Non-solstice Lines, the Grand Chakra System
and the Hopi Winter Solstice Ceremony
In addition to the solstice alignments, a number of intriguing non-solstice lines exists to corroborate the pattern as a whole. As heretofore stated, an extension of the solstice line between Oraibi and Wupatki (the Belt and left shoulder of the terrestrial Orion respectively) would ultimately end on the Colorado River at the point where a major trail east toward Anasazi territory began. Similarly, if the non-solstice line between Walpi and Homol’ovi (the Belt and the right shoulder respectively) were extended, it would intersect the wrist of the constellation and terminate within five miles of the important Hohokam ruin site and astronomical observatory of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, near the Gila River one hundred and fifty miles away. We have also already discussed the extension of the Walpi-Canyon de Chelly solstice line (Orion’s right leg) ending up at the Salmon-Aztec ruin area. An extension of the Oraibi-Betatakin non-solstice line (Orion’s left leg) would bring us to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Ruefully, hundreds or perhaps even thousands of small Anasazi ruins were submerged by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, and the few that remain can only be reached by boat.
Another alignment of ancient pueblo sites forms the grand chakra system of Orion and indicates the direction of the flow of spiritual energy. Drawing a line southwest from Shungopovi/Alnilam, we pass less than five miles southeast of Roden Crater and Grand Falls, both mentioned above. Continuing southwest the line runs by Ridge Ruin 12., through Winona Village 13., and into the forehead of Orion, viz., Walnut Canyon National Monument, a significant mid-twelfth century Sinagua ruin located in the foothills of the San Francisco Peaks. If the line is extended farther still, it intersects the red rock country of Sedona with its electromagnetic vortices, passing the small but gorgeously located ruin and pictograph site of Palatki, “Red House,” as well as the larger Honanki, “Bear House.” In the Verde Valley the newly energized vector directly transits Tuzigoot National Monument, a major thirteenth century Sinagua ruin of over one hundred rooms perched on a hilltop for the probable purpose of stellar observation. The line traverses the Black Hills of Arizona, goes by the newly excavated Emilienne Ruin 14. in Lonesome Valley, intersects the Fitzmaurice Ruin 15. located upon a ridge on the south bank of Lynx Creek in Prescott Valley, continues through the small Lynx Creek Ruin at the northern base of the Bradshaw Mountains, treks across the northern limits of the Sonoran desert, and passes near the geoglyphs 16. in Arizona and California to ultimately reach a point just north of the mouth of the Colorado River, perhaps the place where the ancients migrating on reed rafts from the Third World to the Fourth entered the territory. If we were to extend this line in the other direction from Shungopovi, it would travel northeast across Black Mesa, passing just southeast of Four Corners to finally end up at the major Anasazi sites of Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado.
In this series of villages we have eleven both major and minor Anasazi or Sinagua ruins and one Hopi pueblo perfectly aligned over a distance of over 275 miles within the framework of the tellurian Orion. The probability that these are randomly distributed is highly unlikely and increases the possibility that Masau’u (or some other agent perceived as being divine) directed their positioning. This “ley line” forms a grand chakra system which provides an inseparable link and a conduit of flowing pranic earth energy from the Hopi Mesas to the evergreens forests of the San Francisco Peaks. More specifically, Walnut Canyon symbolizes the Third Eye, or pineal gland (etymologically derived from the Latin word pinus, or “pine cone”), of Orion.
At this point one might ask: Why is the template of Orion placed upon the earth at the specific angle relative to longitude that we find it? The “chakra” line mentioned above, which runs in part from Shungopovi/Alnilam (the Belt of Orion) to Walnut Canyon/Meissa (the head of Orion) is 231 degrees azimuth in relation to Shungopovi. The azimuthal direction of southwest is 225 degrees. Thus, the axis for the terrestrial Orion is within six degrees of northeast/southwest. If we stood at Shungopovi shortly after midnight nine centuries ago on the winter solstice and looked southwest, we would find the middle star of Orion’s Belt hovering directly above the southwest horizon at an altitude of about 38 degrees. Specifically, at 1:15 a.m. on December 22, A.D. 1100, Alnilam is at 231 degrees azimuth.17. In other words, gazing from the central star of the earthbound belt of Orion toward its head located in the foothills of the San Francisco Peaks where the katsinam live, we would see the celestial constellation precisely mirror the angle of the terrestrial configuration.
