(The Amazon culture: near the south coast of the Black Sea, 1600-1200 BCE)

The 'Daughters of the Moon' as a nomadic society of females was austere and ruled by simple laws and customs for survival. It grew out of their Proto-Scythian ancestry but flourished under an early charter the all-woman sect had developed to honor a code to remain male-free. They had coalesced over time into a warrior clan with the unprecedented ability to defend themselves against any marauders who threatened their autonomy-invariably these combative enemies were men. Their Spartan-like existence emulated the life and freedom of the animal they adored and with which they shared their world-the horse. 

All women in this culture had to be exceptional in combat; deft with a bow, sword and a spear; and able to perform these martial duties while in top flight on horseback. Heroism was expected at the risk of all their lives, as they were never to complain about pain or the burdens of a nomadic existence. A 'Daughter' had to remain unflinchingly loyal to her female comrades without fail, willing to sacrifice even her life for the clan if necessary. The penalty for betrayal within the Amazons of an individual woman, or the women collectively, was a suicidal mission in which she had to thrust of herself into the jaws of an uneven battle against males from an enemy clan. There there would be little chance of survival.

This severe penalty had to be selected carefully, often involving a large conflict between tribes-usually rare incidents of all-out war with men in order to employ this consequence as a 'trial by ordeal.' Any woman who awaited such potential atonement for her sin had sometimes to endure months, even years, before a dire opportunity of such appropriate magnitude would present itself. It was believed only then that the 'Magna Mater,' the Great Earth Mother would hand down a verdict-life or death, to the Amazon wishing to be absolved from her great sin of disloyalty or cowardice.

The earth goddess, "Asiatic Artemis" was known to the nomadic peoples of the Near East as well as to the Greeks. Later writers were to link her worship universally throughout the region and it was the Amazons whom it was said, later inspired the great temple of Ephesus in her honor, still standing in partial glory today in modern Turkey. This goddess of female power was at the heart of the Amazon spiritual order, and was often symbolized by the light or image of the moon. Later Cybele, to the Phrygians, and other female goddesses emerged in like kind and in later periods to provide powerful legacies of creation, birth and fertility to the ancient world.

 A woman's alignment to creation for her own reproductive prowess was a strong link to spiritual power in the primordial past, and out of which the Amazons emerged. Such female 'mother-deities' were to associate with the earth itself and its abilities of abundance and rejuvenation. They would later become infused with the mysteries of gender reversal, magic, and divine intervention in many of the myths, legends, and belief systems to develop in this greater eastern region of the formative world. It was nevertheless, 'Asian Artemis' who, as a female presence, gave great inspiration and motivation to the Amazon culture's everyday experiences, emerging some three thousand years ago.

Similar female influence coexisted at the time on the island of Crete among the Minoans and the Lycians, giving women a belief in their inner strength and abilities to compete in a world dominated by male physical strength. It was manifested in the art of the region which records their dual-gender leadership, granting equal and even greater power at times to women. The "Mother Goddess" whom they, the Egyptians and the Hatti-predecessors of the Hittites, adored. Such deities intervened constantly in matters of love, war, birth and death.

The Greek pantheon was to emerge with its own strong female deities, each with a more specialized domain, yet maintaining their feminine mystique and commanding respect by male counterparts for their unique abilities. Hera, Athena, Demeter, Aphrodite and Artemis were all worshiped and respected for their independent characteristics among the male gods to bring favor upon those whom they chose to support. And these females additionally provided the most insidious revenge upon those whom they did not. It was in this light that the Amazons paid homage to their own Artemis and waited for her judgment in the cases of betrayal. In the 'trial by warfare' a pardon would be observed as granted only if, through the Amazon's bravery and fierce combat, she somehow survived the ordeal.

In addition, the entire being of the 'Daughters of the Moon' was associated with their dependency on and love of horses. These animals were treated as family and all little girls were assigned a pony at eight years of age. This creature they would personally name, sleep with in the cold winters, train with for battle, groom, and feed until its death. Girls would begin an arduous period of combat instruction with the animal and their weapons which, as horse and young woman grew into adulthood, converged into a loving and at the same time, skilled co-existence. This relationship with the graceful animal was sacred and contributed to the protection of the society through devotion, finesse, and careful expenditure of energy.

The Amazon horse was worshipped as a minor deity along with the goddess of Artemis and later Cybele, and it could be ceremoniously sacrificed at the death of its owner. This interment of horse and warrior took place only if the woman had distinguished herself bravely with the animal while fighting for the clan. They would be buried together in this case, assuring a reunion in an afterlife, which the 'Daughters' wholeheartedly believed existed for them out of their regenerative properties as women.

Though the tradition of marriage between man and woman was practiced among the nomadic peoples to the north and east across vast territories, and it had been a tenet of the Hittite society within the lands the Amazons roamed-there was never any such union by custom or ceremony practiced by the "Daughters of the Moon"-the name the Amazons called themselves. Within their society a women's sexual contact with males was briefly allowed, however only once a year and for the purposes of reproducing their nation of females. It commenced under strict conditions of a protocol-during one lunar cycle in the summer. All other contact with males, other than in battle, was forbidden, except for that short, glorious warm season when it seemed all the fruit in the land dripped with nectar and sexual coupling with men was encouraged for the purpose of reproduction.

