Category: Artwork
The Jalakanteswarar Temple
By Sharon St Joan
In his book, Vellore Fort and the Temple through the Ages, A.K. Sheshadri writes extensively about the Jalakanteswarar Temple.
Tracing the history of temple building in Tamil Nadu, he mentions that during the early Sangam period, many temples were built of brick and wooden beams, and that this method of building continued until the time of the rock-cut temples – those dug out from the solid rock of hills. The rock-cut temples survive to the present, but the early brick and wooden temples mostly do not.
During the post-Sangam period, up to the seventh century CE, many of the Gods known locally came to be identified with more widely known Sanskrit Gods. Mayon came to be seen as identical to Krishna or Vishnu. Likewise, Koorravai was seen as Durga – and Seyon or Murugan came to be known as Karthikeya. This was a synthesis which took shape between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries.
During this time, Tamil Nadu was gaining recognition as the land of many temples. The Cholas and others carried on this great temple building tradition.
Later, from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, temple building in south India burst into a major expansive phase during the reigns of the Vijayanagara kings, who ruled from their capitol in Karnataka. The imposing features associated with Hindu temples today; such as large gopurams (entrance towers), long corridors, and mandapams (pillared halls) were added. Across the Indian south, many hundreds of temples were expanded, some were entirely rebuilt, and new temples sprung up.
In the view of the author S.K. Sheshadri, who spent decades excavating the fort in Vellore and the temple within it, the first stage of both the temple and the inner fort was constructed by one of the Sambuvarayar kings, Vendrumankonda Sambuvarayar, in the early fourteenth century CE. An inscription with the date 1274 CE, though not quite consistent with the dates of this king, places the temple construction at around the same time as the Sambuvarayars.
Vellore lies in the region once known as Tondaimandalam, which was ruled by the Sambuvarayar chieftains. Today there exist inscriptions in and around eight towns near Vellore. These give the old name of the deity of the temple, who is Shiva, as Jwarakantesvara, which means the God who destroys “jwara” or “vyadhi,” that is “fever” or “disease.” Today the temple is known as the Jalakanteswarar; however, S.K. Sheshadri points out that “jala” means “water” in Sanskrit, and “destroyer of water” doesn’t make much sense. It makes more sense for God to be the “destroyer of fever,” or “healer,” as the original name “Jwarakanteswarar” suggested.
The Jalakanteswarar Temple stands in the northern area of the massive Vellore Fort. The ground level of the Fort has actually risen by more than nine feet, and the original level of the Temple was much lower than it is today. This is all rather complicated, but the effect of the difference in levels was that the original drainage system was covered up by earth that was added later, and without proper drainage, during the rainy seasons, water accumulated inside the temple, causing damage to the structure. When the Archeological Survey of India undertook the systematic excavation supervised by S.K. Sheshadri, they uncovered the original ground level and restored the drainage system to proper working condition.
Beautiful early structures and shrines were discovered that had lain covered in mud for centuries, along with a lovely square tank (pool) reached by descending steps, to the east of one of the wedding halls, and also a ring well in the inner courtyard of the temple.
The temple complex covers two acres. The main gopuram is rectangular, with the base constructed of granite blocks. Near the top of the tower are sculptured yalis, who are mythical lions.
Beyond a second gopuram lies an inner courtyard. There are traces of paintings on the ceilings of both gopurams.
In front of the shrine to Akilanteswari, are located nine burning oil lamps for the nine planets. Akilanteswari is one of the major forms of the Goddess Parvati.
There are two large wedding halls for the sacred marriage of Lord Shiva, as Jalakanteswarar, and the Goddess Parvati, as Akilanteswari, which takes place anew every year.
The Nataraja Shrine is a pillared hall, containing beautifully carved sculptures of the ten incarnations of Vishnu – although this is a Shiva temple, not a Vishnu temple. (Nataraja is the dancing form of Shiva.) It is thought that the temple was originally dedicated to the worship of both Vishnu and Shiva, and that this shrine within the temple may have earlier enshrined Ranganatha, or Narayana, the God who rests on the divine serpent Adi Shesha, while drifting on the cosmic ocean. There is also a double set of kitchens indicating that the temple was for the worship of both Gods, as is the case for the Chidambaram Temple, further south near the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
With its intricately carved, graceful sculptures, and its lovely architectural forms and shapes, the Jalakanteswarar Temple transports one gently into the magical presence of the eternal and the sacred.
