
I wrote these words earlier today, as I was updating a symptom diary that I’ve been keeping for over a year now, so that I can remember how I’ve changed, and when. It took me a long time to understand and articulate that feeling, partly because I am diminished, and my awareness is narrowing. I feel life less keenly every day. I forget to care—about people and things I love. I drift, and draw in. My horizons shrink. My spirit vision darkens.
Image by CL Francisco
In an earlier post I mentioned that I forget every new book I read within a few months (books I read many years ago I still remember clearly). So when I find good books, I can enjoy them over and over again! This past Christmas my son gave me three new books: the Farseer Trilogy, Robin Hobb’s epic fantasy. I didn’t really like the first book when I started it, but since it was my son’s gift, and chosen with care, I didn’t set it aside. I’m not sure when I got hooked: maybe it was when the wolf Nighteyes entered the story. I know I was captivated by then. I bought the trilogies that continued the tale as I approached the end of each of the others. Nine thick books. And tonight I finished all nine for the third time.
Robin Hobb’s Trilogies with Fitz and the Fool
Hobb’s books haven’t been just entertainment. For me, the Farseer series (including The Tawny Man and Fitz and the Fool trilogies) is that rare thing, a story that flickers with hidden meaning, troubling and fascinating me with something just out of reach. I believe that the only way to understand a story like that it is to journey to its heart—and to mine. I’ve always done this by reading a book again and again, until a key eventually emerged to unlock the mystery. I’m not sure if forgetting the details between readings has helped or hindered me with these books, but when I closed the ninth book tonight, I finally understood.
Image CL Francisco
Hobb creates a fantasy world where some humans are gifted with an extraordinary sense she calls Skill. At the end of their lives, a very few choose to journey to a distant quarry and carve a dragon or other beast from the near-sentient stone there called Memory Stone. As they carve the stone, they release all their memories, and eventually their physical bodies, into the carved stone, hoping to bring it to a kind of life and achieve for themselves a limited immortality: their memories never really die.
Image CL Francisco
Image CL Francisco
The most difficult part of the dragon-carving is the carvers’ long and arduous process of yielding up the memories that make them who they are, in hopes that they have accumulated enough depth of memory to bring the stone to life. But once these carvers have given up a memory, they no longer have access to it. As their lives are poured out, they become vague and distant. They lose the love they feel for friends and family, recalling only dimly the fact of its earlier existence. They drift away from life, and from all but the current of Skill that draws them on.
I’m sure you see the parallels by now—not exact, but intriguing. I don’t know if Hobb intended to mythologize progressive dementia (or cognitive loss), but I believe she has, at least for me. What makes her telling so unexpectedly personal is her description of the effort her carvers make to invest their ever-dwindling strength and capacity into the creation of something that encompasses who they are . . . that embodies their lives’ essence.
image CL Francisco
Her images shine a light on my own days, making sense of what I have been doing in darkness and unknowing. For I also feel a compelling need to complete expressions of myself: a couple of unfinished books, paintings for my grandson’s walls, pen and ink portraits of my family, a Flickr photo site. I don’t do them as memorials, or to have my name remembered. I’ve always preferred to remain invisible, anonymous, like a cat hidden beneath the shadowy eaves of a forest. Instead, I am pouring my life into a spiritual nexus that I sense as myself, and the effort I expend contributes to its solidity.
Image CL Francisco
It’s so hard to put this into words!
British folk in times past sometimes spoke of retiring from the world in their old age to “make their souls.” That phrase feels oddly appropriate here. I am struggling to yield who I am into the will of the One, whose Being flows like a river through all that is. I am clarifying for myself who and what I am while confronting my own dissolution. I may grow vague and distant, unresponsive and hollowed out, as the life I’ve known seeps away. But by willingly releasing what I know as myself into the Creator’s vessel, I rest on the Deep of Being. I make my soul.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how This Madness of the Heart (and all the following Miranda Lamden Mysteries) fit together with my Yeshua’s Cats series–and why I feel certain the two series can coexist as books by the same author. But since my reasons are more feelings and instincts than logic, I’ve had trouble putting them into words.
So I did what I often do when I need to make sense of something: I created a piece of art (below). After all, what good is an art therapy degree if you can’t use it to clarify your own confusion? If I’m lucky, by explaining the image I’ll be opening up what lies behind it!
The Sleuth, Chi Rho, and the Cat
So, what are you looking at here?
First, I chose a Hubble image for the background: “Interacting Spiral Galaxies” . . . surely ideal for this project, since galaxies don’t often interact–anymore than churchfolk and professor-sleuths! It felt like a propitious beginning.
Hubble, Interacting Spiral Galaxies
Three interlocking circles fill the foreground. The center circle pulses with a glowing gold and green light; the Christian Chi Rho emerges from its heart.
