Sacred Sites - Robert Scheer's Blog

What is a Pilgrimage?

A pilgrimage, for me, is what differentiates a tourist from a traveler. While a tourist is happy simply to get away, take pictures, buy t-shirts, and indulge in sun, surf and suds, the traveler goes to specific places for a deeper, more significant experience. Although pilgrimages may be spiritual experiences, they all don’t have to be “churchy.” For a person whose passion is reading Emily Bronte novels, visiting the Yorkshire moors that inspired “Wuthering Heights” can be a holy pilgrimage. I once did a “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” pilgrimage in Dorset, visiting the actual locations where Thomas Hardy located the life and death of his tragic fictional heroine.

It is believed that the first Christian pilgrim was the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. Her name was Helena, and in the year 326 she went to the Holy Land in search out places in Jerusalem where events significant in the life of Jesus were thought to have happened. She wasn’t always correct.

Perhaps the best publicized pilgrimage was the one Geoffrey Chaucer made to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Saint Thomas the Martyr, which motivated him to write his Canterbury Tales. During the Middle Ages, pilgrims made long, difficult journeys to shrines devoted to various saints, doing penance or hoping for cures.

Long before the advent of Christianity, however, people were making sacred journeys to holy places. The oldest known pilgrimage destination is Mount Kailash in the Himalayas. It takes three days to walk the 32-mile circumambulation around the mountain, and the altitude of the trail reaches as high as 18,000 feet. According to Buddhist tradition, to do the ritual will wipe out the sins of a lifetime, and anyone who makes the trek 108 times may reach Nirvana.

I have visited approximately 30 sacred sites and places of power in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America, Australia, and the Pacific islands, and as the editor of Power Trips magazine I researched hundreds more. What fascinates me is the idea there may be a common denominator. I suspect that what ancient stone circles, jungle-covered pyramids, holy wells, sacred groves, Gothic cathedrals and Druidic dolmens may share is a force — an energy that science has yet to acknowledge.

When Pliny the Elder declared that Delphi, on Mount Parnassus, was where an important Earth Goddess shrine should be built, it was because he said it was abundant in the life-force energy called plenum. Other ancient cultures speak of a life energy by other names. In Chinese it is chi, Hindus call it prana, and the Sufis named it baraka. Is it possible that concentrations of this energy may infuse the water in some wells with the power to heal? Could it be there was so much of this energy at Salisbury Plain that Neolithic Britons were inspired to erect Stonehenge there?

One of the most-visited pilgrimage sites in the United States is the chapel El Santuario de Chemayó near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands flock there to celebrate Good Friday, its visitors number in the hundreds of thousands each year. If you look in the Room of Miracles, “El Pozito,” you will see a large collection of canes, braces and crutches left behind by grateful visitors whose disabilities were seemingly cured by the healing power of the earth at the location known as the “Lourdes of America.”

Among the most-read books in my personal library is Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, by Phil Cousineau. I highly recommend it before going on any spiritual travels, as it offers numerous suggestions for how to get the most out of any trip – whether it’s to Machu Picchu or your local park.

Whether you are going on a pilgrimage tour of Cappadocia, visiting the shrine of Elvis at Graceland, the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment, or the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie to experience Leonardo’s Last Supper, you are embarking on a potentially life-changing journey. Ultimately, the goal of such a journey is self-discovery. In the end, then, all spiritual paths take the pilgrim to the same destination. T.S. Eliot said it far better than I ever will when he wrote:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

10 Must-See Sacred Spaces in Peru that are Not Machu Picchu

The old saying about the journey being more important than the destination was never more appropriate than when I went on a spiritual tour of Peru. Of course Machu Picchu was the focal point of the program, but there are so many other amazing sacred spaces in Peru where a traveler could have an awesome experience even if they never set foot on the mountain-top citadel that Hiram Bingham called “The Lost City of the Incas.”

There are probably a lot more, but in this post I am just going to tell you about 10 of the most impressive “must-see” sites in Peru besides Machu Picchu. Of course I’m not saying not to go there, but if you invest all the time and expense of traveling to Peru and the only sacred place you visited was Machu Picchu, you would be making an enormous mistake. It would be like ordering a banana split and then throwing away everything except the cherry on top.

Like most group tours to Peru, mine started with a flight from Los Angeles to Lima, and then a shorter flight from Lima to Cusco. The tourist train trip to Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu originates in Cusco, but so do lots of other excursions. So let’s start with those nearest to Cusco.

1. Coricancha

Right within the city of Cusco is the Coricancha (also spelled Koricancha, Qoricancha or Qorikancha). Its original name was Intikancha, as it was devoted to Inti, the Inca sun god. When the first Spanish invaders saw it in about 1536, they were dazzled by the enormous amount of gold which was reported as being “fabulous beyond belief.” The walls were covered with sheets of gold, and golden statues were everywhere.

The Spanish built a Christian church on the site, destroying some of the original construction, but what remains is impressive. While the Convent of Santo Domingo has been damaged by earthquakes and then repaired numerous times since it was built in the 16th century, the original Inca stonework remains unscathed.