Photos: Nanditha Krishna
A much-deserved honor
Many congratulations to Dr. Nanditha Krishna on receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Literature on March 3, 2016 from Vidyasagar University, at Midnapore, West Bengal.
This honor was presented to Dr. Nanditha Krishna (right) by Dr. Ranjan Chakrabarti, Vice Chancellor (left) and by His Excellency Sri. K.N. Tripathi, Chancellor and Governor of West Bengal (center).
As well as being the author of over twenty books and hundreds of articles about Indian culture and traditions, Dr. Nanditha Krishna is the President of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, which is active throughout south India, running schools, museums, the C.P.R. Institute of Indological Research, the C.P. Art Centre, and the C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre.
The C. P. R. Foundation carries out a vast array of programs and special projects – from the Kindness Kids Project to the restoration of over fifty sacred groves. Some programs further an awareness of Indian art, culture, history, and archeological discoveries. Some provide assistance and encouragement to those who may be less fortunate – people, especially children and women, of many diverse backgrounds and circumstances.
The work of the Foundation casts a light on many thousands of years of the life of India, from great classical art and history to folk art and folk traditions. At the heart of all these traditions and the work of the Foundation lies a deep appreciation of the natural world, animals, the earth, and the environment.
The C.P.R. Foundation was founded in 1966 to continue the work of one of India’s greatest statesmen, C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar.
To visit the website of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, click here.
Older than time
By Sharon St Joan
The stone steps, narrow and slightly sloping from centuries of use, extend downwards from between the paws of the great lion down into the green waters of the tank where devotees put their hand into the water and sprinkle it on their heads. The largest and oldest of the temples in this area, the Vrinchipuram Margapandeswarar Temple stands near Vellore, in Tamil Nadu, in south India.
Its outer walls tower perhaps forty feet into the air and are massively thick, like those of a fortress. The atmosphere in the courtyard paved with giant stones is peaceful and very ancient — its ancientness being interwoven with its peace and its massive structure. Like eternity, it seems indestructible, permanent, and unmoving, calm like the great stones that dot the nearby granite hillsides.
Two Ganeshas in bas relief stand near the temple entrance – one for the main deity, Shiva, who is called here Margapandeswarar, the other for his consort, Parvati, called Maragadambal. They have two marriage halls in the temple where once a year crowds gather to celebrate anew their divine wedding. Steps lead up to these huge platforms that are adorned with hundreds of columns.
The Vrinchipuram Temple gets its name from Brahma, who is known here as Virinjin, and who worsipped Shiva at this place. In the sixteenth century, the Bomma Nayaka kings added the two wedding halls, for Margabandeswarar and the goddess Maragadambal, filled with beautiful sculptured columns, delicate and intricate, in the Nayaka style.
Nayak rulers assumed power in south India after the defeat of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1564 by Moslems from the north. The Nayaks built many pillared halls in existing temples and tall gopurams.
Before entering the interior space of the temple, one walks along the wide stone pavements, inside the four outward walls. The temple goes back to the eighth century CE, to the time of the Chola kings, with Raja Raja Chola, who constructed the main shrine, being one of the earlier builders. Before Charlemagne held sway over his empire in Europe, people were coming to these halls to worship.
As if to emphasize the expanse of time, a sundial stands in the courtyard, telling with its shadow cast by the sun, the correct time of 10:30 in the morning.
Growing along the walls, are palms which are the temple tree; here they have the unusual property of, on alternating years, producing black, then white flowers. No one knows how or why.
One of the greatest Hindu saints, Adi Shankar, who brought back Hinduism in the eighth century, after it had for some time been eclipsed by Buddhism and Jainism, visited this temple, to sing a sacred song by the waters of the tank at the feet of the lion.
Eight centuries later, in 1520, Sri Appayya Dikshithar (1520-1593), was born here. An enlightened Vedic teacher, philosopher, and writer, he is remembered as one of the greatest intellectual and spiritual lights of Hinduism, after Adi Shankar. A large cross-shaped indentation has been dug out in the courtyard and lined with stones. Once a year, it is filled with water as a memorial to him. His brother was a direct ancestor of the statesman C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, in memory of whom the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation was founded in 1966, in Madras.