What is the Chi Rho? Like most symbols, it has different meanings across cultures, but for me it’s a symbol used by early Christians in the first three centuries after Yeshua’s birth–before Constantine transformed it into an imperial banner (the cross didn’t emerge as a Christian symbol until after the year 500).
Chi Rho, early 3rd C catacomb
The Chi Rho gets its name from the two Greek letters that overlap to create the symbol: Chi and Rho, the first two letters of the Greek word Christos, or Christ. In the image above, the Greek letters Alpha and Omega are added. I did experiment with using a cross in the center circle, but I like the visual effect of the Chi Rho better, probably because it has “rays” like the sunburst. Anyway, the central circle is meant to be the Christian faith–not the organized religion–but the living faith of all the individuals who hold themselves to be Christian.
The circle to the right is Mari, from Yeshua’s Cat, turning aside from a path in a green forest to investigate the central circle. In her circle she represents all of the natural universe. Creation. Everything that exists naturally, apart from the intervention of humankind. This natural order also includes human beings, since they’re part of the created universe–but not their civilizations.
The totality of the created world–as we know it on Earth–is flowing back from Mari’s search like the tail of a comet.
The circle on the left is where Miranda, my detective, lives. Her circle is the world of human civilization–urban, complex, multi-cultural, and often unsure exactly what they believe. Many, like Miranda, have their roots in Christianity, but have turned away from the church. Spinning out from her circle is a spiral of different world religions. But in her circle she, like Mari, has paused to examine something about the Christian faith that has caught her eye.
Both Mari and Miranda live outside the Christian fold, and they approach it from opposite directions. Mari moves from the non-human, natural environment, Miranda from a detached, urban, academic world. Still, both find themselves intrigued by the light in the center circle. Mari has the easier approach: Yeshua introduces himself by saving her life, and she joins him as a friend. But Miranda has been scarred by her Christian experience; she mistrusts the church and its agendas. As a professor, she sees all religions as examples of the human yearning toward the divine. Truth claims don’t enter the picture. She simply records what she observes, without making judgments. Her methods are catlike: she steps cautiously toward anything new, not committing herself, poised to slip back into the shadows if conflict threatens.
I knew a number of women like Miranda in my years apart from the church. Their worlds were full and rich, but they didn’t screen their experiences through a Christian worldview. Yet they were sometimes attracted by a light shining out from this tradition many of them had left behind.
. . . maybe the light shone through a person
a man like Elmus
or as comfort in the midst of evil
perhaps through the One’s presence in some crisis of their own
or simply in prayer and meditation.
But today we live in a world where it’s increasingly difficult to say, “I believe.” The language is lost. What does it mean to believe? Who are we believing in? People who live in the secular world can’t respond to most Christian overtures–because they don’t understand the words anymore. God-talk is becoming literal non-sense to those outside the churches.
People like Miranda are who they are, just as cats are cats. Each responds to life according to their gifts . . . but for some reason those inside and outside the churches are drawing further apart.
Perhaps we might learn from the effort, and love, we put into cross-species communication with our cats (and dogs, gerbils, birds, and ferrets) . . . and look at the incomprehensible human beings around us as if they concealed inner selves as delightful, unique, and full of surprises as a cat’s. It’s not really such a stretch.
I happen to find the lives of alienated Christians intriguing, perhaps because I’ve been there myself. And if the polls are right, their numbers are growing. Their honesty is often fierce, like their determination never to be taken in again by faux-Christianity and self-serving lies. Sadly we don’t have to look far to find the lurking predators they’re avoiding. And that’s what This Madness of the Heart is about.
Miranda peers into the light of Christian faith–but she looks from a place apart. Her own experiences haven’t shown Christianity to be that promised “light to the gentiles.” So she watches, examines, records, and considers. In the meantime, I feel privileged to narrate her journey.
Bringing C. L. Francisco and Blair Yeatts Together
I imagine two women walking a little apart in an autumn wood where filtered sunlight hangs in the air like rainbows cast by stained glass windows. They might be sisters, although separated by many years: one has dark hair with ruddy highlights, while the elder’s hair shines silver in the shifting light. Both are tall, with the easy gait of serious walkers, loose denim skirts swirling around their legs as they stroll. Each gazes at the wood intently, reaching out to touch the trees . . . a beech here, an oak there . . . eyes shining with pleasure. The same surety of a benevolent Creator’s love undergirds both, rising up through the fallen leaves like an unfailing spring. But there they part ways.
The younger woman knows herself wounded and angry, torn from her roots, unable and unwilling to return to them. Life for her is a trackless horizon, where she must make her own way among a maze of confusing choices,
. . . a life rent by the emptiness of years alone, of stubborn search and dead-end roads, a renegade among the certain, a voiceless stranger in the garrulous crowds.
