(Click on the stars from the 3rd page onwards to discover the mysteries of this constellation)

We immerse ourselves in the constellation Sabazia, which, with its six stars, forms a ritual object—a hand with multiple symbolic elements. The main one is a serpent, which speaks to us of the renewal of life.

The cult of Sabazios was a mysterious one. Only those who participated in it were revealed its secrets through rituals and initiations. In the hand, there is a knife and an altar, indicating the performance of sacrifices to ask for fertility, protection, and health. Today, the rituals are different.There is an intangible water heritage, such as a ritual performed by the fishing boat Alma Envia, which periodically changes its fishing routine to conduct a ritual of strength and blood between the human body and the fish body, namely, the action of marking stingrays or other protected species to ensure their survival. This ritual is semantically connected to other intangible water heritage, such as the procession of Carmen, a ritual to honor those lost at sea and to ask for good fortune on upcoming voyages.

This constellation represents a syncretic cult, born from the confluence of Eastern religions and Greek, and later Roman, polytheism. It speaks to us of the impact that invasions, migrations, and colonizations have had on our culture.

One of the stars in the constellation is the Potosí mines in Bolivia, the source of much of the gold and silver present in the collections of numerous Spanish museums. Its extraction was made possible by slave labor, not only of Latin American indigenous people but also of Africans.

In the hand of Sabazios, we also find the Caduceus of Hermes, which represented good trade and safe voyages. Safe for slave traders in their time, or for the mafias that, according to Europol, still traffic people across the Mediterranean.

Suddenly, the coins recovered from the wreck of the Las Mercedes, preserved in the museum, made of gold and silver from Potosí, are not so far removed from all those coins at the bottom of the sea belonging to migrants in small boats who tried to cross the Mediterranean unsuccessfully.

Each object in the ARQVA collection is a palimpsest, capable of connecting the past with the present, and different presents at the same time.

At the bottom of the hand, there is a cave, and inside it, a woman breastfeeding her child. This makes us think of the Altamira caves and the moment when the paintings were created, with the eyes of the tribe watching. The paintings thus become a performance or pedagogical ritual of transmission and verification of knowledge. Having been embedded in the wall, they have now been printed in primary and secondary textbooks, embedding themselves in the national collective imagination to create its narrative.

We wonder if ARQVA could be embedded in the same way and through its landmark achievements, the recovery of the contents of the Las Mercedes ship against the Odyssey company, if it could become part of the academic program for every student just as Altamira does.