Saving the White Lions

by Linda Tucker

  Through shamanic principles of love and light technology, I knew that it was possible to activate a forcefield around Ingwavuma, an energetic shield that would protect him against malign intention. This protective forcefield would, in effect, render him invisible to the brutal outside world.

  Maria and my prayers must have worked. That day passed. Then another, and another. Timbavati reported that the trophy hunters had experienced the greatest difficulty and inconvenience trying to locate Ingwavuma. Mysteriously, he seemed to have disappeared from the territory, as if instinctively sensing danger.

  For a period of time, Ingwavuma remained invisible. Trying to track him down, the trophy hunters spent days plowing through the bushveld in their high-powered vehicles, aided and abetted by the warden and paid trackers, but Ingwavuma was nowhere to be found. Eventually, a couple of weeks later, the posse intercepted another hapless lion roaming through Ingwavuma’s kingdom and decided to take out this unfortunate beast instead. So the life of my beloved guardian was spared. The exco had fulfilled its annual trophy-hunting quota, and everyone was satisfied.

  For a month following the trophy hunt, I attempted to get on with my life as normal, spending my days with Maria, and my evenings writing up my research on the White Lions. The days went by, and still there was no sign of Ingwavuma. Having prayed with all my heart that he’d vanished out of harm’s way, I could only believe he was safely wandering the remote wilderness somewhere.

  Eventually, after about forty days, Ingwavuma returned. Hearing word that he’d been sighted again, I breathed the greatest sigh of relief. However, the Timbavati authorities decided to get themselves another trophy-hunting permit. A couple of days later, they shot him anyway.

  Appallingly, my guardian lion died on August 22, 2000, on the last day of the month of Leo, as the sun set over the Timbavati wilderness.

  CHAPTER 6

  Death of a King

  MONTHS OF LOSS AND MOURNING PASSED. My lion was dead and my heart was broken.

  Ancient lion shamanism teaches, “When you kill a lion, you kill the sun.” It also warns, “For every lion killed, a human soul will be lost.” There’s something eternally damning about this concept. It isn’t the rough justice of the human variety: tooth for a tooth, life for a life. The balance of scales is a soul for a life (human soul for a lion’s life), which signifies divine justice.

  As for the coward who butchered my king, I knew his name. The wealthy American hunter paid $25,000 for the pleasure of killing Ingwavuma. I was in no state to track down this brute and gun him down in the streets of Chicago to die in a pool of his own blood, but time and again this gruesome wish filled my mind. I felt mortally wounded by Ingwavuma’s futile slaying, incensed with anger and outrage. And I wondered what deep psychological problem had led this weak man to commit such a heinous act. His decision to obliterate the life of the King of beasts was a conscious decision, presumably, but made without consciousness, without conscience. I knew he would carry the blood of my lion on his soul, whether he was capable of knowing it or not.

  With a burning, aching, weeping heart at Ingwavuma’s senseless murder, I submerged my sorrows in astrology books and sacred texts, trying to etch out meaning for my loss. It was then that I discovered the timing of this tragic event was profoundly poignant.

  The particular day of his death—that day only, and at that very time—the setting sun was in perfect alignment with Regulus, the heartstar of the Leo constellation. I knew from my studies of Ancient Egypt that the moment when the sun passes through Regulus is the pinnacle of cosmic events. In old Africa, as in Ancient Egypt, this moment symbolizes the birth, or death, of a Lion King or kingdom on Earth. The ancient mysteries of Egypt also indicate that this cosmic occurrence is the moment when the Pharaoh, or Lion King, becomes immortal and returns to the stars.

  Astounded, I now realized that my Lion Guardian’s departure aligned with a stellar plan in the heavens, which gave me greater insight into Ingwavuma’s sacrificial death. Myth had become real, and reality mythical.