The older woman has made her peace with that old pain, accepted the paradoxes, and learned compassion for herself and the ghosts of her past. Her eyes dwell on the infinity of light surrounding her. She falls back into shadow only rarely, and when she does, she knows the light holds her still.
Yeshua’s Cats speak with the voice of the older woman. The Miranda Lamden Mysteries live in the younger woman’s world, overlaid with the hindsight of the elder. But they are both the creation of a single heart. I hope this post may help you bring them together. I’ll also say that, with the exception of a few creative details necessary to establishing a pen name, all Blair Yeatts’ memories and thoughts shared in posted interviews are C. L. Francisco’s own, although offered from the perspective of that younger self.
Blair Yeatts’ This Madness of the Heart was my first book, apart from a mammoth PhD dissertation and an unpublished memoir. I finished the original draft almost 20 years ago, as a way of venting my hurt and anger at the dirty tricks and character assassinations in the fundamentalist takeover of a conservative protestant denomination. As often happens in revolutions, a zealous minority overwhelmed a more moderate and less vocal majority, and then ruthlessly silenced those who disagreed with them. This previously loose-knit denomination had a cherished history of settling doctrinal disagreements locally: churches had simply split, becoming the 1st, 2nd, etc., churches in a given town. Dissent was in their blood, like the freedom of the individual believer. But this ultra-conservative minority targeted the whole assembly of churches in an iron-fisted power grab.
Once the coup was accomplished, dissidents had two choices: either bow to the doctrines of the new power elite, or leave the church. The denomination of my youth was swept away in a furor of self-righteous certainty. Pastors, professors, and church leaders were driven out. Hearts and lives were broken. Doctrine was narrowed, warped, and set in stone. Callings scorned and contracts withdrawn, women clergy left to find ways to minister among people with a wider view of God’s mercy. A few powerful men now controlled the hearts and minds of the denomination’s mostly oblivious members. There was nothing I could do . . . so I wrote a book.
Unfortunately, trying to read Madness’ original draft felt much like Harry Potter opening the screaming book in the Hogwarts’ library: the anger I’d poured into it flamed from its pages. I realized this at the time, and set it aside—for almost twenty years—until I could return and treat it as a mere story. Then I wrote most of the anger out, leaving a fast-paced tale about a slimy charlatan with an honorary divinity degree in a haunted hollow in Appalachia. The story is admittedly over the top . . . vengeful ghosts don’t play feature roles in most grifters’ lives. But where evil thrives, its deadliest mass tends to hide beneath the surface . . . often masquerading as holiness.
I found myself alienated from the Christian faith during two periods in my life: first for the decade spanning college and my early twenties; second, beginning with the fundamentalist takeover and stretching across another 10-15 years. I still find myself at odds with much of the organized Church. I wrote The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat as an expression of my own faith in a Jesus of Nazareth who speaks with love and compassion, untouched by the legalism he challenged. A cat’s voice seemed appropriate for the task. The first book has now multiplied into four, with a fifth on the way.
The Miranda Lamden Mysteries have roots in those secular years, as well as in my lifelong love of mysteries, starting with Nancy Drew and most recently Charles Todd. They are not Christian mysteries. Neither are they “cozies” (emerging from a cozy mystery feels to me like struggling out of wad of cotton batting back into the realities of life). Ugly or not, if a thing is part of human experience, it’s fit to write, and read, about. Violence is part of life, and so are pain and tragedy; they belong in novels, and you will find moderate amounts in mine. But I also write about what I call “spirit” or “faith” or “redemption”—pick whichever word you like: without it the unremitting darkness of despair grinds human beings into something subhuman.
I write mysteries I’d like to read: novels of danger and intrigue, with depths of love and pain, where characters wrestle with despair and disaster, and fight their way through to the light. They surmount capricious hazards without toxic overloads of violence or sex. Spirituality and questions of meaning drive both cast and plot. I don’t strive for great literature, but for a read an intelligent mystery-lover would welcome at the end of a long day—and have difficulty putting down. I don’t guarantee happy endings, but I never end a book with despair and shattering loss of meaning . . . endings may be bittersweet, but they’re always suffused with hope.
If you’re a Blair Yeatts reader, would you like Yeshua’s Cats? If you’re a Yeshua’s Cats reader, would you like the Miranda Lamden Mysteries? Here’s my take.
Yeshua’s Cats are intended for a Christian audience, although reviewers have repeatedly assured readers that their appeal is much broader. The two most recent books, The Cats of Rekem, and Cat Born to the Purple, have both been chosen for Indie Reader’s “Best of” new book list for 2015 and 2016 respectively. But if you’re a devout atheist, or not at all spiritually inclined, I suspect you wouldn’t like them. If you’re a cat-lover you might leap all other boundaries and enjoy them anyway.
