Legend of Perakee

THE LEGEND OF PERAKEE

A MODERN VIEW OF MAN AND HIS WORLD BASED ON AN ANCIENT TRADITION

by Larry Brinkley

I am solely responsible for the writings on this site. They are based on stories told to me as a child, and a lifetime of living based on those stories.

This teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

Any questions or observations may be addressed to me at larrybrinkley2002@yahoo.com
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All Knowledge falls into the realm of Public Domain. There are those who try to keep secret what they have come to understand, but if they think they are the only ones who know those things, they are only fooling themselves. For the people of Earth, after all, are but one tribe. What one person knows, we all know. What affects one person, affects us all. Each thought, each word uttered, each deed done and undone, each birth or death of any person, place, animal, or thing is like a pebble dropped into the Waters of Life that causes ripples felt around the world.

Just so is the body of knowledge known as Perakee. There is nothing that I can write that you will not be able to say, "Yes, yes, I knew that. I just never looked at it quite that way." Therefore, you could say that the modern version of the Legend of Perakee is nothing more than one man's attempt to rearrange the multicolored beads that we are all born with to make a new picture of this thing we call Life.

This current version of the Legend began almost 50 years ago when my grandpa, J. B. Hoover, told me stories about the lines in my hands beginning when I was at the age of 5, stories that he told me were told to him by his grandfather. Now, this statement may be a matter of conjecture. It is possible that my grandpa made these stories up, like J.R.R.Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS. But I have never found reason to doubt his statement that they comprise an ancient body of knowledge that was held and perpetuated by the Bo tribe of the Caddo of southwest Arkansas, and handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years in a tradition of what in English is called Medicine Men. The Bo tribe, as I understand it, was wiped out by smallpox in 1912, and so the Knowledge of Perakee passed into the world of White Man through my grandpa to me.

I must admit that the stories of Tolkien and the stories of Perakee have certain things in common. The heroes of both sets of stories are the unlikeliest of heroes, to say the least. They are not big and strong, and certainly not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. They are, for the most part, a simple folk born into all walks of life around the world. Some are indeed rich and famous. But most, like me, are poor, hard working, and unknown outside their own small sphere of influence. And also, like the One Ring of the Hobbits, the heroes of Perakee are given a gift by the Spirit that can be used as a tool to benefit one's own life and the lives of all they come into contact with, or it can be used as a weapon of self destruction and chaos.

But the major difference in the two sets of stories is that the One Ring is an object that can be stolen, whereas the gift of Perakee is given at birth and can only be relinquished at death when it is reclaimed by the Spirit.......

The heroes of the Legend of Perakee are folks born with what are called by modern man the Simian lines. Or rather, it is a configuration of energies within the hero that is represented by the lines in the hand.

Hand analysis is, by some accounts, more than 5000 years old. An expert hand analyst can look at the average person's hands and tell more about him than that person knows himself. But folks born with the Simian lines are still a mystery. We have been called everything from White Witches to genetic defects. In the Orient are such sayings as: "If a Simian hand strikes you it will kill you!"; "If a Simian hand cuts down a tree, it will never grow back!"; and "The Simian hand is the hand that holds a hundred!" Some views associate us with criminality, some associate us with genius, and at least one view holds that we are Antichrists, referring to the passage in Revelations about the mark of the Beast being in the hand. And I could add one humorous account of an encounter I had where I was told, rather forcefully, that the lines in my hands prove that I am a werewolf!! Sheesh!

My grandpa once told me: "When the Full Moon rose in the Church, all the Perakee were burned. All else that happened pales in comparison to that one act. For Perakee are the Lights of the World. And Europe was plunged into a darkness from which it took 500 years to recover, and from which they are not fully recovered today." If you are really interested in finding other traditions based upon the Simian lines, you might try looking into European history of that period, trying to understand who was burned and why. I allude to this in one of my poems by the use of the word Arcadia.

But the view I hold most in contempt is that of modern science! People are being dissected today under the umbrella of 'Autopsy', no different than what the Totecs did 15,000 years ago! And the most advanced theory of the most advanced minds in the world today to describe folks with simian lines is Genetic Defect! I was taught that my Simian lines were a great blessing in the eyes of the Spirit, and a curse in the eyes of Man. But from reading presently available material on the lines, I can readily see how you would conclude that we are inferior. It seems that most experts feel we are a result of defective genes, that those of us who lived to adulthood were too stupid or too stubborn to accept our defect and lay down and die, or that we are criminals who will leap out of the closet to pounce on unsuspecting mankind. I find it strange that when a butterfly is found with a new marking, scientists gather around and exclaim, "Look, look! A new species!" But when a person is born with unusual markings in his hands, scientists gather around and exclaim, "Look, look! A genetic defect!" I don't understand how this reasoning came into effect. Perhaps it has always been present, since the first human was born into a tribe of apes:

"Hey, Bubba, come here and look at this!"
"Whatcha got there, Bobby Earl?
"I don't know. I think it is a genetic defect."
"Yep, that's a gee-netic dee-fect if I ever seen one! Where did it come from??"
"I ain't sure. My wife just gave birth to it."
"Er... your wife ain't kinky, is she?"
"Hey, Ethel, you ain't been playing spin the banana again, have you!? I warned you about that shit!"
"Whatcha going to do with it, Bobby Earl? Reckon we oughta kill it?"
"Naw, Bubba. It looks harmless enough. If it can't keep up with the tribe, it will die on its own."
"Okay, but I ain't giving it none of MY bananas!"

