The Liyobaa Cave Entrances
After the conquest of South America by the Spanish Conquistadores, the Catholic priests who were attempting to convert the heathen Indians discovered a cave entrance to what they called “Hell.” This entrance has since been sealed off with tons of rubble, dirt and huge stones and boulders.
The village of Liyobaa (or to translate it, “The Cavern of Death”) was located in the province of Zapoteca, somewhere near the ancient village of Mictlan, or the “Village of the Underworld.”
The Cavern of Death was actually located in the last chamber of an eight-chamber building or temple. This temple had four rooms above the ground and four more important chambers built below the surface.
The high priests of the then-prevailing Indian religion conducted the ordinary ceremonies for the common man of Theozapotlan in the upper rooms. It was when they descended into the subsurface chambers that the secret and, to them, holy ceremonies, were conducted.
The first underground room was the one which was reserved for any human sacrifice. Its walls were lined with the images of the representations of their various “Gods.” A blood-stained stone altar in the center of the chamber served for the sacrifice of any human victim, whose still-beating heart would be torn from a screaming still-living body and offered to the lips of those same stone idols for their supposed repletion.
There was a second door in the first chamber which led to the second room. This was a crypt where the preserved bodies of all the deceased high priests reposed. The next door in this crypt led to the third underground vault, about the walls of which were the preserved bodies of all the former “Kings” of Theozapotlan. For, on the death of a king, his body was brought to this chamber and installed there with all the state and glory, as well as with many sacrifices to accompany him.
It was from this burial chamber of kings that the fourth and last underground room was accessible. A doorway in third room led into the last underground chamber which seems appropriately to have contained nothing but another entrance covered by a huge stone slab. I write “appropriately,” for the entrance to either HELL or the CAVES should be covered but unencumbered in the area about it for the benefit of those who might wish to leave rapidly and wisely. It was conceived by the Catholic Fathers of that day that this was an entrance to Hades; however, as we may well understand, it was an entrance to a Dero larder.
Through this doorway behind the stone slab were placed the bodies of all human sacrifices as well as the bodies of all the great lords and chieftains of the land who fell in battle. The bodies of those warriors were brought from far and wide to be thrown into this cave when they had been cut down in battles which were constantly being waged by these people.
Many of the common people, when debilitated by an incurable illness or oppressed by an unsupportable hardship, which made them seek death, would prevail upon the high priests to allow them to enter the door of death while still living. They believed that if they did so they would be the recipients of a very special afterlife.
The high priests would sometimes accept them as living sacrifices and after special ceremonies allow them to enter the “Cavern of Death” while still living. Needless to say, none ever returned to describe their experiences.
The Catholic priests, in order to convert the believers in this “myth” to Christianity, made arrangements to enter this subterranean door with a large retinue of torch holders and a long rope, which was tied to the stone slab door. They also took the precaution of having a large armed guard make sure that the door was not closed on them.
After they had lighted their torches and entered the door, it was discovered that they would have to descend several large steps. At the foot of the steps was a very wide stone-paved passageway with a high stone buttress on either side. The passageway led directly away from the steps into the distant bowels of the earth. The bones of the most recent arrivals, picked clean, lay before them as the passage seemed to continue without end. On each side of the buttressed path they could see into a large area which was a large labyrinth of stone pillars that seemed to hold up the very mountains which they knew they were beneath. As they advanced into the mountain, a putrid, dank air assailed their nostrils, serpents retreated from the light behind the shadows of the pillars in the distance.
They continued into the depths at a distance of about 40 meters when suddenly a strong cold wind began to blow about them. Still striving to continue, as their torches were extinguished rapidly, they took flight when all became dark, not only for the danger of the serpents, but also from strange sounds they could not place, but which were not being made by the members of their own party. Using the rope and the light of the torch one of the guards held in the doorway, out of the strong wind, the entire party rapidly retreated from this terrifying region.
When all the company had swiftly retreated to the ante-chamber of “Hell,” they rapidly replaced the large stone slab door. After this the head prelate gave orders to fill in all the underground chambers and seal off and erase all signs of the stairs to them, thus eradicating for all time this entrance to the Caves.
