Forgotten Ages Research

The Broken Web of Power—Memories of Earth Energy Lines in the Pacific and the Americas

Report Topics:

• Native Australian traditions of “dream paths” and Polynesian navigation using te lapa or “lines of light” to cross the Pacific Ocean
• Sacred pilgrimages along ancient Inca ceque lines connecting waka sites, and the enigmas of the Nazca lines of Peru
• Malcolm Rogers’ discovery of prehistoric stone piles placed in linear arrangements throughout the deserts of the American Southwest
• Alignments among Native American medicine wheels and Mound Builder remains across the continent
• Implications of the world-wide presence and similar uses among energy lines all over the globe—was there a universal web of power that tapped into the natural forces of the planet, and could it be revitalized again today?

Full Report:

The Indigenous Peoples of Australia, like so many other peoples the world over, have preserved a forgotten knowledge of the hows and whys of earth energy forces in their customs and beliefs, but expressed in their own individual symbols.

Jennifer Isaacs has collected dozens of native legends and stories relating to earth energy aspects. According to the Indigenous Australians, all life—human, animal, bird, fish and plant—is part of a changeless interconnected system, a vast network of relationships which can be traced back to the Spirit Ancestors who came to Australia during a lost age called Alcheringa or Tjukurpa—the Dreamtime.

Long ago these great Ancestors, many in the form of giant Serpents, came from beneath the ground and as they thrust upward formed the mountains, cliffs and hills in the landscape. After their advent an era followed in which the Ancestors journeyed along great linear routes called Dream Paths making streams and rivers, reshaping the land into sacred forms, and creating and naming all life.

Before they departed, the great Ancestors taught their descendants, the Aboriginal or Indigenous Peoples, what they needed to know to live in harmony with all living things, and maintain the natural system by which the Peoples still remain faithful today. In essence, they do not own the land, the land owns them. As Isaacs explains:

“The clans and groups held in sacred trust the chains of Dream sites which their ancestors had visited in the past. The great Dream tracks mark the land boundaries of the central Australian tribes. They are very real and well known to all tribal people. When moving over vast distances navigation is not accomplished by watching the stars but by noting the well known Dreaming sites along the way, described from legend, myth and ceremonial song cycles.

“Periodically initiated men of the tribe re-enact in chant, mime and dance the actions of the Ancestors. Without these ceremonies the annual cycle of life could not be ensured and if the sites were destroyed or defiled the whole functioning of the cosmos would be endangered.”

As other Western observers of Indigenous Australian customs have noted, among them Colin McCarthy, at certain times of the year the Peoples celebrate their Ancestors’ return, who travel down the old Dream Paths so their energies may revitalize and give new life to the plants and animals of the surrounding countryside.

To insure that this energy fertilization takes place, the Aboriginals gather in certain seasons at the Dream Centers--marked by rocks, waterholes, trees, hills, streams and caves--and perform rites whose exact meaning has been lost, but still have their regenerative purposes.

Oftentimes, Indigenous Australians will go on long pilgrimages called Walkabouts following the ancient track lines and visiting other sacred centers in the same manner as Christian and Muslim pilgrims visit their holy shrines today.

Some Dream Paths are very prominent and stretch over great distances. One line starts at Spencer Gulf and moves in a northerly direction into the Simpson Desert. The Kunapipi ceremonies extend from Roper River into the far west of Arhhem Land. In 1960, Charles Mountford traveled three hundred miles with one group of Aboriginals on a Walkabout or seasonal trek, to animate the life energies.

Mountford observed that his Jarapiri companions were always conscious of the fact that their desert landscape had been constructed according to spirit patterns, and performed what they called a Line of Songs as they walked.

Everywhere they went, he wrote, he found local tribes looking after, protecting and up-keeping the Dream Paths in their region, and at special times of the year gathering and singing their myths of the Story of Creation. As Mountford reported:

“It is the aboriginal belief that every food, plant and animal has an increase center where a performance of the proper rituals will release life, the kuranita or kurumba, of that particular plant or animal and thereby bring about increase.”

Over several days and nights of songs chanted until dawn the Indigenous dancers methodically stamp and sway in rhythmic imitation of the moving energies of the Earth.

According to Aboriginal mythology, the spiritual forces of Nature take on many forms, but the most prominent is the image of the snake. In central Australia the Wanambi snake lives in huge caverns beneath the waterholes, and takes the shape of a rainbow when offended.

The Rainbow Serpent, known as Ngalyrod to the Gunwiggu People and Borlung to the Miali, is described as a snake of immense proportions which winds through underground tunnels from place to place along certain important Dream Paths, and by the Ubar ceremonies is called forth by beating a wooden gong.

In the Kimberly region of western Australia the snakes which appear in rock paintings are said to be always at the end of rainbows, endowed with the magical rainmaking properties of the Giant Serpent himself.

Closely linked with the snake is the figure of the Earth Mother. She is called Imberombera by the Kakadu, and is the progenitor of all things. Unfulla, the originator of the tribes, still crosses the Dream Paths as the patroness of mothers. Along the Roper River her name is Jingana, and she in inextricably connected with the Rainbow Serpent.

She is depicted as a snake standing on her tail and reaching into the sky after each rain, and is responsible for droughts, great storms and floods when her People neglect her ceremonies and maintenance of her sacred Dream Centers.

Other spiritual forces include the Wandjina who are portrayed in the Kimberly rock paintings as wide- and empty-eyed ghost-like figures. They too strike offenders of the ceremonies with floods and lightning, and are keepers of the waterholes wherein dwell little “spirit children,” the Mimi, or Aboriginal fairy folk.

The various Dream Centers of the Indigenous Australians are of different forms and serve different purposes, usually based on local tribal beliefs. Among the Arunta, for example, the Centers are called ertnatulunga, where the tribe keeps bundles of sacred stones they believe hold the spirits of their departed, buried in caves and crevices. These are carefully blocked with stones and rocks and the surrounding land is considered holy where no game can be hunted.

Many Centers are also located at springs and waterholes which are also given reverence and respect of their own. Here and there, too, are Centers marked with rock paintings carefully redrawn and restored from time to time.