Among a row of Shiva icons is a representation of a female Tamil poet and saint, a woman living in the sixth century who spent her life writing poetry to Shiva.
As in most Hindu temples, one may circle the icons of the nine planets, the navagraha. These are the sun; the moon; the five visible planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; Rahu, who is the north lunar node; and Ketu, who is the south lunar node (lunar nodes are points along the moon’s orbit that relate to eclipses).
Unusually, the roof above the main sanctuary is made of strings of rudraksha beads. These are reddish seeds from a particular sacred tree. They are widely used and often worn as garlands for their properties to induce healing and spiritual well-being.
Beautiful and serene, massive and unmovable, the Vrincipuram Temple stands unperturbed by the din of the modern world, a doorway to worlds and levels beyond this one.
Photos: Nanditha Krishna
The consciousness of rocks
By Sharon St Joan
No serious person in the modern world really believes that rocks are conscious. There are a few exceptions which we’ll come to in a moment.
Watching the TV series, The Universe, being shown on the H2 channel, one can absorb fascinating facts. Underneath the vast atmosphere of Jupiter, for example, lies an ocean – not an ordinary ocean, but an ocean of hydrogen that is brighter than the sun and intensely blue, also hotter than the surface of the sun.
In between the planets of the solar system lie immensely vast spaces, so large as to be incomprehensible – and far vaster distances separate the galaxies from each other. The universe is expanding. Not only is it expanding, but the rate of expansion, counter-intuitively, is speeding up, not slowing down. Our galaxy is zooming at an ever increasing rate of speed away from all other galaxies. Eventually they will be so distant that we will no longer see them. All light will go out, and the universe will come to a cold, dark end. Or so science tells us – unless we accept another theory, that the universe will collapse in on itself to end in a great crunch, and then expand outwards again.
In short, “modern science” presents us with what may seem to be a picture of the universe that is cold, dark, lonely, pointless, and doomed (albeit with flashes of the spectacular and dramatic, but doomed nonetheless).
Is it possible though that this is not so much a depiction of actual reality, as it is a reflection of the dysfunctional human psyche of the modern world — a condition towards which we have devolved over the past few thousand years? After all, is it impossible that the state of our collective psyche might color our collective perception of external reality? Just a thought.
So we are told that, in the midst of this desert of lifelessness called the universe, are tiny islands of awareness, we humans – and today, many scientists accept the concept that there may be alien life forms on other planets, who have evolved other civilizations. We may or may not ever be able to contact them, and if or when we do, we may find them to be either friendly or hostile. Or they may be all around us all the time in other dimensions, who knows?
As for the animals that share the earth with us, most humans, whether fond of animals or not, assume that they are a lower life form, and somewhat less important than ourselves. When wildlife biologists talk about the populations of birds increasing or decreasing, an individual bird with her own life and awareness, does not rank very high in the scheme of things as we see it from our human perspective. We do tend to care about species that teeter on the verge of extinction, especially the large charismatic ones, the tigers or the elephants, but the odd orange beetle or the obscure blue butterfly doesn’t really catch our attention.
As for plants, people who feel an affection for trees are generally considered quite odd. Though, on the other hand, when tall, old beautiful trees that line city streets are cut down one day by an insensitive city planner, the level of public outcry can be deafening.
In December, 2015, Nguyen The Thao, the head of the Hanoi People’s Committee, in Vietnam, was forced to step down following public outrage over his plan to cut down 6,000 famous, ancient trees lining the streets of the capitol. There have been similar incidents of public rage over felling trees in the U.S. and worldwide.
In the year 1730, the Bishnois, in India, often called the world’s first environmentalists, sacrificed their lives to protect the beloved trees of their village. The king had sent his soldiers to fell the trees to make way for a temple he was building. One by one, the people of the village stood between the soldiers and the trees, and one by one, they were killed defending their trees. Eventually, at the end of the day, the king arrived. Witnessing the numbers of people lying dead, he relented and ordered his soldiers to stop. By this time 363 brave men and women had heroically given their lives to protect their forest. To this day, the Bishnois, in northern India, are known for protecting trees and animals.
Where does this leave us? Well, basically, apart from a few “tree-huggers” and a much larger and growing number of animal activists, the predominant worldview – particularly in academic or scientific circles – is still that humans are important – and anything else may be moderately important in relation only to humans.
