Firewalk with Me
About 5 miles southeast of Roosevelt on a remote ranch in Utah, Terry Sherman (aka Tom Gorman) and well known paranormal investigator Chad Deetken peered into the darkness of a pasture. It was in the early morning hours of August 28, 1997. What they were looking at contradicted rational mans consensus of reality, but not in this place dubbed the Skinwalker Ranch. A dull light appeared in the blackness, gradually taking on depth. As it grew brighter it became a floating tunnel. From the bowels of the tunnel a humanoid figure crawled and heaved its way toward them. In a final mighty effort the figure wiggled its way free of the light and dropped to the ground scampering off into the darkness. The light snapped shut leaving the 2 men alone with their very expensive and very useless equipment. The rancher scanned the darkness with his night vision glasses as Deetkin fumbled with his camera which had failed to capture the event.
The men were both working for Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow founder of the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS). They were participants in an investigation of ongoing paranormal activity's at the ranch. Sherman had purchased the land in 1994 in order to raise hybrid cattle and he, his 2 teenage children, and wife were subsequently driven to the brink of madness by paranormal events. The strange story hit the Las Vegas Mercury News in 1996 and upon reading it Bigelow immediately flew in from his Las Vegas headquarters and purchased the ranch, keeping the Sherman family on as caretakers over the strenuous objections of Mrs. Sherman. With machine like efficiency the NIDS swiftly moved a platoon of accredited scientists and millions of dollars in state of the art technology onto the ranch. They then sealed the ranch off with a paramilitary force consisting of “ex” special forces and law enforcement personnel. Cries from the UFO community that they were being kept from their space brothers by government spooks masquerading as ghost busters went unheeded and in 2009 Bigelow appears to have solved that problem by buying MUFON.
What is known of what goes on at the ranch is largely gleaned from a book ‘HUNT FOR THE SKINWALKER’ coauthored by Bigelow’s hand picked journalist George Knapp who has the odious distinction of having introducing Bob Lazar and area 51 to the world. The other author Colm Kelleher is far more reputable. He is a renowned molecular biologist and was one of the lead scientists in the investigation. Kelleher claims that aside from off the chart magnetic readings, photographic and physical evidence is lacking because the phenomenon exhibits a precognitive consciousness that enables it to avoid imprinting itself on the devices used to record its existence. Kelleher relates an incident when the NIDS was initially deployed at the ranch. They erected telephone poles with TV cameras on top, each camera monitored a field encompassing the next camera. One of the pictures in the control room inside the ranch house was suddenly lost and the scientists rushed to the location outside to find that high atop one of the poles, the cameras, mounts, and wiring were shredded to pieces. Elated they rushed back to the ranch house thinking that the cameras on the pole next to it would have caught whatever was responsible for the sabotage, instead they found nothing on the videos.
The book gives an array of eyewitness accounts from heavily accredited scientists. The phenomena runs the entire gamut of paranormal activity from UFO’s, poltergeist activity, big foots, disembodied voices, and shadow people, to strange and extinct animals. The story includes a bullet proof giant wolf that tries to drag away a calf in spite of taking 5 bullets from the ranchers guns. In one of the many bizarre incidents a figure shrouded by night left a Velociraptor like claw print on the ground where it landed before disappearing, after being shot from a tree.Whatever it was it had a 3 foot wide spread between its glowing yellow eyes. Intelligently controlled floating globules of light regularly roam the ranch harassing cattle and incinerating dogs. Twenty-four cattle have either disappeared or were mutilated. The forensic examinations of the dead animals show all of the mutilations were done with a long blade and shorter scissor like instrument. Some of the mutilations occurred when the animals were left alone for minutes. Four prize bulls were found dazed and crammed like sardines into a tiny trailer after a frantic search for them. Sherman had wondered out loud to his wife that morning what he would do if anything happened to them and an hour latter the bulls had vanished.
The Tribal headquarters of the Ute Indians, Fort Duchesne, is about 5 miles northeast of the ranch. The Ute Indians are forbidden by tribal law to set foot on the property of the ranch because it is “in the path of the Skinwalker.” The Ute blame the Navaho for setting the Skinwalker loose on Ute land as an act of vengeance for crimes the Ute committed against the Navaho 150 years ago when the Ute sided with the United States Government against them.
Just what is a Skinwalker? The Navaho are reticent about talking to archeologists and anthropologists. In the past artifacts have been systematically looted, presumably right under the auspices of the Smithsonian, and sold off to private collectors like Andy Warhol.‘The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)’now protects Indians from having their sacred objects end up in the private collections of elitists. Due to these historical precedents, information defining a Skinwalker and anything of what the Dene speaking people believe is virtually nonexistent among outsiders.
Some say the Skinwalker is a witch, or a witch's witch, but Skinwalker appears to be a blanket term applied to a malevolent manifestation of a supernatural consciousness. Manifestations of the Skinwalker are marked by murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia. According to Clyde Klukhohn, Author of ‘The Navaho: Revised Edition’ (Harvard Paperbacks) the word for Skinwalker in Navaho is “yee nadlooshii,” which means walk/travel like an animal. As the Indian name implies, the Skinwalker moves about in animal form but the word Skinwalker itself implies something far more insidious, something more like a disembodied consciousness that can take over the body of a human and walk in human skin.
Here in the United States, we congratulate ourselves for having been brought by our forefathers to this land of abundance. We pay dutiful homage to the indigenous inhabitants, whom we systematically exterminated for their land. We play at understanding their customs and beliefs and embrace them in our shallow search for meaning. We have assorted Asians magically evolving to Clovis man with his fluted European arrow heads. Intrepidly, he stumbles across some theoretical bridge some 14,000 years ago. From Russia to Alaska “Clovis” man radiated across 2 continents of untapped and seemingly limitless resources.
In carefully controlled retrospect we have invented noble red men who worshiped nature and coalesced into thriving stone age civilizations 3,500 years ago in Central and South America. Freshly minted “scholars” leap through flaming hoops of ignorance as they jostle and trip over each other in their eagerness to recite this university dogma. Enigma’s are arbitrarily debunked, then systematically ignored. Dusty bones in forgotten places bare mute testimony against scholastic scripts that are sanctioned by politically correct social engineers. Cyclopean ruins mark places where these ‘scholars’ dare not tread and the gnawed bones of children whisper unspeakable contradictions.
Wild Child: “Remember when we were in Africa?”
About a thousand years ago a civilization arose in the northwestern corner of New Mexico in a place called Chaco Canyon. The civilization is marked by its unique architecture that spills into the Southwest corner of Colorado, the Southeast corner of Utah, and the Northeast corner of Arizona. Its enigmatic inhabitants are now ingrained as the “Anasazi” in the racial memory of the Indians of that land. From the primitive Indian pit houses and pole-and-adobe construction native to that locality suddenly emerged elaborate constructions in sunset hued natural stone. The structures were of patio slab sized flat rocks quarried from the local sandstone and meticulously mortared, stacked to 5 stories high, and encompassing hundreds of individual rooms. The masonry work is clearly unprecedented by the native inhabitants and resembles that of the Great Zimbabwe, which was built without mortar, arising and vanishing in the same mysterious manner across the ocean in Africa, beginning at the same time the Anasazi disappeared from the southwestern United States.