Among the best examples of these are located in the Kimberly district, Cape York and in Arhhem Land. The figures most often taking the form of undulating serpents and spirals are said to be the Ancestors themselves “frozen” upon the rocky walls.

The Aboriginals explain, however, that it is not the paintings that holds great power. Rather, it is the rocks on which they appear, for it is through rocks and stones they believe which brings rain from the sky and life from below.

In other Centers where the seasonal assemblies take place, the sites are characterized by wooden poles surrounded by circles drawn in the sand. Among the Pintubi and Anmatjera located to the north of the Central Desert their Dream Centers are marked by smoothing the ground and constructing elaborate lines and circles with bird down, clay and ochre—patterns which represent routes to their Centers nearby.

Other tribes such as the Gunwinggu make similar geometric patterns that link the People with the earth forces which they paint on the face and torso of initiated men as part of their ceremonies. Animal and plant symbols along with human figures portrayed in dynamic poses are painted onto specially prepared bark and are used to explain the hidden meanings of the Ancestors’ rituals and journeys along the Dream Paths to the new initiates.

Among the most important of these artistic-shamanic aids, manipulated only by the most knowledgeable among the medicine elders, are the churingas or “sacred things,” flat stones and wood boards upon which are incised or painted several spirals, concentric circles and horseshoe shapes all joined together in a series of lines.

The churingas are maps of the desert lines and energy Centers, and by concentrating and meditating upon them the holy men are said to tap into the power of the lines themselves.

By such means, as McCarthy and other researchers eye-witnessed, the holy men receive accurate messages telepathically over great distances from other tribes, foretell the coming of strangers, locate game, speak with dead spirits and predict the approach of storms and sudden changes in weather. In this manner the energy paths in the desert, through the churingas, are employed as psychic telegraph lines.

Earth energy researcher John Michell made this comment regarding the Aboriginal Dream Paths and the feats performed by their use:

“There is no doubt that the Australian aborigines have inherited the degenerate forms of a forgotten science, retained by their ancestors from the collapse of an archaic universal civilization, through which the currents of life essence itself were brought within human control.”

The ancient Maori of New Zealand had a keen sense of how to work with their land’s energy centers and with a myriad of nature spirits inhabiting the invisible landscape. The tahunga priests knew how to use toko stocks and poi poi stringed balls—seen today in Maori ceremonial dance—as dowsing rods and pendulums, to feel and sense the location of the tahiwha or earth dragon paths, the chi lines of mana or life essence.

The Tahiwha were described as personifications of the earth energies with the ability to travel on land and in the ocean following fault lines and causing earthquakes if aggravated. The crossings of the taniwha ara created tuaha or vortexes which were usually marked with standing stones, sacred pools, tapu lands and in particular marae or sacred spaces for individual tribes.

In Tasmania, folklore collector W. G. Wood-Martin discovered that the ancient Indigenous Peoples, “Believed that stones, especially certain kinds of quartz crystals, could be used as mediums, or as means of communications with spirits, with the dead, or with living persons at a distance.”

In the Bank Islands of the New Hebrides, the natives set out bamboo poles in long linear arrangements as primitive antennae for evoking spirits of nature and the departed.

As far north in the Pacific as Hawaii we find the theme of the control and manipulation of natural energies central among the practices of the islands’ kahunas. They spoke of using aka threads, lines of energy which connect all living things and beings, which they utilized for both religious and healing purposes.

One of the great mysteries of the Pacific is how the ancient Polynesian sailors were able to navigate hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles over open waters with no visible landfalls, yet would reach their destinations with pinpoint accuracy.

The ability naturally involved an intimate knowledge of ocean currents, winds and sightings of the Sun, Moon and stars. But the older Polynesians say these were only part of the story. Several examples have been found of Polynesian sea maps called mattang, made of bamboo sticks crisscrossing each other in what at first appears to be a network representing ocean currents.

However, closer inspection has shown that the lines do not correspond to any known Pacific current patterns. In fact, the sticks are often bent at right angles or sharper, a feat no ocean current duplicates.

The answer, according to the old navigators, is that the stick-maps represent “lines of light” in the ocean. The Polynesians divided the ocean into areas or seas, each sea having a particular type of “vibration” that could be felt and used as a guide even on the darkest overcast nights. Along with the vibrations came the te lapa or streak flashes of light appearing well below the ocean’s surface, which darted between the islands from one location to another over vast distances, but always vanishing just within sight of land.

The Polynesians’ description of te lapa clearly reveals the phenomenon was not attributable to natural luminescence in seawater, and was most unlike random patterns created by luminescent sea life sometimes seen at night in the Pacific.

The lines of light are of another nature entirely, reminding us of electrical discharges through a liquid medium generated at one point and received at another. Significantly, most of the islands between which the te lapa were observed are those possessing unusual stone monuments--standing stones, pillars, stone archways, forts, temple complexes, artificially shaped mounds and ahus and heiaus or sacred stone platforms.

The most well-known of these monuments are the colossal stone heads of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. According to the legends of the Rapa Nui Indigenous People, each stone face is connected through its backside with a cord of energy called mana, that it receives along a straight pathway through the ocean from another place far beyond the horizon.

When one begins looking for energy lines in South America, the first place we immediately think of are the famed mysterious lines and figures drawn on the desert floor at Nazca in Peru, located about 250 miles south of Lima.

Here, spread out on a desert floor a mile wide and 37 miles long, an unknown prehistoric people expended tremendous amounts of labor in carefully removing the sandy dark topsoil to reveal the lighter colored sub-soil beneath, and doing this in long narrow lines. These in the majority of cases traverse for thousands of feet with an accuracy of straightness—a deviation of four yards in a mile--which can only be measured and appreciated using modern optical survey equipment.

Along these lines researchers have also found piles of stones, sometimes small single stones or holes where wooden posts once were inserted at regular intervals. More than 39 of the Nazca lines are aligned to the summer solstice or winter solstice sunrise or moonrise points on the distant horizon, and over 17 point to the risings and settings of stars of major magnitude.

