Written around Year 250 by a San Borondonian nun whose name has been lost to history, A Record of a Journey to Eïa is one of the first original manuscripts of the early literate era, produced at a time when writing was still typically reserved for sacred texts, magic spells, and the transcription of oral knowledge from the Ontic past. This translation was produced at the University of New Lovegain, by Dr. Raginmund binte Maike, in 1382.
Fashuridina had been living at the Silver Belleteaum in Archemedon. Deploring the mutilated and imperfect state of her Ontic library, in the two-hundred-and-fifteenth year after the fall of the Pontifex, she entered into an engagement with a group of scholars that they should go to the Isle of Eïa, where once stood the capital of the Ontic Empire, and seek books of ancient knowledge that had been there transcribed. Labuhaganis, the prefect of Pluma Montis province, had supplied them with the means of crossing the oceans, which then held ferociously hot winds.
Four generations past, any foolhardy travelers through the seas surrounding San Borondon had perished all to a person. So vicious were the ocean serpents that there was not a bird to be seen in the air above, nor fish in the waters below. But through pious study, the priestesses who tended the temple to Mazuzu the Sea Mother uncovered a powerful seal whose inscriptions protected ships and drove away the serpents of the ocean, and allowed passage from San Borondon to the other ports of the world. The monastery-ships began to ply the unknown waters, bringing with them the gifts of Belletri-Sheeri to the peoples of every island. And so had it been for these past 200 years.
With a favorable wind, Fashuridina and her crew sailed from Archemedon eastwards for three days, whereupon they encountered a mighty storm. The vessel sprang a leak and the water came in. The travelers wished to go to the small vessel; but the sailors on board it, fearing that too many would come, cut the connecting rope. The travelers were greatly alarmed, feeling their risk of instant death. In this way the tempest continued day and night, till on the thirteenth day the ship was carried to the side of an island, where, on the ebbing of the tide, the place of the leak was discovered, and it was stopped, and then the voyage resumed.
The great ocean spread out, a boundless expanse. There was no knowing east or west; only by observing the sun, moon, and stars was it possible to go forward. If the weather were dark and rainy, the ship went as it was carried by the wind, without any definite course. In the darkness of the night, only the great waves were to be seen, breaking on one another, emitting a brightness like that of fire. Huge turtles and other monsters of the deep were all about, kept only at bay by the priestess’s charm. The travelers were full of terror, not knowing where they were going. The sea was bottomless, with no place where they could drop anchor and stop. When the sky finally became clear, they could tell east from west, and the ship again went forth toward Eïa.
After traveling for 17 days, a distance we may calculate as approximately 1,500 miles, their ship reached the western shores of the old Ontic Isle, where the country was rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil, littered with the ruins of the fallen Empire. There was a sizable village on the coast, populated by a tall, golden-skinned people, who lived in rambling wooden structures, and whose ancestors had arrived a hundred years before from the southern districts of San Borondon. The clothes of the coastal people were coarse, like those worn by the peasants of the Anzanna valley, some wearing felt and others serge or cloth of hair; this was the only difference seen among them. The people of the settlement professed the Ancient Laws, and worshipped at their Temple nearby, which housed more than a hundred monks, who were understood to be students of the Holy Traditions.
Because there were so few monks, the conventus included both women and men, as well as some ghost-women and ghost-men. All dressed the same, in startlingly purple robes, and slept together upon large cots, and were called to their reading-rooms by the sound of a bell. When they entered the refectory, their demeanor was marked by a reverent gravity, and they took their seats at long tables in regular order, all maintaining a perfect silence. No sound was heard from their scrolls and pens. When any of these pure students required food, they were not allowed to call out to the attendants for it, but only make signs with their hands.
Two of the scholars set out towards the walls of Ontopolis, but Fashuridina and the remaining sages, wishing to see the Temple’s procession of images, remained behind for three days. Beginning on the first day of the fourth month, the townspeople would sweep and water the streets around the temple grounds, making a grand display in the lanes and byways. Over the entrance gate they pitched a large tent, grandly adorned in all possible ways, in which the town’s Magistrate, with the ladies and men of her court brilliantly arrayed, took up their residence for the time of the ceremonies.