One might also question the significance of this precise time when the middle star in Orion’s Belt is at 231 degrees. At the very moment we are watching this sidereal spectacle, “one of the most sacred ceremonies”18. of the Hopi known as the Soyal is taking place in the subterranean chamber called a kiva. Just past its meridian Orion can be clearly seen through the hatchway. This is the time “when Hotomkam [Orion’s Belt] begins to hang down in the sky.” Now a powerful, barefooted figure descends the kiva ladder. He is painted with white dots which resemble stars on his arms, legs, chest, and back. He carries a crook on which is tied an ear of black corn, Masau’u’s corn signifying the Above. One account identifies him as Muy’ingwa, the deity of germination related to the aforementioned Masau’u.19. Another calls him “Star man,” ostensibly because of his headdress made of four white corn leaves representing a four-pointed star, perhaps Aldebaran in the Hyades.20. At any rate, this person takes a hoop covered with buckskin and begins to dance. His “sun shield” fringed with red horsehair is about a foot across with a dozen or so eagle feathers tied to its circumference. Its lower hemisphere is painted blue, its upper right quadrant is red, and its upper left quadrant is yellow. Two horizontal black lines for the eyes and a small downward pointing triangle for the mouth are painted on the lower half of this striking face of Tawa. Alexander Stephen, who witnessed the ritual at Walpi in 1891, remarked that the Star Priest stamps upon the sipapu (the hole in the floor of the kiva that links it to the Underworld) as a signal to start the most important portion of the ceremony.21. This occurs just after 1:00 a.m., the time on this date in the year A.D. 1100 (the approximate onset of settlement on the Hopi Mesas) when Orion was at 231 degrees azimuth.
As the dance rhythm crescendos, the “Star man” begins to twirl the sun hoop very fast in clockwise rotation around the intercardinal points between two lines of Singers, one at the north and the other at the south. With “mad oscillations” (to quote A.M. Stephen) he is attempting to turn back the sun from its southward journey. “All these dances, songs, and spinning of the sun are timed by the changing positions of the three stars, Hotomkam, overhead. Now is the time this must be done, before the sun rises and takes up his journey.”22. If this were merely a solar ritual, one would assume that it would take place at sunrise. On the contrary, the sidereal position of Orion must reflect the terrestrial positioning of the constellation, which only occurs after the former has passed its meridian, i.e., “...when Hotomkam begins to hang down in the sky.” Prior to dawn runners are sent out to the shrines of both Masau’u (Orion) and Tawa (the sun) in order to deposit pahos (prayer feathers), offerings to the two gods whose complex interaction helps to assure the seasons’ cyclic return, keeping the world in balance for yet another year.
Egyptian Parallels to the Arizona Orion
The “Orion Correlation Theory” propounded by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert in The Orion Mystery: Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids. 23. is probably the one with which readers are most familiar. (Incidentally, this book provided in part the initial impetus for writing the present article and book-in-progress.) The co-authors have discovered an ancient “unified ground plan” in which the pyramids at Giza form the pattern of Orion's Belt. According to their theory, the Great Pyramid (Khufu) represents Alnitak, the middle pyramid (Khafre) represents Alnilam, and the slightly offset smaller pyramid (Menkaure) represents Mintaka. In addition, the three pyramids at Abusir correspond to the head of Orion, while the two ruined pyramids of Zawyat al Aryan and Abu Ruwash correlate to Bellatrix and Saiph respectively. Bauval and Gilbert also believe that the pyramids at Dashour, viz., the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid, represent the Hyades stars of Aldebaran and Epsilon Tauris respectively. Furthermore, this schema correlates Letopolis, located due west across the Nile from Heliopolis, with the brightest star Sirius. As co-author Gilbert states in a later book:
It was Bauval’s contention that the part of the Milky Way which interested the Egyptians most was the region that runs from the star Sirius along the constellation of Orion on up towards Taurus. This region of the sky seemed to correspond, in the Egyptian mind at least, to the area of the Memphite necropolis, that is to say the span of Old Kingdom burial grounds stretching along the west bank of the Nile from Dashur to Giza and down to Abu Ruwash. At the centre of this area was Giza; this, he determined, was the earthly equivalent of Rostau (Mead’s Rusta), the gateway to the Duat or underworld.24.