  Realizing there was meaning behind the timing of Ingwavuma’s assassination, I now saw that while the preposterous trophy hunter, with his inflated ego and high-caliber weapon, may have slaughtered my Lion King for a stuffed trophy on his wall, he couldn’t undo Ingwavuma’s holy power.

  As an attempt to divert my sorrow in the midst of mourning, I dragged myself to Johannesburg to see the newly released screening of Disney’s The Lion King, only to find the parallels played out in the cartoon version. I couldn’t help but identify with the orphaned lion cub Simba when he stared sadly at the stars reflected in a dark pool searching for his murdered father, Mafasa.

  The omnipotent ancestral voice speaks from the heavens:

  Look at the stars. The Lion Kings of the past look down on us from those stars. So, whenever you feel alone, remember those kings will always be there to guide you.

  In the darkness of that crowded cinema, I sat and wept in isolation. The same was true of my own story. Only it was real.

  In the wake of Ingwavuma’s killing, like never before in my life, I began to question the nature of justice on Earth. It helped me to remember that two justice systems exist: man-made law and higher law. The former is known as lex, while original law is derived from Nature and is known as logos. Originating from divine rules embedded and encoded in Mother Nature’s higher workings, the word logos is Greek for “the word,” as in “the word of God” (John 1:1). Furthermore, I understood from my in-depth studies on the lion symbol that this first-born of God’s creatures is the bearer of Solar Logos, the law of God and God’s creation, just as the Lion of Judah brought enlightened principles to Earth.

  Having myself emerged from the unjust Apartheid system, I knew only too well that human laws may be oppressive, unfair, and totally inadequate. There may even be times when true-hearted individuals and communities are compelled to rise up against them, as in the struggle against Apartheid and the uprisings against the Third Reich. But while man-made justice systems should be opposed if unjust, it is the Solar Logos that we humans transgress at our peril.

  The Solar Logos originates from a primordial time on Earth when everything was in perfect balance, a creative moment referred to by the ancient Greek scholars as “The Golden Age.” If we honestly consider humankind’s history, we will recognize that the process of so-called development and progress—as we modern-day humans would like to think of our successive civilizations—has not altogether been a constructive and beneficial one. In fact, since this time of harmonious creation, it would appear that humankind has gone through various epochs in an escalating decline and dissociation from Nature and God, which has been likened by some scholars to a degeneration from the Golden Age, to the Silver Age, Bronze, and so on until the age of the basest metal, which is our current industrial age of leaden pollution and corruption.

  In fact, this ever-declining process of dissociation has taken us so far down the path of destruction of our Earth’s precious resources that we humans are on the brink of self-destructing. It is precisely at this time of imminent catastrophe, forecast in so many sacred texts and prophecies of many different cultures around the globe, that the enlightenment bearers return to Earth in order to protect and guide humanity through the difficult transitions ahead. These luminous ones are the leonine avatars, the children of the sun god. While Christ himself appeared at the brink of the turning point in astrological history, two thousand years ago (at the commence of the Age of Pisces–Virgo), the times we live in now are infinitely more challenging and, conversely, potentially more enlightening.

  The difference is that in a previous epoch, the Son of God died for our sins, while in our current epoch of imminent cataclysm—the last in a series of epochs leading to the prophetic times of Revelation—we are required to take responsibility for our own actions (and our own sins) and thereby secure a positive future for humanity on this blessed Earth of ours.

  So it was that my personal tragedy, a
nd the loss of my Lion, gave me insight into the greater workings of our time, and the scales of justice that exist above human folly. I continued to put my thoughts down into the book I was compiling, and although my writing did little to ease the heartache, it helped clarify my mind.

  Shortly after Ingwavuma’s sacrificial departure, while still in this desperate low point in my new life of service to the White Lion cause, I was introduced to Jason A. Turner, a former game ranger and the resident lion ecologist working in the Timbavati region. He was a good-looking, six-foot-four lion man with a friendly personality and the warmest heart. It should have been easy to fall in love with Jason, but my heart was broken.