The Anasazi structures are centered around Kivas, circular constructions usually imbedded into the earth, that were used in the ritual worship of “Kachina” spirits. The spirits were called forth from a small hole dug into the ground in the center of the Kiva called a Sipapu or place of emerging. Rectangular walls usually surrounded the Kivas.
Kachina spirits are currently worshiped throughout the four corner area where the Anasazi ruins are located. They are represented by elaborate dolls carved from the root of cottonwood trees and are for the most part benevolent forces of nature. Nobody has ever found an Anasazi Kachina doll but the present day Indian spirits are called forth from Sipapu’s in the same manner as the Anasazi’s forgotten Gods. Anasazi is the name given by the local tribes to the builders of the ruins and it means ancient enemies or those who are not us depending on the pronunciation.
To even speculate that the primitive basket weaving cultures who made their homes in covered holes in the earth called pit houses suddenly figured out how to quarry natural sandstone and stack and mortar it with the expertise of the finest modern masons is the very height of absurdity. Such a theory violates every rule of empirical reasoning, but apparently this is exactly what Smithsonian produced legions of zombie archeologists have established as a science through its endless repetition in academia.
The desert sun on the burnished canyon walls of the four corner area reveals the many petroglyphs left behind by the previous inhabitants. Since they left no written records we can only speculate as to meaning of these primitive rock montages. The Una Vida Petroglyph shows a human figure behind a spiral. He is flanked below by an insect like humanoid. Between them lay a pastoral scene of abundant and fantastic appearing game.The effect of the whole petroglyph is to convey a sense that what is there takes place behind the spiral.
Kachina bridge is adorned with a faded glyph that looks like a sauropod dinosaur to the delight of the Creationists and chagrin of the Smithsonian charlatans. They have set up an internet chorus sniffling in unison that it’s a mud stain. Others like the Sego Canyon pictograph depict monstrous phantasmagorical beings that fuel the delirium of proponents of the various beneficent space brother theories. These theory's have theoretical beings with incomprehensibly advanced technology and motivated by an overriding sense of altruism, journeying from light years away, to assist ancient man in building the first civilizations. The “aliens” somehow managed to do this without leaving any physical trace of themselves except for the remnants of the civilizations themselves.
The petroglyphs of the Southwest area, where the Anasazi once reigned, are marked by the abundance of swirling spirals like those depicted in petroglyphs spanning all the regions of the earth. There are also mysterious hand prints placed on drawings depicting historical events such as the Chaco Canyon petroglyph. The petroglyph chronicles the birth of the Crab Nebula in 1054. Astronomists estimate that the exploded super nova would have been visible to the Anasazi in broad daylight for a full 2 months. The celestial explosion was recorded in Navajo Canyon and White Mesa as well as in Chaco Canyon and a recent discovery seems to indicate it was recorded in great detail in a remote canyon in Central Arizona at Agua Fria National Monument.
Celebration of the Lizard: “Wait There's been a slaughter here”
The Anasazi dwellings seem to defy logic as they are built on top of mesas or in precipitous niches on sheer canyon walls far away from any food supply the seemingly inhospitable terrain could produce. They had very few windows or doors on the lower levels. People moved from one level to another by ladder. Everything about them testifies that these were fortresses built to withstand a siege by some nameless enemy. Since they were first explored in 1888 by a cowboy named Richard Wetherill it was known that these southwestern ruins marked a place where unspeakable horrors had occurred.Wetherill along with his family invested twenty years in the exploration of the ruins. During this time he came under intense criticism for being anti Indian. Piles of charred and gnawed human bones were found by Wetherill and noted in a ‘Harpers Monthly’ issue in 1902 only to be mysteriously forgotten after his murder.Wetherill met an impromptu end at the hands of a Navaho Indian, supposedly over a horse trade, shortly after the publicity.
The local Navaho and Pueblo Indians do not go anywhere near the ruins for fear that they are haunted and its vanished residents engaged in forms of dangerous black magic. A magic that was precipitated by the use of an unknown agent that the Indians refer to as “corpse powder”.
Christy Turner has spent thirty years investigating forensic evidence in the Anasazi ruins, much of it in Chaco Canyon. He has built an air tight case that the favorite food of the Anasazi were their neighbors and written a book, which he glibly titled ‘Man Corn’. The book ignited a firestorm of controversy that threatens to consume the Smithsonian variety of politically approved pre Columbian history. Turner has used his background as a forensic consultant for law enforcement to ensure that he satisfies the most stringent requirements of proof that his many academic detractors demand of him. Anthropophagic (Cannibalism) practices must never have occurred in the Southwest because in the coloring book world of Smithsonian archeology the Anasazi have already been assigned the role of noble ancestor to our native American Indians.
In one out of every fifty forensic cases investigated by Turner the trail led to murder, dismemberment, and human bones butchered like steer for dietary consumption. Turner set a minimum of six criteria for confirming cannibalism. Each one had to be marked off on a forensic check list. The top of the victims heads were roasted, never the face, with the brain inside the skull. The skull was then cracked open with what Turner showed to be “anvil abrasions” which cannot take place on a skull with its muscle tissue and ligaments still in place. Turner also found tiny V shaped groves on the skulls and bones of the remains. The V shaped groves were all on joints where tendons hold muscles tight. These cuts matched the cuts produced in the academically excepted research of archeologist Bruce Bradley in his experiments on butchering game with flint tools.
The bones were cracked for marrow and exhibited signs of having been polished through their continued stirring in cooking pots. The vertebrae from the skeletons were absent because they were destroyed by being smashed for marrow extraction. Breakage, cutting, burning, anvil abrasions, polishing, and missing vertebra. All the aforementioned had to have occurred before Turner presents his case as evidence for cannibalism. Yet many archeologists reject Turners findings because as Smithsonian poster boy Kurt Dongoske points out: its “dehumanizing” to accuse Native Americans of eating each other. As Dongoske also points out only 10% of what went on 1000 years ago can be ascertained by the archeological evidence. Yet Dongoske and the rest of the social workers impersonating scientists allow themselves the arbitrary conclusion based on their “archeological evidence” that the ancestors of the native southwestern Indians built Chaco Canyon in spite of the contradictory etymological, architectural, and now forensic evidence.
Dongoske claims that the evidence of butchering hardly proves anthropophagic activity. The bones were disarticulated and butchered but to say the flesh on the bones was actually consumed “is a big leap.” Perhaps the Anasazi were just honing their sausage making techniques and did not extend their macabre practices to indulging in their culinary creations. The argument was scientifically settled once and for all when at the location of Cowboy Wash on the site of a massacre of 24 people, in a demonic display of malevolence, human coprolite was found excreted into the family hearth of the cannibalized victims. Molecular biochemists at the University of Colorado found myoglobin in the fossilized excrement. Myoglobin is a protein found only in human heart muscle and not in the gut. This proved conclusively that the gruesome murderer had consumed their victims and then excreted their digested remains right into the victims' family hearth. So much for family time in Chaco Canyon.
