VISITORS FROM HIDDEN REALMS

Discover the connection between UFO visitors and shamanic lore! Brent Raynes' stunning book—intro. by Brad Steiger.

Powerful Earthquake Strikes Southern Peru: Earthquake Lights Reported

What of the controversial Stones of Ica? And More!

As everyone knows, a devastating 8.0-magnitude earthquake, centered out in the ocean about 90 miles south of Lima, Peru, struck around 6:40 p.m. local time, on Wednesday, August 15th. Closest to the epicenter were the cities of Ica and Pisco in that countries southern desert, approx. 125 miles southeast of Lima. Numerous aftershocks rocked the region. The death toll soon reached 540.

We quickly dashed messages off to some of our Peruvian friends and contacts to check and see how they were doing. On August 17th we heard from Jerry Wills of Xpeditions Magazine (http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com) and learned that he and his wife had recently returned from Peru and were in Arizona safe and sound. Jerry wrote: “The devastation in Peru is far greater than is being shown on TV. Our son is still living there with his wife and baby, providing us more details than we would otherwise be able to know. The quake hit an area next to where we were taping our latest episode of Xpeditions TV. The city is all but destroyed.”

On August 20th, I received one of the first emails from Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera of Lima, Peru. He wrote, “The aftershocks continue everyday.” He described how some had occurred north of Lima, but that most were centered to the south around Ica and Pisco. “I have a backpack by the door every night,” he added. “Ana Maria and I were at a countryside hotel called ‘El Pueblo’ some 15-20 miles east of Lima. We were surrounded by hills and had to keep an eye on them in case rocks started to fall. We saw ‘earthquake lights’ (two mild flashes for me), but they were much more intense in Lima and along the coast as some friends and countless other witnesses reported (even for the news).” You Tube contains an example of possible earthquake flashes at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FK416BNFj8&mode=related&search.

Giorgio contributed the article Pachacamac: A Great American Oracle, in the December 2006, issue number 107 of Alternate Perceptions, and is quoted in my book, Visitors From Hidden Realms. I questioned Giorgio in an email as to whether there had been any significant increase of UFO activity in Peru prior to the earthquake. Dr. Anthony Chow, also of Peru, had emailed me a report earlier and I viewed on You Tube video of UFOs filmed over Lima back on May 20th. “There were no major sightings that I know of before the earthquake,” Giorgio wrote, “but Mission Rama [note: local contactee organization] had three major field trips days before, to Lake Titicaca, to the Gobi, and to the jungles of Peru (Paititi).”

The region hardest struck by the earthquake and its aftershocks is also where many major ancient sites are located as well, including the huge Candleabra near Pisco, the Nasca Lines, an area of Pisco Valley, on the Cajamarquilla plain where thousands of strange holes carved out in rock (many 6.7 ft. deep) are being studied (no one seems to know what they are), and the controversial and enigmatic Stones of Ica. Many have been very concerned about the fate of the late Dr. Javier Cabrera’s Ica Stone Museum. Many swear that these stones are the real McCoy, that they’re very ancient engraved stones that portray incredible ancient scenes, portraying humans with dinosaurs, flying machines, telescopes, and ancient maps (perhaps portraying the location of Atlantis or Lemuria?). Dr. Cabrera’s collection of enigmatic picture stones reportedly numbered upwards to 11,000. Mainstream archeology naturally dismisses them as hoaxes. But are they?

Paul Von Ward of Monteagle, Tennessee, author of Gods, Genes, and Consciousness, and Our Solarian Legacy, went to Peru a few years ago and spent several days with Dr. Cabrera when he was still living (he passed away back on December 30, 2001). “I’ve also gone to the village and met the guy that Cabrera says gave him the first stones back in 1966. It has been alleged that he and some of the people in that village actually carved some stones for Cabrera and fixed them up like old ones, and they said that Cabrera asked them to do that. Then he said that more than half of the stones that Cabrera has in his museum are real. ‘I got them from the caves at the river.’ I said, ‘Oh, Cabrera said he would not take me there.’ This guy told me, ‘If you’ll come back I’ll take you there.’ But because I was on a two week trip there I didn’t have time to do that.”

Paul felt that there was quite possibly something indeed authentic to the Ica Stones, that the mystery of the stones shouldn’t be written off, but unfortunately he didn’t have time to follow up on this intriguing story lead any further during his trip.

Fortunately, we can all breathe a sigh of relief with a recent update posted to Kathy Doore’s blog “Labyrinthina!” (http://www.labryinthina.com/icastonemuseum.htm) on August 21st, which stated: “We have good news to report today, Eugenia Cabrera, and the Ica Stone Museum, are safe. They sustained very little damage from the massive 8.0-magnitude quake that rocked the southern coastal region near Ica, a city of 650,000 residents, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless.”

