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THE SIBYL'S CAVE
Here is how Antoine de la Sale in his, "Queen Sibyl's Paradise", describes the entrance of the cave as it is presented before his eyes on May 13, 1420 during his ascension to the Mount Sibilla:
"...And so, following the winding trail which leads up to the mountain peak, in front of the rock that they call the crown of the mount where the entrance of the cave lies...to the right is the entrance, small, of the shape of a shield, narrowed on top, larger at the base. To the front there is a rock, and those who wants to venture inside must lower themselves to the ground and proceed sliding, feet first, until finding a tiny, squared room to the right of the ingress, where stone-carved seats are seen all around. It measures between eight by ten foot in length, height, and width; there is a circular opening as wide as the head of a man, which let in only a faint light, due to the thickness of the mountain. Coming out of this room, those who wants to continue must go back to their right; however it is necessary to descend feet ahead, for there is no other way to move inside this tiny, little, and steep cave..."
The direct experience of the French writer ends here, even though he reports how some young fellows from Montemonaco, venturing into the tunnel to the right of the first room, arrived to a corridor swept by a very strong wind. Frightened by the force of the elements, they made a quick return to the surface.
Two German gentlemen, escorted by priest Antonio Fumato, succeeded – according to La Sale – in passing through the wind-swept tunnel, and crossed the bridge over the abyss, passed the two blazing-eyed dragons, until reaching the "...Metal doors that slam day and night...", that is, the true entrance of the Sibyl's underground Kingdom.
Although Pope Gregorio XI (but for some philologists should be Urbano VI), on about 1377, ordered to have the access of the Mount Sibilla's crown destroyed, so to keep people from reaching the cave, and had the very entrance filled up (with stones or boulders?), La Sale testifies that at the time of his ascension (1420) the opening was "cleared" and it was possible to enter at least into the first room.
Moreover, he observed and noted symbols and words carved into the stone, and seemed to have recognized a German and an English names among those travelers who had been there before him.
In more recent times other scholars and Folklore enthusiasts have visited Mount Sibilla, in the hope to find concrete evidence to the stories narrated by La Sale. All of them were unsuccessful.
On October 1889 G. Miliani ascends Mount Sibilla from Bolognola. He notes all the details and local traditions; among them, the legend that had Noah's great-grandsons coming to the European continent, settling in Sicily but, also, around Mount Sibilla. The villagers of the nearby Isola S.Biagio, therefore, could be the direct descendants of the biblical Patriarch.
Miliani also writes that the top of the Crown was the favorite spot for witches who, through subterranean passages, used to go down to Foce to dance with the young men of the village.
At the time of Miliani's ascension the cave looked as follows:
"...It has always been easy to locate the cave, for it is right below the crest, to the left side of the trekker; currently, even withouth looking for it, it is indicated by a mound of stones that were extracted in order to cut a new entrance...[The cave] consists in a small antrum, only three meters long, and only at its center tall enough to allow standing. The entrance is so low and narrow that is advisable to stay on your four, and advance backward. Above this little, noble entrance there are graffiti or carved words, barely intelligible and strange, to which the legend attributes arcane meanings..."
According to Miliani, and against the predominant philology, the Sibyl's Cave was known way before Andrea de Barberino's poem "Il Guerin Meschino", since
"...Ptoleny mentions it, saying that in the Apennines there is a large and horrible antrum which is vulgarly called the Sibyl's Cave, upon which many things are told..."
Among those stories, the one that has the entrance obstructed to keep wizards and witches from coming out. This, we can find in almost all legends referring to the cave in the following centuries; but to the observer – albeit not enthusiastic from the experience – doesn't go unnoticed the possibility that:
"...it wouldn't be impossible reckoning that at the bottom of the small cave as it is today, there really was a tunnel in the past, which could have led to a system of caverns of various extension. The soil that is now at the floor of the cave has been brought in or, at least, it bears signs of having been deeply removed..."
On that same year (1889), at the end of August, a party of 45 climbers from CAI [Italian Alpines Center] ascend to Mount Sibilla for the XXI Congress of Italian Mountaineers.
A description of the cave has been published into the CAI's R.M., Issue 9, September 1889:
"...With regards to the famous Fairies' Cave, it suffices to say that it is a simple cave of few meters in diameter, dug in the South-Eastern side of the mountain. Its celebrity is due to the legends which were created upon the inscriptions still visible in some parts of the walls...which allegedly date back to the XV century, and to which no special significance can be attributed..."