I was impressed by the intricate details of the stonework inside the Coricancha. The picture I took shows what look like channels cut into the stone as if to fit electrical wiring, or some other mechanical devices. Of course, that would have been impossible unless you are someone who believes the ancient Incas might have been helped by Extra-terrestrial advisors.

2. Sacsayhuaman

Only about a 45-minute walk from the center of Cusco is the enormous Sacsayhuaman complex. The name sounds a bit like “sexy woman” but in Quechua it means “satisfied falcon.” We were told this is a reference to scavenging birds that feasted on corpses after a great battle was fought there.

Just about everywhere you look around Sacsayhuaman there is something amazing to see, and my photo below is certainly one of them. This enormous stone was sculpted with indentations hollowed out.

Their size and shape corresponds with the human brain and spinal column. It is believed this carving represents the seven chakras, and the hollows were originally filled with precious gems, crystals or gold. During Inca times, rituals were conducted in Sacsayhuaman for awakening the kundalini, the energy said to originate from the base of the spine. For this reason, another name for Sacsayhuaman was the Serpent Lightning Temple, a metaphor representing that energy.

3. Qenko

A few miles northeast of Cusco is the archaeological site of Qenko (also spelled Q’enqo, Kenko, or Quenco). The name is the Quechua for zig-zag, which is a good way to describe the intricate carvings made in one huge monolithic rock. Its chambers and tunnels were used for spiritual ceremonies, rituals and even sacrifices for the benefit of farm crops.

My photo shows the inside of a cave that was associated with forces of the underworld and worship of the dead.

4. Pisac

About 35 miles northeast of Cusco, at the South end of Peru’s Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River is the village of Pisac. When I was there about 20 years ago, I thought it was the highlight of my entire sacred journey and the site I would most like to go back to if I should ever return to Peru.

High above the village, at the top of the steep countryside, is a complex that’s like a miniature Machu Picchu. At the very peak is an Intiwatana (hitching post of the sun) and around it are the remains of ceremonial buildings, fountains, baths, and an altar.

If you go, be sure to do so on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday, because that is when a large market is held in the village. Very lively and colourful, the market was one of the best opportunities to buy souvenirs that I found, with vendors and shoppers haggling over the prices of everything from inexpensive trinkets such as clay musical instruments to finely crafted linens, jewellery and clothing.

5. Ollantaytambo

Continue about 35 miles further up the Valle Sagrado to the north and you’ll come to Ollyantaytambo. You should plan to spend at least half a day at this amazing site to touch the water of the sacred fountain, climb up the terraces and view the image of Viracocha in stone on the hillside above the town.

The absolute must-see attraction is the main altar, the Temple of the Sun at the top of the complex with its cyclopian carved pink stone panels. There are six of them, side-by-side. Each is roughly 12-feet (3.5 meters) tall. The carvings are now so worn some are barely visible. But how on earth did the Inca stone masons move them up to the top of the mountain? Each weighs 50 tons, and they came from a quarry 5 kilometers outside of town and on the other side of the Urubamba River.

The next four sacred spaces I want to mention are in a different area, down at the southern end of Peru near Lake Titicaca. Our tour bus from Cusco to Puno seemed to take forever, but there are overnight buses that leave Cusco at around 10 pm and arrive in Puno at about 6 am, which is a convenient fit for a lot of Lake Titicaca tours that start at around 7 in the morning.

6. Taquile

We took a boat to Taquile Island, where we were impressed to learn about the culture of the Aymara people. Their native language is Quechua, and their high-quality hand-woven fabrics are world famous. In their tradition, it is the men who are the weavers.

Lake Titicaca is the second largest lake in South America and it is a very important place in Inca history and tradition. According to legend, the golden Sun Disc that was kept at the Koricancha in Cusco until the time of the Spanish invasion originated in Lake Titicaca. An even stranger theory is that this Solar Disc was brought to Lake Titicaca by Lord Aramu Muru from Lemuria after the continent of Mu sunk into the Pacific ocean.

In Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of South America David Hatcher Childress wrote about The Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, where the Sun Disc was hidden after it was taken out of the Koricancha for protection. More details about this secret monastery can be found in Secret of the Andes by Brother Philip (whose real name was George Hunt Williamson.)

One of the foremost experts on Peruvian legends, shamanism and native traditions is Jorge Luis Delgado, an indigenous Inca of Aymara heritage. I met him at his hotel in Puno, and he related how he came to discover the very mysterious formation known as Amaru Muru’s portal. I will be writing about Jorge Luis and other Andean shamans in greater detail at another time, but in this report it is noteworthy that he recommended our group see three sacred spaces near Puno and Lake Titicaca: the Aramu Muru Portal, the House of the Spirits and the chullpas at Sillustani.

7. House of Spirits

We walked near the entrance to The House of Spirits as we neared to Aramu Muru’s Portal. They are quite close to one another. A foreboding looking valley, the House of Spirits was a place we only peeked into, rather than attempting to enter as it was rather late in the afternoon, the weather was threatening rain, and our main focus was on the Portal. However, you can see from my photo below how the House of Spirits does not look like a very inviting space. Jorge Luis Delgado told me that shamans go there to communicate with the spirits.

