The word “cathedral” comes, ultimately, from the Greek "καθέδρα,” meaning “chair” or seat,” and which in the Late Classical and Early Medieval eras of European history, came to mean the building symbolizing the “seat” of the bishop presiding over a certain domain of Christendom. Organized into networks—much like any other network, including ecological, biological, and anatomical networks—these were all tied to the head, the central node, to the church in Rome. There are analogous sorts of structures in the various other varieties of Christianity, with the difference being, of course, that there is no true “head” as is found in the Western church.

All networks of life, either interconnected legions of individual beings or networks built by individual beings for their own purposes, have a number of commonalities with the above ecclesiastical networks. Of course, these are largely structural similarities, as the networks of cathedrals and various other seats of Christian organizational “nodes” are governed by high-level, “multi-minded” decision making, marked over the centuries by internal struggles, hierarchical reorganizations—catastrophic at times—and all the other features found in human societies. What is more, they have a distinctly religious origin and purpose. Why, then, draw the comparison? 

Over the past several decades, an increasing number of highly anomalous caverns have been found in rock dating to the Hadean-Archaean boundary. That the caverns were formed by erosion, volcanism, or tectonic forces has been ruled out. The overall structure and distribution of the caverns were a mystery until recently, when it was discovered that they are all connected by filament-like “microcaves,” the diameter of some shrinking to a few millimeters across, for tens or even hundreds of miles. The implications of this are bizarre, infinitely more so given the coincident evidence for a novel form of “complex life” which existed a little over 4 billion years ago. 

That such evidence was overlooked or simply misunderstood for many years is due to the fact that this “life” is simply so strange and in almost all ways unlike all previously known life, extant or existing only in the fossil record. The scant, but growing and increasingly understood evidence for this life shows the existence of “structures” which do not seem to have any representative scale or decipherable scaling factors. That is, it is believed at present that they do not have any constituent structures—cells, tissue, organs, and the like—but neither are their fossils completely homogenous. The areas of greatest heterogeneity exist in the aforementioned anomalous caverns. 

The most current and widely-accepted theory is that these caverns were “seats” of some “governing bodies”—so-named “Hadean Cathedrals”—which somehow managed this network of life which spanned the entire subterranean world both prior to and after the Late Heavy Bombardment, which was the event which marked the Hadean-Archaean boundary. The term “subterranean” is used with great emphasis: These networks were “built” deep beneath the Hadean crust. The current theory continues: These networks and governing Cathedrals, perhaps originally spanning the surface or near-surface of the first eon of Earth’s history, were eventually extended deep into the crust. The reason for this is, of course, the beginning of the Late Heavy Bombardment and realignment of the surface of the early earth that it effected. This would indicate, at least, that by the Hadean-Archaean boundary, this organism (or organisms) had evolved—or, developed, or simply possessed; it is unclear which term to employ, as no known evolutionary mechanism can explain such an early appearance of complex life—both the means to detect broad, existential danger, and the means by which to avoid it.

The choice of “cathedral” over “seat,” “hub,” or other, more pedestrian designation for the centers—presumably the centers of whatever intelligence possessed by this odd form of life—is intentional. The worldwide network of Hadean tunnels and Cathedrals has an additional feature, one which has present-day implications. Each of the yet-discovered cathedrals has within it an extremely thin—nearly microscopic, and so completely overlooked at first—”microcave,” the mouth of which opens at some place on the floor of the cavern. These were detected by extremely sensitive seismography, which showed very faint, but regular vibrations in the caverns, the source of which were these “microcave” mouths. Further investigation in the form of slow and meticulous widening of the “microcaves” led to the discovery of what have been termed, most commonly in the popular literature, “Hymns from Hell.” (While tongue-in-cheek—a nod to the Hadean eon from which these structures date—the name is appropriately ominous.) 

The vibrations are the result of sounds originating from deep within the crust, likely in the vicinity of the Mohorovičić discontinuity. They are too regular to have any natural origin and, what is most telling: They show a number of harmonic similarities with human music. The “liturgy,” as it were, repeats itself regularly in approximately 5-hour intervals, the approximate length of the Hadean day.