And just because a person says his grandfather or great grandfather was a medicine man doesn't mean very much. That's like saying he was a preacher or priest. All peoples of all times of all lands have had their own dealings with the Spirit. Each society has its own stories about those dealings, about the people involved, and how they handled the situations, for better or worse. Each tribe has its own Wise Ones, who hold and perpetuate the stories, each adding his own bit of wisdom gleaned from those stories. There has never been a contest to decide whose stories are better. But with modern man's penchant for entertainment and reality programming, it would not surprise me to turn on the TV in some not-too-distant future and see something like:

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to AS THE POWER FLOWS, the game show where religious leaders from around the world compete for grand prizes. Next week, we will have Papa Do Head of the Voodoo Posse with his undead Zombies going against Pope John Paul II and his Ecumenical Council. And two weeks from tonight we will have Momo and his Pygmy Headshrinkers up against the Avenging Angels and their Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But tonight, we have Throws Rocks At Chickens and the powerful Snake Dancers of the Hopi Indians going head-to-head with Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority using their world renowned Lay-On-Hands Magic. Stay tuned after these messages...... Wait!! The action has started before the gong sounds! Throws Rocks At Chickens has tossed a rattlesnake on Mr. Falwell, and the Moral Majority are trying to counteract the venom with Lay-On-Hands Magic! Boy, howdy! What an exciting show we got lined up tonight! Stay tuned AS THE POWER FLOWS!"

Sorry. If you expect only dry non-fiction at this site, you will be sorely disappointed. There is plenty of that. But if I am to share ANYTHING that I have learned, it is to laugh! Laugh at the world! Laugh at the silly comings and goings of your fellow man. And especially learn to laugh at yourself. Because if you don't, everybody else will!

Anyway, this modern version of the Legend of Perakee began as stories told to me as a child. As I grew into manhood, the stories acted as guides through various and sundry adventures and misadventures, including alcohol, drugs, near death experiences, visions, and powerful dreams as my energies balanced. You could say that the Spirit held the stories out as carrots that led me on a personal Quest for Wisdom that culminated in a 5 year meditation with trees in a place known cryptically as the the Indian Graveyard in the Land of the Talking Wood beside the Creek Where the Water Runs Red.

The Knowledge of Perakee is now clothed in my own vernacular. How it was originally clothed, in what language, and in what terms and analogies were its Truths conveyed thousands of years ago, or even a hundred years ago, has all been lost. But the Knowledge itself lives on in this humble attempt to keep it alive.

I am white, I was raised white, and English is my only language. To be exact, I am half Irish, a quarter Dutch, an eighth German and an eighth Caddo, I think. I have never met a full blood Caddo, and have never heard the language. My grandfather spoke only English when he spoke with me, and I never heard him use any other language. Though I am sure he must have known the Caddo tongue, because the cabin where he lived with his parents and 5 brothers and sisters was only a quarter of a mile from the Bo village. He spent much time hunting and fishing with his cousins, and the tribe did not die from smallpox until my grandfather was 20 years old.

My grandfather himself claimed that the knowledge itself was Toltec. Whether this was, or is today, known by all Caddo everywhere, I have no idea. I wrote to the Caddo Council when I was younger, and never got a response from them. The history of the Caddo as reported at their site claim 25 tribes in the Caddo Federation, and nowhere is Bo tribe listed. However, they readily admit that there were other tribes of the Caddo that are not listed or represented in council today.

Now, if my grandpa was correct, the Knowledge passed from generation to generation through persons who possessed a Simian hand. That Knowledge could have passed in and out of many tribes, just as it passed from the Caddo to white man through my grandfather. Toh had 7 children, and all married within the village except his youngest daughter, who married a white man. And of all Toh's grandchildren, only one was Perakee, and it happened to be the son of a white man, my grandpa.

Why is a white man now the Holder of the Knowledge of the Land? Were all others between the ancient Toltecs and today only Caddo? I have no idea. Only the Spirit could even possibly begin to answer that.

The only words alien to English that my grandfather ever used when speaking to me were Perakee and Mahakah, and I have no idea the correct spelling. I feel reasonably sure in saying that the reason he retained those two words is because he had no English equivalent. He never read a book of hand analysis in his life. If he had, it is quite possible that he would have used the terms Head Line, Life Line, Heart Line, and Simian Line. Or he may have preferred the connotations of the words Perakee and Mahakah. I would be lying if I said I knew the answers.

The Knowledge of Perakee was never intended to be used by a few men to gain power over their fellow man. It was given away freely by Toh, by Jim Hoover, and now by me. I have given it away for 25 years in poetry and song.

The second page of this site, titled THE BASICS OF PERAKEE, is thirteen stories that were originally written as posts on the Simian Discussion Board at http://www.handanalysis.com/simian.html hosted by Larry Rodriguez. That was the first time I had ever sat down and told the stories in a linear fashion. Until then, they had just been disjointed bits and pieces of data floating around in my head.

The Perakee knowledge was developed by folks with Simian lines not only to help others with Simian lines understand who and what they are, but to help them understand human awareness in general. Therefore, Perakee Palmistry is not an end in itself. The knowledge of the Simian lines is only a prelude to a vast body of knowledge. It is an introduction that leads into other areas of human awareness.

I look at myself as a Storyteller, a Poet, a modern Bard in the ancient tradition. It is my sincerest wish that as you read these stories they will flow freely from my heart to yours, as they have flowed from generation to generation down the corridor of time, where they will find fertile ground and become a living entity within you as you nourish them with your own Life Force. I love an analogy that Sylvan used on the Simian Discussion Board: "The Pipe has been lit and offered to the Four Corners. Gather around and listen as the drama of the stories unfold ......."