In thirty years 15,000 skeletal remains were examined by Turner 500 showed signs of violent death another 300 were butchered, consumed and discarded in communal garbage dumps. Anasazi cannibalism is historically inexplicable. The Indians of the Southwest have left no archeological or anthropological evidence before or after the Anasazi of ever having eaten each other, or anyone else for that matter. They are indignant and have been the most vocal critics of ‘Man Corn’. Ice core samples and tree rings show the years between 900 and 1150 were marked by a warming trend which would have produced an abundance of food.
Steven A. LeBlanc, director of collections at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and renowned expert on prehistoric warfare and violence, estimated that some events featured the consumption of thirty people at a time and would have been attended to by at least 300 people. LeBlanc has pointed out that Anasazi constructions were certainly built for defense and if you “didn’t build them you died”. LeBlanc is perplexed that archeological evidence indicates these buildings were necessary and that the ghoulish feasts took place within one of the few periods when there was peace and prosperity in the southwest.
Dr David R Wilcox an anthropologist from the Museum of Northern Arizona points out that most of the cannibalistic events took place within the distribution zone of the Chaco Canyon great houses. Christy Turner admits that he must find a logical way to bring cannibalism into Chaco Canyon. He accomplishes this by linking the Anasazi to the nightmarish Aztecs of Mexico.
The Children of Cthulhu
Aztec culture was the pinnacle of the civilizations speaking the Nahuatl language when history says Mesoamerican civilization was discovered by Christian Europeans. This “civilization” lends an element of belief to the Cthulhu Mythos of HP Lovecraft. Savagery so unprecedented in the annuls of known human cultural practices that the original assessment of the Conquistadors, that it was orchestrated by Demons from hell, is still the most valid.
Dr Carmin Pijoan, the residing physical anthropologist of the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico; has not only found forensic evidence of ritual cannibalism in her work, but bizarre and macabre practices like using human bones to make tools, ornaments, and musical instruments not to mention the ornamental skull racks that festooned the buildings of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec’s great city.
Much revisionist history has been written about the conquest of the Aztecs in the hundreds of years after the facts, especially by those within the scientific community indoctrinated into the Caucasian self-loathing and cultic denial of God which has become the standard Smithsonian and National Geographic fare. In the service of this politically correct history that has been invented for the earth by an academic army of talking chimpanzees some of the most inane dribble ever postulated has found scholastic acceptance: “The Aztecs were incapacitated by smallpox”. At its worst smallpox has a 20% fatality rate which out of the estimated half million population of Aztecs at the time would leave 400,000 Aztecs against 200 to 600 conquistadors, many suffering from incurable venereal diseases that they had caught from the Mexican women. Realizing that some people can actually read, these TV scholars now have changed the offending disease to Hantavirus, which the Spaniards although never even having been exposed to were inexplicably immune. “The conquistadors had guns and horses”. This would be plausible if the horses were M1 Abrams tanks and the guns fully automatic Colt Commando AR15’s. In actuality the Conquistadores fielded single shot matchlocks which were ignited by fuse and worthless in the close quarter combat that marked the battles between Aztec and Spaniard, as were the Spaniard’s vaunted horses. “Cortez was a shrewd statesman and managed to organize the other tribes who were resentful of the Aztecs to rebel against them”. This ignores the lone eyewitness account of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who describes the pitched battles of having took place between the Spaniards and the Aztecs with the Spaniards Indian allies bringing up the rear sometimes the very far rear.
Castillo’s account of what happened during “the night of tears” is conveniently left out of every authorized history book. Appalled by the spectacle of cannibalism and human sacrifice that the Aztecs called a religion, upon seizing the city, the Conquistadors had torn down the craven images in the sacrificial temple and substituted them with makeshift icons of Jesus and Mary. After they initially drove the Conquistadors from the city the temporarily victorious Aztecs, led by their priests, went immediately to the temple to reinstate the statues of their monstrous Gods but try as they might, thousands of them, they could not budge the images of the Conquistador’s Gods. After participating in this supernatural event they became convinced that their prophets and their king, Montezuma, had foreseen the truth in dreams before the Conquistador’s ships had even made landfall. Cortez was the agent of Quetzalcoatl, the bearded white God who originally introduced civilization to the “New World.” Quetzalcoatl had promised he would return centuries before and now he had come to punish them for their demonic hedonism. When Cortez launched his counterattack and retook Tenochtitlán most of the Aztec’s did not even fight back.
There are only one of two eyewitness accounts of the conquest of Mexico that are reliable but there are plenty of eyewitness accounts of the Aztecs cannibalistic practices. The most objective of these came from Diego Durán, author of the Durán Codex, whose writings were so sympathetic towards the Aztec that the throne of Spain repressed his work for years fearing it might be incendiary to the Indians (Some of his eyewitness accounts, along with others, of actual Aztec anthropophagic practices are given in Appendix A below).
Turner speculates that there was a migration from the valley of Mexico that settled in Chaco Canyon and preyed on the local Indians by introducing them to the traditional Mexican diet of human flesh. Turner points out a ball field at Chaco Canyon. Ball fields were intimate to Mesoamerican culture. He sees resemblances in the architecture between Chaco Canyon and early Mexican civilizations. Turner’s best evidence is a skull he found with teeth sharpened to animal-like points, a practice common only in the Mexican valley. There are other similarities between the two seemingly separate cultures that Turner does not point out. Diego Durán graphically described the Aztecs penchant for the ceremonial ingestion of intoxicating mushrooms ( see Appendix B). The ritual consumption of Psilocybin mushrooms is a prominent feature of the religious practices of Southwestern Indians to this very day.
The depictions of the birth of the Crab Nebula at Agua Fria National Monument implies an advanced understanding of astronomy. The Sun Dagger in Chaco Canyon, and the one in Colorado, not only resemble petroglyphs found from as far away as the Canary Islands but show an astronomical understanding and an ability to create complicated architectural structures that would interact with that knowledge. That knowledge would have to have been lost to the Native Indians with the abandonment of Chaco Canyon. They show no evidence of ever having had such knowledge. Tenochtitlán was laid out entirely in accordance with the Aztecs seemingly super human knowledge of astronomy as were New World pre-Columbian cities constructed far earlier like Teotihuacán in the Mexican basin and Tiahuanaco high in the Andes.
At the time when the Anasazi flourished in the southwest all the evidence, and their own recorded history, indicates the Aztec migration was from north to south into the Mexican valley. It is an academically accepted fact that a terrible drought took place in the Southwest ending the dark reign of the Anasazi. In the case of Chaco Canyon table etiquette, Mesoamerican culture is more likely the recipient than the donor.