The planet Mars may be important because after we have destroyed the earth we live on, we may be able to colonize Mars by terra-forming it and making it suitable for us to live on. This seems to be an official view of NASA and a goal of space exploration.
On October 9, 2009, NASA bombed the moon by sending two rockets crashing into the moon’s south pole. The intent was for the impact to throw up clouds of debris in which water might be found. In terms of planning a future base on the moon, water would be very useful.
To all ancient peoples on the earth the moon is a divine, sacred being and bombing her is a sacrilegious act. NASA scientists and engineers did not seem troubled by this.
The ancient Mesopotamians worshipped Sin as the moon god. The Japanese called him Tsukyyomi. The ancient Egyptian god, Thoth, was a lunar deity. The Mayans revered Awilix as the goddess of the moon, although she was sometimes referred to as male. The Micmacs, a Canadian, Algonquian tribe, say that the dark spots on the moon are spots of clay left there when rabbit had caught the moon in a trap, then was forced to release him when the moon threatened him. Many Asian peoples see a rabbit in the moon, rather than a “man in the moon.” It seems that all neolithic and paleolithic peoples worshipped the moon, the sun, and the planets, seeing them as divine beings. One can find traces of this ancient worship today in living religions.
Of course, these days we all know better and do not believe such nonsense – or do we? How exactly has science been able to prove that the moon, the sun, the planets, and the galaxies are inert, unconscious, entirely physical, and totally non-spiritual beings that have absolutely not a grain of consciousness among them? Have you seen any proof of this? You haven’t, and neither have I. This assumption of a lack of consciousness on the part of heavenly beings is just exactly that – an assumption, nothing more.
There is simply nothing “scientific” about the assertion that only humans and maybe higher animals have consciousness.
All the world’s ancient systems of knowledge maintained the opposite – that indeed the great beings of the night skies are conscious and aware, that they have a real power and an identity, that they are beings, not things.
In Tamil Nadu, in southern India, at Thiruvannamalai, there is a mountain named Arunachala. The mountain has been worshipped as sacred for thousands of years and is said to be Lord Shiva. It is not that Lord Shiva lives within the mountain, but instead Lord Shiva is the mountain.
In Australia, a massive, one thousand foot high rock, rising straight up out of the plains in the central part of the country is called Uluru, and is known to the native peoples as a sacred mountain – which has been there since the dreamtime. To them, reality is a dream, and the ancient perceptions of their ancestors represented a higher, truer form of reality. Who is to say that they are wrong?
Inyan Kara is the highest peak of the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. To the Lakota Sioux and other nearby native peoples, all the Black Hills were sacred and were the home of the thunder gods and the Great Spirit. The destruction of these hills to create the Mount Rushmore carvings is seen by them as the desecration of a holy place.
It is difficult, even for modern humans, not to feel awestruck in the majestic presence of towering stone cliffs – or sometimes even in the presence of small little rocks that seem to invoke some special presence, that may seem to “speak.”
From where do we gather the impression that these are not great beings, when our instincts tell us that indeed they are sacred beings? Being sacred, are they not also conscious, are they not gods or goddesses? Is not the earth itself a living, sacred being – mother to all of us? There is a voice within us that calls to us to acknowledge and feel a sense of reverence towards these ancient ones – these great rock entities worshipped the world over by our ancestors, these rocks and mountains who perhaps know far more, with a knowledge and perception deeper and more profound, than we small humans could ever imagine or have any grasp of.
Photos:
Top photo: Sakthiprasanna / Wikimedia Commons/ This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. / Arunachala at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Second photo: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team / NASA, public domain / Cluster and star-forming region Westerlund 2.
Third photo: E. A. Rodrigues / Wikipedia Commons / The Hindu god Chandra riding in his chariot.
Fourth photo: Mark Andrews / Wikimedia Commons / This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. / Uluru, the Northern Territory, Australia.
Sources:
To read about the public outcry over the felling of 6,000 trees in Vietnam, click here.
To read about the world’s first environmentalists, the Bishnois, click here.
To read about NASA’s bombing of the moon, click here.