This paradoxical 'mating' was one of the Amazons' basic precepts of their existence-a once-yearly orgiastic reveling during a truce. Afterwards, it was a return to their historical abomination of men and a fight to the death with them over resources and territories which prevailed. These conditions of the 'Daughters of the Moon' had been accepted over time by the male-dominated tribes, as well, in an unwritten compact with them-strictly for the opportunistic pleasure it afforded them. The participating males, however, who naturally vied within their own societies for this privilege, provided their necessary virility and progeny seed to the commixture of the Amazons' genetic strength and tenacity. It produced a winning offspring, robust and aggressive, fit and equipped for survival. Historically, this combination had added positively to the string of separatist generations for the women who became renown in their ultimate survival as 'Amazons.'

It was taught explicitly to the Amazon girls over time and while still in their early teens that no young woman in the society could be eligible to couple with a man other than during the summer mating season. And this only after her moon-blood cycles had been active for three full years. As a further and more demanding stipulation for this sexual privilege, it was decreed in the clan's unwritten laws that such an eligible Amazon warrior-for full reproductive participation, had to have engaged in a battle of proportions resulting in the death of a male enemy, singly or collectively. This event and prescription, they called "tahbur" in their Amazon tongue, had to have taken place either in an offensive or defensive engagement of battle. The only other event which could warrant freedom of participation in these rites of reproduction was if the Amazon young woman had saved the life of one or more of her 'Sisters' while in combat.

These eligible Amazons each year, as a result of their passage of these requirements, could visit the worthy males chosen from a heterogeneous society for the purposes of the clan's reproductive needs. These included men from the declining and diffused Hittite culture or other males singled out from the Proto-Phrygian or Proto-Cimmerian clans to the southeast on the trade route to the Assyrians of the Tigris and Euphrates River Valley settlements. Some years the women travelled northeastward into the regions of the nomadic peoples within the large confines of Scythia for male participation and a natural selection which only diversified their race. These fierce cultures of Central Asia were called the 'Saka.' Yet, as with all of these diverse peoples, they had firstly fought with them as enemies and then, sporadically had made alliances at one time or another for this essential summer mating phenomenon.

For these short periods of truce, the Amazons would converge upon the selected foreign society, explicitly-'not to make war but to make love.' This visitation lasted precisely eleven days in the midst of the most brilliant full moon's cycle, and during the warmest month of summer. It occurred while the Amazons vigilantly camped at a distance on the outskirts of the men's own territories. This was often far from Themiskyra, the ancestral home of the Amazon women, located on the southern coastal border of the Black Sea.

The protocol for this mating festival was stringently taught to the girls since the time they were young. Moreover, it was understood that the sole purpose of this orgiastic season was to successfully procreate and sufficiently preserve the numbers of the women's subsequent generations. Nevertheless, this ritual, known to them as "Nights of the Stallions," or 'utet a-we sune' in their dialect, was also understood to be pleasurable and anticipated by those who had previously experienced it. The season was waited for each year by the eligible young women with a mixture of enthusiasm and natural anxiety.

Their own sexual maturity as Amazons had been a mater of gradual instruction while still young. This came about naturally through talks by their older 'Sisters, encouraging the girls' own sexual exploration and a sense of celebration for and of their own body individually. Becoming sexually 'awake' through nightly talks and each girl's own isolated investigation of sensations through her anatomy, later produced a condition where no girl was in doubt or ignorant of the feelings her body was capable of, either alone or with a male partner.

It was only a mater of waiting for the brief time annually when they would apply these self-discoveries to the act of reproduction with a male. This uniform instruction of all the girls carried them through the duration of their adolescence to a time when such matters would be clearly realized and understood heuristically within the mating season. Participation in "Nights of the Stallion" was eventually every girl's privilege and also seen as a duty to her and her peers to maintain the new generation for the tribe.

Additionally, the 'Daughters of the Moon' during the time allotted to this event were under a strict code to not speak or interact with the men's traditional tribal wives or lovers, should they make their presence known during the time of orgiastic festival. They were taught that their actions with these participating men were seen as a taboo among the women of such foreign tribes. Any feelings of hostility or anger from these women would be seen as expected. The Amazon women were trained consequently to tolerate protests or interferences peacefully, however possible. To their ethos as Amazons, it was far more regrettable to engage in violent hostilities between themselves and other women for any reason, the least of which was over their own temporary and fleeting male attachments.

Moreover, it was also understood by each 'Daughter' that the reproductive act she would encounter at these festivals, was like the reproductive couplings of their own horses in nature. It was performed for the activation of natural laws and for the eventual loving and child-rearing of future 'Daughters' leading to the dynamics of survival. These feelings and expectations were governed under the auspices of the goddess Artemis herself, and in that divine context they were intended for the insurance of the clan's future existence-a cardinal principle in the life of the Amazons. This imperative, among the Amazon women, eclipsed all other conventions of rites associated with the sexual act.

