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At the End of Time
Prophecy and Revelation A Spiritual Paradigm
By Robin Robertson NICOLAS-HAYS, INC.
Copyright © 2011 Robin Robertson, Ph.D.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89254-165-2
CHAPTER 1
Visions of the Millennium
Beginning with their Genesis, and carrying through their Old Testament of previous worlds, and their New Testament of the present to the Revelation of their esoteric ceremonialism, the tenets of this books are as sacred to the Hopis as the Judaic-Christian Bible is to other people.
The world has grown so complex, so vague and ambiguous, that it sometimes seems beyond any individual's ability to understand, much less to control. The brave dreams of our Victorian ancestors—so convinced that they were on the verge of solving all the mysteries, conquering all the demons that had held us captive for so long—have grown stale and crumbled into dust. Once the theme of "progress" seemed an anthem that would lead us forthrightly (and self-righteously) into a glorious future of unending achievement; now progress has stalled and advance has yielded to retreat. The mood has passed from optimism to pessimism, then to despair and, most recently, to a greedy hedonistic apathy.
Yet on the horizon looms a sight so glorious and strange that we don't even have mental categories to encompass the vision. In one of Colin Wilson's books, he tells the story (perhaps apocryphal) of Captain James Cook's arrival in the South Seas. When Cook's great three-masted ships appeared on the horizon, the islanders could not see the ships. They literally could not see the ships and were startled when the white men appeared on their shores. Without some concept of such a ship, they could not find a mental compartment adequate for the strange sight before them, and so they saw nothing at all. Like the islanders, today we stare at visions that fill the entire field of sight and somehow manage to blank them out and see nothing at all.
All over the world, people are trying to contain these strange visions in some way. Change is never welcome, and when nothing but disaster is expected, all change appears to portend disaster. If the world isn't going to die of starvation, it will blow itself up. If the economic structure of the world isn't going to collapse, leaving the rich richer and the poor dead, then the reverse will happen: the undeveloped nations will become so powerful that the current world-powers will become second-rate has-beens. If the dictators don't get us, the terrorists will. We've heard so many terrible scenarios that we just sit numbly, expecting the worst. Yet all of these are just attempts to explain the previous unexplainable. When the familiar disappears, how else to try and explain the new?
All over the world, prophets are arising, reminding us of the old prophesies of world's end, or crying new prophesies to fit our times. All seem so close to our circumstances that we shiver and intellectualize them out of our sight, trying in our tired, frightened way to exorcize the demons that threaten to swallow us.
Hopi History
The Hopis first released information about their history, myths, legends, and religious ceremonies—all of which form a single entity for the Hopis—to Frank Waters, who published them in his Book of the Hopi in 1963. However, the Hopis revealed only part of their mysteries at that time. More recently, they have chosen to release additional information through a variety of spokesmen, including members of other tribes, "breeds", even whites. However, to understand the Hopi prophesies, we have to understand something of the Hopis.
The Hopis are an isolated, introverted, mysterious people, living alone on the plateaus of Arizona, surrounded by their numerous out-going neighbors: the Navajos. Most anthropologists think that the Hopis were a Mongolian people who crossed the then-existent land bridge over the Bering Strait twelve hundred years ago, and then migrated southward. Tree-ring analysis shows that their three main settlements at Oraibi in Arizona were first settled over seven hundred years ago. The Hopis have lived there in their splendid isolation ever since.
The Hopis' own histories tell a very different story. According to Waters, they assert that they made a great ocean crossing, passing over a series of "stones" (i.e., islands), thousands of years ago. They didn't come from the North and migrate southward; they entered in Middle America and migrated northward. The medicine chief I studied with said that—in histories not revealed to Waters—the Hopis tell of the time before this migration, when an earlier migration was made—from the stars. They say that their ancestors came from the Dog Star Sirius one hundred and eighty thousand years ago. Interestingly, an African tribe with no known connection with the Hopis—the Dogon—also believe that their ancestors came from Sirius. The Dogon are also aware that Sirius has a "twin star" not visible to the naked eye—a fact not known to modern science until 1862.
In favor of the anthropologists' theory is the fact that every Hopi child is born with the Mongolian spot at the base of their spine, which seems irrefutable evidence that the Hopi, like their probable cousins, the Mayans, are Mongolian in origin. Other evidence, however, favors the Hopis' version of history and argues that their Mongolian ancestors came to the Americas long before the land bridge across the Bering Strait came into existence . For example, fossil remains have placed men on the North American continent over twenty thousand years ago. In addition, analysis of blood groupings show that Native Americans have the purest "Type-O" blood groups in existence. This would mean that Native Americans were isolated from their ancestors much longer ago than anthropologists would have us believe. Frank Waters says:
There is a great body of literature, ever growing from antiquity to the present, asserting that sea crossings were made from Asia to America centuries before the Vikings and Columbus arrived from across the Atlantic. The earliest of these is the most ancient Chinese classic, Shan Hai King, compiled about 2250 B.C. It describes a voyage across the 'Great Eastern Sea' and a two-thousand-mile journey down the length of the land beyond. Long regarded as a book of myth, it is now asserted to be an accurate geographic description of various landmarks in America including the "Great Luminous Canyon" now known as Grand Canyon.
