Monday, February 2.........Teotihuacan, Mexico

Following two fun days in San Miguel de Allende, Steve and I drove to the international airport in Mexico City. We went to pick up Robert, who would be traveling with me for some months.

I rarely travel with other people on my long pilgrimages. There are several reasons for this. Perhaps the most compelling reason has been my mode of movement as I travel. For the first five years I went everywhere on a mountain-bicycle. Few people are tough (or crazy) enough to travel this way across entire continents. There are long and steep mountain roads to ascend, days of riding in the pouring rain, the ever-present chance of collision with a wild, third-world bus driver, and numerous months are required to travel around a country rather than weeks by train, bus, or car.

Another reason is the time it takes for me to produce my photographs. I seek to make each of my pictures a work of art. Like a painter first sketching an image on canvas and then progressively bringing it to fullness and beauty, I compose my images with a great deal of attention to the placement of objects within the frame of the image. Each structural element within a particular photograph must be in a harmonious geometric relationship with every other element (this is the application of sacred geometry to photography, something I will speak more about in a later section). This careful painting of a photograph and the frequent tendency of clouds to hide the sun’s precious light often make my picture taking a slow affair. People get bored waiting for me. To create the photographs I want, I must be completely free of pressure to do anything else.

The most important reason I travel alone, however, is my need to be highly focused on the "work" that I am doing with my pilgrimages. My journeys are not vacations. Their purpose is not simply to tour places of interest, get a bit of relaxation, and sample exotic foods. Instead, I am seriously intent on doing both an inner and outer spiritual work. The inner work concerns the personal maturation I seek through hours of sitting meditation each day and the deep silence I explore by not conversing with other people for weeks at a time. The outer work concerns the specific meditations I practice at the power places and sacred sites in order to assist in the revitalization of the planet’s energy grid (something I will discuss at length in these writings). These two concerns, in addition to being my life’s work, are also endeavors that bring me sublime joy. Call me narrow minded if you will, but I am not much interested in doing anything else. In years past I have seen enough of the normal tourist sites to last a lifetime; now I seek to fully give myself to spiritual and environmental work. To find travel partners with a similar focus - who are also experienced with rough travel in often dangerous areas - is a rare gift of the gods.

But the gods have been good to me in this regard. Three (and maybe more) great traveling partners are accompanying me on certain parts of my year-long pilgrimage through Latin America. Beginning the journey with me is Steve Brown. Steve is a fifty-six year old long-time bohemian/hippie, veteran meditator, and a very mellow guy. Some people who know us both wonder how we can hang-out together. Steve’s pace is casual and relaxed while I jump out of bed in the morning already going strong in fifth gear. Joining us in Mexico City is Robert "rasta" Rocheleau, a dear friend of mine for seven years, of Steve’s for three (both Robert and Steve hail from the Boston area whose strange dialect they use in order to share secrets and esoteric matters mysterious to me). Robert, thirty-three years old, is deeply spiritual, highly energetic, bubbling with zest and positivity, and is fascinated with Maya culture and the whole subject of sacred sites, earth mysteries and planetary transformation. Steve will be traveling with me for a few months in Mexico. Rasta rob will probably accompany me for the entire journey through South America and back. Also coming along for the Peru and Bolivia phase of the pilgrimage may be Todd Winnant, another earth-loving, deep-thinking, highly spiritual, wild-man rasta-hippie who plays the flute with hypnotic beauty. I feel extremely grateful to have the honor of journeying with these three wonderful beings. The power and focus of our combined intentions will draw forth magical gifts and protection along the pilgrimage.

Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacan, Mexico

The first site we three visited together was Teotihuacan. Just a few miles northeast of Mexico City, this ancient site is believed to have been the largest social center of the pre-Columbian western hemisphere. I find it interesting that the largest city of contemporary times is situated in very nearly the same place as the largest city of the ancient mesoamerican world. Conservative archaeological theory regarding Teotihuacan will tell you that by 100 BC the place was well on its way to being a densely populated city and that by 700 AD it had become the greatest city that Mesoamerica would produce in Pre-Columbian times. Yet an increasing number of scholars studying the mythology, anthropology, archaeology, and folk lore of the Valley of Mexico claim that certain things about Teotihuacan indicate the city may be far, far older. Graham Hancock, in his thought-provoking and engagingly written Fingerprints of the Gods, speaks of many of these archaeological anomalies. Hancock suggests that Teotihuacan - along with a handful of other places such as Tiahuanaco, Balbeck, Nan Madol, and the Osieron and Great Pyramid of Egypt - may date from before the last Ice Age. Personally, I find the alternative theories more interesting. Yes, I am well aware that there are several things which the alternative theorists can not explain, things that instead seem to confirm the more recent datings. But still, it seems to me that enough evidence is being gathered which points to the likelihood of a highly advanced, pan-regional (even multi-regional) civilization of pre-flood times. But, more on this later.

Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan

It was a cold and windy day at the ruins but still I sat for an hour atop the towering Pyramid of the Sun. The view from the peak of this man made mountain is stunning. Dozens of other pyramids are situated on either side of the mile-long "Avenue of the Dead" and surrounding the entire site are the remains of hundreds of other ruined structures. But all these structures, both those reconstructed and those still in ruins, were only a small part of the site as it once stood. As many as 200,000 people lived here in ancient times and their non-religious buildings (dwellings, businesses, etc) were built in wood that has long since decayed. We do not even know what the site was originally called. Its current name Teotihuacan - "the place of the gods" - was given to it by the Aztecs long after the city’s decline and abandonment. Other mesoamericans before the Aztecs - the Mayans, Zapotecs and Toltecs - were equally mystified by the vast ruins, speaking of them in terms filled with myth and legend. Teotihuacan has been an enigma to all who have wandered its desolate grounds.