The Miranda Lamden Mysteries are full of spiritual matters of one sort and another, since Miranda is a professor of religion and an expert on paranormal phenomena . . . they’re for spiritually curious readers. But if you’re a conservative Christian who thinks preachers can do no wrong, you won’t like the first book. If you believe that you’re in possession of the only truth, and don’t care to consider anyone else’s perspective, you won’t like any of the books in the series. Like Miranda, I’ve spent much of my life in institutions of higher learning, and I’ve seen too many people convinced of the unassailable rightness of their own opinions, mistaking the echoes of their own thoughts for the voice of God. That way lies the Inquisition.
Goya, “Scene from the Inquisition”
So why did I reverse direction and decide to claim these mysteries as my own? I think the presidential election made my choice for me: the tragedy of my denomination is now replaying on the national stage, and my mysteries have become appallingly relevant. In Miranda’s words, from This Madness of the Heart:
How had we stood by and let such a man amass so much power? Why were the good people of the town not fleeing the contamination of his spirit? How could they not sense the heart of hate beneath his harangues? Any amount of violence might erupt from the bloodlust JJ was whipping up among God’s elect. Religion! Why did the search for ultimate love so often end in hate?
“What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
I realize that choosing a side in a divisive political—and religious—controversy may alienate me from some of my readers. I hope not. But for me this has become a matter of conscience, and keeping faith with myself . . . as well as with my faith.
Freedom of conscience has always been our privilege in America, but it didn’t come free: it was bought with the lives of people desperate for liberty, and its defense lies in our hands today. I pray we will have the strength and integrity to preserve the freedom our founders entrusted to us.
Before discussing the Murex dye, I’m delighted to announce the 3rd of the 3 reviews received for Cat Born to the Purple: another 5 stars ★★★★★ — this time from Self-Publishing Review! Go here to read the entire review.
Empress Theodora in royal purple, 6th C
The term “royal purple” originated in the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East, particularly during the days of the Roman Empire, when the wearing of a specific color–royal purple–was a privilege restricted to the aristocracy, if not the emperor alone. Royal purple was not the color we think of today when we speak of purple. Apparently it was an almost black violet-red color, said to resemble the color of heart’s blood/clots of heart’s blood. The word “purple” in Greco-Roman times, however, was used to refer to a whole range of colors, from pale blue to red to violet to the true royal purple. Deciding which of these many colors was intended in a given passage can be difficult.
But historians agree that the priceless near-black “royal purple” dye was made only from a gland of the Murex trunculus (more recently called Hexaplex trunculus) sea snail. Depending on the strength of the dye, the time submerged, the dye process, and the type of fabric dyed, the Murex dye could also yield colors ranging from pale shades of blue, green, pink, and violet, as well as the deeper tones. Other varieties of the Murex, particularly brandaris, were also used for dyes, but were considered inferior.
At present a whole separate debate is ongoing among Jewish traditionalists about whether the blue (tekhelet) tassels required by the Torah on the corners of Jewish garments should be dyed using Murex trunculus. Recent archaeological discoveries of fabric remnants from Israel’s biblical period indicate that the original tekhelet dye was probably made from one of the Murex family, if not the trunculus, but since the source of the original tekhelet has been uncertain for so long, white has become the preferred color for these tassels. Ruscillo’s research (see below) found that immersing wool very briefly in a fresh, unheated Murex dye bath resulted in very attractive blues of varying intensity.
Tekhelet?
The Murex trunculus sea snail lives in the sublittoral waters of most of the Mediterranean’s coastal areas. The sublittoral zone refers to the area of relatively shallow water permanently covered by seawater that is immediately beyond the intertidal zone (the area between the high and low tidal marks, where the shore is above water at some point in the tidal cycle). The Murex must be constantly submerged to survive, but it prefers shallow water, usually no more than 20 meters deep, in sheltered coves or lagoons. Where the water is calm and protected from waves the Murex may be found at slightly greater depths. It prefers mixed sand and rocky bottoms.
Sublittoral ocean zone
The Murex feeds in two different ways: scavenging and predation. When there isn’t enough dead material in the water, it preys on other sea snails, mussels, barnacles, hermit crabs, etc., by drilling holes and/or chipping their shells and feeding on the living flesh through the holes. Not an appealing creature, as predators go.
Murex spawning
The ancients didn’t dive for the purple snails during the months between early spring and the beginning of July, because that was (and is) the Murex spawning season. Murex trunculus was harvested from the Dog Star’s first rising in the dawn sky (early July) through the winter months.
Phoenician merchants
Since the only records we have describing the collecting and processing of “purples” are the writings of Roman essayists like Pliny and Vitruvius (whose reports were often more imaginative than accurate), archaeologists have had difficulty piecing together the details of the royal purple industry. Additionally, the Phoenicians–whose Murex dyes were most highly valued in early Roman times–guarded their dyeing secrets carefully. Only in the early 20th century did scientists begin to experiment with Hexaplex trunculus to try to reproduce the ancient dyeing techniques.