The Anasazi are known to have disappeared right around the time when hoards of ravenous Aztecs were rolling into the Mexican valley like a storm from hell.The civilizations that predated the Aztecs in the Mexican valley and Central America: the Toltec's, and Mayans, sacrificed men, women, and children to their heathen deities, just like Caucasians did before the Romans civilized them. In spite of unsubstantiated claims, archeological evidence of the kind of cannibalism that marked the Anasazi and Aztec civilizations is exceedingly rare. Historically, beyond the ceremonial consumption of the bodies of slain warriors, and cannibalism practiced under the extreme duress of famine, humans do not eat each other. The possible exceptions being certain Pacific Islands, most notably another archeological enigma Easter Island, and the rites that accompanied the worship of ancient Semitic gods like Baal and Moloch.
Appendix A:
Bernardino De Sahagún's travelled to the new world in 1529 where he studied the native culture in depth and wrote a 12 volume 2400 page treatise with over 2000 illustrations drawn by native artists. He titled the work La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana or “the General History of the Things of New Spain” the common English name for the work is Florentine Codex. The Codex includes multiple accounts of cannibalism: “After having torn their hearts from them and poured the blood into a gourd vessel, which the master of the slain man himself received, they started the body rolling down the pyramid steps. It came to rest upon a small square below. There some old men, whom they called Quaquacuiltin, laid hold of it and carried it to their tribal temple, where they dismembered it and divided it up in order to eat it.”Sahagún also says: After they had slain them and torn out their hearts, they took them away gently, rolling them down the steps. When they had reached the bottom, they cut off their heads and inserted a rod though them, and they carried the bodies to the houses which they called calpulli, where they divided them up in order to eat them.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the only eyewitness account of Cortez’s conquest of Mexico, other than Francisco de Aguilar’s which was less than detailed. Both participated as conquistador’s. Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s book was titled Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España or in English The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. He did not finish the account until 1568. Castillo wrote his work in order to set the record straight after an account was given by Cortés's chaplain, who had not actually participated in the campaign. The book was not published until 1632 after a manuscript of it was found in the Madrid library. Diaz bears witness to the Aztecs dietary habits when he writes: "A little way apart from the great Cue there was another small tower which was also on an idol house, or a true hell, for it had at the opening of one gate a most horrible mouth such as they depict, saying that such there are in hell. The mouth was open with great fangs to devour souls, and here too were some groups of devils and bodies of serpents close to the door, and a little way off was a place of sacrifice all blood-stained and black with smoke, and there were great ollas and cánaros and tinajas of water inside, for it was here that they cooked the flesh of the unfortunate Indians who were sacrificed, which were eaten by the priests."
Diego Durán wrote The History of the Indies of New Spain referred to as the Durán Codex, and other books, describing Mesoamerican civilization as he found it. Duran was criticized and repressed from publishing in his day because his knowledge of Nahuatl and sympathetic understanding of the native customs were feared to be incendiary towards a native revolt. He entered the Dominican order in 1561 and died in 1588 after becoming ill in 1585 and returning to Mexico City. During his time in the Order he is believed to have been tutored by Fray Francisco de Aguilar, who had been a soldier involved in the siege of Tenochtitlan. Aguilar later joined the Dominican order, and had much to tell Durán about the Aztecs at first contact. He was cited frequently in the Durán Codex. Duran was also rumored to have relied on the legendary Cronica X for information, as was said of many early second hand accountants of Nahuatl civilization. His account of the Aztecs disposal of bodies from sacrificial victims gave details of cannibalism:
"The Historia tells us that when these festivities had ended, when everyone was satiated with human flesh and had seen enough blood flow from those miserable captives, Motecuhzoma ordered that all his men who had taken part in that war be brought there, especially those who had performed outstanding feats and had brought prisoners to be sacrificed … Motecuhzoma rewarded them for what they had done in that war and for the honor they had paid the gods and the pleasure they [the noblemen] had received in being given human flesh to eat. In those days the bellies of the lords were gorged with that human flesh. It is said of that king that not a day passed since he began to rule that he did not eat human flesh. For this he had many slaves and each day had one killed so he could eat that flesh, or so his guests could, or those who usually shared his meals."
“Once the heart had been wrenched out it was offered to the sun and blood sprinkled toward the solar deity. Imitating the descent of the sun in the west the corpse was toppled down the steps of the pyramid. After the sacrifice the warriors celebrated a great feast with much dancing, ceremonial and cannibalism.”
"On the next day a second feast was held by the warriors known as the Knights of the Sun, called Cuacuauhtin, that is to say, "Eagles." This was the festival of the sun that these people called Nauholin [Four Motion], which in the Book of the Calendar and Gods I wrote I translated as "the fourth movement of the sun." In this festival, as I have related, a man painted red was sacrificed in the name of the sun."
"At this feast much human flesh was consumed; there was also fasting and solemn ritual. The curious reader can consult the above-mentioned book I wrote on the ceremonies and rites"
"The Knights of the Sun had their insignia and distinctive attire by which they were recognized, and which permitted them to be distinguished from other warriors. They were the only ones who celebrated the feast of the sun, who were allowed to eat human flesh, and who could keep as many women as they could support."
"Tlacaelel…ordered that sacrifices take place more often. Another reason for this order was that he had acquired a taste for human flesh since the lords ate it frequently. It is also true that Tlacaelel had been persuaded or blinded by the devil and was now inventing a thousand cruel acts, all of which he made into law before his death. He was obeyed so blindly that everything he ordained was done."
"When the festivities had ended, Motecuhzoma seated himself in the supreme place, the Divine Seat, the Place of the Gods, and the war captives were brought out. All of them were sacrificed in honor of his coronation (a painful ceremony), and it was a pathetic thing to see these wretches as victims of Motecuhzoma. It had become as common among these people to sacrifice men on feast days as it is for us to kill lambs or cattle in the slaughterhouse. I am not exaggerating; there were days in which two thousand, three thousand, five thousand, or eight thousand men were sacrificed. Their flesh was eaten and a banquet was prepared with it after the hearts had been offered to the devil."
Fray Toribio Motolinía's was one of the group of eleven friars to accompany Fray Martin de Valencia to New Spain in 1523, to join five friars of the Franciscan order already there (Foster 1950:1). Motolinía became guardian of the Franciscan monastery in Mexico by 1525. He wrote many vivid descriptions of the cannibalism he witnessed:
"On that day … they offered numerous sacrifices of blood taken both from the ears and the tongue…. In addition to these and other sacrifices and ceremonies, they offered up many human beings … they stretched the unfortunate victims on their backs when sacrificing them. Their chest was very taunt, because both feet and hands were bound…. The executioner approached promptly with a flint-stone … they cut open with great force the unfortunate victim and promptly tore out his heart.… Occasionally, the aged ministers of the temple consumed the hearts or buried them. Thereupon they took the victim's body and sent it rolling down the steps. In case the victim was a war captive, his captor with friends and relatives took it away when it reached the bottom and, preparing that human flesh with other food, they held a feast on another day and consumed it."