The article goes on to describe the plaque that the Ascoli Piceno section of CAI placed at the entrance of the cave after opening it. Such label was still there in 1906, but in 1914 is not mentioned anymore.
In the "Cronaca Alpina" of 1900 a diary of an unknown couple is published: on August 31, they ascended Mount Sibilla, and this is their description of the cave:
"...I observed, at the entrance of the cave, where nothing else would capture the visitor's attention, carved certain, very ancient and unintelligible letters, below which stands the plaque that the Ascoli Piceno section of CAI placed on September of '89..."
Countess Grace of Campello della Spina ascends the Sibilla in 1906, registering the following in her diary:
"...This mountain, that few have ascended, is by no means less interesting than [Mount] Vettore...we struggled to find the famous Sibyl's Cave, of which both Marche and Umbria regions speak profusely. Within the cave, on a marble slate, can be read this inscription..."
The Countess reports literally the text of the plaque that Ascoli Piceno's CAI placed in 1889.
The Storia Illustrata magazine presents Domenico Falzetti as the "First Italian scholar who, in 1929, has found a shaft in the mountain, although he could not enter it."
Falzetti is the author of a volume about the digging in the Sibyl's Cave, and one about the legends of the Queen Sibyl; he dedicated many years of his life to the study of the cave and its legendary origins, that some philologists connect with Tannhauser's descent into the Germanic Venusberger.
In the foreword to Falzetti's novel "Alla ricerca della dea d'amore nella grotta della Sibilla di Norcia" [The Quest for the Goddess of Love inside the Sibyl's Cave in Norcia], his daughter Giulia quotes a sentence from the author, according to whom "...the Italian legend is at least two centuries older than the German version of the Tannhauser!".
"...Since 1953 – continues Giulia Falzetti – the year in which twenty people led by the Superintendent of the Antiquities of Marche region attemped to remove the debris that blocked the mysterious cave's entrance (A Henry II's Tornese coin, a spur, and a knife were found six meters under the excavation point) nothing more has been done to unravel the mystery of the legendary kingdom of the sorceress...and the enigma is still unsolved..."
From the above accounts we can see how, from the middle of the XX century to the 60s, the access to the cave was blocked by slides or rocky debris on at least two occasions (the last of which occurred in the 60s).
In the first years of 2000, according to the reports we have collected from some town folks in Montemonaco, members of the local govern had dropped explosives inside the cave on the attempt to open it; in fact they obtained the opposite effect, that is, the disastrous scenario that was presented to us during our expedition.
The "cave" appeared as a depression or hole, ten meters in length and about four in width, where boulders and rocks hindered any entrance that could have been visible otherwise. To the right of the crater we noticed a small niche (completely shut by rocks) with a wood plank stuck into it.
That was perhaps the entrance resembling an upside-down shield described by La Sale but, at present, there is no way to confirm that.
Likewise, it is hard to establish whether the rocks clogging the entrance had fallen naturally or in consequence of the explosives' blasts. Only the use of digital surveying instruments (i.e. Geo Radar) could shed some light upon the matter.
On the other hand, we believe that there are other entrances leading into the deep recesses of the Mount Sibilla; legends speak of at least four of them: the Devil's Cave, the Black Cave, the Cave of Fear, and the Forest of Meta above the Tenna Springs.
According to La Sale, the Kingdom of the Fairies had been occluded forever to mortal eyes well before the French author's visit to the Sibillini Mountains. In his book, La Sale quotes the prophetic words of Queen Sibyl:
"...'Furthermore' said the Queen [to the knight], 'for we will remain in the conditions in which you now see us as long as this century's end'..."
And, according to La Sale, it was already the second half of the XIV century when the knight had descended into the enchanted reign of the Sibyl. At the turn of the century, then (1400), the Fairies Kingdom would have to be changed, vanished, or forbidden to our earthly dimension.
If we analyze the symbolical meaning of the Queen's prophecy, we could find a link with certain Ancient Astronomy's and "Realistic Folklore" 's theories, claiming that recurring phenomena are interpreted through different historical periods using the cultural and symbolical instruments available at each time.
