Accordingly, upon returning to Colorado, I assembled a presentation for colleagues, including Martin Brennan and Kean Monahan, to address the Mojave North site with a particular emphasis on my SEA Rock discovery. Hugh Gardner, another friend, who was trained in archaeology and who had accompanied me on several expeditions to the Purgatoire River, also attended the gathering. They were intrigued and quite amazed at my Mojave North Light Serpent animation video and, along the six-line equinox alignment, were excited with the archaeoastronomy of Mojave North and the prospect of its being an Old World site. But to my surprise and dismay, they were skeptical about the SEA Rock discovery and its identification as a microheliolithic animation. The consensus of my peers was that it wasn’t credible. “Let this one go,” recommended Brennan. “Why lose your reputation over something so small, when there are bigger stories to tell?”
But the placement of the petroglyph at the upper triangle that conjuncts with the equinox shadow image was too convincing for me to ignore, and instead of taking their advice, I chose to be inspired by the Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and lecturer Anthony de Mello, who once said, “Seeing is the most arduous thing that a human being can undertake because it calls for a disciplined, alert mind. Seeing calls for dropping the controls, which society exercises over you, a control where the tentacles have penetrated to the very roots of your being, so that to remove it is like tearing yourself apart.”*19
But I found that I was not alone in proposing new alignments at Mojave North. At the time of the SEA Rock discovery, in addition to Schmidt and me, there was another serious rock art researcher focusing on the archaeoastronomy of Mojave North. He took an interest in the SEA Rock and my theory that it was a microheliolithic animation. Together we produced a time-lapse video of the phenomena that helped to validate the intentionality of the alignment.14 In the next chapter, which also discusses Mojave North, I will describe Dorian’s work and far-reaching conclusions.
11
Mojave North II —Did They Come Across the Pacific?
Looking beyond established fact, Dorian Taddei,*20 my esoteric friend, once suggested, “It might well be said that the old Silk Road trade routes, as we know them today, were really but a subset of a global trade network spanning both the great oceans as well as the major continents of earth.”1
WHERE HAVE ALL THE MYSTICS GONE?
Taddei had found his way to this most sacred of sites by connecting with my colleague Kean Monahan, the Sun Temple video documentarian described in chapter 9. I first met him at the Anubis Caves on the fall equinox in 2003, and during the next nine years, I came to know him quite well over dozens of extended sojourns to isolated desert sites. It was with his urging that I made my first trip to Mojave North in 2004.
Taddei is one of my few friends whose orientation is more esoteric than mine, but my youthful investigations into alchemy and Hermetic and Eastern philosophies helped me to comprehend his grand perspective. On the other hand, my other colleagues found him too overbearing to work with and his lengthy and esoteric explanations beyond comprehension or historical basis.
Nevertheless, the focus of Taddei’s research is to explore his ideas about the deeper symbology left in stone by the ancients relating to an earlier “One World” religion. According to him, the Magi, or Magu, were esoteric masters of the Indus Valley Empire that once extended to the Armenian highlands who once led expeditions across the Pacific to North America. While the term in modern times refers to the Three Wise Men in the New Testament, it was used at least since the sixth century B.C. to refer to Persian followers of Zoroaster, a man whom Hellenistic chroniclers believed had the ability to read the stars and manipulate the fates.
Fig. 11.1. A true mystic of the desert, Dorian Taddei has been investigating petroglyphs, archaeoastronomy, and alchemy connected to transoceanic voyages to the Americas for many years.
However, despite general academic opinion that “Magism” was spread throughout the ancient world by the expeditions of Alexander the Great from 334 to 323 B.C., Dorian claims that this science, magic, and esoteric knowledge had come from far earlier sources, from before the last cataclysmic event— a devastating comet bombardment of the Earth around 3200 B.C. Thus, the occult knowledge of these early astrologers and their ancient alchemy was preserved in the mountainous regions of Indo Europe, including ancient Armenia and the Himalaya, and became part of the Zoroastrian traditions over millennia of cultural diffusion. After time, all that remained of this were the many avenues of culture that became known as the Silk Route.
These Magi (or Magu), Taddei suggests, were scientists, navigators, alchemists, astrologers, and teachers who commanded expeditions to the bays of Los Angeles or San Francisco, only a few hundred miles from Mojave North, to obtain minerals and gems and also to teach the local people. Thus, he thinks that long before the Celtic visitations to New England and Colorado, this global religion fertilized the indigenous religions of the day with alchemical and calendrical insights and supported those who followed it in advancing the human condition.
In fact, archaeologists have found that the Indus Valley culture that began around 3200 B.C. had the technical expertise to accomplish such voyages, especially during its peak from about 2900 B.C. to 1900 B.C. During that time, the valley fostered a vast empire—the largest in the world—that stretched from Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean, with cities of multistory brick buildings, vast irrigation networks, and other public works, along with the most advanced metalwork in the world. They also had compasses, planked ships, and a sea-based trading network that stretched to western Asia, Mesopotamia, and Africa, far beyond their borders.2
The subject of Indian influences and other possible influences will be further explored in the chapters that follow, but first the question of why visitors from overseas would be so attracted to Mojave North needs to be addressed.
