Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers

by Carl Lehrburger

  I believe the sacred teaches that we, this present generation of humans, are the future. But we’ve forgotten this essential truth. Unlike the dogma presented by many modern religions, the sacred connects us to a divine origin and an evolving spiritual journey over many cycles of time. This crucial message has been recorded, time and again, by countless civilizations, bringing to life a mysterious relationship between heaven and earth that is inscribed for future generations as a foundation to define, orient, and remember, and to which they can return. Without a relationship with the sacred, the destruction of our home planet and the incessant exploitation of our fellow human beings is doomed to continue at an alarming pace.

  My journey to discover a New History has led me to rediscover the sacred that was missing from my formal education. I discovered that others share my dismay with the materialism and reductionism of modern science. One influential figure was Alfred Russell Wallace (1823–1913), the cofounder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution, whose advocacy of spiritualism and belief in a nonmaterial origin for the higher mental faculties of humans caused much strain in his relations with some of his colleagues within the scientific establishment.

  Another influence on me was René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz (1887– 1961), who was quoted at the beginning of this book and whose “otherworldly” outlook was at odds with most of the scientists of his day. In his fifteen-year journey of investigating the Temple of Luxor in southern Egypt, he unveiled new discoveries regarding the nature and interests of ancient man, but with scientific exactitude. His books, include Esoterism and Symbol, Symbol and the Symbolic, The Egyptian Miracle, and The Temple of Man. They revealed that cosmological and mathematical principles incorporated in the structure of the Temple of Luxor, thought lost or forgotten for thousands of years, exposed a living organism with a central philosophy and organization. Lubicz compared Luxor to “a colossal compendium of esoteric truth, whose every detail, from its total design down to its very materials, voiced one central revelation: that Conscious Man was the goal of cosmic evolution.”9

  Lubicz showed us how the mathematical and cosmological knowledge that was needed to build this monument to the spirit came about. He demonstrated that the Egyptians used the Pythagorean theorem centuries before Pythagoras, that they understood the precession of the equinoxes, the circumference of the globe, and the mysteries of pi. He also documented the incorporation of sacred geometry and astronomy into the temple. For example, he discovered symbols corresponding to the twelve zodiac signs in most of the chambers and buildings in the temple.10 He also presented evidence beginning with the earliest dynasties, that Egyptian artistic and architectural achievements were guided by knowledge of the precessional movement of the vernal equinox through the zodiac.11 Such knowledge indicates an advanced astronomical ability, because the discovery of the precessions has been credited to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus much later in the second century B.C.

  All in all, Schwaller de Lubicz illustrated the profundity that can pervade the seemingly mundane and ordinary relics of the past because he felt that to comprehend the sacred requires more than a casual glance. At the very least, he tried to encourage those who are incapable of appreciating the extraordinary to preserve history’s treasures for others who could come along and comprehend the cosmology of the ancients.

  THE SERPENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  Throughout time, serpentlike features have been carved onto stone edifices and sculpted into works of art across the Americas, Eurasia, and the East. The similar contexts in which the serpent appears, often in association with cosmological phenomenon, demonstrates its universality as a symbol that can lend insight into the psychology and mythology of the ancients. With its mysterious ability to shed its skin, the serpent not only symbolizes an awakening journey but the ourobus symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail exemplifies the never-ending cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Thus, the serpent is often the centerpiece of glyphs that literally come to life at the equinoxes and solstices. From sunrise to sunset, as the seasons progress, the snake icon traverses the stony surfaces of petroglyphs at Mojave North in California, the Colorado Pathfinder site, and the temple steps of Chichén Itzá in Mexico.

  The universal death-and-rebirth metaphor is also amply demonstrated by the association of the serpent with astronomical phenomena, mainly involving the equinoxes. However, it would be a mistake to suggest a single meaning or mythology as the serpent is manifested in so many cultures and in so many different specific instances.