Artist’s Reconstruction of Tyre before Alexander’s conquest
Deborah Ruscillo’s experiment, “Reconstructing Murex Royal Purple and Biblical Blue in the Aegean,” is by far the cleverest, and most innovative approach to this problem that I could find. By grossly simplifying her methodology, I might summarize it like this: locate an ancient Murex dyeing site where the Hexaplex trunculus is still thriving, and duplicate the processes suggested by archeological evidence and ancient texts, using tools as close to the originals as possible; where ancient wisdom fails, experiment with reasonable alternatives.
Ruscillo’s baited pot & basket
Most of Cat Born to the Purple‘s technical details of Murex dyeing came from Ruscillo’s work. For instance:
Neither divers nor baited baskets/pots alone could have caught enough purples to supply a dyeing workshop of any size; they must have both been used together.
Adding urine makes the color more vibrant, although the Murex dye is permanent without additives
Boiling the dye mixture ruins the dye
Three days is the ideal amount of time for steeping fabric in the dye
The stench of the Murex, swarming wasps, biting flies, and hatching larvae make the dyers’ lives a misery
Dye on hands and nails takes roughly 6 weeks to disappear
Wool is the only fiber that absorbs the dye to create a deep, dark color
Neither the stink nor the color is reduced by washing; perfume would have been necessary to disguise the smell, even after washing and long periods of airing.
Perhaps her most amusing and understated remark was, “Pliny never made dye himself.”
photo Kirsten Benkendorff
The dye comes from the hypobranchial gland of the Hexaplex trunculus, which secretes mucus for its mantle. The gland itself is pale, and must be cut out of a living snail (left), since the gland shrivels and dries shortly after death.
photo by kuvmamhlubhmoo
When the live gland is pierced and exposed to air, the mucus rapidly changes from clear to yellow to yellowish green, green, and violet. The photos to the right show a fresh live trunculus gland removed. The gland itself is yellowish, but the liquid is clear.
The photos below show a sequence from Pourpre filmed by pygmeejones. The timing and color may not be exact, since the snail in the sequence appears to be recently dead or the gland already ruptured in opening the shell, based on the green color of the mucus when the gland is first pierced.
Exposing gland
Initial puncture
1 min after puncture
2 min after puncture
20 minutes
45 minutes
Archaeologists have discovered what appear to be holding tanks for snails along the Phoenician coast, where Murex could have been kept alive in seawater until enough snails had accumulated to brew the dye. Since thousands of Murex trunculus would have been needed to dye just one cloak to the deep blackish color of the royal purple–and twice as many if Murex brandaris snails were used–there would have been a definite need for such tanks.
Like most Mediterranean cultures, Phoenicians trafficked in slaves, and may have made a habit of kidnapping unwary women and children in their ports of call. The citizens of Sepphoris rounded up by the Romans after the brief rebellion following Herod the Great’s death were sold to Phoenician slavers in Acco. No doubt because of the extreme unpleasantness of the tasks involved, slaves provided most of the labor in the Phoenician Murex dye industry.
The stench of the opened snails permeated the area of the dye workshops and beyond. Contemporary accounts described Tyre and Sidon as attractive cities, but stinking of the Murex dye. In almost every case where archaeologists have found the huge piles of broken Murex shells that identify a likely dye site, the piles have been well outside the cities.
Piles of crushed Murex shells
Finally, Ruscillo asks one question that I never saw raised anywhere else: was ancient fleece stained with Murex dye before before it was woven (dyed in the wool), or was the whole cloth dyed after the fabric was completed? Her experiment showed that dying the unwoven fleece left a powdery residue of purple dye in the wool that filtered out and left stains on workers and work areas. The residue made an extra post-dye washing essential before the wool could be spun and woven, which would have required extra time and labor. Dyeing already woven fabric left no such residue, and also eliminated the problem of different dye lots of thread creating an unevenly-colored weaving.
For more details, imaginative and historical, read Cat Born to the Purple!
“Grace dances . . . dance, all of you!”
—The Acts of John
Heresy vs orthodoxy is the stuff that breeds wars, and Church history is full of it. Without getting into a discussion of Church councils and the creation of the Christian canon, I’d like to look at a 2nd C gnostic gospel that was pronounced heretical—and see what it might say to us today.
St Ignatius of Antioch, Enemy of Docetism
The Acts of John was condemned by Church fathers as docetic (docetism is the belief that Jesus’ humanity and physical body were an illusion). To modern eyes John can be a peculiar book, full of bizarre notions and unappealing ideas—particularly its contention that the spirit of Christ abandoned the man Jesus to suffer on the cross alone, while the divine essence stood apart, untouched by pain.
