modern Argentinean Chaco and the Bolivian lowlands, and in the 1830's, an Araucanian warlord named Calfucurá--well steeped in his people's traditions--led a massive search for the object in the mountain ranges of Tandil, Balrcarce, San Luis and Córdoba which did not turn up the Baton of Command.

It is at this point that we must delve into the other esoteric tradition linked to this black basalt wand: students of the occult believe that aside from its neolithic age, the Baton of Command is tied in to the European tradition of the Holy Grail, which has been handed down to us through Arthurian legend and Wagnerian opera and is far removed from fiction.

These esoterics, like the late Argentinean scholar Guillermo Terrera, believe that the 12th century chansons de geste ofChretien de Troyes and Wolfram Von Eschenbach make allusions to the Baton of Command and to the existence of South America--a landmass whose existence Medieval man could not have suspected.

While these allegations would quite rightly be dismissed as crankery in the hallowed halls of academe, Terrera and his followers nevertheless make an intriguing case for their beliefs. According to these esoteric revisionists, mythological sources in Central and Eastern Asia make reference to a mysterious character entrusted with the custody of two sacred items: one of them the so-called Holy Grail o Sangraal, and the other being "the Stone of Wisdom", which they identify as the Baton of Command.

The enigmatic custodian of these items would have begun his career thousands of years ago, and is only known as the