The monks of the Temple, being keepers of the old Ontic knowledge, and held in great reverence by the people, took precedence of all others in the procession. At a distance of three or four miles from the shore, they made a four-wheeled image car, more than 30 cubits high, which looked like a great castle moving. The Six Precious Substances—jade, jet, lapis lazuli, diamonds, pearls, and amber—were grandly displayed about it, with silken streamers and canopies fluttering all around. Marble images of the gods stood in the middle of the car, with two automaton-angels in attendance upon them, while wooden images of the local sea-spirits were made to follow in waiting, all brilliantly decorated with gold and silver, and by the use of subtle magics hanging in the air. When the car was a hundred paces from the gate, the Magistrate took off the diadem of her office, changed her dress for a fresh robe, and with bare feet, carrying in her hands flowers and incense, and with two rows of attending followers, went out at the gate to meet the images; and, with her head and face bowed to the ground, she did homage at their feet, and then scattered the flowers and burnt the incense.
She then took an obsidian knife from her robes, and sacrificed a bound kid, removing its head and burning it against the sacred fire. When the images entered the gate, the air was filled with smoke and incense, and the brilliant ladies and men with her in the gallery above scattered far and wide all kinds of flowers, each strung to scraps of paper written with holy words, which floated about and fell to the ground. The coastal people that had assembled took the flowers and gathered them up for their sacred magics, which were said to bring all manner of good health and fortune. In this way everything was done to promote the dignity of the occasion, and to show piety in the execution of the most sacred rites.
The play concluded with a long poem, recited by the oldest villager, relating what happened after fire destroyed the village’s first temple. The grounds became overgrown with vegetation, and there was nobody to sweep about it; but a herd of wild elefants came regularly, which brought water with their trunks to water the ground, and various kinds of flowers and incense, presented at the feet of Amadar’s statue. Many decades later there came from Ontopolis the Ninth Pontifex to worship at the Temple. When she encountered the elefants, she was greatly alarmed, and screened herself among the trees; but when she saw them go through with the offerings in the most proper manner, the thought filled her with great sadness—that there should be no keepers of the temple here, that might serve the images and reliquaries, but the elefants have to do the watering and sweeping. With her own hands she cleared away the grass and trees, put the place in good order, and made it pure and clean. She founded there an imperial monastery; and when that was done, she quit the Coral Throne of the Pontifex, and became head of this monastery. When Fashuridina set to leave the village, and thought how the Ninth Pontifex had formerly resided there, a great sense of holiness grew in her heart.
Fashuridina and the remaining scholars followed the old road to the brick-built walls of Ontopolis, which ran in four vast circuits around the city. Just beyond the last gates, citizens lived in modest wooden houses built against the grand structures built by the Pontifices. There stood the massy enclosed theater with wedge-like blocks of seats, the temples, the imperial citadels, the long-emptied mint, and the baths, its colonnades all adorned with broken marble statuary. The lanes and passages within the gates were kept in good order. At the heads of the four principal streets there were built sacrificial halls, where, on the eighth, fourteenth, and fifteenth days of the month, they spread carpets, and set forth an altar, while the monks and commonalty from all quarters came together to celebrate the Liturgy. These halls were constructed near a holy fountain, overlaid with bone-white Frislandic marble, which still flows with aqua lustralis from the spring of Oua-Lillil. There the travelers prayed in the most traditional manner: “Hail, sacred fountain, you who are gracious, unfailing, crystal-clear, azure, deep, murmurous, shaded and unsullied! Hail Oua-Lillil, guardian deity of life-energy, who sanctified these health-giving draughts!”
The imperial palace and gardens in the midst of the city, which existed as in ancient times, were all made by spirits which the Pontifex employed, and which piled up the stones, reared the walls and gates, and executed the elegant carving and inlaid sculpture-work—in a way which no human hands of this world could accomplish. These places were still there as of old, but at the center of the city all was emptiness and desolation; no person dwelled in it. The hall where the Pontifex preached and performed the Liturgy had been destroyed, and only the foundations of the brick walls remained. The old ruins were full of doleful creatures: owls dwelled there, and the wild beasts of the islands cried in their desolate houses. Where the altar once stood, Fashuridina brought incense, flowers, oil and lamps, and with the scholars Cuadonosor and Babeshidina, arranged them on the ground. She made her offerings with the flowers and incense, and lighted the lamps when the darkness began to come on. She felt melancholy, but restrained her tears. In front of the rock cavern, she chanted the Compass Psalms, remained there over the night, and then returned towards the inhabited edges of the city.