  In the hills of Durango in southwestern Colorado, the serpent head is one of perhaps a hundred characters in a script known as the “mystery glyphs.”12 Such “mystery glyphs” have been found at approximately twenty-five sites in all of the western states, except Oregon and Washington, in panels above valley floors that are inscribed with a petroglyphic script that has baffled researchers for decades. These mystery glyphs share the common use of about one hundred petroglyphic characters, all incised, chiseled, or engraved with metal tools to a depth of one-eighth of a foot to three-sixteenths of a foot, generally in hard sandstone, granite, or other hard rock. The characters are quite uniformly two to three inches high. A typical panel will contain twenty to forty characters, with the drawing of the serpent being one. We can surmise they are a mixture of different cultures, perhaps a secret coded language. At least some, showing men on horses, are said to be dated to circa the mid-1800s mining era, while others appear to be quite older.

  Fig. 17.1. This serpent head inscribed in the hills near Durango, Colorado, is one of perhaps a hundred characters in a script that is known as the “mystery glyphs” and has been found in about twenty-five locations in the western United States.

  Fig. 17.2. Detail drawing of a mystery glyph serpent.

  Fig. 17.3. A serpent image from Colorado’s Pathfinder site.

  As noted earlier, the image of the snake is a predominant glyph at the pristine Colorado Pathfinder petroglyph site, which is adorned with fertility and creation symbols. One of the central serpents on the panel is associated with the equinox noontime alignment, and this is the key point: that the serpent is both a witness and a participant. In this imagery, the sun dagger, entering a hole in the cave above the panel, impregnates Widapokwi, Changing Woman, who is First Mother, and then it travels below to illuminate the serpent at her feet. Thus we know that the ancestors to the Native Americans who created the Pathfinder petroglyphs associated serpents with the creation mythology and with fertility and the passage of time.

  In Mesoamerica, the serpent is a recurring image in religious beliefs, mythology, and rituals, such as those practiced in the cult of Quetzalcoatl, the “Feathered Serpent,” in what is now Mexico.

  Fig.17.4. Quetzalcoatl. (Photo from a 2014 Mayan art exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science)

  Fig. 17.5. The Vision Serpent, Stone Lintel 15 at the classic Mayan site of Yaxchilan. (Drawing by Martin Brennan from the hidden maya, 204)

  The Maya in southern Mexico and Guatemala provided another manifestation of a serpent in their many depictions of what they called the Vision Serpent.

  The Vision Serpent at Yaxchilan was conjured by Lady Six-Stone in A.D. 755 through an act of blood sacrifice. According to Martin Brennan’s commentary, to the Maya this was the price of admission to open the door to the world of the ancestors.

  In a space-time sequence and perhaps in a more practical embodiment, the Vision Serpent appears as a day-sign in the 260-day Mayan calendar, where he appears as Chicchan, who emerges in the east and is followed by Cimi, a transformational deity and the god of death who resides in the north.13 The divine Vision Serpent also has a greater meaning to the Maya since it occupies and helps configure the great spaces of the World Tree and the Milky Way.14

  Fig. 17.6. The Mayan day-sign known as Chicchan, the serpent, is one of the twenty day-signs in the 260-day Mayan calendar. Many variations of the glyph are known. (Drawing by Martin Brennan)

  On the ground, the largest of t
he giant earthworks of North America is the Serpent Mound in Ohio, with its open mouth preparing to consume an oval-shaped mound (chapter 13). The Serpent Mound is about the length of four and a half football fields and averages twenty feet in width. The same imagery of a serpent and a disc appears in the Kansas Serpent Intaglio earthwork in chapter 9, while simple mound serpent effigies are found in Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, and other locations.15

  At the Mojave North site in California the equinox Light Serpent moves across a panel for only thirty minutes before the serpent conjuncts with and “consumes” the petroglyphic central disc or egg that is surrounded by a spiral. Miraculously, the spiral-and-egg motif is the same target for a lunar alignment, described in chapter 11.