Scattered among the linear patterns are various animal and geometric figures, some outlining serpents, spirals, birds, plants, insects, fish, whales, flowers and zigzag lines. Nazca was also famous for its pottery production and had a distinctive art form, samples of which offer clues as to why the lines had been constructed. One example depicts shamans standing at the end of one line with hands outstretched toward a rising celestial object, and along the line are the faces of worshippers gazing into a series of zigzags which appear to be flowing down the line.

Not only are the Nazca lines a puzzle, but so are a number of local enigmas. One of the animal figures depicted on the desert landscape is of a spider 150 feet long, drawn with a continuous straight line half a mile in length. What is peculiar about the spider is that one of its legs is deliberately lengthened and extended, and at the tip there is a small cleared area. There is only one spider known that uses the tip of its third leg in precisely the manner portrayed for purposes of copulation , and that is the Ricinulei, which lives in caves deep in the Amazon jungle, a thousand miles from Nazca.

The problem is the spider is very tiny, and its mode of reproduction can only be observed with a good microscope.

Another animal pictured at Nazca is a particular species of monkey identified by its long spiral tail. This is called the spider monkey, and can be found only in the Amazon jungle, a good three thousand miles away.

On one remnant of Nazca pottery is a distinct picture of a white-breasted, black-coated penguin. The difficulty here is that penguins are indigenous to Antarctica, nearly six thousand miles away.

Another piece of Nazca pottery shows the faces of five girls—one white, one red, one black, one brown and one yellow. These colors could not have been chosen randomly, as all the major races of humanity are clearly represented. These faces—along with the animal figures from so many far-flung locations—are evidence of global communications in the distant past that equaled that of modern times.

The linear patterns of Nazca are by no means unique. Tony Morrison, a British researcher and author, began searching for other evidence of prehistoric South American lines in 1977, and eventually found them almost throughout the continent.

In the Pampa de Media Luna not far from the Nazca valley, Morrison found one straight line about a mile long, built of small heaps of stones placed approximately two yards apart connecting a large hill and a low man-made mound.

The Pampa too is marked with other small radiating lines and large cleared areas all delineated by small stone heaps. In 1574, the local peoples reported to Jesuit Father Jose de Acosta that these and similar linear patterns were, “shrines and high places of spiritual meaning.”

At Pena de Tajahuana near Ica, Morrison examined another set of lines and rectangles about 75 feet wide—all connecting small standing stones and stone piles made with rock material that is not local, but had been transported from a site five miles away.

Along the Peruvian coast extending into Chile, there are estimated to be as many as one hundred more locations, each showing the exact same characteristics in interconnected pathways, stones and hill shrines.

One special group at Collique near Lima has several points and standing stones in the middle of stone rings, from which radiate five to six lines each. One line measures over three miles long running over steep hills and valleys undeviated and perfectly straight.

The Aymaras of Peru recognize these various stone configurations and lines as guacas or huacas, “spirit centers,” and reveal that the patterns connect not only stones and hills but also hidden springs, wells, caves and the burial places of their ancestors. Many of the lines and sacred places are still being reverently cared for, and one can still find offerings of cocoa leaves, llama fat, tobacco and broken pottery at various stone heaps made to the spirits and forces which are said to inhabit the lines.

Just how far back in history these lines were held sacred Morrison discovered in his visit to Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incas. In 1653, Jesuit Father Bernabe Cobo reported that the Incas knew of hundreds of wakas or sacred centers, the greater majority of which were located on ceques or long straight lines.

The Temple of the Sun or the Coriconcha, located at Cuzco, appears to have been the major focal point for the most important or imperial ceques. The Temple itself, as described by the Incan historian Garcilasco de la Vega in 1603, possessed a Hall of the Sun and four chapels dedicated to the gods of the Moon, Stars, Thunder and the Rainbow.

The structure of the Temple was aligned to face directly into the summer solstice sunrise, and de la Vega described how once a year the Inca priests gathered within the central Temple tabernacle to receive the Sun’s rays which struck the center only on that day. In the Temple’s Hall of the Sun stood a huge golden disk sporting the face of the solar deity. Surrounding the disk were the mummies of all past Inca kings, seated on thrones of gold, each throne marking the beginning point of a sacred ceque line.

From the Temple, Father Cobo learned from the last Inca priests, a total of 42 major ceques radiated outward passing through the city of Cuzco and continued on sometimes as much as thirteen miles in length. Each of the ceques had from 4 to 15 wakas or sacred places on them, making a grand total of 365 wakes—one for each day of the year—interconnected with the central Temple. Four of the ceques ran to the cardinal points, and the Incas used these as geodetic lines for measuring and dividing up the Incan Empire into religious and administrative territories called tawantinsuyu.

As for the wakas, Father Cobo compiled a list of these and they included temples, standing stones, stone groupings—squares, circles and half-circles—ceremonial clearings, sacred hills, caves, springs, boundary posts, mounds, sacred trees, crop plots for growing maize for sacrifices, single stone idols, and sun towers called suncancas which were used for calendar purposes, measuring the rising and setting points of the Sun on the horizon during the year. Of these, the most numerous were 90 springs and fountains, 80 single standing stones and 50 hills and mounds.

It is unfortunate that most of these wakas have been destroyed. In 1617 and 1618 the Spanish Church in Peru conducted a purge to eradicate many of the symbols of the old Inca religion. As a result, it was recorded that throughout Peru 603 principle wakas and 3,148 conopus or sacred stone piles were obliterated, removed or in some cases surmounted by church structures. In Cuzco, where the Spanish priests re-ordered the streets so as to destroy those which followed the ceques, little can be found left today of the original linear system radiating from the ruins of the Temple of the Sun.

However, Morrison discovered some traces were inadvertently preserved. Several of the Spanish churches in Cuzco fall in straight alignments indicating they were built on waka sites located on old ceque lines. This is precisely the same characteristics found with many other energy lines in Europe, Africa and Asia where a later religion in raising their symbols over the ruins of prehistoric sacred centers have become the new markers for finding where the ancient energies once flowed.

Curious about the Inca ceremonies and customs associated with the wakas, Morrison unearthed several more interesting facts particularly relating to the predominance of certain numbers.