But if you can set that notion aside, The Acts of John offers a number of intriguing thoughts. Perhaps most familiar is a lovely passage known as “The Circle Dance of the Cross,” in which, the night before his death, Jesus invites all his disciples to form a circle and dance around him. Those of you who have read Yeshua’s Cat may recognize the last four lines of the quote below as part of Yeshua’s conversation with his mother before he left Nazareth for the last time.
Here is an edited version of the original text:
[Jesus] stood in the circle’s center and said, “Answer ‘Amen’ to everything I say.” Then he began to sing a hymn, saying: “Glory be to you, Father.” And we, moving around him in a ring, answered him: “Amen.” “We praise you, O Father; we give thanks to you, O Light where darkness cannot dwell.” “Amen.” “I would be saved, and I would save.” “Amen.” “I would be freed, and I would free.” “Amen.” “I would be wounded, and I would wound.” “Amen.” “I would be born, and I would give birth.” “Amen.” “I would eat, and I would be eaten.” “Amen.” “I would hear, and I would be heard.” “Amen.” “I would be thought of, being wholly thought.” “Amen.” “I would be washed, and I would wash.” “Amen.” “Grace dances. I would pipe; dance, all of you.” “Amen.” “I would mourn: lament, all of you.” “Amen . . .” “The Whole on high takes part in our dancing.” “Amen.” “Whoever does not dance cannot understand what is coming to pass.” “Amen.” “I would flee, and I would stay.” “Amen.” “I would adorn, and I would be adorned.” “Amen.” “I would be united, and I would unite.” “Amen . . .” “A lamp am I to you who behold me.” “Amen.” “A mirror am I to you who perceive me.” “Amen.” “A door am I to you who knock at me.” “Amen.” “A way am I to you a wanderer . . . “
Picasso, “Dance of Youth”
Christian mystics down through the centuries have used the metaphor of dance to describe the human relationship to God, and I found John’s Circle Dance delightful.
Well, I mused, if The Acts of John can include the Circle Dance, what else might I find? So I examined the book more closely. Another idea present throughout the book is that Jesus appeared in many different guises while he walked the earth. I must admit that John’s list allows for a few more possibilities than the canonical gospels: a child, a young handsome man, a youth just bearding, a middle-aged balding man, a small ugly man, a huge heavenly man, a being of whiteness and light, a man with a soft yielding body, a man whose body was hard as stone, a body firm to the touch, and a body with no physical solidity at all. John describes the significance of these guises with the words, “. . . his great grace, his unity that had many faces . . . “
Those words reminded me of recent critics in the search for the historical Jesus who point out that people of every age have tried to mold Jesus into their own ideal of who he should be—thus hopelessly muddying the waters for anyone trying to discern the true historical person.
But here’s my thought: what if Jesus’ message right from the beginning was intended to be a message for all ages and all people? What if his message always had access points that could lead people along diverse paths to the One through him? What if he included embryonic possibilities in his teaching that could support every positive interpretation ever put on his original message? Everything from human rights, the light within, and justice—to caring for the environment and liberation theology? What if most Christian heresies, while diverging from the mainstream, have a unique glimmer of this truth?
Unfortunately, we as humans too often seize on glimmers of truth as if they were the final and complete word of God rather than single facets. Just so the Church has long been at fault for trying to narrow Jesus’ message to fit their limited understanding, enclosing it within a box made to their order. In the hands of the Church, too often the multifaceted diamond of Jesus’ message has been transformed into a stony concretion in crumbling stone—frozen and trapped beneath masses of accumulated tradition.
“His unity that had many faces . . .” is one insight from The Acts of John that we might wish to heed. What if one of Jesus’ primary goals—long obscured by human ignorance—was to bring healing to the shattered images of the One, fragmented for so long among human cultures? What if he offered freedom, and the brilliant unity of God’s countenance, to all people—and we have warped them instead into shadow and condemnation?
Last year after publishing The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, I wrote an additional piece of the story that I sent out in my Christmas newsletter. Here it is again, for the first time in a public posting.
For those of you who have the paperback edition of TGATYC, this new piece would be inserted at the top of page 124, just after “. . . filled with laughter.” For those of you with the Kindle edition, it’s in Chapter 15, Magdala, just after Mari muses about the nature of the festival of lights, and before Yeshua starts speaking on the last night of the feast.
“Night Sky Christmas,” C. L. Francisco
One night after everyone had gone to bed I finally asked him. “Are your people celebrating the return of the sun’s warmth when they celebrate their festival of lights, son of Earth?”
“Yes and no, little mother,” he replied, turning his head and smiling as he opened his eyes. “We measure the years by the seasons of the moon, not by the sun’s path, so none of our holy days takes note of the sun’s movement, not even this one. No, this week we rejoice in events almost 200 years past, when a great man named Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem from the pollution of a pagan altar put there by foreign conquerors. Our many lamps call us to remember that the One’s light can dispel even the deepest darkness.”