Further, there was to be neither guilt nor shame during that summer fortnight for the warrior women's natural surrender to their libidos-as it was believed to be a natural joy bestowed upon them by Artemis and seen as a divine gift. There was consequently to be no holding back the excesses of sexual energy they were allowed to express during those eleven memorable days and nights each year.

During this reproductive-feasting period, often additionally referred to as "Nights of the Brightest Moon," approximately one in three of the most fertile participating women of the clan would become heavy with child by winter. From these orchestrated truces with their former enemies, many women maintained the product of their couplings nine moons later in the spring, having given birth to children with qualities and characteristics of those men whom they had coupled with-essentially, their virile and former combatants. It was a process which, year-upon-year, yielded genetically strong offspring.

The female infants from these unions were kept to be raised within the 'Daughters' society for their entire lives, while the males were returned the next season after birth to the tribes from whence they were conceived. This humane practice was contrary to some legends about the Amazon's birthing habits, where it was believed they put the infant boys to death, or maimed them in their first weeks of life. There was no such violence, scorn or cruelty brought upon infants of the male sex among the Amazons, nor was there any remorse about giving up these baby boys in the fall when the tribe's protocol dictated it. Male infants were given back to the rightful clan out of mutual respect for survival and in thanks for their enemy's participation in their future legacy.

These unwanted boys often augmented existing families in such opposing clans who had limited numbers of children. In return, the 'Daughters of the Moon' who conceived males and returned them were often compensated with goods and supplies for their efforts. Woven felt cloth from goat fur, woolen blankets, bronze and iron weapons, gold and silver jewelry, were some of the items they could only attain otherwise in military raids. It was clearly understood each year, however, that with the Amazons' delivery of these boys back to their fathers' tribe-the temporary truce between the two cultures, was once again null and void, opening the door again to combative and lethal relations in the open territories for survival.

Those Amazon women who nursed and nurtured their own daughters in the cold of winter back in Themiskyra and after, were perceived as celebrities to the others in the clan. There they were supported and assisted by the whole tribe, honored as once again maintaining and contributing to the 'Daughters of the Moon'-a purely homogeneous yet fully reproductive society.

There were, however, legends in the 'Daughters' own society, stoically told of older mothers who had actually killed or were murdered themselves by their own sons later in battles, encountering the men decades afterwards in armed conflict. Equally disturbing to the more heterogeneous tribes and more traditional nomadic cultures who coexisted with the Amazons were rare cases where a middle-aged woman, still participating in the "Nights of the Stallion," might unknowingly encounter her own son at a subsequent reproductive festival, once conceived from a previous sexual revelry. These incestuous encounters, as in the same spirit of all the couplings of Amazons and foreign men, could not be predicted nor prevented, as they occurred through frenetic ecstasy and under anonymous conditions.

With regards to natural or untimely death, no 'Daughter of the Moon,' believed she could ever pass into the anticipated afterlife had she not perished in physical combat, or after a decorated life defending her Sisters. This secondary status, often concerning the older members of the clan who died naturally, could only be determined during a proper tribunal in the dead woman's honor, prior to her burial, and with a unanimous agreement among her comrades of her valor and sacrifices. Such a decision determined how much of the woman's battle regalia and her life-collected decorative affects would be interred with her. In addition to royal warriors such as Amazon queens or princesses, and their long line of matriarchal leaders, many women were honored in death with an elaborate collection of their belongings to take with them into that eventual chthonic realm, often including their faithful horse and weapons.

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At 1:35 AM that night both Nicasio and Daniela were still awake in their respective beds. His was in the rear of his flat near the university, where staring at the ceiling, he still quietly rehearsed his presentation. In the dark he softly recited details of his fieldwork, described images of recent satellite photographs of Drake's Cove, and juxtaposed them with excerpts of 1579-the original phrases from Drake's pilot. By memory Nicasio recounted his findings of long-range weather patterns and the careful measurements of sand spit migrations at different seasons in the year.

At the same moment across the bay Daniela was couched in a comforter atop her antique brass bed. She was sitting up and looking out the window over the jeweled city from the third floor of her parents' immaculate Victorian home. To anyone else, the view and setting would have been breathtaking. The house was perched high over San Francisco Bay on one of the prominent hills which were signatures of the City. She had been crying for some time. A large flask of designer cologne, bought for Nicasio's anniversary gift, still lay on the wooden floor where it had been thrown but remained unbroken.

It was an unusually dark but clear October night, as the daily invasion of fog had dissipated from the coastline many hours before. Daniela looked down at the illuminated sections of the city. It was a mosaic of amber and gold points of light, sweeping down dramatically to an immense black edge where sea met land in a chiaroscuro of humanity and dark water. It was exactly the line where contrasts had battled for untold ages. A single horn of the crescent moon remained ominously visible above the horizon, appearing deceitfully and momentarily at rest.                                                  

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