So it is that, for instance, the demons and monsters of the Middle Ages become Aliens and Genetically Altered Mutants in our epoch. The same goes with fairies and witches, wizards, necromancers, and underground realms.
The very existence of a Chthonian world, inaccessible to most people, is reported since prehistoric times everywhere in the world, and the present Era has experienced a wavy trend that has even touched upon orthodox science (e.g. The Theory of the Hollow Earth and The Geocosmic Theory suggested, among others, by Halley, Lowell, Abelkader, etc).
Whether or not the dimensional portal into the Fairies Kingdom had been sealed from within, rather than by the confusing and goofy machinations of man, the mysterious charm of the Sibillini Mountains remain unabated; Certainly, it doesn't keep the natural elements from delivering messages to those who await, as we shall see in the next paragraph.
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THE CRY OF THE SIBYL
"All Is Number" said Pythagoras and, through the symbolism of the numbers and their interpretation is possible to understand the nature and its messages, either in the Macrocosm (Cosmic Level), or in the Microcosm (Quantum Level).
Few days before our expedition to the Sibillini Mountains we have studied the numbers that would have accompanied us during our exploration. Here we publish the most pertinent and remarkable details linked to the vision of the Sibyl that we have witnessed. There is much more than this; there were signs along our route which can only appear to those who are ready to see.
Our choice to start the trekking from the base of the Infernaccio area on July 3 and, from there, to reach the crest of Mount Sibilla by night was not accidental:
The July 3rd, 2015 is a Theosofic 1+8 or 9, a symbol of mysticism corresponding to the XVIII card of the Tarots: The Moon. That night was the second night of full moon (93% of visibility), one Friday. In those days Venus and Jupiter were at their nearest point and perfectly aligned (their distance was equal to the diameter of our Moon), thus forming a triangle Venus-Jupiter-Earth, with the Moon as mediator.
Both Venus and the Moon have a strong connection with the Earth's feminine energy (Friday is dedicated to Venus, to the Water element, and to Copper, a "conductive" metal, while the Moon is associated to the feminine since the dawn of time (see the mythical triad Ishtar-Isis-Venus), and a necessary guide that allowed us to ascend the Sibilla mountain at night. This mountain has been
connected at different historical moments with Mount Venus of the Tannhauser's legend, which contains inside the legend of another Virgin, the mysterious Foreseer Sibyl.
The month of July has been chosen, among other things, following the legend of the Guerrin Meschino that, according to Andrea de Barberino, allows to enter the Kingdom of the Sibyl only when the Sun is in the houses of Gemini, Cancer, or Leo (May-August); but also because the Moon in July, according to the Celtic lore, is called "Blessing Moon" and enhances strength, the magical aspects of nature and, in general, encourages positive undertakings.
Furthermore, in this month of the 2015 there will be two full moons, and this doubles the lunar influence upon our planet.
According to the Qabbalah, Summer is associated to the ATZILUTH (= Emanation) state, while its corresponding Sephira is the seventh, NETZACH, symbol of victory and achievements.
The animals associated to the month of July, according to the Oriental tradition, are the dragon, the lion and the phoenix. These all represent power, wisdom, regeneration.
On the very day of the vision proper, let's analyze the symbols that allowed us to assist to the extraordinary event: We descended along the northern side of Mount Sibilla, and set up camp at the edge of the forest, about halfway into the valley that would have led us, the next day, to the Tenna Springs.
The valley, ancestral symbol of the mother's womb and "cradle" of nature, is identified with the Cup that contains the vital liquid of the existence, according to the prehistoric myths of the Magna Mater, a concept that in the Middle Ages was romanticized into the myth of the Holy Grail.
The Saturday, July 4th, 2015 is a Theosofic 1+9 or 1, symbol of unity, beginning, the Unum, and corresponding to the XIX card of the Tarots: The Sun.
On that day the Earth passed exactly between the Sun (Symbol of light) and Pluto (a Chthonian symbol), that is, between two opposing symbols which needed a catalyst to connect and generate the Third Element.
Saturday is consecrated to Saturn whose elements are the earth and the "fixing" Lead metal.
According to the Qabbalah, its corresponding Sephira is the third one, BINAH, Ionic symbol of the Great Mather (The Earth symbol of all), meaning comprehension, understanding, and associated to the hermetic "Water Root".
