Enigmatic Lands ~ Sacred Sites
Western Hemisphere
Bermuda Triangle
The waters north of the Greater Antilles are said to be rife with mysterious forces that cause instrument malfunctions, freak waves, and other effects -- sometimes with dire consequences for ships and aircraft.
Bighorn Medicine Wheel
American Indians say this 800-year-old circle of stones in northern Wyoming has "medicine" -- spiritual power. Cairns at its rim align with the sun at the summer solstice and with bright stars on other dates.
Black Hills
Sacred to the Sioux, this mountain range in southwestern South Dakota continues to draw Indians for annual religious rites that include fasting, praying, and vision quests.
Chichen Itza
At this important Mayan religious center on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, ritual dancers wore the skins of flayed human sacrificial victims. The skins symbolized transition from death to new life.
Pyramid of Kulkulcan/Quetzalcoatl
Four Corners
Where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, this point is surrounded by lands sacred to both the Navajo and Hopi nations. It is also frequently mentioned as the site of the Seven Cities of Cibola.
Great Serpent Mound
Time, it seems, has not robbed this Indian earth work in southern Ohio of its magic. On a windless day in 1975, leaves at the site reportedly gathered themselves and crept toward a visiting sociologist.
Hatzic Rock
This tall boulder, located sixty miles east of Vancouver, British Columbia, is believed to hold the spirits of four Indian chiefs who were petrified by the Gods for impertinence.
Lake Titicaca
Situated at 12,500 feet on the Bolivia-Peru border, Titicaca is the world’s highest large lake -- and is believed to be the spot where the Sun God set down his son and daughter, who established the Inca Empire.
Machu Picchu
Once home to a thousand Incas, this city in the Peruvian Andes lay unknown to the outside world -- thus escaping destruction by the Spanish as a pagan site -- from the 1570s until its rediscovery in 1911.
Nazca
From the air above the Nazca (Peru) desert, one sees the ground come alive with huge outlines of geometric figures and spiders, birds, fish, llamas, condors, snakes, and haloed beings. Some of the figures are longer than two football fields; some of the lines are 40 miles long. It’s estimated that the patterns have been there for 700-1,500 years. Drawn on the ground, by exposing the light yellow soil which lies under the dark surface of the ground, the lines have remained because there is little rain or erosion there.
At the end of the plateau are statues, buildings, and carvings. One is an 80-foot-high double rock which seems to represent a human head, but contains drawings of at least 14 heads which show, symbolically, 4 races. An Inca, Tupac Yupanqui has said of the carvings, "The white men from the stars created them... created them in their likeness, in the likeness of the strangers living in the 4 quarters of the world..."
Many of the carvings can be seen only at a certain time -- an hour of the day, a time of year -- when light hits them at a special angle. Daniel Ruzo, a Peruvian explorer, took a photograph of a bas-relief carved on a hill which showed an old man’s face. The negative of the photo depicted a young man. Some of the statues and carvings show animals not indigenous to South America: tortoises, African lions, and camels, for instance.
Who did the lines and the carvings? How did they do them? Dr. Maria Reiche, a German astronomer, spent many years charting the lines from a high ladder. She has correlated her findings with positions of the sun, moon, and stars, and feels that the lines represent a huge desert calendar.
Those who believe that alien beings from outer space have been visiting the earth for thousands of years think that the lines were either made or ordered to be made by extraterrestrials.
See also Nazca Lines.
Palenque
Carvings on a sarcophagus lid have led some to believe this Mayan ceremonial center in Mexico was built to commemorate an alien visitation. The lied seems to depict an astronaut at the controls of a spaceship.
Sedona
Visitors often claim to experience strange sensations and take on paranormal abilities while in this part of Arizona. Psychics say the place has four power spots, or vortices, whence the earth emits energy.
Spider Rock
According to Hopi lore, this 800-foot stone spire in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, is home to the Earth Goddess, Spider Woman. She is said to guard the portal through which humans first emerged.
Teotihuacan
Already a ruin before the Aztecs found it, this one-time metropolis northeast of today’s Mexico City was the work of an unknown people who were masters of architecture, government, and the arts.
Tiahuanaco
Mystery shrouds the ruins of this sophisticated city on a desolate 13,000-foot-high plain near La Paz, Bolivia. Some say it was built by the Egyptians or Phoenicians; some believe the builders came from Atlantis.
Further Resources
Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites
by Colin Wilson
Celtic Sacred Landscapes
by Nigel Campbell Pennick
Earth Memory: Sacred Sites
Doorways into Earth's Mysteries
by Paul Devereux
Power Places of Kathmandu: Hindu and Buddhist
Holy Sites in the Sacred Valley
by Kevin Bubriski
Sacred Sites of the West
by Bernyce Barlow
The Yucatan: A Guide to the
Land of Maya Mysteries
by Antoinette May
Continue to Enigmatic Sites in:
Travel to Uranus for Universal Myths.
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