VISITORS FROM HIDDEN REALMS

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

Returning to Pinson—Meeting Daniel Statnekov

As described in my book Visitors From Hidden Realms (2004), our Native friend Dove had a profound spiritual experience with a group of people on top of an Indian Mound west of Nashville, Tennessee. This occurred back during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, and this was also her first experience with the Peruvian whistling vessels. As she and the group chanted and blew the whistling vessels, she suddenly found herself at what looked to be Machu Picchu in Peru (which she recognized from pictures she had seen, as she has never been there physically). She saw herself, in a vivid vision, dressed in a robe looking up at a spaceship, and then she overheard others talking and sharing their visions, and they were describing the same things! She was very startled by this.

A few years back, I gave her a copy of my co-editor’s book People of the Web (1990), in which Dr. Greg Little described a huge ceremonial Indian Mound complex in Pinson, Tennessee. At the center of this awesome complex is a 72 foot tall mound, known as Saul’s Mound, which is the second tallest Indian Mound in the United States. The site goes back to 100 B.C. After reading the book and looking at the pictures, Dove felt like this was the mound complex where she had her 1987 experience.

On Sunday, April 22nd, Dove and her family met my wife Joan and I at Pinson and visited the tall 72 foot mound. On top of the mound there is a large wooden observation platform, and so after twenty years we blew the whistles on top of the mound, possibly the same mound where Dove and the others had their experience back in 1987, although Dove still wasn’t absolutely certain that it was the same mound (it was at night). I had checked with another person who had been present and, after so many years, they weren’t certain of the exact location either.

During our own whistling vessel meditations atop Saul’s Mound our group had a few mental impressions, but nothing really profound. I envisioned briefly a male shaman type standing beneath a pattern of stars and Joan “saw” a dragon-type image she thought might have been the Cherokee Uktena.

I was a little disappointed, I had hoped for a little something more, but the long arm of synchronicity was soon about to change all of that. Daniel Statnekov, the author of Animated Earth, the man who first realized their psychoacoustic quality after his own experience with one of the vessels back in 1972, had been conversing for months with Joan and I in emails and over the telephone, and then it looked as though he would be leaving out from New Mexico on a trip across country in early June, a trip that would take him close to us. Excitedly we made plans to meet off of highway 40, near Jackson, Tennessee. On impulse I mentioned that if he was interested we might also visit the nearby Pinson mound complex, and soon learned in an email that the idea appealed to him, that sometimes when traveling across country he would stop at Cahokia Mound in Illinois and blow the whistles.

On Sunday, June 10th, at 10 a.m., we met Daniel in the parking lot outside the Pinson Mounds Museum. Joan, who is learning pottery herself and has her own studio, showed Daniel one of her hand built vessels, to which he was very complimentary, saying though that she’d have to work on improving the sound. Joan already knew this and so his observation did not hurt her feelings in anyway. He was being honest and she appreciated his constructive remarks.

I popped open the trunk of our car and lifted open the lid on the wooden box containing the seven whistling vessels on loan to me from our good friend Kenny Smith of Alabama. Over the last couple of years, I’ve traveled around doing presentations with these whistling vessels, which I knew were from the molds made by Daniel, but I wasn’t sure if these were ones he had made or his apprentice Don Wright. Now, I surmised, I might be able to find out.

Daniel checked out the vessels one by one. At times, he put two spouts in his mouth and simultaneously blew two vessels. He listened closely and finally announced that they had a good sound. He also looked each one over very carefully, and pointed out what he called a Hopi infinity symbol on one, but then admitted that Don could have done it also. When I pointed out that this set was over twenty years old and had been purchased for about $500.00, I had been told, Daniel said that he had never charged for a vessel at that time, but then added that it could have been a set that he made for someone and they might have sold them.

Next I opened a small luggage bag with three whistles imported from Peru. He also blew into each of these, but he said only one, one that is called Pregnant Woman, should be blown in conjunction with Kenny’s vessels. The other two he didn’t recommend.

Before leaving the parking lot, I pointed out Saul’s Mound nearby. I then opened up a copy of Greg’s book, People of the Web, and showed him a couple of pictures Greg had taken of the mound (pictures which contained an unexplained orb with a ring around it), and then I mentioned about Dove’s whistling vessel and mound experience. We then began walking toward Saul’s Mound.