  Fig. 17.7. Mojave North equinox Light Serpent.

  The serpent images are not limited to large sculptures, monumental earthworks, and petroglyphic representations but are also found on smaller artifacts, as can be seen from some of the Calalus artifacts housed in the Arizona History Museum in Tucson described in chapter 14. In addition to the Latin inscriptions left on the crosses, there were nehushtans (poles or staffs) with ascending snakes that coil around the cross, which convey an image similar to the caducei or staffs of Mercury in the Western Hermetic tradition. These climbing serpents express another aspect of, for lack of a better word, the serpent consciousness coiled around the Tree of Life, which returns us to one of humankind’s oldest stories, the one that took place in the sacred Garden of Eden.

  In Arizona, an Anasazi-era serpent that was not mentioned in this book becomes one with a spiral, moving inward toward the center. This petroglyph is split by the summer solstice morning sunrise. A nearby petroglyph at the same Arizona site depicts the opposite movement of the serpent as it emerges from the coiled center.

  These stunning petroglyphs demonstrate how the Anasazi viewed the process of transformation, perhaps indicating how consciousness manifests in the world. See figure 17.8 and figures 17.9 and 17.10 below.

  Fig. 17.8. An Anasazi-era serpent in eastern Arizona.

  Fig. 17.9. The Anasazi-era serpent in detail, showing inward movement.

  Fig. 17.10. Another Anasazi-era spiral petroglyph, showing the serpent emerging from the spiral.

  A RETURN OF THE MAGI?

  From the evidence I’ve presented and what I’ve documented from others, the history of America should now include the numerous examples of Indo-European, Asian, Celtic, and other travelers to the New World before Columbus. To me, the record is clear: they arrived as navigators, shipbuilders, architects, astronomers, geologists, and cosmologists, and some of their monuments have stood the test of time. Now, in this modern era, how can this information be useful? Can understanding this or any other possible “missing” pieces of history alter our perceptions or improve our lives? I have discovered and would argue that, yes, a restoration of wisdom from the ancients would benefit us all by helping us to appreciate our collective past and our shared future.

  The ancients demonstrated a direct connection to nature through conjunction alignments that literally show the moments of illumination (or “enlightenment”), conception, birth, and/or death of solar and earth deities. Returning to the Colorado Pathfinder petroglyphs, the equinox noon alignment captures the moment of the impregnation of Widapokwi, the First Mother, a story analogous to Greek and Hindu myths of how the earth goddess was fertilized from above.

  Fig. 17.11. Pathfinder petroglyph identified by author as Changing Woman, the First Mother.

  It also seems from the rock art and archaeoastronomy left in stone that ancient travelers from Europe and around the world worshipped the sun god and transported their prayers and imagery to the Americas. At an equinox sunset in the Anubis Caves, I witnessed the god’s death in a dramatic heliolithic animation as the petroglyph image went into shadow and the Anubis figure above stood out above it as the Lord of Night (chapter 8).

  With the Mojave North SEA Rock petroglyph, I identified another image of a sun god, one that is akin to a triple-face animation at the equinox sunset. It communicates how, in perhaps an echo of the Indus Valley, the moment of death ignites enlightenment as a new image emerges and the god is reborn.

  The death and rebirth of the sun god is found in many ancient stories, including those of Osiris and Mithras, and is the underlying theme of Christ’s being reborn and returning. Now we can appreciate how that god’s story may have arrived in America, both from the East and the West, and been made available to all. In other words, is it possible to shatter the old belief structures that are fueled by conquest, exploitation, and materialism and to pursue a new twenty-first-century paradigm of inclusiveness, balance with nature, and personal and worldwide harmony?

  Fig. 17.12. Mojave North at the moment of enlightenment at equinox sunset.