"There was enacted on this same day another, even greater and never heard-of, cruelty. To the top of those six poles which they had erected on the eve of the feast they bound and crucified six male war captives. Below were more than two thousand boys and men with bows and arrows. After the ones who had gone up to fasten the captives had come down, the boys and men discharged the arrows, like rain, at the six crucified captives. Presently they went up, unfastened the half-dead victims, and let them fall from that height. Such was the crash with which they hit the ground that every bone in their bodies was broken or bruised. Thereupon the Indians subjected them to a third death, sacrificing them and tearing out their hearts. Finally they dragged them away, slashed their throat, cut off their head, and gave the heads to the minister of the idols, while the bodies they carried, like mutton, to the lords and chiefs for food…"
Francisco de Aguilar: While in his early eighties Aguilar wrote an account of the Aztec conquest drawing from his experiences, apparently urged to do so by his Dominican brethren. This account, known as Relación brave de la conquista de la Nueva España ("Brief Record [Account] of the Conquest of New Spain"), went unpublished in his lifetime, however a manuscript copy of it was preserved at the royal library of El Escorial outside of Madrid, Spain. It was first published in 1900 by the Mexican historian and archivist, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso
Appendix B:
Diego Duran
"When the sacrifice was finished and the steps and courtyard were bathed in human blood, everyone went to eat raw mushrooms. With this food they went out of their minds and were in a worse state than if they had drunk a great quantity of wine. They became so inebriated and witless that many of them took their lives with their own hands. Under the strong influence of these mushrooms they saw visions and had revelations about the future, since the devil spoke to them in their drunken madness."
Sources
"The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice." Harner, Michael (1977)
Cannibals and Kings Harris, Marvin (1977).
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Comments
NO excuse and like Thoth I read this twice. Man oh man who knew you were a professor.
man this was quite the read and I had no idea..
Wow I am amazed at the history.. I can well imagine after the feasting mushroom were quite the hallucinogenic sight.
HUGGGGG
Jack, I have to admit that I don't hate cannibals even nearly as much as I hate the bloodless murderer Obama, with his high-tech drones floating over the primitive villages of Yemen and Afghanistan. Those things reduce the human species to mere blips on a video screen in Denver, and that's much more repulsive to me than any amount of blood and guts.
-R-
No one is an 'expert' unfortunately, regardless of written accounts (relatively few) or physical evidence (obscure at best). Which is what makes this stuff so interesting, to me anyway, the very idea that in spite of all I might see, read or hear, no one really *knows* :).
And I still want to know what that thing was that crawled out of the dull light at Skinwalker Ranch ;).
Rated for given an apocalypse and loss of all of today, what will the far-in-the-future tomorrow think of us?
Fantastic writing, Jack! -- even without having yet eaten any mushrooms. Looking forward to reading it at greater length tomorrow and watching for the next two installments.
R
It took me about seven years to figure out that it was a racket - that the priests ate the meat. I always suspected something similar went on with the Aztecs. Especially when you look at the fact that they didn't keep herds. You can't build a mammoth warrior civilization like that without a regular source of protein. Yet the history books say they grew rice and beans and went hunting in the jungle.
Maybe you are going to answer these questions in Part II or III, but I wonder why the Christians conquerors were so determined to cover this up. And also why do they lie about the timeline? Evidence from mitochondrial DNA shows that Asians crossed into North America much earlier, around 25,000 - 30,000 BC.
Thoth I hope you will wrap that over seized brain of yours around the next 2 pieces
Linda I hope you will be felling better for the next 2 pieces. This piece in not only the culmination of 8 months research but that research has been synthesized with a lifetime of living my life with all the planets in the 12th house. I am intimately acquainted of just what awaits all but a select few on the other side of the event horizon
Jacob who knows better than you and I that retribution is just around the corner The Mayan Calendar was taken out of Egypt and as Plato said in Cretias civilizations have arose to great heights only to be destroyed All over again: and start as illiterate savages
Seer you will know what a Skinwalker is before this post is over
POd I have much help
Thank you for my friends who have so far commented on this. This is only part one. far more will be explained in the next 2 installments.
After watching Mel Gibson's "Apocalypsa," I have no doubt they were cannibals. In his version, the head is decapitated after the removal of the heart and the head is bounced down the steps.
Can't wait to see where Part II goes . . .
Great job. Rated.
Respectfully, though, your hatred of archaeology and anthropology as some kind of nefarious politically correct "anti-God" conspiracy, not to mention your fear and loathing of pre-Columbian cultures, is a problem. But it seems you're arguing some kind of supernatural agency at work here, so I understand that's your viewpoint.
Shapeshifters, otherkin.. etc. I am 1/8 Catawba or Sioux. There is still a block in how to explain things to people who do not use their language. Always take with you someone who you know is skilled in both and who you trust. You will find these people in the Universities. Well, you know I never gave much thought to the old stories I heard from my Grandmother. She did tell me not to repeat them except to my children. There is a story about that ridge I have it in one of my books. A book you did not mention. I will try to find it but it will take me a while I have a lot of books.
O Great Spirit in the Sky
Please watch over Jack
Keep him safe
while he has a look around
in your world.
Human sacrifice was very common in the ancient Mideast. Need I remind you of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac -- or Ishmael, if you're Muslim? Need I remind you Abraham's willingness to slaughter his own son is pointed to as a sign of "goodness" or "godliness", by those whose idea of religion hasn't progressed much since? Thank god the rest of us have arrived at the obvious conclusion -- such an act is not a sign from God, but a sign of insanity.
Nor was human sacrifice limited to ancient times. Need I point out the good Christians, who by their own boastful admission, slaughtered Muslims by the tens of thousands during the Crusades, decapitating prisoners and tossing their heads into the streets, so that the families of the victims would have a difficult time rejoining head and body for burial -- a requirement of the Muslim faith, if one is to reach Paradise?
Nor are we "exceptional" Americans free from the taint of savagery against our fellow humans. Witness these quotes from General Sherman, after he was put in charge of solving "The Indian Problem":
"We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians stop the progress of the railroads. I regard railroads as the most important element to facilitate the military interest of our frontier."
"During an assault, the soldier cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination – men, women and children."
Sherman, and his right-hand man Sheridan, helped popularize the phrase "The only good Indian is a dead one", and it was Sherman who coined the phrase The Final Solution.
And so it goes even today with "civilized" Christians and The Other.
To return to the Aztecs, no doubt they practiced savagery in the extreme. That's one reason other tribes in the area joined up with the Spanish, whom they saw as saviors. But as has been said many times, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
But let's keep thing in perspective, shall we? First of all, the holier-than-thou Spanish priests -- enablers in the horrors of the Cross and Sword -- had no room to criticize any other culture. They were willing accomplices in the worst sort of human savagery -- slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It ill behooves these black-robed hypocrites to lecture anyone else about morality, considering their role in the Indian Holocaust -- and god damn them, all in the name of the Prince of Peace.
As for cannibalism, yes, from our perspective -- isolated as most of us are from the savagery of the meat industry slaughterhouses -- we can decry cannibalism. But the simple, brutal truth is that cannibalism is no more intrinsically evil than human sacrifice.
And if you're going to practice human sacrifice -- if you're going to slaughter the enemy after a victory -- from a purely practical perspective, does it really make sense to let all that meat go to waste?