Earthquake Resistance

The huge megalithic walls of Sacsayhuaman are not just an awesome sight but are said to be able to withstand the force of very powerful earthquakes. In four centuries past stone cathedrals in nearby Cuzco were leveled three times, but the walls of Sacsayhuaman remained securely in place. Behind these walls the remains of a perfectly circular building have been excavated. Believed to have been an ancient astronomical observatory, it is similar to ones found at other locations, including Machu Picchu. “Machu Picchu is in a way very earthquake proof,” Paul Von Ward also told me. “But I think the ruins outside of Cuzco, called Sacsayhuaman, where these huge stones are that have no mortar, and are odd shaped stones all fitted together, they have withstood earthquakes too. They knew how to cut, size, fit all of those stones together in ways that would withstand the shaking of an earthquake. Now people say if they were so advanced why aren’t all of those stones all symmetrical. Well they’re not symmetrical because symmetrical ones are not as flexible to withstand earthquakes.”

I asked Paul about stories I had heard about how tight fitting these huge stones are. “I took my Swiss Army knife and I tried to get it in there,” he said. “You couldn’t do it. You might get it in a quarter of an inch. But you couldn’t get it in there.”

“I’ve explored all over the Peruvian Andes,” psychic and author Gary Bonnell told me. When I asked him about the ancient stone works of Peru, he stated “if you go down to Peru and look at how some of this stuff was being cut it’s pretty amazing with what looks like laser beam accuracy.” He then added, “there are stones that were cut half way through and then abandoned and where they’re cut, on the inside, is polished.”

Ancient Peruvian Balloonists of Nazca?

During our interview, Paul Von Ward also talked about flying over the huge Nazca Lines and observing firsthand those immense ancient lines and designs on the landscape below. He said, “Once you go there and you look at these lines as they go across up and down hills and then you realize how symmetrically perfect they are you say, ‘These guys couldn’t have walked along the ground and kept it this symmetrical up and down the hills.’”

Perhaps there is an answer!

In Brad Steiger’s Worlds Before Our Own, he described how a Portuguese Jesuit Priest named Bartolomei De Gusmao had alleged that back in 1690 he had observed Peruvians flying in balloons! Modern Peruvian explorers Bill Spohrer and Jim Woodman voiced their opinion that the huge Nazca Lines were not used by spaceships, as claimed by Erich von Daniken in his popular Chariots of the Gods?, but were actually used by ancient Peruvian balloonists!

The two explorers studied De Gusmao’s written accounts wherein he described how the Peruvians had constructed their balloons. Reportedly the ancient balloonists of the Nazca desert stitched together large, four sided triangular balloons that were placed over a fire pit. Soon the balloon was inflated by the warm air and rose upward. The two found textile fragments in area tombs that they felt could have been used in the manufacture of such hot air balloons. Later, Ravsen Industries in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, informed the two men that the textile materials would have been superior to what is used in modern balloons.

Time magazine’s December 15, 1975 edition carried a report on how the International Explorers Society had successfully launched Condor, a hot air balloon made of fabric that closely resembled the materials found in those Nazca gravesites. In addition, lines and fasteners were made of native fibers, while the gondola was woven from totora reeds from nearby Lake Titicaca. Two pilots took it up for a test flight, reaching 600 feet in a mere 30 seconds. Then the ride turned kind of wild when the balloon was suddenly hit by brisk winds and fell back to the earth, striking the ground with a thud, both pilots knocked out onto the ground. Then the pilotless Condor rose back up into the air again, reached an estimated 1,200 feet, flew over two miles, and then gently landed on the plain. The project was deemed a success!

(Note: See the recent book Ancient South America for a summary of this research.)

UFOs and ancient sites

Now just because Erich von Daniken’s ET interpretation of the Nazca Lines may have been shot down, the presence of UFO activity at ancient sites has been significantly high. One of the best documented Peruvian cases of a UFO landing and entity encounter reportedly happened shortly before noon on August 20, 1965, when Alberto Ugarte, an engineer, and his wife and numerous others watched as a small silvery disk, estimated at a mere five feet in diameter, landed on a stone terrace of Sacsayhuaman. The witnesses described how two small humanoid beings, of dazzling brightness, emerged from the craft, appeared to be surprised to find humans at the site, and climbed back into the object. The craft then rose up into the air and next took off to the west. During one four week period back in the 1960s, there were said to have been at least 36 sightings of UFOs disappearing into the depths of the huge and legendary Lake Titicaca, all reported officially by the Peruvian Navy. “When we toured Peru, Sherry and I witnessed glowing UFOs entering and leaving a lake near Ollantaytambo,” noted UFO author Brad Steiger noted in his Introduction to my book, Visitors From Hidden Realms. Their shaman guide for the tour had taken them to a sacred lake, said to be frequented by UFOs, and sure enough, when they went they saw for themselves mysterious lights zigzagging and bobbing around in the night sky and emerging from and descending into the waters of the lake.

