KINGDOM BY THE SEA...
Ernest Hemingway used to say that stories should be like icebergs. Nine tenth parts of them must remain sunk under water. We all crave for mystery thus, historical events or characters become legends and myths. Devoted fathers read these stories to their children at night time disguised as fairy tales, and the protagonists of the stories smile in their land by the nameless lake…they have fulfilled their most secret ambition, they have become immortal.
Few legends have stirred the imagination like Shambhala and the kingdom of Prester John.
Once upon a time, in a very remote land there was a king who was not only a great king, but a Christian priest as well. The name of that king was Prester John, and he ruled over 72 countries. His land was rich in silver and gold, a crime and vice-free peaceful kingdom where milk (siiiiiiiii) and honey flowed everywhere and many wonderful creatures lived. That king wrote letters to several Popes in Rome, telling them that he was a faithful Christian, and was acquainted with all kinds of unknown beasts, such as: men with horns on their foreheads and three eyes, women (Amazons) who fought while mounted on horses, men that lived 200 years, unicorns, phoenixes, and of course, the Fountain of Youth (his letters are the first recorded mention of such a fountain) and the Garden of Eden.
The palace where Preste Juan lived was made of crystal with a roof of precious stones. A magic mirror warned him about any conspiracy which could take place in the Kingdom. The King slept in a bed of sapphires, the elixir of eternal life was free for everybody to use and the King himself was 562 years old.
He was also commonly said to have been a descendant of the Three Wise Men, who popularized gold, frankincense and myrrh by presenting these gifts to the Baby Jesus. He supposedly carried a scepter carved from pure emerald. In later medieval texts, Prester would become associated with the Holy Grail, but this appears to have been entirely a literary gambit with no particular historical source.
The Pope Alexander III sent emissaries to search for Prester John's kingdom, but they found only small Christian outposts, survivals of Gnosticism and other various heresies in the Near East. Then, Italian explorer Marco Polo took an interest in the stories, after the Christians had their asses kicked out of Jerusalem by Saladin. Polo never found Prester, so he made nice with Kublai Khan instead. The only evidence Polo ever found for Prester John were a few scattered sects of Nestorian Christians, who were more or less the first Fundamentalists, believing in the literal truth of the Bible.
By the fourteenth century, exploration had proved that Prester John´s Kingdom did not lie in Asia, so new letters, written in several languages, appeared stating that it was located in Abyssinia, present-day Ethiopia. When the kingdom moved to Abyssinia, expeditions and voyages began to head to Africa to rescue the hidden Paradise. Portugal sent expeditions throughout the fifteenth century and the legend lived on as cartographers continued to include the kingdom on maps through the seventeenth century.
Was it all a hoax? The letter could have been proven a forgery from the first edition, which copied exactly the description of the palace of Saint Thomas, the Apostle. I think it was written on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who wanted assert temporal power over the spiritual power of the papacy by inventing a magnificent Christian king in a distant land. The letter appeared at a time when people strongly wanted to believe in the tale of a mighty Christian king who would relieve the Holy Lands of the Islamic menace. In fact, the Moslems believed in this legend too, and lived generally terrified of the thought that he was going to rouse his armies to march westwards against them.
Some authors claim that this mythical kingdom is non other that Shambhala, a hidden area (in this or a different dimension) where great spiritual masters rule idyllic realms guiding the evolution of humankind. The question is, how are we so prepared to accept and believe in these myths and what long-forgotten reality are they hiding?
When no soul is left
When the bombs are all gone
And the streetlamps shine in
On a nuclear dawn
Mankind´s darkest hour
Screams out on and on
The living will call
For their Prester John
But just like the past
Like crusaders long dead
Whose skulls ground to dust
Shattered by heathen lead
In the heat of their battle
Beneath a merciless sun
The dead and the dying
Called for their Prester John
And now in the void
Left by horror and gun
As the only one left
With skin tattered hope gone
I sit and alone
I call for my Prester John.