Worlds of Consciousness
According to Waters, the Hopis' histories/mythologies talk of four successive worlds, each destroyed by a great catastrophe, after each of which men emerged into a new world. To the Hopis, the destruction of these "worlds" is—at one and the same time—both literal and symbolic. The "worlds" represent both stages of consciousness and epochs of human history. At each stage, there is both a collective state of consciousness within the world and a corresponding personal state of consciousness within each person. The latter corresponds to a particular psycho-physical location in the human body. We are now living at the end of the fourth world, which corresponds to the most material, the least spiritual, of the four worlds. It is the nadir; when it ends, a higher series of worlds begins.
According to Waters, after their "emergence" into the fourth world at the "Tuwanasavi" [i.e., Center of the Universe]—which is located at the current site of Hopi settlements in Arizona—the Hopis split into four groups or clans, each of which went off to either the north, east, south, or west. Their task was to journey until they reached the sea, then return to their starting point. Having completed one "round", they would start in a new direction and again make a full round-trip. They were to proceed thus either clockwise or counter-clock-wise until they completed all four "rounds". Their journeys would have formed a great cross or swastika about the Tuwanasavi, where they could come together in a permanent settlement, free of clan arguments or differences.
They left pictorial records—"glyphs"—of their migrations on rocks throughout the Americas. Mayan glyphs can be readily read by Hopis, which buttresses the Hopis' claim that both had common ancestors. These pictorial records describe clearly how many of their four journeys each group had taken, and the order in which they were taken. Only the record at Oraibi, the home of the Hopi, shows all four migrations completed.
Petroglyphs and pictographs of the migration occur in many different locations from Chichen Itza in Mexico to Arizona and Colorado. The circles record the number of "rounds" completed. (Frank Waters, Book of the Hopi).
The symbol found at Chichen Itza [author's note: the capital of the Mayan empire; a city which—like Babylon—became the capital of successive empires, each time to be abandoned and later rediscovered] indicates that the people covered only one round before returning to the same area and attests to the Hopi belief that the Mayans were simply aberrant Hopi clans who did not complete their migrations.
The Emergence and the migrations are so beautiful in concept, so profoundly symbolic, one is tempted to accept them wholly as a great allegory of man's evolutionary journey on the Road of Life.... It is difficult to reconcile a people having such an enlightened concept of spiritual life with an actual primitive people wandering over a vast and undiscovered continent in prehistoric times. Yet such were the Hopis. Archeological remains and ancient records attest this.
Hopi Religion
Traditional Hopis live in isolation in Oraibi, shrinking in numbers, preserving their heritage, their magical teachings. They believe that by practicing their beliefs, they keep the world in balance. They have no priesthood because every male Hopi serves as priest at one or another of their ceremonies during the year "after which he returns to work in his fields, wearing no vestige of priestly garb and carrying no aura of sanctity."
The Hopis live a life so thoroughly entwined with religion that modern Westerners may have a difficult time grasping it. The Hopis view religion on both the abstract level and the literal level simultaneously, rather than falling into literalistic interpretation or dismissing religion with abstract interpretation. This combination seems—to Western eyes—either primitive or profound depending on our willingness to accept their very different view of reality. Linguist Benjamin Whorf studied the Hopi language and found that it exhibited the same complexity. He comments that "the Hopi thought world has no imaginary space ... it may not locate thought dealing with real space anywhere but in real space, nor insulate space from the effects of thought."
That duel level of acceptance is most clearly expressed in their prophesies. The Hopis have studied these prophesies, which are spread over the walls of special underground chambers called kivas (literally "world below"), sacred places where the Hopis hold their religious rituals. During the Hopis' ancient migrations, "they had no homes save small pits they dug in the earth and roofed over with brush and mud." Like virtually everything else in the Hopi culture, these kivas evolved into both a practical solution to their need for a gathering place and a symbolic representation of their articles of faith.
Cylindrical or rectangular, it was sunk deep, like a womb, into the body of Mother Earth, from which man is born with all that nourishes him. A small hole in the floor symbolically led down into the previous underworld, and the ladder-opening through the roof symbolically led out to the world above.