Our Peruvian friend Giorgio (mentioned earlier in this column) has acted as a civilian consultant to the Peruvian Air Force’s Office for the Investigation of Anomalous Activity (OIFAA) and has long studied the UFO phenomenon in Peru. In fact, he has had personal experiences himself with UFOs at a “window” location called Chilca. Chilca is a coastal community that is about 40 miles south of Lima. In 1975, Giorgio was one of a dozen others to see a bright “lens shaped white light,” an estimated 40 feet in diameter, “emerging from the ocean” some 250 feet away. In 1977, he also saw a metallic “bell-shaped craft” flying slowly and silently low overhead. Of Chilca, Giorgio added, “Curiously enough, Chilca is a place where the first horticultural efforts took place in ancient Peru, the town of Las Salinas (adjacent to Chilca) has three healing lagoons and there’s a very dilapidated pre-hispanic pyramid on a hill.”

Acoustics, Harmonics, and Ancient Sites

A little explored area of ancient history is the importance played by sound in connection with shamanic practices. The pre-Columbian Peruvian whistling vessels are believed by a growing number of researchers to have been shamanic tools used for inducing altered states of consciousness. Daniel Statnekov, the author of Animated Earth, realized their profound importance back in 1972 when, out of curiosity, he happened to be blowing into an ancient Chimu whistle from Peru that he had purchased. When he did this he had a mystical quality out-of-body type experience. Many others have since shared similar and dramatic spiritual type experiences as well, as I can attest to from my own experiences with the whistles, plus working with functional replicas of Chimu vessels now myself for two years and sharing the experience with many others. We know that Peruvians had the whistling vessels for over two thousand years, but there still remains much that we still don’t know. Soon after the arrival of the Spanish in 1532, Peruvians stopped making the whistles. Or else, they went underground with their practices and creations.

A good many ancient pyramids and temples have incorporated within them extraordinarily complex acoustics. I can’t help but wonder if some of the ancient whistles, flutes, rattles, and various other instruments of sound were used in conjunction with the designed acoustical properties of such sites to perform specific rituals and ceremonials of which we can now only imagine would have been like and were about.

Andrew Collins, in his book Gods of Eden, explores sound anomalies incorporated into ancient architecture throughout the world. However, he points out that the sound acoustics of the Mayan temples of the Yucatan are among the strangest in the world, noting that the temple complex of Chichen Itza tops the list of such sites. For example, if one stands at the base of the stepped pyramid known as Castillo and shouts, an echo sounding as a shriek will sound from the top of the structure. On the other hand, if someone goes to the top of the pyramid and speaks in a normal voice, they can be heard clearly at ground level at a distance of some 150 meters away. Nearby is the Great Ball Court, and inside of it a person can stand in a circle of stones and hold a perfect conversation with another person standing in a similar circle of stones located some 60 meters away, and it’s as if they’re only a few feet away.

Experts are hard-pressed to explain how the ancient Mayans constructed these sites with these and other acoustical anomalies. At Tulum, on the Yucatan coast, during incoming hurricanes or storms a loud whistle or howling sound is created. I wonder if it was heard as Hurricane Dean recently passed over the Yucatan?

At the Mayan site of Palenque, we read how three people can stand one on top of each of a group of three pyramids there and easily conduct a three-way conversation between themselves.

But Palenque holds another mystery as well!

In a recent phone interview (08-29-07) with Jonathan Goldman, the director and founder of the Sound Healers Association, I asked him if he would recall for me his remarkable experience that was described in his book Healing Sounds, of when he and five traveling companions were being led late one night in August 1987 into a subterranean level of an ancient Mayan temple in Palenque, Mexico. This particular temple had been closed to the public, and suddenly the guide pointed to a doorway and told Jonathan, "Make sound here" and then turned off the flashlight. The group was plunged into total darkness. The guide, Jonathan had explained in his book, was aware of his interest in sounds, and so Jonathan began to tone harmonics.

"I made this sound and the room became slightly illuminated. Now it wasn't as though somebody had switched on a 60 watt bulb, but you could definitely make out the outline of different people and actually see them to some degree or another. I created this tone, I don't know, for a minute or two minutes. Everyone in the room experienced this phenomenon, and then the guide turned his flashlight on and we continued.

"I have to admit that it was probably such a powerful experience for me that I truly blocked it out from my psyche, my consciousness, until I returned back to the United States. We were down there during what was called the Harmonic Convergence. I then began to research different ideas of how this might have manifested, and in my book Healing Sounds I spend a few pages at least contemplating how this possibly could have been and it certainly was a real experience."

Years later, Jonathan was talking with a man who had spent years with the Lacandon Mayas of the Mexican Rain Forest, who are said to have been descendants of the Mayan builders of Palenque, when Jonathan was told that he should feel very lucky as the creation of light through harmonics was something that the Mayan shamans taught to only a very select few.

In the next issue of Alternate Perceptions, join us for an indepth interview with Jonathan Goldman on the fascinating subject of sound healing and what we're learning about the remarkable properties of sound from both ancient spiritual traditions and modern quantum physics.

Note: In this column, I have several times cited statements made to me by author Paul Von Ward. For anyone wishing to read a full interview with this noted UFO author, we did such a feature with him in the June 2005 (No. 91) edition of this magazine. Go here.