Just to give an idea of the esoteric geometries which exist within the Sibillini mountains, let's observe the lines crossing the area that we have explored:
1. Lake of Pilate, Sibyl's Cave and the Infernaccio Gulch are perfectly aligned along the North-South directrix.
2. Taking the Cave-Lake segment, and drawing its perpendicular, an isosceles triangle forms, with its vertex pointing West. At the center of the triangle there is the Mount of the Cross.
3. Taking the perpendicular segment from the center of the triangle to the base, it becomes the base of a new triangle, whose sides converge right on the Mount Priora (Pizzo della Regina), thus forming another Isosceles triangle.
It was near that perpendicular that we were when the giant shadow of the Sibyl appeared before us, laid against the wall of the Mount Priora/Pizzo della Regina.
Having "read" the numerical and geomantic structure of those days we knew, therefore, that as soon as the spirit was clean by the means of the ("leading"), preparatory journey under the light of Venus, the energy of the Sun would have afterwards "spoken" to the Earth to leave its message overimposed ("fixed") upon the earth. And that is what has happened.
Obviously we couldn't imagine the way in which such message would have been revealed to us, nor whether we would have be under the right conditions to "receive" it.
The vision of the Sibyl appeared suddenly, majestic and ineffable in his silent chant.
At that moment it seemed as if all nature surrounding us had stopped to listen: the plants, the rocks, the insects, and the stars up in the sky.
We were but a tiny, little component of the incredible mechanisms that were then working to render the message intelligible to our eyes.
The certainty of the imminent event did not diminished the marvel and the charm which that face had impressed upon our minds during the few minutes it was visible.
We believe that the Sibyl, or what it is by her represented, had wanted to send a message to our time, appointing us heralds for the day, so that we could reaffirm its presence onto the Apennines' peaks, within the deepest recesses of the rocks, inside dark woods, into lakes and rivers, and along the pasture that with its grass cloak the steepest sides of the valleys.
The Sibyl is present in each and every element because it is a patroness and a prophetess, sorceress and mother, a keeper, and the millennial secret that has never departed.
What changed is man and its beliefs, that have progressively detached from the purity of nature, forgetting its language and importance.
What we have defined as a "Chant" it is in fact a cry, the scream of who intends to reaffirm her own existence and importance, notwithstanding the several defiling acts that Mount Sibilla had suffered in the past years [the use of explosive to "restore" the access to the Sibyl's Cave, the white trail dug without any criteria along the side of the mount, littering caused by the so-called 'nature lovers', etc.]
"...On a Summer's Saturday, at twilight, while we ate our dinner, and the sun slowly set behind the Sibillini peaks, to yield to the upcoming night, on the side of the mountain the giant and indisputable image of a face appears before us, the neat profile of a woman with long hair (or, perhaps, a veil) in the act of uttering words, a cry, or a chant, in a magical, surreal silence. All our senses are focused upon that shadow, our awe-stricken consciences were unprepared to the majesty of the picture covering the entire wall of the mountain. The curtains had been suddenly lifted up over the fantastic; We felt pushed backward of thousands of years, when leather-clad men worshiped the stars from inside circles of megalithic stones, or when they chanted hymns to nature under the scrutiny of semi-divine beings."
Recovering after the first, long moment of surprise, our modern mind strove to find the logic behind the phenomenon, analyzing the ridges that the sun hit with its rays, calculating its projection over the mountain, assessing each angle, in the attempt to find a reason to justify that form leaning against the mountain. To no avail.
That face was the result of sun's refraction upon the rocks, through a combination of impossible and unrepeatable angles; then, set the logic aside, we came to admire the aesthetic of it, bewitched by the beauty of the image that took away nothing to the overall harmony of the landscape, as if it were just another natural element.
Several minutes elapsed and, then, we saw the face slowly changing, its edges fading into the endless shadows cast by the rocks before nightfall. The vision had ended, the message had been delivered.
It was up to us, now, to collect it, and passed it on..."
[From the notes taken immediately after the vision]
Renzo Roiati in his book "La Sibilla Appenninica e le Nove Stelle Maggiori della Vergine" [The Apennines' Sibyl and the Nine Major Stars of Virgo] has conducted a thorough study based upon the alignment of the churches dotting the Sibillini territory. He demonstrated that their structure mirror the constellation of Virgo, showing that not only in ancient eras, but also in fairly recent times, the cult of the Magna Mater, to what the Sibillini Mountains were consecrated, was well known. The Great Mother which later became Venus, then the "virgin" Sibyl (Without ignoring a possible substitution with the Goddess Cupra of the Piceni people); and, at last, the advent of Christianity and all its efforts to cancel the memories of pagan rites, thus condemning the prophetess to the underworld; in her place, the "virgin" Mary rose. The eternal conflict between the two feminine poles, the pagan and the christian.