The Inca quipu is a long rope to which is attached a series of strings, each string possessing one or more knots, or further subdivisions of strings. The Spanish chroniclers recorded that special members of the Incan court and priesthood calld quipu-camayoc were able to read the string-and-knot patterns, that these by their arrangements preserved certain information only the readers could interpret.

Morrison noted that many of the quipu which have survived to the present show patterns remarkably similar to those of the ceques and wakas, and he proposes that the one may have served as maps or representations of the other.

Possibly they may have had a deeper purpose, for we recall that the Indigenous Australians used their churinga boards which also depicted sacred sites as a means of tapping into the line system to utilize the energies. Morrison found that many of the knot arrangements in the Inca quipus represented sets of seven, and wondered if the number seven also had a special significance among the ceques and wakas.

Likewise he found the number three important as well. Many wakas were made up of a grouping of three stones. Ceques were also often described as divided into sets of three having three names each. And children in partaking in waka ceremonies were said to always walk three times around the sacred sites, and always in the same direction. Significant also were the numbers five, nine and eleven.

Traveling southward and higher up into the Andes, Morrison next explored the linear systems of Bolivia, many located at the 14,000 feet level, and discovered even more mysterious characteristics associated with them.

For a hundred miles on either side of the line from La Paz to the volcano Sajama is the greatest concentration of lines, many either single and long, running dead straight across the rugged Andean terrain, or grouped in networks of zigzags and radials.

Some figures are half-buried in stretches of sand dunes indicative of great age, while others appear very clearly defined, still being faithfully tended by the local peoples. The Bolivians call the lines takis. In many cases these terminate at a silu or sacred hill or mound. If the hill is topped by a chapel or capilla (again showing a supplanting of an older site by the Church), the silu is called a calvario, and its associated line is a calveri taki.

Stone heaps found along the takis are of three types. There are qontos or “sacred places” of a general nature; apacitas where supplicants keep adding stones as offerings to the “spirit forces dwelling there” who control the wind, earthquakes, rain and the rainbow; and the tiyanas or “rest stops” for travelers making pilgrimages parallel to the lines at various sacred places.

Along the lines one also finds single stones, boulders and circles of stones now used as llama corrals as well as houses, tombs, lakes, river crossings and “high places,” such as mountains and volcano peaks. All these are said to be the dwellings of the acacila or benevolent spirits of the earth who are often described as invisible wise old men from long ago, but who still inhabit the lines and sacred spots, and reward those who maintain them.

These acacila control rain, hail and frost. A few of the lines point to places on the horizon where the Sun and Moon rise at specific times of the year, and—as another sign of Church influence—these lines are today named after the saints on those respective feast days the Sun and Moon shine down the lines.

However, the local peoples still preserve many of the ceremonies of their ancestors. In January they celebrate the Festival of the Alicitas, by tradition associated with fertility and originally sacred to Eqopo, the god of good fortune and prosperity.

Several days before the actual festival times parents and children gather about the locally most important sacred center—usually a single stone or stone pile—and slowly encircle the center three times on their knees while fasting.

At the end of the ceremony, food is placed in and eaten from special pottery bowls. Once emptied the bowls are broken to pieces and offered as jikillita or “spirit money” to the spirits of the center.

Beyond Bolivia and the Andes mountains toward the east, Morrison has evidence that the enigmatic lines extend far and deep into the jungles and mountains of Brazil. To explore these lines, however, will take special efforts and may be the target of expeditions in the future.

One question remaining is, how old are these line systems? Among several Indigenous legends are stories that the lines were originally the product of the oldest remembered peoples to inhabit the continent. Luis de Monzon, a Spanish magistrate, reported in 1586 that the Indians knew of a prehistoric people called the Viracochas—named after their primordial deity—whose name means “sea foam,” indicating they came from across the ocean and were also lighter-skinned than themselves. They first appeared at Tiawanaku not far from the shores of Lake Titicaca, and from there began the very first civilization ages before the Incas or even the Aymarans had arrived.

The Indians remember Viracochas as not having been many in number, but were great sages and saintly people, versed in all manners of mysterious wisdom and science. By their powers, they reordered or created all of Nature into a system of balance and harmony. By the time the Indians arrived into the land, however, they found the Viracochas old and weary, their powers waning. The older race then departed toward the west, and the Indigenous peoples say that in their honor they still maintain the old lines, keeping the earth in balance, waiting for the Viracochas’ prophesied return.

The most significant development in the study of ancient Central American archaeology in the last century has been the discovery that a large majority of Maya, Toltec and Aztec pyramids and temple complexes were purposely built aligned with one another and with astronomical events such as the equinox and solstice risings and settings of the Sun and Moon, as well as planetary and stellar declinations on the horizon.

However, what has perplexed many experts in the growing field of archaeo-astronomy is that not all the alignments are coordinated with the heavens. At the Maya city of Uxmal in the Yucatan, for example, one finds structures pointing toward the summer solstice and spring equinox sunsets, plus the most southern horizon positions for the Moon and Venus. Yet the overall alignment of the Uxmal temples and complex is 9 degrees east of north, which has no astronomical significance whatsoever.

The strange orientation is also found incorporated in many other nearby sites. Not a few experts are suggesting that these alignments, as well as the temple locations themselves, were part of a much larger conceived pattern of which the Sun, Moon, planets and stars played only a part. Author-researcher Warren Smith observed that the Maya chose their temple sites not in regards to ease of access or suitable terrain, but often placed them in the middle of hostile jungle or swamp-like environments. There appears to have been some special consideration given to unseen benefits for raising their structures where they did, benefits Smith believes had to do with invisible earth energies. He wrote:

“We can speculate that the great pyramids of Mexico were built on powerful earth points. It may have required considerable time and skill to select the right spot for a large pyramid, a location where the currents of the earth converge.”

This concept is also shared by Dr. Maxine Asher, who besides being a researcher is also psychically sensitive to powerful forces still active in many sites in the Yucatan and Guatemala.

Dr. Asher noted that at many late Maya and Aztec sites where human sacrifices were made, the energies are oppressive and are causing “mis-alignments with the harmony of the universe.”

