QUARANTINE BLOG # 341

March 6, 2021

El Hombre Dorado

The quest for El Dorado was an enterprise of fantasy that obsessed the adventurers from Europe for more than a century.  

Tales of a golden kingdom and of a golden king, somewhere in the unexplored wilderness of South America, spurred men on.  Nothing halted the pursuers of the golden dream. They marched on, killing and plundering, suffering incredible torments, often traveling – as one chronicler put it – con el alma en los dientes – with their souls between their teeth.

They did not find El Dorado.  The stuff of dreams cannot easily be transmuted into solid reality.  Their deeds constitute a monument to futility.

Yet there was a kernel of truth within the fantasy.  This is where the quest began, a third of the way through the 16th century with a glittering story that journeyed from Bogota to dazzle the conquistadores.

The tale came out of Cundinamarca, “the land of the condor,” now the Andean highlands of the Republic of Columbia, present-day Bogata and Lake Guatavita.

Legend said that the wife of one of the earlier chiefs had thrown herself into the water in order to avoid a punishment, and that she survived there as the goddess of the lake. 

The notch at the far end of the lake was carved by Spanish soldiers trying to drain the lake, looking for gold.

Pilgrims came from villages nearby to cast their offerings of gold and emeralds into the water. At every new choice of a king, an imposing ceremonial was observed. 

A long procession led by men, their bodies painted red, followed groups of men decorated with gold and emeralds went to the lake. Last was the newly elected chieftain. His naked body was anointed with resinous gums, and covered all over with gold-dust. This was the gilded man, “el hombre dorado.”

The gilded chief and his companions stepped on a small craft and rowed to the middle of the lake. There the chief plunged into the water and washed off his metallic covering, while the assembled company threw in the gold and the jewels they had brought with them. The festival closed with dancing and feasting.

A “spin-off” of the legend of El Dorado may be the Seven Cities of Gold. In the 16th century, the Spaniards in New Spain (now Mexico) began to hear rumours of “Seven Cities of Gold” located across the desert, hundreds of miles to the north.

Donald Duck and his nephews discover the seven cities in the comic “The Seven Cities of Cibola”.

Daniel Boone looked for it.

Nicholas Cage discovered it under Mount Rushmore in “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”

Edgar Allan Poe met a pilgrim shadow.

But the kingdom of the gilded man always lay over the next mountain, beyond the next turn in the river.  The pull of El Dorado was relentless. The record of earlier failures only served to intensify the hunger of the new generations of explorers.  

Sir Walter Raleigh was the last and most tragic of the Doradists. The pretty story of Raleigh’s spreading his cloak to spare Queen Elizabeth from the mud is almost certainly apocryphal, but by the spring of 1582 he had come to stand high in the Queen’s favor, and quite probably had become the newest in her long succession of lovers. 

He led an expedition to North America where he christened a fertile new land “Virginia” in honor of his Virgin Queen.  He planted the colony of Roanoke, and abandoned it after several years of bad luck and hardship.

In 1592 he fell out of royal favor because he had seduced and then married one of the Queen’s maids of honor, Elizabeth Throckmorton.  

The Queen turned against him – not so much for the seduction, but because Raleigh and his bride had dared to marry without Elizabeth’s permission.  The newlyweds were locked away in a prison cell at the Tower of London. It would have made for an interesting honeymoon.

Raleigh gradually regained a measure of favor, and in 1594, received permission to sail to South America to establish a colony for England and against Spain.  During one part of that search for El Dorado, his men massacred a Spanish settlement, and to gain favor with the Spanish, the new King, James I (Elizabeth died on March 24, 1603) arrested Raleigh and put him back in the Tower of London.  

His original sentence was a ghastly one: to be hanged and cut down alive, then disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered.  Since Raleigh was still a popular figure in England, James commuted the sentence to simple beheading, then suspended the execution for 16 years.  Sir Walter Raleigh was the Tower’s leading tourist attraction.

Raleigh was sent to the executioner on October 29, 1619. Seeing the axe that would behead him, he mused: “This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries.”  Raleigh’s final words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: “Strike, man, strike!”  As his severed head rolled away, the quest for El Dorado effectively died as well.

The ceremony of an Indian tribe became the magnet of doom for hundreds of bold men.  A fantasy, a golden dream – a chieftain transforming into a statue – the bright gleam of his body – El Dorado, the realm of gold –  was an obsessive quest from which there was no turning back, no reprieve for those condemned to follow its fruitless trails.

Next week, a voyage down the Amazon and Spain’s greatest treasure.

👉   Manifestation and Mission.

Today’s Lenten Lectionary reading is the story of the Transfiguration.  Before we go there, let’s look at two Old Testament manifestations of God’s presence to people who were following Him.

Moses sees an Egyptian abusing a Hebrew, kills the Egyptian, and buries the corpse in the sand.  Exposed, he flees to a new life in the desert.  One day God calls out to him from a mysterious burning bush.  The incident is not just a manifestation of God to Moses.  Moses is entrusted with a mission.

Then there is the prophet Elijah.  Hunted by the evil queen, Jezebel, Elijah, a fugitive, seeks refuge in a cave.  And in the deep darkness of that place the Lord calls out to him.  There is a great wind, there is an earthquake, there is a fire, and finally there is a still, small voice.  Elijah does not simply witness a manifestation. He is entrusted with a mission.

Just a few days ago Peter identified Jesus as the Messiah, but Jesus told His disciples that rejection and execution and resurrection are ahead for Him.  Then something happens that had never happened before.

“Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain. His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes. His clothes shimmered, glistening white, whiter than any bleach could make them. Elijah, along with Moses, came into view, in deep conversation with Jesus” (Mark 9:2-4 – The Message).

There is wondrous manifestation, and there is a mission.  The disciples hear a voice saying, “This is My beloved Son.  Hear him!”  Then Jesus tells His disciples that when they see the empty tomb and the resurrected Lord they are to tell the world.

When we encounter God’s glory, perhaps in the midst of trouble, anxiety, and confusion, we need to do something more than what Peter suggested.  We don’t need to create a scrapbook moment.  God entrusts us with a mission to be pursued.  Otherwise, why have a manifestation?

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