There are several fascinating mysteries about the grand city and its pyramids. One of the most intriguing concerns the massive, one-foot thick, sheet of granulated mica that until recently covered the entire top level of the Pyramid of the Sun. Removed and sold for profit by an unscrupulous archaeologist in the early 1900’s, the mica had long ago been transported from a mine thousands of miles away in South America. How had the great quantity of mica been brought from so far away and, more important, for what purpose had the pyramid been covered with the rare stone? One scientist has suggested that the mica, being a highly efficient energy conductor, could have been used as part of a receiving device for particular, long wave-length, celestial radiations. The incoming celestial energy would be stored by the massive bulk of the pyramid (in essence a huge battery) and focused/concentrated into the snake-like cave beneath the pyramid by the pyramid’s sacred geometrical construction. This energy, available for human use at any time of the year, would be especially concentrated at certain periods within solar, lunar, and stellar cycles. These cycles and their regular, precisely occurring, energetic concentration periods were minutely observed by using the astronomical observatory structures built in specific places throughout the geomantically aligned city of Teotihuacan. The original ceremonial use of the site most probably began in the small natural cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun. With the growth of population, the complexification of its culture, and a host of other social and environmental factors contributing, the site grew into the enormous sacred site whose remains we see today. But the great antiquity and ruined condition of the site do not prevent current time visitors from connecting with the spirits and powers of the place. Even though the mysterious mica has been removed and the strange cave locked we may still tap into the energy field of Teotihuacan. Walk the entire length of the so-called Avenue of the Dead, circle the pyramids of the Sun and Moon (optimally in both directions), then climb and meditate at the top of both pyramids. This will allow a mutually-beneficial interpenetration of your personal energy field and the field of power in this "place of the gods."

Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan

In search of a certain photograph (I had seen it in a past issue of National Geographic magazine) I walked miles through and around the enormous complex of temples. Eight hours later, suffering from a bout of "Montezuma’s revenge" in my belly, exhausted from climbing pyramids, and never having found my photograph, I returned to a smelly hotel room. A religious celebration was gearing up at a nearby church and drunken celebrants set noisy firecrackers off throughout the night. At 3:00 in the morning, unable to sleep because of the noise, I decided to take a walk about the town. But I could not leave the hotel. The manager had locked the doors from the inside. Returning to my bed, I lay awake and laughed about the simplistic New Age notion that we "create our own reality." I wondered who, of all those people locked in that hotel and kept awake by the constant explosions, had been silly enough to have created such a reality for the rest of us? Or, does life simply happen of ITS OWN MYSTERIOUS WILL - and then we have just a little bit of choice and ability to respond to that already created reality? The whole situation reminded me of a lovely sentance by the writer Annie Dillard in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk: "Wherever we go in life there seems to be only one business at hand. That of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us."

"Antlantean" statues, archaelogical site of Tula, Mexico

The next day, my stomach pain increasing, we made our way to Tula. On other travels through Mexico I had decided not to visit Tula because of an idea I had formed about the place based upon readings of its later history (977-1168). Tula is believed - again by the "conservative" mesoamerican scholars - to have been built and used by the warlike Toltecs as the capital from which they conquered and influenced a large central-Mexican region. In the infancy of my study of power places and their effects upon humans I had assumed that a place of known military activity would not be a peaceful place to visit. Years later, I have changed my mind about both Tula and the visiting of places with so-called "negative energies." From extensive research I learned that Tula had been a sacred place long before the Toltec culture appropriated the region and that its previous inhabitants had not been so warlike. Additionally, I came to understand that a so-called negative energy place was not necessarily bad to visit but could infact be good, and that such a site might itself need a sort of healing or "energy balancing" from loving-hearted human visitors.

"Antlantean" statues, archaelogical site of Tula, Mexico

My experiences at Tula confirmed both these matters. I felt the small ruined site to have a very ancient presence of peace, a more recent one of violence, and a still more recent one of confusion and need. I have felt similar overlays of presence at many other sacred sites around the world. The way I explain this phenomena is by recourse to my theory that people effect sacred sites every bit as deeply as the sacred sites effect people. Considered from this vantage point, Tula was previously a ceremonial site of a peaceful people, later taken over and used as a military citadel of a warlike people, then abandoned to be later rediscovered and used as a lonely archeology ruin on the edge of a large 20th century town. The place is seeking a return to its earlier sentiment and identity. The psychic imprint left by a significant number of people involved in violent mindsets and activities may take hundreds or thousands of years to dissipate from a place. The present day inhabitants of Tula are, for the most part, unaware of these things and therefore do no more than contribute to the general confusion of the place. Tula, however, is on one of the unmarked routes of modern day pilgrims and "energy workers" and these visitors, a few dozen each day, stimulate and assist in the energetic healing of a once sweet piece of land. It is good for humans to come to Tula. Good because the Earth Spirits appreciate the return of human awareness and relationship with the sacred earth. Good also because energy workers may themselves receive a sort of inoculation against "negative energies" by visiting a place where such energies are said to be.

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