He rose to his feet and reached out his arm in invitation, so I leapt to his shoulder, wrapping my tail around his neck. Together we walked out under the winter sky and stood on the hill, watching the stars touch the great sea with their cold fire.
“Yet, little leopard,” he continued as if he had never paused, “you are right when you wonder if we are also welcoming the sun’s return. Just as stars grow brighter in the long nights, each light that burns in winter’s darkness whispers of that hope. Together with all Earth’s children, our hearts grow full when we see the sun begin its long journey back to the heights of heaven. This too reminds us of the One’s faithfulness.”
I curled around his neck more closely to dispel the night’s chill, but I said nothing. I only purred with pleasure at his closeness. I sensed that words still lay unspoken in his heart.
“Sweet Mari, my mother told me that I was born on a night like this, when the stars danced in a black sky, and the breath of humans and beasts alike clouded vision with their brief mist. Joy filled the night and sang in the heavens at the wonder of my coming into the world. All things were made new under that sky, she said.”
I rubbed my whiskers against his cheek, and he continued.
“I can almost hear the heavens singing on such nights. The One’s face shimmers behind the host of stars like a distant oasis in the heat of a desert’s summer day. And yet the chill of a winter night and the searing heat of the desert’s noon both lie quiet in the hollow of his hand.
In a A Cat Out of Egypt, Miw, the Egyptian temple cat who narrates the story, is in danger of becoming a cat mummy–and not as a result of a natural death. Several readers have asked whether such a thing could have been based in reality. This week’s blog is my answer.
How were cat mummies created in ancient Egypt? What significance did they have? What kind of process led to the creation of the vast cat cemeteries that archaeologists have discovered among Egyptian ruins? As with most historical questions, the answers are complex.
Cat mummy mask 20 BC,
McClung Museum
Cat Mummies as Votive Offerings
Cat mummies discovered in early excavations at Bubastis were probably the first to be seen by Western explorers/archaeologists, but the cat cemetery unearthed at Beni Hasan (a site roughly 100 miles south of Cairo and known for its beautiful tombs), was carefully described by a Western observer. In 1888, near the rock-cut temple dedicated to the lion goddess Pakhet, a huge cat cemetery was discovered. A lengthy description of the discovery follows, as recorded by British professor W. M Conway:
A common cat mummy
An Egyptian fellah from a neighboring village . . . dug a hole, somewhere in the level floor of the desert, and struck–cats! Not one or two, here and there, but dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a stratum thicker than most coal seams, ten to twenty cats deep, mummy squeezed against mummy tight as herrings in a barrel . . . A systematic exploration of the seam was undertaken. The surface sand was stripped off and the cats laid bare. All sorts and conditions of them appeared–the commoner sort caked together in black lumps, out of which here a grinning face, there a furry paw, there a backbone or row of ribs of some ancient puss, stood prominently forth. The better cats and kittens appeared in astonishing numbers, with all their wrappings as fresh as if they had been put into the ground a week, and not 30 centuries, before. Now and again an elaborately plaited mummy turned up; still more rarely one with a gilded face . . . only three cat statues have as yet been found. Two are small bronze figures. The third is a life-size bronze, a hollow casting, inside which the actual cat was buried . . . The plundering of the site was a sight to see, but one had to stand well to windward. All of the village children came and provided themselves with the most attractive mummies they could find. These they took down to the river to sell for the smallest coin . . . The path became strewn with mummy cloth and bits of cats’ skulls and bones and fur in horrid profusion, and the wind blew the fragments about and carried the stink afar . . . .
But most of the Egyptian cat mummies discovered in this and other such cemeteries in the late 19th century–nineteen tons of them–were bought in bulk and shipped to Europe to be sold at auction as fertilizer.
Who were these cats, and where did they come from? How did such huge numbers come to be packed into common graves–and sometimes even burned? Contemporary scholars agree that these cemeteries, always found in the immediate area of a temple dedicated to one of Egypt’s feline goddesses (such as Pahket at Beni Hasan, Bast at Bubastis, and numerous other sites as well), were filled with the mummies of cats purchased by pilgrims and given as votive gifts to the goddess. They had to be put somewhere.
Temple at Beni Hasan
The cats discovered inside these mummy wrappings were the ancestors of today’s Egyptian Mau cats. Some are clearly identifiable as one of the two wildcat sub-species thought to have interbred to eventually produce Egypt’s domestic cats: the jungle cat, Felis chaus, and the African wild cat, Felis silvestris libyca.