The negative energies persist because they exist in a magnetic field that is wound up like a spring, and is subsequently released little by little when triggered by the consciousness of sensitive individuals coming in contact with them. The very last phases of the Maya, Toltec and Aztec civilizations, all of which practiced forms of human sacrifice, were relatively late cultural developments, and they supplanted the temples of far older and purer energy centers.

As many psychic travelers have found, the secret is to tap into the original positive and life-affirming powers of these ancient sites, to release their “cleaner” energies, in order to clear out the later desecrations and subversions from the sites’ accumulated karmic patterns.

Evidence for the older and purer earth energy culture can be found in many locations. At Chichen Itza, for example, almost at the base of the main pyramid there, as well as near the House of the Old Woman at Uxmal, one finds small groups of standing stone phalli bearing a remarkable resemblance to those found in prehistoric Europe and the Mediterranean.

At Loltun Caverns in the Yucatan, near Oxkutzcab, which archaeologist J. Manson Valentine demonstrated in 1965 had been inhabited long before the Maya or other Central American cultures came into existence, one finds carved on the cave walls the now familiar symbols of the old earth religion—spirals, zigzags, lines, phalli and single stone altars.

The late Maya in particular were on occasion forced to abandon their temple sites due to growing infertility of the soil in their environs, and moved en mass to new locations in the Yucatan to start over. There is reason to believe that this infertility may have been caused by the planet’s reaction to their general disregard for human life.

As to the existence of actual lines in Central America, they are discernable as what the Maya called sacbes or raised white roadways. The most extensive patterning of these exist at Coba, where forty-two once radiated outward from the forgotten sacred center.

One of these sacbes spans the jungles and swamps between Yaxuna and Coba running east-west over a distance of 62.5 miles. The road takes the form of a causeway varying from 30 to 34 feet wide, made of stone pavement blocks mortared over with lime and cement, and raised above the terrain from 2 to 8 feet.

The causeway is considered nothing short of phenomenal in its engineering, especially where it passes directly through swamp areas, where problems of unstable soil foundations were overcome and solved. However, there are certain features about the causeway which indicate it was no ordinary road. As archaeologist J. Eric S. Thompson observed, the Coba and other sacbes were not built for practical purposes, because the Maya possessed no beasts of burden or wheeled vehicles.

His conclusion was that the roads served some peculiar “spiritual purpose, as a setting for great religious processions.”

Curious also was the Coba road’s design. For 42 of its 62.5 miles the causeway follows a dead-straight line with only three changes in angle along the rest of the traverse, always in straight line segments and not varying by more than 10 degrees. Nowhere is there a curve or any consideration given to avoiding natural obstacles. The road runs right through thick jungle growth and murky swampland, in places where a much better footing and easier route is located only yards away.

The Coba causeway begins at the outskirts of the city of Coba, inter-connecting ruined sites located along a chain of fresh water lakes. Along the length of the Coba road are several stelae or engraved standing stones interspersed with small raised platforms or shrines from 13 to 16 feet in height each. At Yaxuna the causeway ends at the base of a pyramid.

There is some archaeological evidence that Coba and other roads were not the sole product of the Maya, but that they merely improved upon a pattern which had existed ages before, just as the Romans utilized the prehistoric holy lines of Europe inherited from a previous forgotten civilization.

The Maya not only made roads out of an older linear pattern, but they also may have used it for canal routes as well. Satellite photography, using high intensity sonar techniques similar to those utilized in the mapping of the terrain of cloud-covered Venus, revealed a series of unusual linear patterns crisscrossing unexplored jungle areas of the Yucatan, Belize and Guatemala. These lines are now thought to be a lost network of Maya canals which extend in all directions over a considerable area, 11,000 square miles.

The old Maya elders who live secluded in the jungles and coastal swamps of the Yucatan and who preserve something of the most ancient and purer forms of the primordial earth religion, remember the ancient roads as having been a system of power lines used by the abeles or ancient ones, who knew the secrets of communicating back and forth by psychic means, much n the same manner as the Australian shamans still communicate along their Dream Paths today.

The Maya elders describe a great ancient one, Ucan, who traveled the entire peninsula and the world, carrying a magical white stone of quartz, and wherever he strode along his linear odyssey, the stone of Ucan created etheric ribbons which bound the sacred centers of the earth together. Along the sacbes and ribbons also traveled the uyumil kaax, the Yucatan fairy folk, also called the aluxes, who gave fertility to the land wherever they appeared.

The sacbes were linked also at very special power centers with the kuxan suum, the “roads to the sky,” or connecting lines of life energy between earth and the heavens of the gods. When the sacred centers were either abused or abandoned, not only the terrestrial energies were depleted, but the vital arteries to the rest of the universe were cut, stopping the “spiritual blood” from reaching the planet.

Only in later times was it mistakenly thought that the physically spilled blood of human sacrifices could temporarily replace it. The Maya today prophesy the return of Tutl Xiu, a leader who shall restore the sacred centers and reconnect the energy lines of the world, both upon the earth and into the heavens, bringing all things back into harmony once again.

On a spring day in 1924, an archaeologist named Malcolm J. Rogers began a one-man back-packing expedition into the Borrengo-Anza desert of southern California. It was his hope to find some evidence of prehistoric humanity having lived in this area—perhaps a few flints, some broken pottery, or if he was lucky even a long-forgotten campsite.

What Rogers found instead was far beyond his expectations. In a three-hour walk along the rocky desert terraces he counted no less than 364 small cleared circular spaces and stone circles set out in lines.

During the next three decades Rogers expanded his area of search to include all the desert country of central and southern California to just east of the Colorado River, and by 1943 he had catalogued a total of more than 8,000 circles, 41 ceremonial figures, and 500 trails of cleared and stone lines.

The California circles the archaeologist observed were of several types. They averaged from 4 to 16 feet wide, and appear as well-defined bare patches on the rocky desert floor, often outlined with rocks and boulders, with the rims never more than two tiers high, and a maximum height of 14 inches. Ninety percent of the structures are perfectly circular, while the remaining ten percent are oval or even rectangular. In several cases the rings are open-ended, double-circled or half-moon shaped, or have a large single standing stone in their center. One curious feature Rogers noted was that the circles were many times grouped in series of nine.

