The Winter Solstice Pilgrimage of 2012 to Chaco Canyon: Combining Stellar Acoustics with Acoustic Archaeology
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The Winter Solstice Pilgrimage of 2012 to Chaco Canyon: Combining stellar acoustics with acoustic archaeology By Willard Van De Bogart This is a story about a pilgrimage to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico for the winter solstice of 2012. I flew to New Mexico from Bangkok, Thailand to be in a location on the earth that had a special significance for our ancient ancestors who made it a point to pay homage to the stars. After I left Chaco Canyon I went to Harbin Hot Springs in Middletown, California. It was at Harbin where I could sit down in the peaceful surroundings of nature, nurtured by the natural hot springs and write up the experiences I had when I was standing beneath the stars on top of a mesa 7000 feet above sea level at 4 degrees above zero. It was at Chaco Canyon where a timeless form of energy over took my mind and I became entranced in a world filled with a living spirit that felt as real and tangible as the life I live here on earth. How could such a place create such an overwhelming sense of otherness will be the subject of this story. The silence I encountered definitely had something to do with it. My reasons for going to Chaco Canyon were based on wanting to be in a location where there was a clear view of the heavens and a place that was revered by our ancient ancestors who used stars and planetary alignments to form their own cosmology. Chaco Canyon satisfied both of these requirements. What I did not know when I made the decision to go to Chaco Canyon in August of 2012 was the extent to which the heavenly bodies played such an integral part of the ancient Chacoan lifestyle. Going to Chaco Canyon was also supported by the fact that I had a very close friend who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was in Albuquerque that I was able to prepare for the long drive north into the area known as Chaco Canyon. It was winter and there was a snow storm coming so I had doubts the sky would be clear. But I was determined to participate in the winter solstice in this area so I set out to make preparations to travel there. But why fly from Bangkok all the way to New Mexico just to experience the winter solstice? Why in fact decide to make a pilgrimage to a sacred site half way around the world? The answer was predicated on the fact that this winter solstice was the last to occur on the 26,000 year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. That this precession was verifiable or an astronomical fact was less important to me than knowing that this solstice was recognized as an important time marker by indigenous cultures worldwide and made popular with the knowledge of Mayan calendrics. The significance of this period of time was that it culminated at the end of a long precessional cycle recognized by all ancient cultures. The depth of understanding mentioned in ancient cosmologies, which revolved around the solstice sun, is still recognizable by the hundreds of stone markers, earthen mounds, and ancient observatories all of which align themselves to the movement of celestial bodies in the heavens and in particular the rising of the solstice sun. This period of time in 2012 was being hailed as a time of transition for all of humanity, a transformative time where we might find ourselves in a totally new world and would have an entirely different perspective on how we collectively as a species would perceive the universe. Many thought this winter solstice was an end time in which it was prophesized that the destruction of the earth by natural cataclysms, including a complete reversal of earth’s magnetic poles or even an influx of solar radiation would forever change the face of the earth. Indeed there were so many offerings anticipating the arrival of the winter solstice of 2012 that it turned into a labyrinth of complex mythical proportions. But, for me the one salient feature which prompted my decision to travel to Chaco Canyon was that from an astronomical perspective the alignment of the heavily bodies was going to take place and it was this alignment, which as a result of the celestial mechanics of our solar system, would not happen again for another 26,000 years. That fact coupled with the attention that all of our ancient ancestors attributed to the movement of the stars in the heavens, and most likely accompanied by elaborate rituals, cosmologies and beliefs that were a part of this solstice phenomenon gave me the inner conviction that I should be in a location on earth where I could experience the solstice directly and especially where ancient people had recognized the solstice sun. It was the winter solstice, which most likely was responsible for all the development of super natural belief systems eventually leading to the creation of the gods. The ancient Chacoans, Hopis and ancestral Puebloans definitely satisfied all of the above criteria as a place to experience the winter solstice... The decision to go to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico was made in early August of 2012. Even though I intuitively knew that this would be a perfect place to experience the winter solstice sun I had little if no knowledge of the area or even the ancient Chacoans who I had thought were called the Anazazi. But, with research I soon began to learn it was more politically correct to refer to the people who inhabited Chaco Canyon from 800AD to 1300AD as ancestral Puebloans. But in fact, I soon discovered in my research, that scholars had differing points of view and opinions as to what exactly these ancient people did in Chaco Canyon. I soon became aware that astronomy and cosmology were an integral part of the ancient Chacoans; as I will refer to these ancient people. I soon found myself immersed in the scholarly works of Dr. McKim Mallvile, Anna Sofaer, Philip Coppens, Charles Bensinger, Chris Hardaker, Frank Waters, Richard Fisher, Stephen Lekson, and the list just seemed to go and on. By late October of 2012 I began to see that Chaco Canyon was a natural location on earth that the early people of the Americas had choosen to build a very sophisticated observatory. Chaco Canyon was an archaeoastronomers’ delight as they tried to decipher what it was these ancient people might have been doing in this canyon. It is not for me to review all this research in this story as it is readily available by doing some basic research. However, several areas which I became attracted to were the migration routes discovered going south to Mesoamerica as well as the long roads going north that were eventually discovered by aerial reconnaissance. Within the actual construction of the kivas and great houses were discovered advanced mathematical building techniques as well as using the canyon wall named Tse Biinaholts’a Yalti for the acoustical enhancement of ceremonies and rituals. The canyon walls themselves are covered with petroglyphs, including a flute player, depicting very unusual figures which almost look as if they might be from another world. Chaco Canyon I came to learn was a very mysterious place and I did not know any of these facts when I made my decision to go there in August of 2012. It became obvious to me that I was not going to be able to master all the knowledge that had been generated over the past 100 years on what Chaco Canyon was used for. But it did reinforce my decision to go there. The story of this pilgrimage becomes more interesting when I had to consider what it was I would do in the middle of the winter 7000 feet above sea level once I got to Chaco Canyon. The answer to this question takes me all the way to Santiago, Chile where my research on ancient Khmer temples, which I had done in 2002 -2006 throughout Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, was mentioned to Munesh Purohit Kumar by a close friend of mine and editor of the South East Asian Review; Dr. Sachidanand Sahai. Dr. Sahai is a well known scholar on South East Asia and last year received two prestigious awards from the president of India for his work on the influence of the Indian culture on South East Asia. When Dr. Sahai was in Chile he learned that Munesh Kumar was interested in how Vedic mantras were originally created as a response to stars and that they affected human emotions. Dr. Sahai wrote to me and mentioned Munesh Kumar’s interest in this area of stars and mantras and I immediately found the concept to be fascinating. The sounds from stars was already being utilized in musical compositions by many composers, and a new field of study called stellar acoustics was developing as a result of using the sounds of stars recorded by radio telescopes. I had already been downloading many of these sounds which were recorded at radio telescope facilities in several countries. I was also aware of the Alma radio telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile. At this point I began to make associations with stellar acoustics, Munesh Kumar, mantras and stars and my own synthesizer compositions all coalescing into a new idea which I immediately wrote down in my journal. Kumar was of the opinion that the state of human affairs on the planet was in a desperate situation enabling him to promulgate the idea that the survival of the “human breed” needed to be saved.