African wild cat
Jungle cat
What is a votive gift? We don’t see them much in Western Christianity today. The candles bought and lit alongside the altars in some churches are as close as most of us ever come to this ancient practice. The word “votive” here refers to something given or dedicated as an expression of a wish or desire. In Roman Egypt (which is when ACOOE takes place) the people believed that if they bought a mummified cat and presented it to the temple of a goddess like Bast/Bastet, or Pakhet, the cat’s spirit would join the goddess in the afterlife, where it would continually urge her to bless the giver and answer their prayer, whatever it might be. Of course millions of other animal mummies were given in the same way to their respective gods–snakes, fish, mice, gazelles, ibis, crocodiles, sheep, cattle, falcons, dogs, and even beetles.
Falcon
Gazelle
Ram
Ibis
Snakes in an ibis mummy
Recent research has shown that the popularity of votive mummies increased dramatically after 1000 BCE, when temples’ strict formality relaxed, and common people began to express their own personal piety. As the demand for votive mummies increased, priestly corruption and greed set in, resulting in “mummies” containing no animal at all, only a few bones, or parts of common animals substituted for the bodies of rare ones. In time, some animals came to be bred solely for the mummy trade.
X-ray of kitten mummy inside votive cat figure
Particularly among the cat mummies from Bubastis, archaeologists have discovered a large proportion of young kittens, strangled or with broken necks, placed in adult-size wrappings. Cat remains from Bubastis that were apparently burned rather than mummified are still a mystery. (One tidbit of feline tradition in A Cat Out of Egypt explains such a fictional burning at Leontopolis).
As the description of Beni Hasan makes clear, the mummies in these cemeteries ranged from the ornate and artistically sophisticated to the very simple and carelessly made. The odor described at Beni Hasan certainly would have come from the less carefully-made mummies. Animals mummified as carefully as wealthy humans would have had little or no such odor. (In A Cat Out of Egypt, reference is made to the slip-shod embalming methods used in the production of some votive mummies)
Wood sarcophagus
Wood sarcophagus
Bronze sarcophagus
Wood sarcophagus
A number of the mummies found in Egypt’s cat cemeteries were more carefully constructed. Many were beautifully painted and expensively wrapped. Some were enclosed in wooden caskets, often shaped as cats. Others were placed inside hollow-cast bronze cat figures. With these more complex figures we may be straying into the category of household pets embalmed and presented to the temple as votive offerings by their owners after death, although the presence of kitten mummies in some of these bronze figures (see above) may indicate their origin in the cat mummy trade. So in conclusion, we need to examine the different relationships that existed between cats and humans in early Roman Egypt, and how cat burials reflected those relationships.
Cats and their Egyptian Humans
Two early Greek historians are often quoted in discussions of ancient Egyptian cats: Herodotus (484-425 BCE) and Diodorus Siculus (1st C BCE), although their accounts should probably be approached with some caution. For instance, Herodotus states that it was the established habit of Egyptian cats to run into burning buildings; clearly his reports were not entirely accurate. Similar questions remain in his report of the battle of Pelusium, which, according to Herodotus, the Egyptians conceded to the Persians rather than risk killing the animals the Persians had staked out in their front ranks. How can the contradiction between the respect for ancient cats that both men reported, and the evidence of large-scale cat slaughter in the votive mummy industry be resolved?
Editorial cartoon based on the Battle of Pelusium
Perhaps this discrepancy can be explained by suggesting a kind of class distinction among Egyptian cats, at least as far as humans perceived them. The wild or feral cats who lived on the fringes of society would have been lowest in this order, little different from any other wild or domestic animal routinely hunted or raised for food, and probably bred for use in mummies. Second would have been the domestic cats kept as pets and mousers and generally respected as members of a species ennobled by the gods. Third were the sacred cats, whose status might have been determined either by specific markings–as in the case of the Apis bulls–or by their temple lineage. These cats were not worshiped, but held as sacred because in some way they were embodiments of the goddess. However they were identified, it was probably these cats who were so highly respected in Egypt that, according to Diodorus, a visiting Roman was lynched after accidentally killing a cat. Questions remain as to whether temple priests were permitted to kill cats considered to be sacred. Whatever the truth may be, Weguelin’s “Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat” (below) is likely to be a romantic over-statement.
John Reinhard Weguelin, “The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat,” 1886“Little Mewer’s” sarcophagus
We do know that cats were treasured pets among the ancient Egyptians, and were frequently depicted in their owners’ tombs, as well as being buried with them. They were grieved by their humans as family members when they died. Perhaps the best known of all Egyptian pet cats is Tai Miuwette, “Little Mewer,” the cat beloved of crown prince Thutmose, brother of Akhenaten, whose stone sarcophagus has come down to us. We also know that sometimes these treasured pets were brought to the temples to be embalmed, and sometimes left as votive offerings–but only after natural deaths following long and pampered lives.
Grace . . .