These enigmatic circles were also either laid out in linear or slightly curved patterns such as those seen in southeast Inyo County, or were inter-connected with long lines of stones and rocks joined at placed by stone piles and hearths. At various places along the lines Rogers discovered milling stones, potsherds and flints which he suspected had been sacrificed in repeated sacred ceremonies.

One notable line or rocks was laid on a low gravel terrace in the Mojave Desert south of the Masquite Gills in central San Bernardino County, and connects seven cobblestone piles, ending in a cleared circle.

Another line extends 129 feet long and is located in the Colorado Desert in eastern Imperial County north of the Carga Mucacho Mountains.

And still another, the largest of all, runs through Yuma County, composed of 200 lbs. boulders, and is over 600 feet in length.

Not all the stone alignments, however, are straight ones. Rogers discovered one grouping located on a longspur of the Cady Mesa in central San Bernardino County where the rocks form snake-like patterns which include one double line 400 feet long.

Besides stone alignments, Rogers also discovered much longer desert lines in the form of paths and trails where the soil had been purposely cleared and beaten down, and where no flora grows even today. The Colorado River desert country especially is webbed by such paths, some up to thirty miles in length, with either stone circles, mounds or stone piles found at either end.

Along the trails themselves, Rogers came across numerous structures, including stone circles, strange figures of human-like and animal-like forms, and spiral designs, all outlined in boulders and rocks, and containing indecipherable symbols and petroglyphs carved into them. These Rogers called “trail shrines.”

The shrines, he believed, had been added one by one over time, composed of small usually spherical stones given as offerings by wayfarers who traveled the paths. Mixed in with the stones were pieces of tobacco pipes, foodstuffs, smashed ceremonial bowls, flints and shell jewelry which had also been sacrificed years ago.

One of the largest such trail shrines Rogers excavated is located in Arizona, between Ehrenberg and Tacna. It is made up of 50,000 individual stones and thousands of artifact fragments indicating a great age and long continuous use and reverence. In other places the archaeologist found a high number of three shrines appearing close together, but because of the gradual accumulation of stone offerings, the individual shrines had merged into one single large pile.

To Rogers, these stone shrines suggested that the trails had had a sacred and mystical nature attached to them, and speculated that the prehistoric builders had believed in spirit entities which inhabited the paths, to which appropriate offerings were made, guaranteeing good weather, hunting and long life.

Other features of the trails likewise pointed to the same conclusions. For example, in several instances the trails served no practical function as a means of connecting living sites or other social or economic centers. They simply end out in the middle of the desert, usually pointing toward a distant hill, mountain or mesa.

Second, in places the trails are cut across by a line of stones or are interrupted by stone piles or circles, which would have been inconvenient obstacles if the trails were used only for traveling purposes. Rogers envisioned instead that the trails represented flows of energies, and the structures were actually barriers to catch the flow of invisible spirits which traversed the lines.

Finally, along long stretches of the trails the archaeologist discovered parallel footpaths showing where prehistoric peoples had actually walked. These footpaths crossed the sacred trails only at shrines or stone circles, or other special places it appears it was safe to step across the current.

Rogers observed from various artifacts found along the footpaths that even thousands of years ago after the builders of the original trails and stone structures had disappeared, the Yuma Indigenous Peoples still regarded the trails as sacred and powerful, and they too walked only on the footpaths and did not disturb the spiritual trails extending throughout the land.

Stretching from Colorado east to the Rocky Mountains and on up into British Columbia is a series of about fifty or more mystery stone circles called medicine wheels, the most famous being the one located in north central Wyoming, Big Medicine Wheel. The circles measure up to two hundred feet in diameter and are usually composed of a central stone or stones out from which radiate several spokes or lines, which are in some cases joined together by an outer circumference of small stones.

The medicine wheel finds an analogy with the Hopi kiva or sacred circle. For village ceremonies involving the general populous, the Hopis of the Four Corners area of the American Southwest gather at special places, usually marked by a circular wall or group of stones, sometimes with a stone or stones clustered in the middle. Here, the villagers perform their sacred rituals, one of the most well-known being the Snake Dance.

During the Dance the participants recite words which reveal that the kiva is far more than just the stone circle on the surface, but that it is connected with inter-related forces from above and below. The heads of rattlesnakes are washed in clear water poured from stone jars stored underground, and the dancers sing:

“Grandmother of the earth, I have cleansed your arrow-shaped heads. Go in to the deep kiva now, and dream of rain—bring rain to my people, my Grandmother.”

The kiva, according to both the Hopis and Zunis, extends into the earth as an inverted energy cone. By gathering and harmonizing together in chant and circling dance, the peoples bring balance between the forces of Nature in the sky and earth, not only for their own prosperity and existence, but for the benefit of the entire continent. As one of the old traditional Hopis observed:

“There is a sign of things that can’t be explained. There are shrines out there in the spiritual center which are markers for spiritual routes which extend in all four directions to the edge of the continent. Through our ceremonies it is possible to keep the natural forces together. From here our prayers go to all parts of the Earth. They are the balance that keeps all things well and healthy. This is the sacred place; it must not have anything wrong with it.”

On a higher level the elders and medicine people of the tribe, when they meet either among themselves or with representatives of other Indigenous Peoples, form a circle in a secret underground chamber located below other unmarked kiva centers.

Here also the most sacred initiations into esoteric wisdom take place, and the chiefs and shamans strengthen the links with the ancestors by bringing out, reading and interpreting ancient holy writings and symbols. To them special reverence is given, for they tell of an age long ago when all humankind was in far better harmony with Nature, and communicated directly with the Earth.

The most sacred place for the Hopis and the Navaho is in northern Arizona, called Tukunavi or Black Mesa, covering two million acres and rising 3,300 feet from the desert floor, considered by the local tribes as an important energy center for the planet. Not surprisingly, the area has the highest concentration of lightning phenomenon n the North American continent. Also, magnetometer tests conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher of Standford Research Institute demonstrates that the site possesses intense geomagnetic anomalies.