The kiva is thus the focal point of Hopi life. It abstractly symbolizes the tenets of the ancient ceremonies performed in it; it functions on the secular level; and it is the underground heart of all that is truly, distinctively Hopi.
Others may visit many of the sacred sites of the Hopi. Visitors frequently tour other more pedestrian kivas, but not these particular sacred caves, where the ancient teachings are recorded. Like all such ancient knowledge, the prophesies are expressed in symbols and, hence, are open to interpretation, but the Hopi have had nothing but time to carefully study and interpret these writings. They were willing to withdraw into seclusion originally because the teachings told them that this would be necessary, that the white man would rule over the Indian for this long time.
Time of Purification
In 1987, Michael Toms interviewed John Kimmey, a white man whom the Hopi elders picked to spread their message, on New Dimensions radio. Almost twenty years earlier, fresh out of the armed forces, Kinney visited what he later found to be a "sacred place" in Northern California. While there, he experienced the earth "speaking" to him. He returned to the spot many times. During one visit, he "heard" two words: "Taos" and "Oraibi." He vaguely knew Taos was a town in New Mexico, but had never heard of Oraibi: the village in Arizona where the Hopi Indians have lived continuously (almost entirely in peace) since before 1150 A.D.
Kimmey went to Oraibi and told his story to an elder (a "grandfather" in Native American terms). Shortly afterwards, in Taos he found the teacher he was intended to find: "Little Joe" Gomez, with whom he lived and studied for eight years. Upon Little Joe's death, Kimmey acquired a Hopi "grandfather." Since then, Kimmey has been both a student of the Hopi elders and a teacher of the Hopi children. He is an adopted Hopi and has been delegated by the Hopi to spread the Hopi prophesies.
In Kimmey's description of the Hopi prophesies, the time of "purification" (that is, the critical time of passage from one world to the next) would be announced by
... a "gourd of ashes" which is spilled upon the earth. This ash will be poison. Everything will burn for a great distance around that area and nothing will grow there for a long time. The ashes will get into the water and air. People who drink the water will soon die. Women who are exposed to it will not be able to give normal birth.
In 1946, the first atomic test explosion took place in Almagordo, New Mexico. When the Hopis heard about the bomb, they knew this was the "gourd of ashes" which would announce the time of purification. In 1947 they convened a meeting of the elders of all the clans in Hopiland, in order to synthesize all their varied knowledge of Hopi teachings and prophesies into a single version they could present to the world, as their prophesies had told them they must. Though Frank Waters discusses none of this, it undoubtedly figured in the Hopis decision to share some of their knowledge with him.
Kimmey says that the Hopis predict three great symbolic "shakings" of the earth. The first is symbolized by the Swastika, the ancient masculine symbol. The Swastika was also the pattern described by the migratory routes which the Hopis and Mayans took when they arrived in the Americas. The Hopi "grandfathers" interpreted World Wars I and II as the predicted "masculine" upheaval; the Nazi Swastika was for them a proof of this interpretation. The Hopis saw these terrible wars as evidence of the trouble caused when the masculine principle, with its inherent need for aggression and expansion, is cut-off from the gentle receptivity and containment of the feminine principle.
The second "shaking" of consciousness was symbolized by the sun, which the Hopis regard as the symbol of the feminine because they view the sun as the mother of the earth. After much reflection, the Hopi "grandfathers" have concluded that the Western world's "continuing dialog with the Eastern hemisphere" (the land of the "rising sun") marks this second, feminine upheaval. Obviously, as evidenced by our wars in Korea and Vietnam, the West's response to the East has largely been negative. On the other hand, Japan's integration of Western ways into their Eastern culture marks a positive aspect of the dialog, as does the spread of Eastern fields of study such as Zen, Vedanta, Aikido, etc. in the West.
The third great "shaking" of the world is symbolized by the " red hat and red cloak people." They can either bring us wisdom which we accept or they can destroy us. Kimmey says that "the Hopi people are very cautious about interpreting [this symbol] because we are in the midst of it." A "purification" must inevitably occur, which will cleanse the remains of the "fifth world" to prepare for the "sixth world." [The "fifth world" occupies only a brief period following the longer four worlds discussed by Waters]. The outcome of the third shaking is, however, ambiguously presented: either of two resolutions can occur. One possibility is a successful union of the male and female principles, which the Hopis view as following the inborn, instinctual plans set in each of us at birth by "the Great Spirit." The other possibility is, of course, that we can use the "gourd of ashes" to wipe out all life. If we take that path, the Hopis say that the world will be decimated in a single day, and "the ants" will be left to rule the world.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from At the End of Time by Robin Robertson. Copyright © 2011 Robin Robertson, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of NICOLAS-HAYS, INC..
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