Hi borfnodol,
right, currently Hibernate Search is tied to Hibernate core. There are intentions to de-glue them, and code is improving in that direction but there's still much work to do.
You might give a look into JBoss Cache Searchable:
http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/JBo ... SearchableIn this project the Hibernate Search mapping and backend was readapted to index objects stored in the JBoss Cache.
Alternatively you could fix the sources, but that would need a fair amount of work. Patches are welcome and if you show up on the developer mailing list you'll get all needed directions.