It was a beautiful and sunny day. Joan was telling Daniel about a recent dream she had had involving a whistling vessel. Twice Daniel stopped, to feel the energy he said, telling Joan though to continue talking. Soon, and throughout the two hour visit, Daniel remarked on how “sweet” the energy of the place felt. Toward the end he thanked us for sharing the place with him. He said he’d return again in the future, when passing through.

Instead of walking up the wooden stairs to the wooden platform on top of Saul’s Mound to blow the whistles, as we had recently done with Dove and her family, Daniel suggested we find a shaded spot on the ground at the base of the mound. He explained that he felt it was important to make physical contact with the earth while we blew the whistles there. So on the eastern side we found a pleasant location, and all three of us began to sit on the ground. Joan laughed and said that as in so many sweat lodges she had been in she’d face the east and so end up sitting in the proverbial hot seat. Daniel took up a position facing me in the north and I faced him in the south. We formed a semi-circle. In the center, Daniel placed a rock from his former home in New Mexico of 19 years, along with three ancient pieces of broken pottery shards.

Daniel explained that these whistles of his that we were about to use were tuned to the lower frequencies of an earlier Peruvian culture, similar to two whistles that he had loaned to us last fall to experience. He explained the importance of maintaining a slow, steady and light breath as we blew into them. First he had Joan try blowing hers as he blew his along with her. Then he did the same with me, striving to get us both to blow our whistles in harmony with his. Then it was time for the three of us to blow our whistles together as a group.

I didn’t have a watch on, so I’m not sure exactly how long we did this, but I’d guess close to or around half an hour. Every now and then, I’d “see,” in my mind’s eye, so to speak, an eye like image, along with a blue or bluish light (once purple), that would come and go. A couple of times, in the light, I thought I glimpsed a human head. Toward the last of it, it was like I was seeing a blue eye, with blue light in the eye, and it had eye lashes, and several times it was like the eyelids closed together. It was an eerie sight, and one I didn’t remember ever seeing before!

Afterwards, Joan told me that she thought she had heard a voice, or voices, and a female sing-song sounding voice (same voice it seemed). Then Joan stood up and felt right behind her, and to her left and towards the mound, a female presence. It felt very near! Daniel had just walked around the mound barefooted in a (if you were looking from above) counterclockwise direction. Joan decided, in light of what was happening, to do the same. I joined her and as we walked Joan worried some that perhaps her imagination was getting the best of her. I encouraged her to just go with it and see what happened.

When Daniel was on his walk around the mound, Joan told me how she had “seen” a green stock during our whistling that shot way up into the sky, higher than the trees there (which were pretty tall), and way up on top there was a single leaf, and she knew that leaf was her! I asked what happened next, and Joan said we stopped blowing the whistles.

After we got back to the parking lot, Daniel pointed to one of the trees near the mound, talked about how straight it was, how they all looked healthy and in good shape, and again he used that word “sweet.” Then he went over to his truck to look for something and I quietly asked Joan if she would tell Daniel about her green stock and leaf vision. He listened thoughtfully and then said at the end (about her being the leaf) something like, “Maybe you are.” Daniel never did say whether he had “seen” anything himself, and never questioned us as to what we had seen. Joan later told me that out of all of the times that we had been to Pinson, after Greg and Lora had first taken us there well over a decade ago, that this was the first time anything like this had ever happened.

In more ways that one, it was certainly a very memorable visit and experience. It was a dream-come-true for us to finally get to meet Daniel in person. We have found him to be an extremely kind, thoughtful and generous person. He has patiently and carefully answered our many questions, and continues to do so, and he has shared with Joan, a potter herself, many of the secrets of the trade, so to speak, as related to constructing replicas of these magnificent Peruvian instruments of sound.

The following weekend when we met with our dear friends Greg and Lora Little at a small ARE gathering in Memphis, I was telling Greg about our recent Pinson experience. With regard to the female presence that Joan had described at Saul’s Mound, Greg reminded me that also at Pinson there was Twin Mound, a burial site that kind of resembles a pair of breasts, and that ten ornately clad women had been uncovered in an excavation there. A picture of this mound and this information can also be found in Greg’s book, People of the Web.