Cahokia Mound and Almond Joy

Monday, October 31, 2011
On our way to Cahokia, we stopped in to a local Starbucks (for you know what) and Target for some medicine for the colds we all have. Seems like we always catch something when we leave the farm.  We asked several employees at both locations if they knew where Cahokia was, and the response was the same… no one even know what it was much less where.  So the largest pyramidal structure in our country is completely unknown to the people residing less than 15 miles away. The earthen mound known as Monk’s Mound is a massive platform mound with four terraces, 10 stories tall, and the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide and covers 13.8 acres. It also contains about 814,000 yd of earth that was carried and put there by humans. http://cahokiamounds.org/
My first thought when we pulled up to it was that when I was a teenager, we were always looking for places like this to hang out, make out, or just get a good view of the city. I guess all the young people today are too busy texting to look up and notice a huge multi-tiered mound with 156 steps going up the north side. The view of St. Louis from the top is incredible, and probably better at night or like on the 4^th of July but the sign says it closes at dusk.  It was a beautiful, perfect, completely clear day. Not one cloud appeared all afternoon, and I could see the entire circle of the horizon. We arrived at 12:30 pm and there were a few people milling around, a couple playing drums, and some people coming and going up the stairs. While we loitered in the grass, a flock of Canadian geese performed an air show directly over the mound for a few minutes and then disappeared on the horizon. Over the next hour and a half, probably about 200 hundred people ended up at the top of the mound including a Native American group with a woman in ceremonial dress. People gathered in circle around, and she began walking the inside of the circle with a smudge bowl and a feather fan. An eagle flew overhead and was noticed and appreciated by the Native Americans.  This was about the time the anticipated Mayan elder and his group arrived.

I should add that the pre-ceremony teaching (for $25 donation to the cause) had to be held at another location 20 miles away due to some monetary/payment confusion with the State Historic Site people. You cannot charge for ceremonies at the site - which is not what was happening, but you know how that goes...
At least we could have ceremony at the site.

 Hunbatz Men and the skull guardians were welcomed at the top after we watched him methodically climb those 156 steps in a light haze of copal smoke.  Everyone gathered around again in a huge circle, and the woman continued to walk around smudging everyone.  Her dress was fantastic, but I especially favored her head piece and kept thinking what a great project it would be for making use of all those turkey feathers I find in the horse pasture.  For some reason – which I am hoping to find out – people in the crowd from Chicago were asked to gather and divide into 4 groups of 7.  The crystal skulls were placed in a center circle, and the skull guardians stood in a circle around the skulls. The people from Chicago were placed in the 4 directions, 7 in a line at each direction, so that they formed another layer of the circle between the guardians and the outer circle. The outer circle was about 6 people deep, so the whole thing was probably 40-50 feet in diameter. (I do not cook with exact measurements either.)   They invited people who had brought their own crystal skulls or had crystals or stones to also place them within the circle of skulls. The people were pretty excited about that. I was sitting, and so I laid my hands and forehead on the ground to feel the energy of the circle of skulls in the earth.

 Hunbatz explained that we were going to honor the moon this day, and this sacred configuration was specifically for that purpose. He also had everyone hold up their hands and explained that our hands represent the moon also. We have 14 bones in our fingers on each hand, which totals 28 – the cycle of the moon. So each group of 7 people represented a week of the moon cycle of 4 weeks total = 28 days. (That is for those of you who are slow with math.)   Of course, the cresent moon was visible in the sky in the northwest in the bright light of day.
He expressed that he was happy to see everyone again – which is a Mayan custom to acknowledge that we have all known each other in previous incarnations. He emphasized that everyone who was here this day had been here before and he was grateful we had come again. He said we all came here from the stars and the skulls came from the stars also.  He spoke of the crystal skulls being brought here to re-open and re-activate this sacred place. He held a skull and explained that it was given to him from a Tibetan Lamma from the Himalayas and that it was given to the Lammas from our star family. He explained that teaching in our future would come from the skulls.

Now, I’ll take a little aside to tell you that each phrase Hunbatz spoke was repeated at each of the 4 directions by a man so that all people in the outer circle could hear what Hunbatz was saying. So in effect, each phrase was spoken 5 times. It was often comical, like the telephone game, and the crowd would correct the mis-spoken words, or one speaker sometimes left words out, but the next one did not, so all in all the message was transmitted. The method gifted the ceremony with a cooperative village atmosphere, not to mention it was sort of hypnotizing to hear the phrases repeated 5 times. The slow flow also added to the Time of No Time theme we are gliding on.

Hunbatz had each of the groups of 7 alternately dance around the inner circle and honor the skulls. In this way, each phase of the moon honored the energy and presence of the skulls in this place. I was sort of struck by how this culturally mixed group of people fell right into a rhythm with the process and each other as if they had all done it before - which evidently we have. There were several people with drums around me, and we were all playing together, with others in the circle with drums and rattles. I had my singing bow. I could not really hear it over the drums, but I could feel the vibration. Then Hunbatz and 3 of the skull guardians walked around the circle with skulls, sometimes placing the skulls up to people’s foreheads, or some people touching or holding them. I saw lots of smiles and tears.  I still personally feel somewhat reserved about actually touching or connecting individually with the skulls, and have only held the one carried by my friend Mary who was on the Spring Equinox trip with us in the Yucatan. I feel a curious connection to one skull that has recently emerged from Bolivia. Here is as picture of it – I feel a heart centered awareness from it, and it seems to transmit ideas through symbols, but this is my "beginner" skull-ology perception. We'll see...

Hunbatz explained that the energy of this place at Cahokia was now changed, and that people would see things here that they have not seen before. He wanted to be sure people understood it was not something to be afraid of.  Then he and a Native American man spent some time looking up into the immaculate blue sky alternately pointing at birds or planes, as if they expected a star craft to descend in our presence.  They were probably there, but not visible. I expected it too, but  nature was calling me to get down the steps so I regretfully left the circle. I cannot wait to hear on the news when people see something they have not seen before, and I hope it is star people coming to that site. That should surely make those young people look up from their touch pads and qwerty keyboards.

 As I was standing in the circle, I kept getting an energetic feeling of a large crowd on that mound.  I intuitively felt as though the entire ancestral lineage of each person physically present in the circle was present in that space/time. When I look with my eyes, I almost felt disappointed at the number of people I could see, as if it was discordant with the actual amount present. I actually walked the entire circuit if the circle to seek if changing my perspective allowed me to see better.  Later, when I talked to Gerald about it, he said there were many spirit lights all around.. as if the entire clear blue dome of the sky was sprinkled with glitter, and everywhere around us. It is the time where the veils are thin between our world and theirs. Let us remember where All Hallows Eve and the Day of the Dead came from by honoring our ancestors and loved ones passed over, and by spending this month of the year communing with them.

Of course we found a nice neighborhood on the west side of St. Louis for the boys to do some trick-or-treating in their spooky costumes and then we drove late night to Kansas City Here I Come by eating lots of candy to stay awake.  Tonight we made it to Colorado Springs, and tomorrow we journey to Crestone, CO for Tibetan Monks, a Medicine Wheel, certainly some loitering, and hopefully a warm fire.