  Were it not for Jason, I’d never have uncovered the factual details behind Ingwavuma’s trophy hunting. The Timbavati Exco controlled any information leaking out to the public and was highly circumspect about revealing anything regarding their trophy-hunting policies. No doubt they’d long since recognized I might be problematic and had put up impenetrable screens against me, so I had very little access to information. But, as a scientist specializing in the study of the lions of the region, Jason had free rein and traversing rights to the entire greater area of some 150,000 hectares. Contracted for a three-year research program with the private reserve and its direct neighbors, Jason had been brought in specifically to determine the impact of lion predation on the prey in the region, since the reserve had an intention to increase their lion-trophy quotas. Given that I was intensively researching the lions of the same region, it was inevitable that our paths would cross.

  Although I’d been requesting information and researching any material pertaining to the lions of the Timbavati region for the past few years, no one had informed me that a lion ecologist was also researching them and could therefore be of assistance to me. One day, however, a family with kids and an auntie decided to rent a camp in Timbavati Private Nature Reserve for a long weekend, requiring that a game ranger take them out on game drives. For some unlikely reason, there weren’t any game rangers available for that weekend, so the resident scientist, Jason, who also had extensive game-ranger training, was called upon to help out as an emergency measure. It turned out that family was my family, and I was the aunt.

  Jason and I immediately started talking about lions, a discussion that continued throughout the game drive, then around the fire after dinner, until the sun rose the following morning.

  Jason was a strong-minded and genuinely committed conservationist, and he believed everyone had a right to know the truth. Since he himself was eyewitness to Ingwavuma’s bloodied body being carted into Timbavati HQ, he sympathized deeply with my loss. In this case, the truth was something neither of us could easily live with.

  Shortly after the weekend meeting with Jason, I returned to Maria’s village to continue my shamanic work. Maria seemed to think I had met my match. She told me that my predestined meeting with Jason was written in the stars, and that once our minds and hearts united in a singleminded conservation mission, nothing could separate us. Back to back, we would fight for the same cause. I wasn’t ready to hear this. Ingwavuma, now a guiding light from unseen realms, indicated clearly that this bloody incident would not be the last time an ignorant butcher would take the life of a just monarch through ego and vainglory. My only concern was to equip myself with all the shamanic techniques I might require to be effective in protecting the future White Lions. I became a Warrior of Light and took up the spiritual weaponry that Credo and Maria had set aside for me: the sword of truth, the bow and arrow of love, and the shield of lightforce. Ingwavuma’s assassination sealed my commitment to protect the lions of this region. If any White Lion cubs were ever born again in the natural and spiritual kingdom of Timbavati, these future kings and queens would have an unfaltering gladiator to ensure their survival.

  Approximately two months after Ingwavuma’s death, Maria made an astonishing forecast. She reminded me that “no matter how humans try to destroy sacredness in Nature, they cannot! God is supreme. Nature belongs to the Creator.”

  She threw the bones of divination and observed with a deep knowing expression as the lion bone rolled off the mat and came to rest directly in front of me. I will never forget the glimmer in her eye as she predicted that a lioness would soon be born, outside the borders of Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, but in a place of great symbolic significance to humanity. She warned me that I must take special care not to overlook the signs. Seemingly, my Lion King had had to depart to make way for the arrival of a Lion Queen.

  As the Keeper of the White Lions, I was called to return this new Sacred One to the land of her origins, Timbavati, the place of the angelic starlions, no matter the obstacles.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Queen Is Born

  HOLDING THIS TINY NEWBORN WHITE LION CUB against my chest, I’m moved by an overwhelming maternal sense of love and protectiveness. It is December 26, 2000, the first day after Christmas, in Bethlehem, South Africa.

  I cup my palm around her rounded little belly, so soft and downy, and the pinkness of her tender paws. I breathe the exquisite milky, talcum scent of baby lion. She’s so vulnerable, she can’t keep her head from lolling if I don’t support her. The bond between us is so exquisitely close, it seems she’s trying to suckle.

