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Page 75 Chapter 10
The City at the Gate of the Sun
"The early Spanish travellers who visited the ruined Bolivian city of Tiahuanaco at around the time of the conquest were impressed by the sheer size of its buildings and by the atmosphere of mystery that clung to them. 'I asked the natives whether these edifices were built in the time of the Inca,' wrote the chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon, 'They laughed at the question, affirming that they were made long before the Incas reign and . . . that they had heard from their forbears that everything to be seen there appeared suddenly in the course of a single night . . . '1 Meanwhile another Spanish visitor of the same period recorded a tradition which said that the stones had been lifted miraculously off the ground, 'They were carried through the air to the the sound of a trumpet.'2
Not long after the conquest a detailed decription of the city was written by the historian Garcilaso de la Vega.. No looting for treasure or for building materials had yet taken place and, though ravaged by the tooth of time, the site was still magnificent enough to take his breath away:
We must now say something about the large and almost incredible buildings of Tiahuanaco. There is an artificial hill, of great height, built on stone foundations so that the earth will not slide. There are gigantic figures carved in stone . . . these are much worn which shows there great antiquity. There are walls, the stones of which are so enormous it is difficult to imagine what human force could have put / Page 76 them in place. And there are the remains of strange buildings, the most remarkable being stone portals, hewn out of solid rock; these stand on bases anything up to 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet thick, base and portal being all of one piece . . . How, and with the use of what tools or implements, massive works of such size could be achieved are questions which we are unable to answer . . . Nor can it be imagined how such enormous stones could have been brought here . . .3
That was in the sixteenth century. more than 400 years later, at the end of the twentieth century, I shared Garcilaso's puzzlement Scattered around Tiahuanaco, in defiance of the looters who had robbed the site of so much in recent years were monoliths so big and cumbersome yet so well cut that they almost seemed to be the work of super-beings.
Sunken temple
Like a disciple at the feet of his master, I sat on the floor of the sunken temple and looked up at the enigmatic face which all the scholars of Tiahuanaco believed was intended to represent Viracocha. Untold centuries ago, unknown hands had carved this likeness into a tall pillar of red rock. Though much eroded, it was the likeness of a man of power . . .
He had a high forehead, and large, round eyes. His nose was straight, narrow at the bridge flaring towards the nostrils. His lips were full. His distinguishing feature, however, was his stylish and imposing beard, which had the effect of making his face broader at the jaws than at the temples. looking more closely, I could see that the sculptor had portrayed a man whose skin was shaved all around his lips with the result that his moustache began high on his cheeks, roughly parallel with the end of his nose. From there it curved extravagantly down beside the corners of his mouth, forming an exaggerated goatee at the chin, and then followed his jawline back to his ears. Above and below the ears, on the side of the head, were carved odd representations of animals. Or perhaps it would be better to describe / Page 77 / these carvings as representations of odd animals, because they looked like big, clumsy, prehistoric mammals with fat tails and club feet.
There were other points of interest. For example, the stone figure of Viracocha had been sculpted with the hands and arms folded, one below the other, over the front of a long, flowing robe. On each side of this robe appeared the sinuous form of a snake coiling upwards from ground to shoulder level. And as I looked at this beautiful design (the original of which had perhaps been embroidered on rich cloth) the picture that came into my mind was of Viracocha as a wizard or a sorcerer, a bearded, Merlin-like figure dressed in weird and wonderful clothes, calling down fire from heaven."
The Sphinx and the Megaliths John Ivimy 1973
Page 66 "The name Merlin is supposed by some to be derived from that of the Celtic sky God Myrddin, which would link this ancient tradition of wizardry with the druids - the priests, doctors, and wise men of the Celts who were the inhabitants of Britain and France when the Romans came"
Page 65 The Mystery of the Megaliths
"Megalithic Structures - that is to say, prehistoric monuments built with stones of enormous size - exist in many parts of the world. The most famous, if not the greatest number, are found in the British Isles and in Brittany in the north-west corner of France. They are of many different kinds - dolmens or cromlechs (tables of two or more uprights supporting a flat stone on top), chambered tombs, menhirs or great stones standing alone, stone rings of various sizes and shapes (circles, flattened circles, ellipses, and egg-shaped rings), and straight avenues of standing stones arranged like grids in multiple rows.
Of all the megalithic structures by far the best known and the best preserved is the circular 'temple' of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. We call it a temple because, in the words of the official guide, 'almost everyone agrees that Stonehenge was a temple',1 but we print the word in inverted commas because there is no evidence to prove that it was ever in regular use for religious worship, much less that it was originally designed for that purpose. What was the original purpose of the founders of Stonehenge is, in fact, the core of the mystery that we are here attempting to unravel.
From the point of view of sheer size and complexity of structure perhaps the most important of the megalithic sites is the great stone ring at Avebury on the Marlborough Downs about 16 miles (25 kilometres) to the north. This is the centre of a cluster of prehistoric stones and earthworks which include the neolithic camp of Windmill Hill, the 350-foot (107 metres) long West Kennet Long Barrow, and Silbury Hill, the biggest man-made mound in Europe with a height of 130 feet (40 metres) and a base covering more than 5 acres (2hectares)'
Of the single megalithic stones by far the biggest is the great menhir of Er Grah (Le Grand Menhir Brise), which lies broken in three pieces on a peninsular in Quiberon Bay, South Brittany, not far from the 1000-yard long stone avenues of Carnac. This megalith once stood over 60 feet high and was clearly visible from 10 miles across the sea. It is estimated to weigh 340 tons. this is six or seven times the weight of the biggest of the huge sarsen stones of Stonehenge, which itself weighs 50 tons..."