Again, the Spanish priests had no room to talk, given the human misery the Cross and Sword visited upon the New World. Is it really more moral to feed humans to your dogs than to eat the meat yourself? Or is it somehow more moral to force your Indian slaves to eat human flesh, as the Spanish did? That is the testimony of Bartoleme de las Casas, another Spanish priest who spent many years in New Spain.
I'll look for your next installment. Time for dinner.
Christopher Columbus was more than likely Joan Colom Bertran, a Catalan of the Colon Bertran family of Barcelona. They were a highly ranked family of professional sea farers. The third grade readers from which you seem to collect your “facts” from have long since been discredited by European and particularly Spanish historians. You really need to get your facts from the actual eyewitness’s like Diego Duran, who wrote The History of the Indies of New Spain referred to as the Durán Codex, and other books, describing Mesoamerican civilization as he found it. Francisco de Aguilar who was also a conquistador and wrote his own short account. Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote the only detailed eyewitness account of Cortez’s conquest of Mexico, other than Francisco de Aguilar’s which was less than detailed. Both participated as conquistador’s. Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s book was titled Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España or in English The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. He did not finish the account until 1568. Castillo wrote his work in order to set the record straight after an account was given by Cortés's chaplain (your other source) who was not even present during the fighting. And by the way has you read Castillo’s account you will find that the Indian ally's marched in the rear sometimes the very far rear and were only there to take prisoners to sacrifice to their own heathen deities. The Spaniards considered them to be completely useless in battle. All the battles took place at close quarters between Spaniard and Aztec, with the Spanish horses and their matchlock rifles being completely useless. And if you would like to dimiss Duran as a racist, Duran was criticized and repressed from publishing in his day because his knowledge of Nahuatl and sympathetic understanding of the native customs were feared to be incendiary towards a native revolt. Speaking of which your boy Bartoleme De Las Casas had his manuscripts taken to Madrid where they were assiduously rewritten under the watchful eye of Juan Lopez De Velasco, Censor of the Council of the Indies, who is quoted as saying: “the interest of the State is over disclosing the truth”. I thought you didn’t like the Catholic church Tom yet you quote their propaganda prolifically in your comments.
Casas writings would not be published till almost 100 years latter after the Catholic church got through cleaning them up. What the Catholic church didn’t want you to know is that in “Columbus's” possession was “Crónica X” the source of the expeditions . The similarities between the materials of Durán, Acosta, and Tovar, were first noted by scholar Robert Barlow in 1945.Crónica X is now an irrefutable scholarly fact.
So in short my butter knife wielding friend:Columbus was not even Columbus his real name was Joan Colom Bertran of a high ranking family of sea faring Spanish nobleman. His discovery of the New World was staged. The knightly order to which Colom belonged to had been coming to the new world at least 150 years prior to his voyage and America was known to exist among learned Rabbis long before that.Colom had in his possession something called ‘Chronica X’, which was the appalling history of the Aztecs and an inventory of how much Gold they and the Inca possessed. When he met the Taino he thought he was making contact with the Aztec, one of the lost tribes of Israel, and he was out for theological retribution just like Cortez would be later (the gold didn’t hurt either). Most of the key people in Colom's crew were Jewish including an interpreter that was fluent in Chaldean, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Colom was eventually disgraced for his treatment of the Taino probably leading to this nonsensical lie school children are taught that Columbus was an Italian bartender and wool dealer that was also a 15 year old admiral in the Spanish royal navy. Colom spent the rest of his life dogging the coast of the Yucatan peninsula on the wrong side looking to make contact with the Aztec, he never did and died in disgrace. Read my next couple of posts if you want to know the real history of Americas “discovery”.
Please read the next 2 parts of my post before you try to formulate arguments based on the long ago discredited lies of the Smithsonian, you are far to smart a man for that.
And of course we can judge Mesoamerican human sacrifice by our standards today - just as I can judge brutal, vicious and gory auto-da fe's, witch trials and heretic burnings, all European medieval/rennaissance religiously sanctioned ritual murder, which the Spaniards who conquered Mesoamerica and the Andes were very practiced in doing. Aztec sacrifice is but one piece of a whole planet's worth of human barbarism mixed with achievement. And anthropologists trying to reconstruct history don't have the luxury of ethnocentric outrage, not if they want to be serve accuracy, science and knowledge.
Or should every scientist in this field just randomly extol the virtues of white people and throw in proof of God, in order to avoid the "insidious cultic denial of God and self loathing of being Caucasian" as you say?
Now you have people believing Apocalypto is a documentary "OMG, they TOTALLY had sacrifice and cannibalism!" There isn't one credible Mesoamericanist who would deny that in the first place. And you have people concluding that Aztecs subsisted primarily on human flesh as opposed to the corn agriculture which we can SCIENTIFICALLY AND HISTORICALLY PROVE was the main subsistence. The cannibalism was an elite ritual practice but there weren't eating Soylent Green chimichangas in every home.
I'm sorry, and again this isn't a personal attack. But Tom isn't the one with the butter knife.
The fact that you give such patently absurd claims credence causes me look askance at your analysis of pre-columbian history of the Americas. While it's true that some of the claims of las Casas were and continue to be in dispute -- particularly by those who had a vested interest in suppressing the truth about the Indian holocaust, no historian I'm aware of disputes the fact that he was present at the time the crimes he alleges were committed. Furthermore, the illustrations that accompanied his writings are awfully detailed to have come from someone concocting such beastly behavior whole cloth.
And if these heinous crimes were visited upon the Taino and other tribes of the Caribbean by the conquistadors, it is certainly reasonable to assume similar crimes were committed by the conquistadors elsewhere in the Americas.
The Feast of Succot has been observed in Judaism since the first days of Solomon's Temple. It is observed in the harvest season of fall, on the 15th day of the the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. The festival is celebrated for eight days during which the celebrants live in booths, covered with branches, leaves, and fronds while they meditate on the ancient patriarchs. The Yuchis Indians are indigenous to the area in the Tennessee river valley where the Bat Creek Stone was found. They are different in both physical appearance and language from their neighbors.The Yuchis celebrate a harvest festival which is identical to the Feast of Succot. Every year on the fifteenth day of the harvest month they live in booths with roofs open to the sky, covered with branches, leaves and foliage. During this festival they dance around a fire and call upon the name of God. Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon who translated the Bat Creek stone was convinced after siting in on the Indians festival he exclaimed to a friend siting next to him: "They are speaking the Hebrew names for God!"
The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone besides serving as evidence for pre-Columbian occupation of the Americas by the Phoenicians (read Israelites) also serves as a warning for Zombie archeologists contemplating a resurrection. The boulder which sits on the side of Hidden Mountain in New Mexico not far from Chaco Canyon bares an ancient Hebrew inscription of the 10 commandments. Discovered in 1933 by one of their own; professor Frank Hibben an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico. Hibben’s held degrees from both Yale and Harvard but saw his distinguished career systematically dismantled when academia made it a point to dig up half of Alaska’s tidal zones in an effort to discredit some of his earlier findings at Cook inlet. Hibben it turns out had misidentified the strata in which he had unearthed evidence contradicting Americas inhabitance before academia's cherished bench mark of Clovis Spear Points.