  A MIND ADJUSTMENT IS REQUIRED

  As amply illustrated in this book, cultivating a new way of seeing has always been an arduous task, oftentimes taking a lifetime to accomplish. Following a life of servitude and suffering, at the time of death Judeo-Christian religions offer the reward of sight, or awakening into the kingdom of heaven, lending the notion that enlightenment is associated with physical death. However, from the Hindu perspective, awakening might require many lifetimes to fulfill and is accomplished by disciplining the mental and physical bodies through the practices of renunciation, meditation, and yoga.

  Yet the story of a protagonist—a god, saint, or ruler—achieving enlightenment during his or her lifetime is shared by many religions and cultures, lending the idea that man is capable of awakening during his worldly journey. The notion that awakening can transpire in an instant is borne out by primitive cultures during rituals and practices designed to facilitate the awakening journey.

  Much of modern civilization remains divorced from the inspiration and meaning that was available to its predecessors. Without this knowledge, how are we to right the wrongs of the past, to awaken from the amnesia that enslaves humankind in a mundane world? How do we restore balance and purposeful direction to a world so inflicted with genocide and destruction?

  A mind adjustment is required in order for new insights to emerge that might alter the disconcerting trajectory that modern man has charted. Countless civilizations have demonstrated that the opportunity for consciousness to awaken is not only a birthright, but also a responsibility owed to oneself and one’s community. Human development and our very survival depend on man’s ability to awaken into consciousness.

  Rite-of-passage ceremonies commonly employed entheogens, psychoactive substances that aided in the transfer of ancient knowledge. The word entheogen is derived from the Greek root entheos, which means “the god within,” and the word refers to mind-altering substances that make available the hidden world of the spirits. Entheogens are chemical agents found in plants and mushroom species and in the venoms and secretions of certain animals. Traditionally, these “medicines” are gathered and prepared by shamans and are used in a reverent manner, often during coming-of-age ceremonies in the company of elder community members who witness the transformation and provide counsel to the initiate.

  In North America, alcohol, morning glory seeds, peyote, and other “magic” mushrooms were used for this purpose, while South Americans employed strange and wonderful plants that grew wild in their jungles. Also, vision quests were and still are practiced by different native tribes as coming-of-age rituals. The purposes of these rituals, according to Thompson, “are to seek out a spirit guide that can help the individual learn about his purpose in life. Fasting, dancing, singing, drums, and the elders’ council provide an existential matrix for a catharsis of the soul.”16 These traditional rituals were an important part of establishing a bond between the individual and the greater tribe and culture while psychoactive agents are also administered to the physically ill to provide insights into both the affliction and the cure. Similarly, vision quest ceremonies used entheogens to inspire the psychologically sluggish or amnesiacs who were simply in need of
direction and purpose.

  Fig. 17.13. The Pathfinder howling Eight-Dog petroglyph, which might represent a shaman.

  Ritualistic practices from throughout time offer a roadmap to reposition backward, so that we may proceed forward on a new path.

  Mesoamericans held great reverence for mushrooms and other psychoactive plants (see figure 17.15 below). Many stone mushroom figures found throughout the Western Hemisphere convincingly show psychoactive Psilocybe species, while others in Guatemala often resemble Amanita muscaria.17

  It would be a mistake to assume that psychedelics or psychedelic-induced states of mind are required for healing and to achieve greater knowledge. Other methods for transcending the limited ego consciousness that don’t involve sacred plants are well known, including meditation, yoga, and even just “right living.”

  Fig. 17.14. A different “outside” perspective, from behind the veil of phenomenal existence, is shown in this nineteenth-century painting of an alchemist. (From Camille Flammarion, L’Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire, 1888, 163)

  Fig. 17.15. Anasazi-era petroglyphs with mushroom, from along the Potash Highway in Utah.

  MUCH TO BE DONE

  By confronting our past demons, there is an opportunity for redemption; the evolutionary boost humanity is looking for is to move from previous ages of terror into a new paradigm of a world without war and conquest. Outlined below are key areas that need to be addressed if we are to move forward with a New History.