To sustain all this, the Gothic Church of S.Mary (now disappeared) is mentioned in the book "Montemonaco, nel Regno della Regina Sibilla" [Montemonaco, in the Realm of Queen Sibyl], where author Vittori writes:
"...that the monks, having found up there remains of paganism, built that temple [dedicated] to Virgin Mary in the vicinity of the Sibyl's Cave, so that people would feel less bitter the detachment from the ancient practices of the pagan cult performed in that antrum known since ancient times..."
The image we have seen on the side of Mount Priora/Pizzo della Regina corroborates the Oriental tradition which describes the female goddess (Embodied by Ishtar first, and Isis later) as "covered with a veil", symbol of initiation necessary to acquire the Keys of Knowledge. The vision of the Sibyl also suggests an interesting similitude with the Black Madonna (still worshiped throughout Europe), whose origins are found in ancestral and almost forgotten times. They are both Chthonian figures, "virgins of the underworld".
Back to the sacred numerology surrounding the Sibillini mountains, the local folklore speaks of seven churches built to worship the virgin Mary, all of them located on the north-eastern side of the "ring".
Roiati identifies nine of them instead:
"...of which three, including the long-disappeared Santa Maria di Foce, are not present in the memory of the few...people, friends of a faraway time...[They] rise around the Mount of the Sibyl, and typically near the access points which mark the trails leading toward the place of the prophecies [the Sibyl's Cave] and the demonic lake [Lake of Pilate]...the Mount Vettore, the Mount Torrone, the Cime del Redentore, Mount Rotondo, Argentella, Forca Viola, Palazzo Borghese...Cima Vallelunga, Sibilla..."
The Nine Churches of Virgo have been thus identified: S. Maria dell'Ambro, S. Maria in Casalicchio, S. Maria della Corona, S. Maria in Gallo (disappeared), S. Maria in Lapide, S. Maria della Cona, S. Maria in Pantano, S. Maria di Foce (disappeared), and S. Maria della Maina.
By connecting these churches together, a peculiar correspondence with the nine visible stars of the Virgo constellation becomes evident (the star Spica or Alpha Virginis is the brightest of the nine stars. Roiati attaches it to the S.Maria in Lapide Church).
There are innumerable examples of correspondences between architectural works and the firmament: the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt with the Orion Belt; the Angkor Wat Temple of Cambodia with the Draco Constellation; the position of the Gothic cathedrals in France with the Virgo Constellation, and so forth.
But the placement of the churches on the Sibillines would precede that of the French cathedrals by at least four centuries. And who build them remains a mystery, for the history didn't preserve accurate data. It could have been the Benedettines or the Templars, not to mention the fact that there could have already been pagan temples on those locations. It is one of the many enigmas surrounding the Central Apennines.
We can't but noticing how the symbol of the Virgo accompanies the figure of the Sibyl. That constellation, projected on the ground, seems to embrace the Mount, protecting it between its "cosmic arms" (Roiati's map shows how Mount Sibilla is located exactly between the churches of S. Maria di Foce and S. Maria dell'Ambro, cutting their directrix in a very precise way).
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LEGENDS ABOUT THE APENNINES' "SIBYL"
Whereas the legends about the Lake of Pilate and the Mount Vettore are recorded in documents dating back XIV century, the Sibyl of the Apennines appears in the medieval chronicles with two writings published in 1410 (Andrea de Barberino's "Il Guerrin Meschino") and 1420 (Antoine de la Sale's "Queen Sibyl's Paradise").
The first is written in the form of a knightly poem; it tells about Guerrino, knight errant, and the sorceress Alcyna, banned by God and exiled into a subterranean realm whose entrance would be in the mountains, somewhere near the city of Norcia.
At the hermitage of San Leonardo, the hermits attempted every possible way to discourage Guerrino from ascending to the Cave of the Sorceress Alcyna, but he was determined in his decision. He took on a ragged and slippery trail, which ran along rocky crests looking over bottomless ravines, until he arrived at a waterfall and, exhausted, fell asleep.