And when you get done with all that you can explain why Aristotle wrote in "De mirabilibus auscultationibus" that the Carthaginians were building colony's in a land beyond the pillar of Hercules ( Appendix E). The land had navigable rivers and since there are no islands with navigable rivers in the Atlantic he could have only been referencing America. Aristotle was not the only famous scholar before the common era formally recognizing Phoenician colony's in America . Didorus Siculus (Didorus of Sicily) gives vivid details of its discovery and colonization by the Phoenicians in his massive 40 volume work Bibliotheca historica ( Appendix F). You mention the Mormons well surly a Smithsonian comic book aficionado as your self must know far more that an ignorant Mormon savage. You are an asshole who is in love with the sound of your own keyboard and unless you are able to refute a single fact given here I will forced to consider you as my Smithsonian provided court Jester, Please don the appropriate costume of long pointed shoes and a cap with bells on it.
Ancient America is a fascinating subject, I think... I know that the academics (quackademics?) don't buy into much -- if any -- of this stuff (I think that Barry Fell is pretty much reviled in academia), but it certainly makes for interesting inquiry/reading.
You've got about ten posts' worth of content here. I'd love to get through the whole thing but length is an issue. Please break it down farther - more of us will get through this. Also, it's easier to digest a couple of contentions than a unified field archeological theory.
It's good writing. It's interesting topics. I'll do a better job in smaller bites.
Thanks.
Jack my dear friend;
In the scheme of things, Jack, I comment here for no one else but you. For all the times you’ve been alone in commenting on my posts. I support you in the same manner right here, right now. I appreciate you, your compassion and desire to move beyond the traditional teachings of “Western scholars.”
I did not know much that you bring forth and certainly nothing about the paranormal Skinwalker that “moves about in animal form.” But what I find far more insidious and relevant, is the profit-over-people “Discoverers,” those ruling oligarchs, who, like the old “Eunuchs of Nicea” trap and enslave the masses through books, celluloid images and Lalaland lies, what you describe of the Skinwalker “something more like a disembodied consciousness that can take over the body of a human and walk in human skin.” That consciousness is build on the limitation of the mind, which Western man has convinced himself is a superior tool. Yet the human mind is a neutral slate – for the masses (sheep as you would say), it mostly only regurgitates what’s put into it. There are indeed other portals with much more intelligence and remaining undiscovered for reason of the oligarchs dominance. Certain folks who have commented here perhaps find suburban amnesia much more comfortable to handle. That’s easier and whole lot less pain.
Jack, you must already know that neither Clovis man (14,000 years ago) nor the pre-Clovis human remains found in South America - Pedra Furada (21 to 40,000 years ago) explains the origins of the first humans to inhabit the “Americas?” If there were folks who still believe HIS-story, I would pose only these questions: “who were the first humans to inhabit Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia? Why would it be different in the Americas?
There is one branch of the human race that is aboriginal to the world. I personally believe that ultimately all wrongs or rights, lie with that branch which must emerge, if not in this cycle before the next (ice-age or “fire next time”) or rebirth time, than the next, from different portals to emanate a more humane planet.
If my journey in the here and now, were different, Beloved Jack, I’d enter this conversation with more than this comment. For, I was born in the land of the Taino where the African became Ayisyen (Haitian) - that place where Columbus (Colom Bertran) claims to have “first discovered” the Americas; that place where Bartholomew De la Casas began the Atlantic side of the African holocaust (Maafa) and human slave trade. But I write on this everyday, in a myriad of ways, as you well know Jack. Nothing has changed as this struggle for civilization to reign on planet earth, rages on. I live in Haiti, at its epicenter in the Americas and endure US/Euro cannibalism. If humans were just flesh and the Smithsonian and other versions or fabricated reality inculcated in human minds of today’s “scholars” were all that there is, I and mines, would not still exist, still be conquering the transmigrated and physical fears of the barbaric Euro/US “disembodied consciousness that can take over the body of a human and walk in human skin” but is a zombie with no humanity. Be well, Jack
I just got to this part:
"At its worst smallpox has a 20% fatality rate which out of the estimated half million population of Aztecs at the time would leave 400,000 Aztecs against 200 to 600 conquistadors, many suffering from incurable venereal diseases that they had caught from the Mexican women."
You cannot be serious Jack. What defamation? Mexican women may not be here reading this thread to respond, so allow me.
Unbelievable. You’re saying that Mexican women gave the nasty, degenerate, raping, pedophiliac-Spaniards venereal diseases? That is the worst of Officialdom’s color book propaganda and way beneath your intelligence. Syphilis and small pox where brought to the Americas by the self-described “discoverers,” Jack. I know you know this. (http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/stop.html#vaccinelinks )
It’s recorded these Euros living in cities where enduring constant plagues, and had a problem with bathing, back in the day. Columbus's sailors brought syphilis and other degenerate dirty feces and ill germs to the “New World” and decimated the indigenous population, not the converse... Just like the United Nations just brought their dirty soldiers and cholera to Haiti. Haiti had no cholera before October 2010.
I’ve written on an Oct. 10, 2011, Open Salon post, titled “Bill Clinton has more power in Haiti than Haiti's president”:
“In the sixteenth century, Christopher Columbus’ sailors brought syphilis to Haiti, made it a common practice in the Americas to give smallpox blankets to decimate the local indigenous population. But the Europeans insisted it was the Tainos of Ayiti who gave the Europeans syphilis and were diseased just as they accused Haitians with having started HIV/AID and just as structural racism allows cholera to decimate Haitians today.”
"The Cross, the Rabbi &The Skin Walker"
After reading it in its entirety, I don't see the strong Rabbi connection to the cross to the Skin Walker. Not very clearly. My limitation, I am sure.
Yes of course I see the references in the comment sections about "their Bibles that have been rewritten by the eunuchs of Nicaea" and that "Most of the key people in Colom's crew were Jewish".
But, in the article itself, mostly I come away at the end, with the appendixes especially, with a virulent attack on the Aztecs, Anasazi and of Mexico.
The post seems to be mostly about the cannibalism that marked the Anasazi and Aztec civilizations and the reluctance of the Smithsonian folks to properly document this for "political reasons?." Simultaneous with this exhaustive attack of the Aztecs, Anasazi, Mexico and the reprehensible defamation of Mexican women and some more attack of Jews and Catholics (no friend of a this pagan Haitian woman to be sure), I see suggested glorification of the the European, uhm, "non-heathen" deities??? The godly non-heathen diety of the "discovers?" is somewhere in there too. What di those Romans believe?
Anyway, it feels like unworthy stereotypical stuff but couched as criticism of Officialdom.
For there is much evidence of the glorification of the Spaniard conquistadors vis a vis the "hoards of ravenous Aztecs" who rolled into Mexico some time before, uhmm, "like a storm from hell."
You write, at the end Jack, that "The civilizations that predated the Aztecs in the Mexican valley and Central America: the Toltecs and Mayans, sacrificed men, women, and children to their heathen deities, just like Caucasians did before the Romans civilized them."
Knowing your constant supportive comments on my definitely non-colonial works, I don't get this as the true history of pre-columbian America.
