And a few travel photos
from A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick
the star child contemplates earth
Before the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, and Greece there were even prior civilizations. Whether or not these amazing architects from the neolithic mists of time were lost Atlanteans, or whether they had been in contact with angels or space aliens as per Von Daniken or, whether we, ourselves are the descendants of starmen or mud is all a great unknown except of course for the matter of cosmic carbon!!
The meaning of these wonderful ruins, who the people were, why they built and what answers they sought, remain mostly a mystery. We speculate solstices, astronomy, and religious sacrifice, but nothing is known for sure. Humans have gazed at the heavens and wondered for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers and observers of nature incorporated what they saw into religion and ritual, as did the more recent mesoamerican peoples.
The “henge” sites in the UK and Ireland were built in days of no known technology or written history and they pre-date the pyramids. I decided to go through my photos and find the best from last year’s trip- there were so many and I had only used a few which are on my Gateways and Journey’s Blog.
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and from The Mouth of the Wizard’s Well (Chichen Itza)
more mystery in central America, though not as old!! (200-900 CE)
El Caracol, the mayan observatory
The fire of Kukulkan
A brief background on the mystical Maya
The solar journey of Chak ek (Venus) played a significant role in Mayan ceremony and belief. Their calendar, called the long count, was more accurate than ours and they had an incredible system of mathematics. On a large playing field they participated in a ball game of life and death, light and darkness; a great sacred ritual which opened the doors of the fearsome underworld (Xibalba). There were 3 levels reaching upward from Xibalba, through the earth and to the heavens, all held together by a mystical tree on which souls traveled.
Caves were symbolically sacred to the Mayans and the root of the great tree can be seen in the cave Balankanche at Chichen Itza.
Only a few portions of their written “bible,” called codices, survive as “The Popol Vu,” thanks to one far seeing monk who understood their value and saved them at a time when the church burned everything in sight that was not Christian. How Mayan glyphs came finally to be translated is another story!
Sayil –
Labna- the mayans believed that passing through a gate was to enter another dimension. It was a sacred ritual and undertaking.
When I journeyed through the Yucatan from Tulum to Uxmal, along the Sac be and Ruta Puuc, I fell in love with the Mayan story and symbolic ritual and wrote a bit on this on my Journeys and Gateways Blog).
During a quiet period on the Chichen Itza site I received a special privilege invite by a kind curator to enter the “snail” ( caracol) which is off limits to the public. Like entering a church portal and touching holy water or a sacred icon on the wall, I instead reverently placed my hand on the painted hand print of an ancient astronomer-priest who reached through time and space to greet me.
In the Jaws of Kukulkan
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After all, we didn’t have to come from any other place in the cosmos. All of the mysterious cosmos is in each one of us!! Sol is our star and we are starmen! So I leave you with words from Joni Mitchell’s song
“we are stardust, we are golden and we have to get ourselves back to the garden!”
and David Bowie’s
There’s a starman waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds
and the beautiful ( and underrated) film
The Fountain –
Death is the Road to Awe
based on Mayan myth –
the runes of the gatekeeper's daughter- dedicated to Nick 
Wonderful and breathtaking… Love the music as well…
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thank you Bonnie!! Glad you enjoyed it. Wonderful travels and mysterious civilizations!
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You’ve done some amazing work for these photos! Wonderful thoughts about these mysterious places.
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thank you so much Amy. I love mysterious places! 🙂
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I love this, specially the star child contemplating earth.
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Amazing! Did not know about Rings of Brodgar!
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yes they are!! Thanks for your visit!!
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I find those Mayan mysteries so interesting. I’m sure there’s much to the legends than we can ever know about.
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Glad you liked this post. I love the mayan history. It is so mysterious and quite alien to European philosophical development etc. Yes, sadly much was lost during the time of the conquistadors. They are still trying to piece it together. The story of the glyphs and the very young boy(13) who found a key to deciphering them-David Stuart, is fascinating. There is an excellent PBS program called Breaking the Maya Code about this.
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An excellent series and information with some great interest 🙂
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thank you Rascal!! I hoped it would be!
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Amazing photographs, Cybele, it is staggering to realize how old some of these sites are! ♥♥♥ ;^)
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thanks for visiting Aisha!! How they moved those huge stones remains a mystery!! I love mystery lol. ( and I love the ancient history of Egypt!!)
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Ancient buildings seem to have been made only of rocks. And the builders could move some really giant ones. Why did we shift to trees and ended up depleting our forests? I wonder. There would have been rocks for everyone, I think. Great post, Cybele. Have a great week!
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Incredible to think about it! On the Orkneys where the ring of Brodgar is there are no trees!! Glad you enjoyed reading this. Thanks for the visit!!!
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dreamy 🙂
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thanks for coming by Joshi!!
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Beautiful photos, Cybele! I find the info you add extremely enriching! It’s always so much fun to stop by your blog 😀
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Thanks Lizzie! I’m so glad you enjoy some of my historical meanderings along with the photos!! I’m sure you can relate to the imagination being fired up by some of these wonderful sights.
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Beautiful photos and amazing old story, fantastic!
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Thanks Della!! They are amazing places with amazing stories!!
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Wow, Cybele. These are amazing photographs and history. Absolutely fascinating!
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thanks Linda!! The history and imagination of these places are wonderful! The mayan story is very strange and unusual. It’s only more recently that some of their history has been revealed by the translation of their glyphs. Stonehenge and Brodgar of course remain shrouded still in mystery.
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Lovely photos – especially Stonehenge under the stars. Loved the story of the tree too. I wondered which culture the ideas of the film Avatar came from.
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Thank you Six! I love history and myth. I think so many cultures had the idea of a great and sacred tree of life! It’s very deeply symbolic. Loved the film Avatar with such spectacular graphics.
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Glad you thought to revisit older images – nothing wrong with that when you come up with great stuff!
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Thanks so much Robert- all of those places grab the imagination!!
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Cool
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Truly amazing places!! thanks for stopping by!!
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