Tragically, since 1970 the Mesa has been torn apart and devastated by coal strip mining corporations and diggings for oil and uranium. As Hopi advocate Moira Timms reported:

“Many of the Hopi shrines, the sacred foci of their prayers and rituals, have been desecrated. The delicate network of power paths which radiate out over the Mesa land and keeps the energies of the planet harmoniously stabilized have been interrupted and irreparably damaged.”

This disregard for the sacred places of the Earth, the Hopis themselves predict, could lead to events which have happened ages before.

According to Hopi legend, the Great Creator Taiwa made Sotuknang, who in turn created Spider Woman as his helper. Spider Woman then took earth and saliva, and formed two twins, Poqanghoya and Palongawhoya.

To the first twin was given the task to shape and mold the patterns of all things and all life, while to the second twin was given the power to travel along special routes and paths from pole to pole and set all the Earth’s vibratory centers in motion by the sound of his voice. This made the entire planet quiver as one in song, and rotate in balance and unison with the rest of the universe.

These two brothers and their individual work find an interesting parallel with the European beliefs in nature spirits who perform the same functions. Hopi legend speaks of how the peoples in former ages used the creative forces of the earth’s and human centers combined to perform great miracles of healing and rejuvenation.

But, say the Hopis, despite all these powers and wisdom, the first people forgot the worship of the Creator, and began to divide and draw away from each other through jealousy, discrimination and hatred. The first sign of trouble came when all the animals, which up to that time had lived in peace and communicated with humanity, fled away in fear from their approach.

Then came Sotuknang, who instructed those who still worshipped the Creator to listen to the kopavi or the energy center at the top of their heads—their crown chakras—that would guide them to a place safe from the coming destruction. A few inhabitants did so, and soon afterward the twin Palongawhoya sang a discordant note, the disturbed earth’s vibratory centers caused the planet to shudder, and the entire globe was engulfed in fire and flood.

Four such former worlds have been destroyed for the same reason, and always to the survivors Sotuknang asked that they love their Creator, love themselves, love the Earth, and “sing in harmony from the tops of the hills, “ keeping the world in balance.

Today the Hopis remain faithful to these promises. Each clan has its own sacred shrines and centers it is responsible for, placed at intervals along the boundary lines of their territories. According to Hopi legend collector Frank Waters:

“Each clan erected an altar, conducted its ceremony, and demonstrated the power it possessed to bring power of snow, control underground streams, prevent cutting winds, prevent flash floods, insure germination and reproduction of all forms of life. And every year the kachina spirits came to help the people, bringing blessings from the stars, worlds and planets.”

In some of the ceremonies the elders walk three or four times around the clan boundary lines. In others, participants walk through a symbol of the Earth Mother, carefully and meticulously drawn on the ground—a spiral maze made up of seven or nine loops very similar to the garden troyes of Britain, the ancient mazes of Europe, and the labyrinthine symbols found in ancient Crete, also dedicated to the Earth Mother goddess. The Hopi say that the walk through the spiral maze helps quicken the step, alerts their senses, gives them a surge of physical strength and regenerates the spirit.

Among other Native American tribes are also found many beliefs and practices related to planetary power centers and energy transference between earth and life.

The Navaho, for example, use two distinct shapes in the architecture of their buildings—an eight-sided Hogan, and a pyramidal tipi structure. The Navaho claim each shape accentuates a different type of energy found locked within the land. The Hogan channels a female energy, while the tipi generates a male energy. It is in the tipi structure that Navaho medicine people perform healing utilizing the energies harmonized within with the vibrations of chanting, color, light, stones and crystals, herbs and fumigants.

The Navaho are firmly convinced that the flow of energy moves freely through the earth, and through all living things, and that to benefit from these one must not disturb the flow, but simply create vibrations that will alter the flow to be more advantageous.

Among the Apache medicine people the means of receiving power could only be accomplished by periodically rubbing their backs against a sacred stone which pierced the holy ground in the country of the Walapai. Such stones and rejuvenating forces are likewise found among the Pueblos of Laguna and Acoma.

At Standing Rock in South Dakota, the Sioux knew of a particular sacred medicine stone, and the Tusayan were described by European traders in centuries past as possessing “a great stone around which they marched in solemn procession in their snake dance.”

But not all the energy spots were marked with stones. Other Indigenous Americans, especially in the American Northwest, erected totem poles made of logs from sacred trees, and often carved with the images of nature spirits and powerful beings who aided and brought good hunting and fishing to their people.

Among the Tewa Pueblo, Delores La Chapelle observed:

“The Tewa Pueblo world is bounded by four sacred mountains. On each of the mountaintops is a keyhole arrangement of stones called the ‘earth navel’ with the open end directing energy toward the village. In the center of the village is the ‘earth mother navel place.’ This is the sacred center of the village. The mountain earth navels of the Tewa gather in blessings from all around and point them to the village, while the center mother earth navel concentrates and centers all this energy.”

One of the greatest problems facing Native Americans today as already noted with the Hopis is the destruction of their sacred centers and shrines at the hands of the white people who are ignorant of their true purpose, and who are now paying for the consequences.

Doug Boyd tells the story of his sojourn with a modern Shoshone medicine man, Rolling Thunder, and relates one incident in which the shaman took him to a Western ranch that had once been on Indian territory. The land was rich and fertile, but when white settlers took the land for themselves and drove the Native peoples away, they also dynamited a sacred shrine nearby in order to make way for a road.

Soon after, the grass in the fields died, hay would not grow, and the horses and cattle became sick with no apparent cause. The balance of Nature, Rolling Thunder revealed, had been disturbed and left desolate.

Slowly, the Native peoples are coming back and are restoring the sacred shrine, so that the land is returning by its former inhabitants to its rightful fruitfulness.

Not only has the destruction of Native American power centers caused problems in the West, but also it is having its effects in the Midwest and East as well. Throughout the Mississippi valley and its tributaries—from Nebraska to New York and from Michigan to Florida—is a vast system of earthen mounds, temples, truncated platforms, animal and human effigies, lines, circles, squares, polygons and stars which in their construction must have expended the intellectual and physical labors of a most sophisticated civilization, termed today the Mound Builders.