The region in Hopi cosmology corresponding to the Duat is called Tuuwanasavi (literally, “center of the earth”), located at the three Hopi Mesas. Similar to the ground-sky dualism of the three primary structures located at the Giza necropolis, these natural "pyramids" closely reflect the Belt stars of Orion. In addition, the entry to the nether realms is known in Hopi as the Sipapuni, located in the Grand Canyon. Culturally significant to a sacrosanct degree, this area mirrors the left arm of Orion. Whereas the Egyptian Rostau is coextensive with the axis mundi of the Belt stars formed by the triad of pyramids, the Hopi gateway to the Underworld in the Grand Canyon is adjacent to the center place but still close enough to be archetypally resonant in that regard.
In addition to The Orion Mystery, Robert Bauval has also co-authored a book with Graham Hancock entitled The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest For the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. Among other things this book describes the cosmic journey of the Horus-King, or the son of the Sun, to the Underworld: “He is now at the Gateway to Rostau and about to enter the Fifth Division [Hour] of the Duat -- the holy of holies of the Osirian afterworld Kingdom. Moreover, he is presented with a choice of ‘two ways’ or ‘roads’ to reach Rostau: one which is on ‘land’ and the other in ‘water’.”25. We have been blessed with a wealth of Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, both on stone and on papyrus, with which we can reconstruct the Egyptian cosmology. On the other hand, unless we consider petroglyphs more as a form of linguistic communication than as rock “art,” the Hopi and their ancestors had no written language; hence we must rely on the oral tradition. In this regard the Oraibi tawa-mongwi (“sun watcher”) Don Talayesva describes an interesting parallel to Rostau. As a young man attending the Sherman School for Indians in Riverside, California during the early years of the twentieth century, he became deathly ill and, in true shamanistic fashion, made a journey to the spirit world. After a long ordeal with many bizarre, hallucinatory visions, he reached the top of a high mesa and paused to look. (Is it simply just another coincidence that the Hopi word tu’at, also spelled tuu’awta, meaning "hallucination" or "mystical vision," sounds so close to the Egyptian Duat-- indeed spelled by E.A. Wallis Budge, former director of antiquities at British Museum, as Tuat, that seemingly illusory realm of the afterlife?)
“Before me were two trails passing westward through the gap of the mountains. On the right was the rough narrow path, with the cactus and the coiled snakes, and filled with miserable Two-Hearts making very slow and painful progress. On the left was the fine, smooth highway with no person in sight, since everyone had sped along so swiftly. I took it, passed many ruins and deserted houses, reached the mountain, entered a narrow valley, and crossed through the gap to the other side. Soon I came to a great canyon where my journey seemed to end; and I stood there on the rim wondering what to do. Peering deep into the canyon, I saw something shiny winding its way like a silver thread on the bottom; and I thought that it must be the Little Colorado River. On the walls across the canyon were the houses of our ancestors with smoke rising from the chimneys and people sitting out on the roofs.”
26.
In this narrative the dry, narrow road filled with cacti and rattlesnakes, where progress is measured at just one step per year, is contrasted with the easy, broad road quickly leading to the canyon of the Little Colorado River. A few miles north of the confluence of this river and the Colorado River is the actual location of the Hopi “Place of Emergence” from the Third World to the present Fourth World: a large travertine dome in the Grand Canyon to which annual pilgrimages are made in order to gather salt. In correlative terms the Milky Way is conceptualized as both the evergreen forest of the San Francisco Peaks (upon whose summit is a mythical kiva leading to the Underworld) and the “watery road” of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon-- that sacred source to which spirits of the dead return in order to exist in a universe parallel to the pueblo world they once knew. In the “double-speak” of the astral-terrestrial correlation theory, are these spirits in actuality ascending to the celestial river of the Milky Way? Is that the purpose of this grand schema? --to draw a map on earth which points the way to the stars? Talayesva’s account also includes such traditional otherworldly motifs as “the Judgment Seat,” which he calls Mount Beautiful, a peak about eight miles west of Oraibi that supports a great red stairway, at least in his vision. In addition, we hear of a confrontation with the Lord of Death, in this case a threatening version of Masau’u, who chases after him. Thus, like the Egyptian journey to the Duat, the Hopi journey to Maski, the “House of Death,” has two roads-- one on land and one on water. In this context we must decide whether or not the latter is really a code word for the sky.
