Mysteries of the Grand Canyon: Pyramids and Ancient Civilizations
Below the Utah/New Mexico border, running along the Western edge of sprawling Navajo, Havasupai, and Hualapai reservations lands, the Colorado River has patiently carved a geological masterpiece — the Grand Canyon. Despite the extreme desert climate, native people have inhabited the region for centuries.
Dominating the landscape beyond the Rocky Mountains, the immense Colorado Plateau stretches 130,000 square miles from the Wyoming border to the North, the Arizona/Nevada border to the East, and beyond the Four Corners region along the Colorado/New Mexico border further East.
A thorough exploration of the region would take months — even years. The Grand Canyon alone could take weeks to explore, beyond requisite tourist attractions. The Havasupai people have lived in the canyon for at least 800-years, and have successfully fought for restoration of tribal lands taken by the federal government. A travertine dome near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers is believed to be the “sipapu,” or “place of emergence” by native people. This sacred formation is nameless, simply referred to as sipapu by indigenous people. Tribal leaders prefer to keep the location private.”
“Few locations on the planet can rival this amazing ‘great wound in the Earth,’ as it was described to Francisco Vasquez de Coronado by the Hopi in 1540,” said Christopher O’Brien, a journalist and investigator who has explored the canyon and its legends for years.
The first documented white man to “lay sight” on the confluence area in Marble Canyon was Seth Tanner, a Mormon pioneer married to a Hopi woman. While he had good relations with the Navajo and Hopi tribes in the region, when the Hopi learned he had seen the sacred site, they blinded him. His life was spared because of his Hopi wife, but he was told that if he spoke of what he saw, his tongue would be cut out.
Then there’s the astonishing geology — hoodoos, towering mesas, land bridges, and ancient “Vishnu” schist, the basement rock found on the canyon floor, 1.8 billion years old. But this isn’t the only example of geologic features with names from myth and exotic pantheons — there are also Brahma and Rama schists, Babylon Cave, Isis Temple, and the “Cheops” pyramid — a natural pyramid formed by long, slow erosion. Other pyramid formations bear names like “Apollo’s Temple,” “Buddha Cloister,” or the “Tabernacle.”
While some speculate that these commanding geologic formations were engineered by something other than nature, there is simply no indisputable proof. One theory is that these monoliths were built by an ancient civilization and over time, were buried in sediment. The Colorado River eventually washed away the sediment, revealing the ancient formations.
Evidence of an Ancient Civilization in the Grand Canyon?
G.E. Kincaid, born in 1863 in the then-wilds of Idaho, was a hunter, explorer, and erstwhile archaeologist. For thirty years he had explored the West for the then-young Smithsonian Institute under Prof. S.A. Jordan, ostensibly employed by the institute. In 1909 he embarked on a journey down the Colorado River in 1909 in a wooden skiff — a less than ideal boat for navigating the river.
Starting from the Green River in Wyoming, Kincaid traveled down the Colorado “looking for mineral” like others exploring for gold in the main canyon and secondary tributaries such as the Little Colorado Canyon. He described when reaching Marble Canyon near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers in 1908, an area where there were “stains in the sedimentary formation” roughly 2,000 feet above the riverbed. Geographers estimate that Kincaid was at about mile 56 of the river.
Treasure Cave?
Somehow Kincaid scaled the 2000 ft. with “great difficulty,” hauling his camera and glass plates with him. According to the April 9, 1909 Arizona Gazette, Kincaid discovered a cave entrance — upon entering, he discovered what was called “The most important archaeological find in North America.” Called an “underground citadel,” the cave was reportedly vast, with hundreds of chambers filled with mummies and artifacts that appeared to be Egyptian.
Arizona Gazette report of Kincaid’s discovery.
He described a “cross hall” with a buddha-like idol sitting cross-legged with a flower in each hand, carved out of the chamber walls. Additionally, Kincaid reported “vases or urns of copper and gold, enamelled and glazed vessels, granaries filled with seed, burial chambers filled with sarcophagi, and countless other wonders.
According to the story, Kincaid left the location and arrived in Yuma, AZ. Shortly after, the story was published in the Arizona Gazette. There are rumors of the Smithsonian sending a team of 30 to explore and document the amazing find — but no evidence remains. Shortly after, news stories regarding the discovery evaporated into silence.
When queried later, Smithsonian officials denied institutional relationships with Kincaid or Prof. S.A. Jordan. The site and its surroundings in Marble Canyon were reportedly acquired by the U.S. Government and declared “off limits” to visitors. A metaphorical door slammed on the entire topic.