The first strophe of Adash-Shimonosor’s Annales Ruinam states that Eïa, many centuries ago, originally had no human inhabitants, but was occupied only by wild spirits, with which sea-merchants of various townships carried on a trade. When the trafficking was taking place, the spirits did not show themselves. They simply set forth their precious commodities, with labels of the price attached to them; while the merchants made their purchases according to the price; and took the things away. If merchants tried to take the commodities without leaving the proper cost, the objects would disappear as soon as they were brought to sea. Through the coming and going of the merchants in this way, the people of their various islands heard how pleasant the land was, and when the spirits went away, they flocked to Eïa in numbers.
When the fifth incarnation of Amadar came to this land, wishing to bind the wild spirits, by her supernatural power she planted one foot in a valley at the north of the city, and the other on the top of a mountain, at the south of the city. Over the footprint at the north of the city, the first Pontifex built a large dome, 400 cubits high, grandly adorned with gold and silver, and finished with a combination of all the precious substances. By the side of the top he further built a monastery, the Amadareum, where there are now five hundred monks. There is in it a devotional hall, adorned with mosaics of gold and silver and rich in the Six Precious Substances, in which there is an image of Amadar in black marble, more than 20 cubits in height, glittering all over with those substances, and having an appearance of solemn dignity which words cannot express. In the palm of its upper right hand there is a priceless pearl.
Fashuridina went to the Amadareum, and lived among the monks, as did the scholars Hormex and Ahormexa. At the end of seven years, her eyes had not rested on a familiar hill or river, plant or tree; she had not for years heard the tender songs of the San Borondonian ghost-women, and a constant sadness was in her heart. Suddenly one day, when by the side of this image of black marble, she saw a praying merchant presenting as his offering a fan of white silk, which he burned at Amadar’s left foot; and the tears of sorrow involuntarily filled Fashuridina’s eyes and fell down.
One of Fashuridina's original objects had been to search for copies of the Theurgic-Astrological Discourses. In the various monasteries in San Borondon, however, she had found one master transmitting orally some part of the discourses to another, but no written copies which she could transcribe. Here, in the Amadereum, she found a complete copy of the treatise, including the rules for binding wicked spirits, those same words which were used in the first Great Council, while the fifth incarnation was still in the world. She further obtained a transcript of the six or seven thousand invocations to the Mother of the Ocean—those which were spoken in ancient times by the communities of monks who dwelled in the marshes outside the walls of Ontopolis; which also have all been handed down orally from master to master without being committed to writing. In the community there, moreover, she obtained codices containing about six or seven hundred spells; also the Dialogues of Aezara; one chapter of the Sophia Sutra; the complete Discourses on the Island of the Doves; and the De Natura Magicae by the Daughters of the Great Goddess—all being works unwritten on the isle of San Borondon. Fashuridina stayed on the ancient island for twelve years in total, copying Ontic books, and perfecting her understanding of the Ontic speech, so that she could gainfully transcribe knowledge retained only through the ars memoriae of local philosophers, generations of whom had passed down fragments of rare wisdom from the tempus ante ruinam, before writing came to Eïa.
It was in the year 470, at the Equinoxal Festival of Belletti-Sheeri, that I met the devotee Fashuridina, who then presided over the women’s monastery in the Gold City. On her arrival I lodged her with myself in the study, and there, in our meetings for conversation, I asked her again and again about her travels. This august woman was modest and complaisant, and answered readily according to the truth. I thereupon advised her to enter into details where she had at first only given a summary, and she proceeded to relate all things in order from the beginning to the end. She said herself, "When I look back on what I have gone through, my heart is involuntarily moved, and a great holiness flows forth."
These words affected me in turn, and I thought: "This woman is one of those who have seldom been seen from ancient times to the present. Since Ontic learning has been cherished and preserved in San Borondon, there has been no one to be compared with Fashuridina in her devotion to the gods and search for the True Wisdom. Henceforth I know that the influence of sincerity finds no obstacle, however great, which it does not overcome, and that force of will does not fail to accomplish whatever it undertakes. Does not such greatness arise from disregarding the toils of everyday life, and attaching utmost importance to saving knowledge which might otherwise be forgotten?"
Sources:
Ausonius, The Order of the Famous Cities, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn White, 1919
Fa-Hsien, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, trans. James Legge, 1886
Isaiah 13:21-22, King James translation, 1611