....
"A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?" --- Albert Einstein
Another thought, could you write a brief summary of this?
Thanks for posting
Power outage & bronchitis have sapped my concentrative
powers, and to do justice to this post I gotta be on my "a game".
I need to read the lively comments, as well...
Jesus, did ya have to write a f-ing epic on your return? :)
Later, Jim
You have weaved quite an interesting tapestry here.
I know you to be a scholar, so I’m sure all the pieces will fit together;
this first piece was intriguing for the way you have transformed all the general (no doubt false) knowledge about the Natives as lovely simple earth-worshipping , nature-attuned innocents to a more realistic basis. These people were , let’s just say it, savages. The Europeans who happened upon them were more advanced savages. Locked into mythological thinking.
The Hebrew connection interests me immensely. I have had some acquaintance with the Mormon ideology and history, and this no doubt ties in, somehow. I especially enjoyed your references to not only Plato but Aristotle, staggering geniuses who stood at the dawn of Rationality, yet were immersed in ancient knowledge, now long gone.
Skinwalkers, and, more generally, shapeshifters: are they human? I always assumed they were shamanically educated people of advanced consciousness, able to reach the subtle realm, what we now experience as dreams…
The world’s mythology is full of them.
This certainly is a mass of stimulating information smoothly written.
Well, since my concussion, I can't be relied upon for any form of linear exegesis (everything's on a different shelf in a different folder)!
Anyway, I hope the course of your narrative might allow you to touch on Cheikh Anta Diop and the possible origins of the Olmec civilization (the exodus of the Lower Nile Delta Egyptians "The Black Pharaohs"). Most of his information is in French but some English and Spanish references are also out there.
I would bet you speak Spanish, your writing here is reminding me a lot, of the Spanish novelist, Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa (Tenerife, Canary Islands). There's a tremendous scene, I believe in "Viracocha", where a character in the book is led up to a remote mountaintop ice cave where the elders of the tribes go to die, because he has heard the legend that the frozen remains of Viracocha "The Feathered Serpent God" (analogous to Quetzalcóatl, also a bearded caucasian) might be seen there.
Jack, not to ride overly much on Ezili's comment, and unwilling to leap to conclusions (as this is Part 1 of 3, I understand...), still, I must say, that sparks flew for me too, at precisely the points that she has noted...
Anyway, without pretending to defend you, it would seem to me that much of the material (for instance, the extraordinary amount of cannibalistic carnage etc.) appeared to be being quoted and referenced by you verbatim from the texts, and not necessarily espoused by you (as pure and actual fact), in the journey toward whatever conclusions, unknown to us (the readers) at this stage, that you will pretend to make further on.
Saludos ~
and soucouyant
a kind of West Indian
Skinwalker who strips bare
to the bone, and I do mean the
bone, at night, and travels around
like a ball of fire, doing devilish deeds!
Great research and a compelling read.
rated with love
I read that book by Bernal Diaz. The Conquest of New Spain. It reads like an adventure novel, but wierdly, its very much true. The indian alliances played a key role, but certainly Spanish armor also played a role, as well as superior ranged-fire weapons and close-quarter weapons (swords vs. wooden weapons). Alone, this wouldn't have been enough to win, but then again, there was a more advanced military science knowledge backing Cortez (he was a general and read about the campaigns of Caesar, I am told, or at least had them read to him).
I think Smallpox also helped the Spanish and hurt the Aztecs, not to mention the element of surprise, which the Spanish kept in their corner from the moment they landed at Vera Cruz
I have seen glimpses of things I wish I had not, the expression "let sleeping dogs lie" comes to mind when I think of those who would toy with whatever malevolent entity the skinwalker is. I suppose the foolhardy are free to choose what I would refuse. Doors easily opened are not necessarily easily closed, there are many things it's best not to learn, though innocence is not a protection or a power.
Interesting to see that you wrote the Skinwalker portion first though I can almost guess the connection you will make to the Rabbi & the Cross. I'm happy I etched the rune of protection in all my doors because I'm seriously creeped out now. I will not think of this thing again. I can't say I'm looking forward to reading the next two but I will read them and say my simple prayers.
I'm well aware of the type of scientists who prefer to pronounce that if they can't understand or explain it, then it can't be true. I find it endearing in a childish way but unfortunately it's more rediculous than simply saying they don't know. Such is the realm of academia, the noisy and pompous find their way to the top.
As far as the museums go, my experience with them goes back decades, I no longer pay much attention to such nonsense. They are busy hiding all the mistakes they make and fakes they buy, as well they should.
Personally, I dislike wasting energy being annoyed with either group, they are what they are. Like those who believe in the silly belief system of economics, they will create their own end. As well they should.
Thanks for all the work you put into this, off to read the next post. May we be protected from all that is not good.
This has been a 6-month journey of excellence my friend, producing an awesome piece of work that should be mandatory reading for anthropologists world-wide. Perhaps it would open some eyes and sweep some cobwebs out of the tree of ignorance and end the hyper-incestuous, illogical, unreasonable reasoning that the science of anthropology seems to engorge itself upon.
Isn’t it a bit odd, that these “scientists” point an accusing finger at the creationists for being “closed-minded” while they can’t seem to find a way out of the proverbial wet paper bag themselves? I’m not creationist by any means and gods are for fairytales, but neither do I find much comfort in a science built upon disjointed conjecture by indoctrinated wise men when in fact much of it is itself an evolutionary effort built upon exaggerated concepts until the next guy comes up with a better story (which, of course, must be approved by “them”).
The ancient story of Gilgamesh, the Bible/Torah/Quran and the fantasies of the “history” of the United States as told in our glorious history books rather than the cold, hard facts of European imperialism. There are no connections between the pyramids of Egypt and the pyramids of Mesoamerica; between the petroglyphs in the American Southwest, Norway, Africa and Ireland!! It’s all just one massive coincidence; “this I know, for the Bible tells me so!
You ever wonder; why do people, as evidenced by some of the responses to your post, dwell so intently upon getting a little peep at the tree, when perhaps we should be taking a look at the forest? Hunters and gatherers Jack! Hunters and gatherers! Hunters roam the forest for multiple clues and the gatherers focus on the individual plants for berries.
There’s far more than simply gods and science going on in our little world, but if it’s not all nice and sugary, wrapped in a shiny little Mylar package for us, we’ll reject it. After all these centuries, we still seem to be caught up in an egocentric existence where the sun, hell even the universe, revolves around us and our ideas; don’t we?
You done good my friend! You done real good!! I’m off to read the others.
You should've gone into anthropology.
I have a book on the shuar indians written by john perkins, documenting cannibalism.
Your lengthy discussion appears perhaps to be intended to form a part of a future document or technical paper; I therefore humbly put forward a small editing amendment to your text:
"Enigma’s (s/b Enigmas) are arbitrarily debunked, then systematically ignored. Dusty bones in forgotten places bare (s/b bear) mute testimony ...
I noted in passing a few more similar oddities: if you sir, are interested, I would be happy to ferret them out and pass them on.
Thanks again for a most interesting read.