To his awakening follows the "preparatory" encounter with Macco, the giant snake, and all the adventures within the realm of Alcyna, which compose the entire poem.
In the case of La Sale, which to some extent proposes the adventures of Guerrin Meschino, he also collects local folklore regarding the descending of the knights into the kingdom of fairies, via a cave located near the crown of the mount (Sibilla).
The episodes narrated by La Sale are four, the longest and most detailed one being that of the knight and his squire who reach the Fairies' Kingdom, live there for a year, then go back to the surface. But later, having the Pope refused to concede them the absolution, they return to the magic kingdom for never coming back again.
About the other three stories, one is about five local Towns folks who enter the Sibyl's Cave; another tells of two German gentlemen led by visionary priest Antonio Fumato, and the last is the chronicles of the "Lord of Pacs" who intends to find his brother, who had disappeared into the cave a year before.
So, who the Sibyl of the Apennines really is?
It is again La Sale who tell us that she was not included in the list of the ten Sibyls of the Classicism. The same concept has been analyzed in the interesting study of Paolucci, who worked on the Sibyl and her legends for his graduation thesis in the Academic Year 1946/47.
He draws an accurate, historical and symbolic research into the figure of the Sibyl, whose name evokes the ancestral power of prophecy.
The Sibyls were indeed described, in the Classic World, as women that could utter oracles from the mouths of caves set in the remotest and most inaccessible places of the Earth, and which, in the transition between Paganism and Christianity, became heralds of the coming of Christ.
The ancient historians Varrone and Lattanzio put on records ten Sibyls who had existed in the Classic Era; in 1481 Filippo de Barberiis adds two more to the list (Sibyl Europa and Sibyl Agrippa). The ten classic Sibyls were: Persian, Libyan, Delphic, Erythraean, Cimmerian, Cumaean, Hellespontine, Phrygian, and Tiburtine.
There seems to be no connection between the classic Sibyls and the "Sibyl" of Norcia. Other scholars have noted this anomaly, and La Sale himself, at the end of his tale on Queen Sibyl, admits he doesn't ascribe her to the classical prophetesses.
Desonay, professor of Romance Philology at the University of Liege, studied La Sale's text and the problem of the Sibyl. He solved it by advancing the theory that she had to be, during the Pagan Era, linked to the cult of the Goddess Cybele.
This theory didn't convince Paolucci (as well as other researchers), because the link Sibyl-Cybele, if for some aspects may be plausible with regards to the classic Sibyls, has no ground when referred to the "Sibyl" of the Apennines, for the simple reason that she was not a classic prophetess. Moreover, Paolucci remarks how the term "Sibyl" is a recent name applied to that figure, while originally she was called "Tetric".
Whereas upon the Lake of Pilate (located in front of Mount Sibilla from the Southwestern side) there exists a wide folklore concerning fairies, necromancers, and demons, the legend of the Sibyl is much less known and studied, having it survived in the popular traditions of very few places.
According to Paolucci
"...The Sibyl of Montemonaco is a product of popular fantasy which, without any historical nexus...has condemned the prophetess to the deep recesses of the mountain, perhaps in the same century where the Legend of Pilate in that area rose..."
Paolucci believes that the legend of the Sibyl originates in the folklore of Norcia and, specifically, in the Guerrin Meschino poem which represents "the oldest testimony" of it.
According to the tradition, the Cumaean Sibyl, geographically the closest among the classic Sibyls to the Apennines, would have been the prophetess who taught Mary during her stay at the temple. Afterwards the former was cast out into the depths of the mountain because
"...Foreseeing the incarnation of God in Mary, and hoping to be herself the chosen virgin, she attempted to prevent the realization of the sacred event..."
F.Neri has collected several legends from Sicily that confront the Sibyl with Mary. All of them condemn the former to a subterranean, eternal exile in the heart of the Apennines, in a place where the cave, the cursed lake (Pilate's Lake), and a deep gulch carved in the rock (the Infernaccio gulch) form an esoteric triad able to pin down the "Tetric" prophetess' body and spirit [the term "Tetric" was used by Virgil in the Eneid, L, VII, vv.713].