I think one answer to the question, “Why Mojave North?” lies in the rocks themselves. The smooth, darkly patinated surfaces of the white dolomite rocks invited pecking so that, once removed, the bright white images would have had a striking visual effect compared to the darkened background. Of course, since that time the markings have turned dark, which now makes many of them nearly impossible to detect.
But there is one more geological feature that makes Mojave North distinct. The rocks themselves have fractures that resulted in patterns of triangles that were often used as a background for the petroglyphs.
Once I recognized the importance of the triangular shapes, it became easier to identify previously unseen glyphs. Clearly the ancients who made them used the natural fissures or triangular-shaped rocks to frame some of their works of art.
Fig. 11.2. The natural triangular and fractal patterns in the dolomite limestone at Mojave North are an essential component of many of the engravings.
While watching the shadows move across the rocks, they must have realized that Mojave North was a wonderfully natural archaeoastronomical location for memorializing their deities and wisdom. This would certainly have been the case with the triangular rocks employed in the equinox morning Light Serpent animation and the SEA Rock, among the many other alignment features of the site. And the compelling evidence for a unique trans-Pacific migration comes from the fact that these petroglyphs are unlike those of any of the sites known to have been developed by Native Americans.
CROSS-QUARTER DAYS AT MOJAVE NORTH
Thus while returning to Mojave North over many years, I participated in a number of new discoveries with Taddei. However, in regard to Schmidt’s coining of the name Lugh of the Long Arm (chapter 10), he cautioned me that problems often arise when choosing to name glyphs or rock art panels. By naming a figure after a Celtic deity, it colors the objectivity of one’s mind, and before long it is assumed that the site is Celtic in origin. For example, he wrote me, “Instead of being Lugh, this image was more likely Shiva, Mitra, or Hercules, the same underlying light deity with a different name from the earlier Indus Valley culture.”3
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Taddei’s point was reinforced by Proinsias MacCana in his 1970 book Celtic Mythology.
It has been suggested more than once that Lugh is a relatively late arrival among the Celtic gods, but this is unlikely. It is true that he appears in the literature as a newcomer to the Tuatha Dé Danann, but one cannot assume that this reflects a historical process. . . . Not only is it virtually certain that he was known to all the Celtic peoples, but he is analogous in several respects, notably to his use of magic, to the Germanic Odin and the Indian Varuna. His usual epithet, Lámhfhada “of the long arm,” may refer to his mode of fighting with a spear and sling, but it has also been compared with the similar epithet of the Indian god Savitar, “of the wide hand,” who stretches out his hand to control sun, moon, and stars to regulate the succession of day and night. In short there is no good reason to suppose that Lugh does not belong to the Indo-European heritage.4
THE EXPLORERS
Kean Scott Monahan and Phil Leonard at Crack Cave (2005)
William R. McGlone (1926–1999)
Dorian Taddei and Carl Bjork (2011)
Martin Brennan in Mexico (2014) (Photo by Cheryl Yambrach Rose)
Ted Barker, Bill McGlone, and Phil Leonard (From back cover of Petroglyphs of Southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, 1994)
Carl Lehrburger and Rod Schmidt at Mohave North (2012) (Photo by Julianaa Satie)
PATHFINDER ALIGNMENTS (CHAPTER 6)
Light entering cave from top creates the Light Dagger
Pathfinder Equinox Noontime Alignment
Light Dagger on Pathfinder Panel
Light Dagger passing through Changing Woman and interactng with Serpent glyph
Noontime alignment: Suncatcher (left) and Changing Woman (right)
Noontime Pathfinder alignment: Serpent (left) and the second anthropomorph (right)
CRACK CAVE (CHAPTER 7)
Crack Cave Gate in Picture Canyon, Colorado (2005)
Crack Cave looking east from inside cave (From Ancient American Inscriptions)
Crack Cave alignment on equinox
Crack Cave inscription (by Kean Scott Monahan)
SOUTHEASTERN COLORADO ALIGNMENTS (CHAPTER 7)
Ted Barker family homestead built in early 1900s in southeastern Colorado
Winter solstice shaman from Salt Arroyo in southeastern Colorado
Sofa Rock equinox alignment (Colorado) petroglyph and target
The author, ca. 2004, at a southeastern Colorado petroglyph site
ANUBIS CAVES (CHAPTER 8)
Bill McGlone in Cave 2 (1995)
The Anubis Panel in Cave 2 (Drawing by Martin Brennan)
Photo of the Anubis petroglyph from Cave 2
The Anubis Panel in Cave 2 about fifteen minutes before sunset on the equinox. The sun god goes into shadow as Anubis is illuminated. (Photo by Bill McGlone)
SUN TEMPLE COLORADO AND CAVE HOLLOW IN KANSAS (CHAPTER 9)
Sun Temple cross-quarter day alignment at sunrise on May 5, 1985. Photo by Bill McGlone, Ancient American Inscriptions
Sun Temple alignment at sunrise on August 7, 2005. Photo by Kean Scott Monahan © Transvision
Cave Hollow, Kansas. The sunlight passes through tunnel to strike the petroglyphs
Cave Hollow, Kansas equinox morning alignment
Damaged concentric circles from Central Kansas
Detail of a yoni-style petroglyph with face from Central Kansas
Central Kansas evening equinox cave
Evening alignment begins with an image of a fish rising on the panel
Evening alignment ends with a triangle of light (bracketed by petroglyph)
MOJAVE NORTH, CALIFORNIA (CHAPTERS 10 AND 11)
Mojave North site with the Eastern Sierra Mountains in background and camera equipment in foreground
A prominent rock that resembles a large Shiva Linga
Equinox morning alignment as Light Serpent approaches the “target,” a pecked “egg” surrounded by concentric circles
Summer solstice morning alignment with retracting shadow
Lunar alignment, Feb. 1, 2007 (Imbolc), photograph by Dorian Taddei with enhancements by author. A “light dagger” hits the center of the Luni-Solar target (above) as the moon’s light/shadow line aligns to the six-rayed conjunction index marker (below), but only on this Imbolc cross-quarter day. On the previous crossquarter day (Samhain) on Nov. 6, 2006, a “dark dagger” struck the center of the Luni-Solar target from another angle (see inset photo).