Millions upon millions of tons of earth were moved and heaped up forming complexes and patterns which in many cases exhibit a high degree of mathematics and engineering in their designs. Especially noteworthy is that many of the Mound Builder structures contain astronomical alignments, and also are arranged in distinct linear forms.

Among the effigies shaped upon the American landscape are some familiar energy forms: birds, spirals, winged beings, and the most famous of all, the Great Serpent Mound near Locust Grove, Ohio, depicting a serpent with an egg in its mouth, reminiscent of the Greek and Egyptian Omphali.

Sadly, however, our understanding of these structures’ purpose, as well as an incalculable number of mounds themselves, have been obliterated by five hundred years of the so-called advance of modern civilization westward across the North American continent.

Ancient earth energy researcher John Michell observed that, unlike other migrating peoples in the past who inherited or preserved from the indigenous inhabitants they supplanted some understanding of their nature-energy wisdom, and a respect for the sacred places which influenced and balanced the fertility of the soil, the European colonists in North America wantonly butchered the Indigenous keepers of the land, learning little from them, and wherever possible demolished their holy places and structures. The colonists and settlers did not even both to erect their churches over sacred mounds as their forefathers had done in Europe.

Instead, they built whatever they pleased wherever they wanted, in total disregard to the natural order. They inherited a very rich and fertile country which had remained that way for more than a thousand millennia under the Native Americans’ care.

Now, only after five centuries of conquest and abuse, we are today seeing a dramatic change. As Michell remarks: “The catastrophic results of the new Americans’ failure to inherit the geomantic lore of their predecessors is now becoming apparent in the endemic restlessness and unease of the present inhabitants and in what seems to be the inevitable approach of sterility to both the land and the livestock through the application of naïve agricultural theories, together with the disregard for the living and therefore vulnerable nature of their environment.”

In 1858, an early student of Indian ethnology and archaeology, William Pidgeon, met an old sage named De-coo-da, who told him he was the last hereditary prophet of the extinct Elk nations, a people whose roots provided a direct link back to the original Mound Builders.

He tried to communicate to Pidgeon a few of the many secrets of the mounds and their magical purposes. He described to him how long ago game and crops had always been abundant because of the mounds. Earthworks were continually made, or being expanded, or trees were planted on them in rows and in special places, or stones erected and circles built, all to further refine the manipulation of the “creative life energies.”

The Earth spoke to humanity, and humanity spoke with the Earth, in harmony and understanding. “The face of the earth is the red man’s book,” De-coo-da said, “and those mounds and embankments are some of the letters.” But the words are now broken, forgotten, and the terrestrial pages badly torn and neglected.

Scattered throughout the New England states—in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and especially concentrated in Vermont—are over three hundred stone monuments in the form of chambered mounds, standing stones, cairns, dolmens or table stones and circles. Largely through the efforts of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) have these relics from the dim past been catalogued, studied and in many cases preserved from destruction.

The most well known of these is Mystery Hill, also called America’s Stonehenge, at North Salem, New Hampshire. It is a series of stone chambers, dolmen-like structures interspersed with standing stones and walls.

Though the site has received damage in the past, investigators have demonstrated that the Mystery Hill complex incorporates equinox and solstice sunrise and sunset alignments, various stellar alignments, and several lunar observation points, all dating back to before four millennia ago. A large number of the other New England sites have also been determined to be astronomically attuned to the heavens as well.

Inspired by their British cousins working with leys on the other side of the ocean, members of another group, the American Society of Dowsers, have used their special talents to explore the New England monuments, with surprising though not unexpected results.

Several dowsers have concentrated on stone chamber sites found in Vermont. In most cases they report the structures had been built directly over underground blind springs, with energy lines extending outward from them.

Other dowsing forays have been made to old Indian mounds and other sacred areas, and here too the teams have discovered one or more subterranean up swells of water or streams crossing each other directly beneath the sites.

Adding to the mystery of these monuments is a report by geographer Noel Ring that photographs of the New England area taken by NASA from an altitude of 65,000 feet reveal huge hexagon shaped patterns crossing the entire countryside, laid out in a series of forgotten stone walls, stone alignments, ditches and soil discolorations, many several miles long.

The way in which farms, colonial-built towns and roads overlap and cross the hexagons demonstrates that the patterning dates from a far earlier time than the coming of the Europeans. Most significantly, almost all the known stone structures in New England fall within the curious linear patterns.

It is clear that the ancient energy line systems are found over the entire surface of the Earth--throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Pacific and the Americas. The legends and traditions associated with them indicate they are all based on essentially the same principle--the balancing of unknown earth currents, directly inter-related with the energies of the human mind, life, the planet and the heavens. It appears that someone long ago in the past not only knew this principle, but applied it for their own benefit.

First, they must have had a profound insight into the world about them, to be aware of the earth currents’ existence, plus the wisdom to develop a means of detecting those currents.

Second, they would have had access to the end-product of a tremendous body of intuitive and accumulated research and experimentation in perfect balance. They knew how to manipulate the currents toward a predictable result while still maintaining equilibrium and control.

We can only guess at many of these aspects from what remains, for our science today has not reached that level of understanding.

All we can say is that it involved very advanced knowledge of geometry, astronomy, geophysics, astrophysics, geomantic engineering, the biological sciences, the entire electromagnetic spectrum—including the psychic and bio-energy fields—and all of its potentials, the piezoelectric properties of crystals and other materials, subtle yet unknown energy sources which have the power to open inter-dimensional doorways, and the secrets of life itself.

The very nature of the operation of the energy lines also presupposes that for the system to have worked to its full potential it was necessary that all terrestrial currents be accounted for and utilized. The energy line system was thus a truly global system. It was not a concept that could have simply originated with one group of isolated people and was then slowly communicated to and imitated by neighboring groups.

Rather, the system had to have been pre-planned by a single universal culture that knew the ability to survey the globe and chart the geographical features and energy potentials, revealing the underlying major and minor centers of earth energies.

And once the planning was accomplished, then had come the awesome task of executing the plan--the raising of massive temples and pyramids, the moving of hills and mounds, the laying out and setting up of lines, circles and other figures, the diverting of streams and springs.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]