In medieval times it was believed, not unnaturally, that the erection of the great stones at Stonehenge and elsewhere was the work of magicians. There was no other possible explanation. In his Histories of the Kings of Britain written in the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that the stones of Stonehenge were brought to England from Ireland by the wizard Merlin to make a burial place for Britons who had been treacherously slain by the Saxon leader Hengist at a meeting to which he had invited them on Salisbury Plain. The British King Ambrosius Aurelianus (reputedly the brother of Uther Pedragon and uncle of King Arthur) wanted to build a memorial for the dead men which would last for ever, but his builders and masons could think of no way of doing this. So he sent for Mer-lin, the magician, who answered him thus:
' "If you want to grace the burial-place of these men with some lasting monument, send for the Giants' Ring which is on mount Killaraus in Ireland. In that place there is a stone construction which no man of this period could ever erect, unless he combined great skill and artistry. The stones are enormous and there is no one alive strong enough to move them. If they are placed in posi-tion round this site, in the way in which they are erected over there, they will stand forever." '2
Page 77 'These stones' (said Merlin) 'are connected with certain religious rites and they have various properties which are medicinally important. Many years ago the Giants transported them from the remotest confines of Africa and set them up in Ireland at a time when they inhabited that country. Their plan was that, whenever they felt ill, baths should be prepared at the foot of the stones: for they used to pour water over them and to run this water into baths in which their sick were cured. What is more, they mixed the water with herbal concoctions and so healed their wounds. There is not a single stone among them which hasn't some medicinal virtue.' "
Page 92 "Apollo, to whom the spherical temple of the Hyperboreans was dedicated, was not only a sun god: he was also a god of healing. Could there be a connection here between the famed good health of those people, the identity of the god they worshipped, and the magic medicinal properties of the stones of the Giants Ring which the wizard Merlin brought from Ireland in Geoffrey of Monmouth's tale? And could there also be a connection between the technical magic displayed in the erection of the stones and the worship of Apollo in his third capacity as god of technology and the arts?
The men whom King Aurelius sent to Ireland, according to Geoffrey, to fetch the stones had first to fight a battle with the Irish. He continues ..."
Stonehenge Decoded Gerald S Hawkins 1965
Page 20 " 'The Britons . . . made choice of Uther Pendragon the king's brother, with fifteen thousand men, to attend to this business.' The armada put to sea 'with a prosperous gale.' The irish heard of the proposed seizure of their monument, and king Gilloman raised a 'huge army,' vowing that the Britons should not 'carry off from us the very Page 21 / smallest stone of the Dance.' But the invaders 'fell upon them straightway at the double-quick . . . prevailed . . . pressed forward to mount Killaraus . . . '
Then the would-be monument-movers were faced with the problem of how to transport those great stones. ' They tried huge hawsers . . . ropes . . . scaling ladders [memories of the lists of weapons in Caesar's Gallic Wars!] . . .never a whit the forwarder . . .' Merlin had to take over. He burst out laughing and put together his own engines . . . laid the stones down so lightly as none would believe . . .bade carry them to the ships,' and they all 'returned unto Britain with joy' and there 'set them up about the compass of the burial-ground in such wise as they had stood . . . and proved yet once again how skill surpasseth strength.'
Geoffrey added that Uther Pendragon, and King, or Emperor Constantine, were both buried at Stonehenge.
Most of Geoffrey's story is useful only as a
Page 22 It is interesting that in the legend Merlin did not resort to simple magic to whisk the stones from the old site to the new. He was of course more than capable of that: legendizers other than Geoffrey state that he transported the stones by his 'word of power' only. Could it be that there lurks folk-memory of actual moving of Merlin's 'engines'?
In the realm of purer myth, there may be more than engin-eering connection between Merlin and Stonehenge. Some mythographers have thought that the name 'Merlin' is a corruption of the name of the ancient Celtic sky god 'Myrddin,' who might have been worshipped at stone monuments. A Welsh triad states that the whole of Britain, before men came was called 'Clas Myrddin,' or 'Merlin's Enclosure.' The Welsh folklorist John Rhys in an 1886 Hibbert Lecture said, "I have come to the conclusion that we cannot do better than follow the story of Geoffrey, which makes Stonehenge the work of Merlin Emrys, commanded by another Emrys, which Iinterpret to mean that the temple belonged to the Celtic Zeus, whose later legendary self we have in Merlin.' In 1899 Page 23 Professor A.T. Evans wrote in the Archaeological Review that Stonehenge was an advanced representation of sepulchral architecture, ' where the cult or worship of departed ancestors may have become associated with the worship of the Celtic Zeus; the form under which the divinity was worshipped would have been that of his sacred oak.'
Page 88
"It was a beautifully balanced piece of sculpture with three rows of eight figures, twenty-four in all, lined up on either side of the elevated central image."
"…there was something coldly mathematical, almost machine like about the way they seemed to march in regimented lines towards Viracocha"
The scribe describes the presence, of the present of the present
My God, said the scribe to Alizzed you were gone such a long time I thought you were never coming back. And, said the scribe, indicating the shadows of time past, 'those of tomorrow could'nt help but wonder, about the why's and wherefores of it all, whyever were you? 'The Y as in YOU of the I's that seize', said Zed Aliz ' taking a learning lean on a magic's tick, has been to the downside up of the upside down, to see how far it is. All the way there, and all the way back.
Reight writ the scribe, right on.
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