C.P. Art Centre: An Exhibition of Paintings on The Light Supreme – The Temple of Tiruvannamalai
C.P. Art Centre Exhibit: Ganesha
Native American rock art
These beautiful photos were taken by Kirk Robinson, who writes this about them –
The pecked images, such as the Rochester panel, are called petroglyphs; and the painted ones, such as the Sego Canyon panel, are called pictographs. Originally, many of the petroglyphs were also painted. They may have also been decorated with feathers and other natural materials.
There is obviously a lot of meaning in these interesting figures, but it is hard to know what they mean. Sometimes you can tell what individual images represent – desert bighorn sheep being the most common of the petroglyph figures in most of the West, but also deer, bears and birds, etc. – but other times they are mythical creatures or spirits that combine body parts from more than one animal. Some look like images of prehistoric animals. Others are what we call anthropomorphs, because they have a generally human shape with a torso and head, and sometimes hands and legs. They might represent spirits or shaman. Some images appear to be shields. However, most of the panels are more than just a set of images. They tell a story, or multiple stories, and are not simply representational. Some Indians might have more insight into their meaning than we foreigners. We tend to be too literal, whereas their traditions involve a lot of symbolism.
Unfortunately, vandalism is a big problem for Native American rock art. The easier it is for people to get to rock art panels, and the more well-known they are, the more likely they are to be vandalized. A lot of folks think they are just graffiti, which is not true. That belief is a reflection of ignorance. Many of them required great skill and a lot of time to make, and were used for important religious ceremonies. They are like murals and the sites were carefully chosen. Often times a panel features multiple stories from different periods and different cultures, one overlaid on another or right next to each other. It is nearly impossible to date rock art accurately, but many panels are several thousand years old, while some are only a few hundred years old. Some of the more recent ones show cowboys on horseback and locomotives.
It is important that we respect these treasures and protect them. Never touch them with your fingers or any other object. Time alone will erase them soon enough without our help.
Travels with a rock art guardian
By Suzanne Cordrey
I was invited to travel with a friend who is one of the “guardians” of the most ancient rock art paintings in the United States. I had no idea what I was going to see nor that it even existed when I just felt that old familiar pull from within that said “Go with her.”
Truth be told, I have not been to many places in Texas since I moved here. The only thing I knew was that we were headed for the Mexican border. Lots of emotion around that, since Texas has had such a big influx of illegals, including lots of children on trains from all over central America. Such heartbreak, trauma, families torn apart, and such divisive opinions amongst the people here. We had been told that the cabin we were to stay in had been broken into by illegals just a couple of weeks ago. Feeling’ real safe about hearing that!
So Melinda and I packed up and headed down to a place called Seminole Canyon where all this awesome rock art lives. To Melinda, it is like her spiritual home. She was born and raised mostly by a single mom in eastern Texas. It amazes me to see how all of us can have such humble beginnings and still end up shining our spiritual light into the world. Now she is an RN, an acupuncturist, and I met her at a tai chi class that she reaches. She lives just up the road from me.
All I know is that we are heading south, through the wildflower covered fields of the hill country, and I watched as the scenery changed into thick bushy mesquite trees and cactus, albeit blooming cacti. Ocotillo, prickly pear, acacia bushes, lechuguilla, all enriching the high desert plateau of western Texas. Towns like Boerne, Uvalde, Del Rio flashed by on green road signs as I enjoyed the feeling of the changing ecology. Soon we came upon a large body of water.. What? Here? It is a man made reservoir called Lake Amistad. Bridges arching gracefully over fingers of clear blue water, leading off into what looks like nowhere. One road just ended right into the water; got flooded out after the dam closed. And there was an incident a couple of years ago where an American was shot while riding his Ski-doo in the Lake by someone on the Mexican side. His wife saw him fall and went to his rescue but couldn’t l save him and he drowned. I’m surprised she wasn’t shot. The International border is in the center of the lake but who knows where. Prickles of Weirdness creep up my spine.
But Melinda is full of excitement and begins to weave a web of magic about how the rock art we are about to see was found in the 1930s and about the long process of acquiring the land and regulating the caves where the murals are painted. We drive past the reservoir and unlock a gate, bounce over a couple miles of dirt track and the cabin comes into view. It sits on the edge of a cliff overlooking the lower Pecos River, which looks huge there because it is running into Lake Amistad and backs up there. Gorgeous!. The cabin is empty, we bring everything including our own water. Primitive but screened in and has a stove. I’m cool with that.