  It feels like a revelation, the most overwhelming moment of my life. Absolutely nothing will ever be the same again. I’m filled with love, but at the same time torn in confusion. She isn’t my newborn baby. This little lion-lamb was ripped from her own lioness mother only hours ago and will now be bottle-fed by callous humans in preparation for her future as a trophy animal.

  This softest, gentlest creature is so full of latent fire. Holding her in a loving embrace, I see her blue eyes connect with mine. Soul to soul. Flame to flame.

  From deep within a timeless place, from now to eternity, I make a pledge to this lion baby, future Queen of Lionesses. I promise you I will never rest, not for a single day, not until I’ve returned you to your ancestral kingdom of Timbavati. No matter the cost.

  IT’S THE END OF A LONG, EXCRUCIATING DAY. 6:30 p.m. I’m sitting on one of the deckchairs on the veranda of the trophy hunter’s fortress-like house, sipping the cocktail he’s just offered me, numb and bewildered, watching the dying sun burn the horizon. All around me are caged animals, in a concentration camp of suffering and misery.

  I’ve been invited to dine with this grim hunting operator and his wife. The owner of the farm is a self-styled Rambo and a publicly confirmed PH (professional hunter). He was friendly to begin with but left me a moment ago to fetch his rifle from behind the bar counter; something in the distance had annoyed him. His appearance was affable, beneath which I detected a powder keg of barely contained rage.

  From our preliminary discussions, I’ve determined he has no qualms about taking cubs from their mothers at birth, hand-rearing them to frolic about the house with his own daughters, until such time as they grow unmanageable a couple of months later, put them in enclosures to grow up, and sell them to be shot as trophies. In fact, earlier today he produced an advertisement in the local papers that pictures one of these subadult cubs dining at the dinner table with his family, under the headline:

  Shoot This Lion for $25,000

  I dared not ask the canned hunter, but a staff member has since informed me that the tawny-colored lion in the ad—which was bottle-fed by his wife, slept in the beds of his daughters, and sat incongruously eating dinner out of a bowl together with the family—was duly shot as a trophy.

  As his guest, I’m struggling with a surging range of confused emotions. Beside me on the coffee table is a brochure of this man’s pretty daughters, smiling as they hold up lion cubs, with the caption:

  Trophy hunting is conducted in season

  with excellent slaughtering facilities.

  Beneath me on the floor is a spread-eagled skin of a lion as a rug, the head intact.

  This is madness. Where am I?

  Sitting on the veranda of
the trophy hunter’s farmhouse, I’m hemmed in on all sides by cages housing rare endangered animals, looking desperate and demented and awaiting their fate. There are so many cages that they extend all the way from the back of the house to the front, where they form our view.

  In 1997, the hard-nosed British investigative television program The Cook Report first exposed the atrocities taking place in these commercial hunting operations and gave them a name: “canned lion hunting.” The term “canned hunting” refers to the malpractice of raising endangered wild animals in cages to be shot as trophies. But while the concept of “lions in a can” does convey the grim notion of sensitive living creatures being turned into commodities, it conveys little of the real horror: Newborn cubs are wrenched from their mothers by the use of mechanical weed eaters. They are then hand-reared, bottle-fed, and made to be dependent upon and trusting of humans. Many are parceled out to be petted and cuddled by the public for money before finally being caged, baited, and mercilessly slain in their confined spaces.

  I made a pilgrimage to this God-forsaken little town, acting on inside information that a magnificent White Lion is illegally being held captive here. Once I arrived, I discovered that Bethlehem, South Africa, is the black heart of this notorious canned-hunting industry.

  Having traveled during Christmas Day, I arrived in Bethlehem early this morning: Boxing Day. I then met up with Greg Mitchell, the game ranger running this place. Greg told me he signed up for this job thinking it was a genuine scientific breeding program, only to discover he was running a factory-farm-cum-killing-camp.