Mojave North SEA Rock with tape measure on approximately 25-inch wide rock
Sunset Equinox Alignment (SEA) petroglyph with a U.S. quarter
SEA drawing of sunset animation showing two faces in one with color
This series of pictures shows the sequence of the shadow moving across the petroglyph over two hours, leading up to sunset on the equinox, and revealing a monkeylike image (shown in color above)
The Mojave North six-line equinox alignment, three lines in light, three in shadow
One of several grid designs at Mojave North
THE GREAT BASIN (CHAPTER 12)
Map of the Great Basin (Map by Karl Musser)
Petroglyphs from a petroglyph site near Bishop, California
Petroglyphs from a site near Bishop, California #2
Pictoglyph of apparent boat from Chumash Painted Cave Historical Park, California
Petroglyph from Little Petroglyph Canyon near Ridgecrest, California
Red Rock equinox alignment near Bishop, California
Cupules on vertical rocks from two different Nevada sites
OTHER EVIDENCE (CHAPTERS 14 AND 15)
Fifth-century Roman coin found three feet deep in Springfield, Colorado (photo from Archaeoastronomy of Southeast Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, from McGlone et al.)
The Bat Creek Stone, found in Tennessee in 1889. According to Semitic scholar Cyrus H. Gordon, the words "for Judiah" are written in Canaanite. (Photo by Scott Wolter)
Hidden Mountain, New Mexico, Ten-Commandment Stone and detail.
Notice the first line of inscription has been scratched out by vandals.
Sculpture from India (A.D. 100–A.D. 1300) showing maize. Photo by John Jones for the New World Discovery Institute, G. Thompson, Director, 1995.
Also, it turned out there was more to this Lugh image than any of us had previously imagined. Building on Schmidt’s discovery of a sunrise alignment on the August cross-quarter day Lughnasa that strikes the upper double-sun petroglyph, Taddei suggested that the well-endowed petroglyph figure was also likely involved in the cross-quarter day sunrise event. As it turned out, he was right, but the image was the target not just for the August cross-quarter day but also for the February and November cross-quarter days as well. This was ingeniously accomplished by placing the image in such a way that two different rocks created light and shadow lines that intersect the figure differently on the four cross-quarter days.
While there are four cross-quarter days, there are only two cross-quarter day positions of the sun. This means that the sun is in the same position for the February and November cross-quarter days and for the May and August cross-quarter days. Thus the Lughnasa (August) alignment is repeated on Beltane (May), and the Imboc (February) position of the sun on the horizon creates the same alignment for Samhain (November). It is generally understood that Beltane (May) and Lughnasa (August) celebrate male dieties, while Imbolc (February) and Samhain (November) honor female deities.
Previously, Taddei had commented to me:
The cross-quarter days were the main ritual events for ancient esoterics and were linked to the timing of alchemical operations as well; alchemical elixirs and their manufacture being an integral part of all myths of antiquity, especially those of India and Asia Minor. Martin Brennan is one of the few to understand the importance of these cross-quarter, luni-solar calendar dates for Old World cultures, something that has been completely missed by mainstream archaeologists. Without a framework for understanding
how they thought, it is no wonder that much of the story of their presence in the Americas has been completely overlooked.5
The Celtic cross-quarter days, as noted in chapter 4, were named, before their Christianization, Imbolc in early February, Beltane (May), Lughnasa (August), and Samhain (in early November).
Putting Taddei’s theory to the test, he and I agreed to meet at Mojave North to observe the cross-quarter day at sunrise on August 7, 2005, with a focus on documenting his predicted light show. We arrived in the predawn to set up our camera equipment and were ready for an anticipated sunrise event. With the exception of the cross-quarter alignment on the double-sun petroglyph, we didn’t know exactly what to expect.
Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers Page 18