The Manuscript of Compostela (The Milky Way) By Victor Morgado

Our path is not an escape, but a conquest, an art to cultivate oneself until a renaissance. Our point of departure is an authentic need to open ourselves to an indefinite time, outside of illusions and vanities for a return to ourselves.

As we enter the Romanesque churches along the roads to Compostela, we must walk clockwise within the structure, to let the tellurian energies go into our being and surrender to the mystery of the stones, which according to tradition, are sculpted in the hermetic language of alchemists and Druids by the anonymous brotherhood of French builders.

This medieval brotherhood was in charge of working the images of animals, dragons and devils fighting humans, among calvary images , the victory of the resurrection and black madonnas, in order to activate the dormant dimensions of the hero's journey in the pilgrim's consciousness.

A simple glance over the artwork calls us into the invisible. Notice the square base of the columns in the Romanesque churches (representing the world) turning octagonal ( promise of a future resurrection) ending in a narrow top where matter transforms into spirit.

Spiritus Mundi is a personal journey he or she begins at any of the four sacred circles of tellurian forces, chosen by sage druids during the 5th or 6th century in France. By the 11th century, Christianity had replaced the druid's shrines by re-building cathedrals on the sacred circles, thus respecting the chosen lieu of energy. These sacred spaces follow the westward direction of the Milky Way.

In almost all civilizations, from the Incas to the Celts, the Milky way has the same symbology: a passage created by the gods to link the earthly reality with the Eternal Paradise.

That is the origin of the mythical snakes and fleuves we find in non western art. The Milky Way is the path followed by birds and souls from one world to the other.

On this path the pilgrim souls  seek not only the journey on the physical plane but also in the spiritual realm. This is  the road of explorers, mystics and all those who go from one place to another on earth or in the cosmo, from one state of consciousness to another .

The Druid's love of inner journeys and their visions  inspired their prophesis about the woman that would bring a saviour into the world. This pregnant woman is the black madonna we often find in medieval shrines throughout  Europe. If the white virgin is the one who has already given birth, the black virgin is the pregnant woman of the druid's vision.

During  the second half of the 11th century, a variety of factors made for a new burgeoning of vitality thorughout the west.
There was great enthusiasm, reflected in the greatly increased pilgrimage traffic to sacred places.

At the dawn of the 21st century we are experiencing a re-birth to the sacred circles of the past, linked from one sacred circle (Romanesque church) to another,  along the four legendary roads, where alchemists found their stones and where synchronicities are custom-made for the pilgrim like signs of love, to remind us that when we walk on this path, time has no longuer a hold on our mind, nor the shadows of  daily reality, as the pilgrim walks he or she enters  unheard-of realms,  where good and bad memories emerge and get filtered in the purity of  he or she who is no longer held in time.
Following the yellow arrows painted by helpers along the rocks and trees, the pilgrim  walks freely beyond the pyrenees on a mythical Quetzacoatl , or Camino de las Estrellas, as it is known in Spain.

A journey to the west from shrine to shrine, like the beads of an endless rosary that reaches a key of light in Santiago de Compostela.