Desert birds fill the evening skies with song, a pair of blue herons fly in harmony in the late day breeze and greet us with a flyby over the cabin. I had a hidden agenda in that I wanted to see the night skies, clear and unobstructed from the sweet oak trees that drape over my little cabin in Wimberley. Big night sky and Jupiter, Venus and Mercury were all present for the big reveal which made my heart beat with joy.
Early morning and we hike down into the canyon to see the White Shaman. The ancients here made this area their home around 3500 years ago. Long before the Anasazis inhabited the Four Corners area. No one knows who these people were, but skeletal remains have been used to replicate faces and they have been honored in bronze statues here. The theory about the White Shaman mural that I can relate to is that they used peyote and datura plants, which are represented in the paintings, fell into an altered state and saw beyond their third dimensional lives. They left recordings of traveling into the “otherworld” and instructions on how to do it. It reminds me of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and their meaningful journeys. And both cultures would be overlapping in time. I always thought that streams of consciousness wove through civilizations, just waiting for people to become aware of them. In the White Shaman mural, there is much symbology of the number 5, and there are 5 shamans standing in line, with a white shaman emerging from the body of the center shaman.
We spent a couple of hours musing over the figures, then turned our attention to the canyon behind us that we had just climbed down into. A peaceful, private, lush green canyon with a crazy canyon wren singing his laughing song to us, and a beautiful painted bunting, one of the most brilliantly colored songbirds in the US, sat in full view for us to admire him. I could have died right then and there. Then, I almost did. As we left the cave and climbed up the steep narrow pathway that was littered with crumbled limestone, out of nowhere, I slipped and fell. Reaching out to grab something, I impailed my arm on a dead twig. I had to lift it off the branch and one look told me that it was deep. Melinda went into nurse mode, wrapping it up and as soon as I fought off the shock of it all, we hiked up to the rope and I had to use that arm to pull myself up the slick rock hand over hand to get up to the edge of the canyon. All the way to the car we went back and forth abut whether to seek urgent care or wait three days to get help. The winning course of action was to drive into Del Rio and get it stitched up and get antibiotics for infection. It was just too damn deep. Well, that took care of a whole afternoon. But I wasn’t willing to return home. It was just my forearm, after all.
Melinda had to guide a tour on Saturday, so I stayed at the cabin and let the pain pills float me into a lovely time warp that lasted all day. I had no idea what time it was, and let my spirit soar free as I looked out over the Pecos river and read the books Melinda brought about the history of the rock art in the area. Birds sang, herons circled together below, the wind blew, keeping it cool and the sky played the most magic picture show of soft, soaring clouds and then a brilliant orange sunset . That evening another guide from the rock art foundation showed up, lit a fire in the pit, and told his tales of life as it is for him since he moved there. He, too, is smitten with the rock art, like it has beckoned to its spiritual family to come and protect it and these people have felt so drawn to be there. I recognize that calling, as I too, was called to go to Macchu Picchu years ago. Maybe these people were the ones who painted the pictures on the walls of the caves. Who knows? I smile at the Bigger Picture that we are all drawn into. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing.
Our last day there lured us over the Seminole Canyon State Park, where another mural called Fate Bell is accessible. Larger tours go there and it is much easier to get to. Meaning that over the years, it has been plundered a bit. But a particular guide that is very knowledgeable was giving his last tour and Melinda was eager to hear him. He is young and his wife is not as enamored with the vast western desert and it’s lack of amenities as he is. So they are moving. The tour was very powerful with many cosmic signs that I recognized as spirit on the move through us all. The young man spoke of the connection of the ancients with the modern day Huichols of northern Mexico and how so many of the ceremonial rituals are alike. He thinks the Huichols are the decendants of this culture and that the peyote ceremonies are practices in many of the same ways. And it is all written on the walls of these caves. There are 123 known cave murals in Texas and no one knows how many are on the Mexican side. It is too dangerous to travel over there at this time, but someday in future, when peace spreads over the land and borders are a thing of the past, we can work together to uncover the rest of the rock art. I know it seems unlikely, but then nothing is what it seems……………………..
Photos: © 2015, Suzanne Cordrey
C.P.Art Centre: Exhibition and sale of Terracottas