Returning to the subject of Orion projected upon the deserts of both Egypt and Arizona, we find both discrepancies and parallels. In terms of distinction between Orion's African and North American manifestations, the Egyptian plan is on a much smaller scale than the one incorporating the Arizona stellar cities, using tens of kilometers rather than hundreds of miles. Furthermore, the bright stars of Betelgeuse and Rigel are perplexingly unaccounted for in the Egyptian schema. (Recently independent Egyptologist Larry Dean Hunter has claimed to find all the stars of the terrestrial Orion in Egypt, but this remains disappointingly unsubstantiated.) In addition, the Giza terrestrial Orion from head to foot is oriented southeast to northwest, while the Arizona Orion is oriented southwest to northeast. Of course, the pyramids are located west of the Nile River, while the Hopi Mesas are located east of the “Nile of Arizona,”27. i.e., the Colorado River. We should also point out that Abusir is not in the correct location to fit the constellatory template of Orion’s head.. Bauval and Gilbert state that Abusir is “...a kilometre or so south-east of Zawyat al Aryan,”28. (Bellatrix, or Orion’s left shoulder), but it is in fact about six kilometers southeast. In other words, Abusir is nearly four miles south-southeast of where it should be according to the star correlation theory. Unlike Bauval, Gilbert, and Hancock, the present author has not yet journeyed to Egypt, but the consultation of any scale map will verify this statement.29.
Despite these few differences though, the basic orientation of the Egyptian Orion is similar to that of the Arizona Orion, i.e., south, the reverse of the celestial Orion. According to E.C. Krupp, Ph.D., Director of the Griffith Observatory, this is one of the factors that invalidates the Orion Correlation Theory.30. This critique, however, is the result of a specific cultural bias in which an observer is looking down upon a map with north at the top and south at the bottom. Imagine instead that the observer is standing on top of the Great Pyramid (or for that matter, at the southern tip of First Mesa) and gazing southward just after midnight on the winter solstice. The other two pyramids (or Mesas) would be stretching off to the southwest in a pattern that reflects the Belt of Orion now achieving culmination in the southern sky. We can further imagine that if the upper portion of the terrestrial Orion were simply lifted perpendicular to the apparent plane of the earth while its feet were still planted in the same position (Abu Ruwash and an undetermined site in the case of Egypt; Canyon de Chelly and Betatakin in the case of Arizona), then this positioning would perfectly mirror Orion as we see it in the sky.
When the Anasazi gazed into the heavens, they were not looking at an extension of the physical world as we perceive it today but were witnessing instead a manifestation of the spirit world. Much like the Egyptian Duat, the Hopi Underworld encompasses the skies as well as the region beneath the surface of the earth. This is apparent in the dichotomous existence of ancestor spirits who live in the subterranean realm but periodically return to their earthly villages as clouds bringing the blessing of rain. Even though the eastern and western domains ruled by Tawa remain constant, the polar directions of north and south, controlled by the Elder and Younger Warrior Twins (sons of the Sun) respectively, are reversed. Thus the right hand holding the nodule club is in the east and the left hand holding the shield is in the west, similar to the star chart. However, the head is pointed roughly southward instead of northward. This inversion is completely consistent with Hopi cosmology because the terrestrial configuration is seen as a reversal of the spirit world, of which the sky is merely another dimension. An alternate explanation for the change of directions is the possibility that the pole shift which destroyed the Hopis’ Second World reversed the position of the constellation's mundane aspect.
At any rate, when looking up at Orion on a midwinter night, we can imagine that our perspectives have switched and that we are suspended high above the land, gazing to the southwest toward the sacred katsina peaks and the head of the celestial Masau’u suffused in the evergreen forests of the Milky Way. Ironically, it is here on the high desert of Arizona that we feel most fully in our bones and in our hearts the hermetic maxim attributed to the Egyptian god Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus): “As above, so below.”
Copyright © 2001 by Gary A. David
Contact: e-mail islandhills@earthlink.net
web site: The Orion Zone
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