Would, then, the Sibyl of Norcia be no other than the Cumaean Sibyl? This is Paolucci's opinion (joined by Barberino, Peranzoni, Lalli, and Mecchi), and at this point we don't feel to enter into any further argument with such thesis, except quoting Roiati who, in one of his books, writes:
"...according to Trebellius Pollio, [there would be] a reference to a certain 'Sibyl of the Apennines', who had been consulted by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, ruling from 268 to 270 [AD]..."
Our theory, however, based upon the study of the available sources (Biondo, Bonavoglia, Caracciolo, Pulci and, above all, Enea Silvio Piccolomini or Pope Pius II, who studied extensively the occult sciences, and was well acquainted with the Voivode of Wallachia Vlad III "Tepes", better known as Dracula), and after our two expeditions on Mount Vettore and Mount Sibilla, is that the Sibillines Mountains don't derive their name by the dwelling place of the Sibyl, but the exact contrary. Given that the "ring" is located in a well known, very powerful energetic hub within the Earth's energy grid (called Ley Lines) and, in particular, at the junction of a Synchronic Line which starts in the British Isles and crosses Europe through Lyon, enters Italy in Turin, and moves along the Apennines until reaching the Sibillines and the Gran Sasso Mountain Range, from where it swerves eastward continuing its trail into the Adriatic Sea (and on until Tibet). Such energetic lines facilitate the manifestation of psychic phenomena which were used in the past by wizards and necromancers to perform their rites.
In such a place a gifted woman could have well found its dwelling; or, if we give La Sale's stories a certain interpretation, a "portal" could have remained open on a different dimension (that of the 'Fairies' Kingdom') for some time.
And, given the mysteries surrounding those cryptic places, the popular tradition, knowing the stories of the Cumaean Sibyl, may have identified the dweller of the cave with the "Sibyl of Norcia" or Nursina ("nursino" is a synonym of necromancer, wizard). In this case the Nursina would be an "apocryphal", thirteenth Sibyl.
Of a similar opinion is I.Chirassi who, in her study "Un Pellegrinaggio del Fantastico Itinerario al Regno di Sibilla" ["A Pilgrimage Of The Fantastic Itinerary to the Reign of the Sibyl"] (Chiaravalle di Fiastra, 1996) suggested the presence, on Mount Sibilla,
"...not of the Cumaean Sibyl [we would be speaking], nor of a mythical Pythia, but of a character endowed with a prophetic power, autonomous for many aspects, replicated in a group of knowledgeable, feminine beings..."
while F.Allevi speaks of a conscious substitution that would have been made from Cybele to the Sibyl; in his book "I Monti Sibillini nell'Antichita' " (1940) ["The Sibillini Mountains in the Ancient Times"] he writes:
"...The easiest way to abolish and eradicate the orgiastic cult of Cybele upon the Mount Piceno could be that of state in her place the personality of a Sibyl which...never was considered a goddess, nor was she the object of a cult...and yet her name sounded similar to that ancient goddess..."
A. Fabbri, in his "Visso e le sue valli" (1964) ["Visso And Its Glens"] refers to an ancient belief with regards to the cave and its dweller:
"...In the VIII Century AD a demon set its dwelling therein and, under the appearance of an enchantress, gave out oracles like and ancient Sibyl. She looked extremely beautiful and sent to hell all those, attracted by her spells, dared to enter the cave.
After three days of fasting, and by the aid of powerful exorcisms launched against the evil spirit by the bishop of Norcia and the friars of S. Eutizio, some were able to approach the cave. They found nothing but macabre remains and warning words: 'Fidelis, fugite ab hoc peste' [Believers, Flee from this (place of) doom]..."
After all, none of those who have ever ventured into the depths of the mountain (except the German knight and his esquire in the account of La Sale) have come back to the mortal world to tell about the secrets of Queen Sibyl.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. De La Sale "Les paradis de la reine Sibylle" (1420 ca)
AAVV "Monti Sibillini - Racconti di Salite dal 1420 al 1935"
L. Paolucci "La Sibilla Appenninica" (1947)
D. Falzetti "Alla ricerca della dea d'amore nella grotta della Sibilla di Norcia" (1948)
M. Montesano " '...Sacro alle nursine grotte' - Storie di fate, cavalieri, 'negromanti' nei Monti Sibillini" (2003)
R. Roiati "La Sibilla Appenninica e le nove stelle maggiori della Vergine" (2006)