But stories have persisted, and many claim to know the location of the entrance, called “Kincaid’s Door.” Theories and speculation about a coverup abound; just do a google search on “Grand Canyon Egyptian Artifacts,” or some variation — a search will return pages with assertions that the story is a hoax, that the story is true and that the cave was claimed by a secret society, or that the cave is home to reptilian humanoids as per David Icke. To explore the story, start with a segment of Regina Meredith’s “Open Minds” on Gaia — guest Jerry Wills shares details of Kincaid’s Grand Canyon discoveries.
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The Transformational Power of the Viking's Runes
The Birth of Runes
The Viking runes came into being when Odin brought them forth from another world. Historians from the National Museum of Denmark explain that Odin ruled over Asgard, which contains Valhalla, “the hall of the slain.” Half the warriors who died in battle were collected by his female handmaidens, the valkyries, who belonged to him. As such, Odin was the object of worship by kings, warrior chieftains, and their people.
In a mythic Viking tale, Odin wounds himself with his own spear before hanging himself from the Yggdrasil—the world tree in Norse culture—for nine nights, drawing wisdom from the Depths of Urd, just below it. From there, Odin sees the runes that existed even before his own coming into being, “a time before time.”
Just as he’s about to die, Odin gathers up the runes and shares them with all of creation and an array of supernatural entities and human beings. Eventually, the runes were given their shapes and phonetic values by subsequent tribal elders. They were carved on weapons, tools, jewelry, amulets, bones, pieces of wood, memorial stones, church walls, and other hard surfaces.
Ancient peoples of the Germanic lands knew the runes to be beyond the time and space with which most people are familiar. Some experts suggest that they were never really “invented,” but are instead eternal, pre-existent forces that Odin discovered through his aforementioned superhuman ordeal.
Historians have linked the runes to areas with a history of Germanic-speaking peoples, including from Iceland to Scandinavia, throughout England, and into Central Europe. Even Constantinople is home to the runes, showing that ancient seafaring cultures had made their way into what is now modern-day Turkey.
Reading the Runes
We may use the metaphor of a tree to assess how the runes are read. Historian Emma Groeneveld noted that “they are generally made up of vertical lines — one or more — with ‘branches’ or ‘twigs’ jutting out diagonally (and very occasionally horizontally) upwards, downwards or in a curve from them. They can be written both from left to right and from right to left, with asymmetrical characters being flipped depending on the direction of writing.
Each rune represents a phoneme (a speech sound) and had a name, made up of a noun, that started (and in one case, ended) with the sound the rune was mainly associated with. Lots of regional and temporal variation existed in the shapes of the letters.”
Experts of Norse mythology explain that, on the surface, runes seem to be letters. However, they are much more, because each one is a symbol of a cosmological principle or power. The very act of writing a rune called upon unseen spiritual forces. In every Germanic language, wrote historian Daniel McCoy, the word rune comes from the Proto-Germanic word that means both “letter” and “mystery.”
The Eternal Magic of the Runes
The runes have been used to link the natural and supernatural worlds, and this gives them the power to enact spells for protection or success. Still, said Olsen in an exclusive Gaia interview, according to archaeological and historical evidence, runes were used as magical tools for healing, transformation, building wealth, and for making the world a better place.
The power of the runes is in their sound vibrations, teaches Olsen. Each runic character represents a letter so that it can be combined with others to form words. The runes are also magical symbols, and each character has its own name and symbolic meaning.
Norwegian historian Marit Synnøve Vea explained that runes are not limited to their carved signs, but are also applied in certain songs, magical formulas, secret skills, and for secrets hidden in Skaldic (Old Norse) poetry. Vea noted that runic magic was used to foretell the future, as a form of protection, to cast spells, to cure illness, to bestow love, and much more.
But where there is power, there is a warning. In the wrong hands and minds, runes carved by unskilled persons could represent risky business. Vea cites a poem from the Old Norse Egil Saga that serves as an ancient warning for the modern generation:
Runes none should grave ever
Who knows not to read them;
Of dark spell full many
The meaning may miss.
Ten spell-words writ wrongly
On whale-bone were graven:
Whence to leek-tending maiden,
Long sorrow and pain
The history of the runes is the history of timelessness, a paradox among paradoxes. Often regarded as tools for parlor games, serious historians have found the deeper meaning in ways the runes can be read and applied for the betterment of life on this planet and the invisible worlds.