8. Aramu Muru Portal

Also known as the “Gate of the Gods,” or a trans-dimensional stargate, the Portal of Aramu Muru is a representation of a doorway, cut into the solid rock wall in the shape of a large letter T. No wonder it has become such a popular destination for explorers seeking a pilgrimage to the paranormal.

When I sat inside, I felt the briefest flash of an impression of a tunnel, but I did not have a very clear vision. Another member of my group, however, had a very intense experience. She reported losing body consciousness and seeing a bright, bluish light that transformed into a softer pink glow. She felt she was experiencing Total Unconditional Love. She heard a voice telling her the portal was a channel between the 3rd and 4th dimensions. It then gave her guidance about her life’s work and how she was meant to help others connect with and open their hearts. She felt Spirit had used the Portal to affirm the path upon which she was now walking.

9. Sillustani

The final pilgrimage destination near Lake Titicaca that is particularly noteworthy is Sillustani, the pre-Inca cemetery on the shore of Lake Umayo near Puno with its eerie tower-shaped tombs called chullpas.

These burial chambers are known as “houses of the soul” and most of them were damaged by grave robbers. Each has only one opening, in the East, where the first light of day from the morning sun can enter. Nearby are small stone circles named for the Sun and Moon, and our group did a ceremonial ritual there, marking the end of our spiritual tour of Peru.

There is, however, a 10th sacred space in Peru that is perhaps the most powerful and mysterious of all – even possibly surpassing Machu Picchu.

10. Marcahuasi

Also sometimes spelled Marca Wasi, Marcahuasi is a pre-Inca site located in the Andes near the village of San Pedro de Casta gained notoriety after being made famous by archaeologist Daniel Ruso in his book, Marcahuasi: The Story of a Fantastic Discovery. Ruso describes the site as having more than 20 energy vortexes that are rich with healing energies. I interviewed a paranormal researcher who visited Marcahuasi and had several unexplainable experiences there including sightings of a UFO.

One of the best-known features of Marcahuasi is an ancient stone carving known as The Face of Humanity. In the morning, when illuminated by the light of the rising sun, it looks like the face of a young man, looking upwards. But in the evening, as the light is fading and coming from the opposite direction, it looks like an old man facing downwards.

Marcahuasi is believe to have been an ancient mystery school, and among its stone carvings can be seen “impossible” representations, such as humans of all different races, and dinosaurs that were extinct and supposedly unknown to the pre-Incas of the Andes who are believed to have carved them 10,000 years ago.

Photo credits:

Coricancha by Diego Delso / CC BY-SA
Sacsayhuaman by User:Colegota / CC BY-SA 2.5 ES
Ollantaytambo by Stevage de la licence Creative Commons Attribution – Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 3.0 (non transposée).

All other photos by Robert Scheer (c) Cedar Cottage Media

Understanding the Power of Sacred Places

El Santuario de Chimayó

Since the beginning of time, people have been going on pilgrimages to sacred sites for healing, inspiration and guidance. Mainstream scientists may scoff at suggestions that water from holy wells can cure illnesses or that ancient megaliths can deliver messages from the spirit world, but the concept of powerful places has been known to many cultures for thousands of years.

In ancient Greece, sages built an Earth Goddess shrine at Delphi because of the abundance of plenum, an energy they believed bubbled out of the earth on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. In the Chinese tradition there is a similar life force called chi. Sufis call it baraka and Hindus know it as prana. The Hopi of Arizona say that sacred places are sites where life energy is the strongest. They refer to these power centers as “spots of the fawn.”

Earth’s oldest known pilgrimage site is Mount Kailash in Tibet, which has been a holy travel destination for an incomprehensible 15,000 years. Walking the 32-mile trail around Kailash takes about three days, at altitudes as high as 18,000 feet. Buddhists say the ritual circumambulation washes away the sins of one lifetime, and 108 times around the mountain will enable you to reach Nirvana, or Enlightenment.

The first Christian pilgrim was Helena, mother of the emperor of Constantine, who toured the holy land in 326 c.e. and identified (not necessarily accurately) many of the sites associated with Jesus. In Medieval times, the tradition of Christian pilgrimages really began to take hold. Jerusalem was the primary goal, but pilgrims who couldn’t manage the long voyage could still do penance or seek cures by visiting shrines devoted to the various saints. Canterbury Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Thomas, was England’s most popular pilgrimage site, as described in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century. In Spain Santiago de Compostela, said to contain the bones of Jesus’ disciple St. James, was second in popularity only to Rome as Europe’s most-visited pilgrimage destination during the Middle Ages.

Today you don’t have to go overseas to find places known for miracles. In Chimayó, New Mexico there is an adobe chapel, El Santuario de Chimayó, where 2,000 believers congregate each Good Friday, and 300,000 pilgrims come every year. In a small room at the back of the chapel, known as the “Room of Miracles”, is a hole in the floor through which people scoop out sand, said to have curative properties. The walls of the room are lined with hundreds of letters and pictures from visitors thankful for the healing they say they received. But exactly what is it about sacred places that accounts for the extraordinary events that visitors sometimes experience?

Carn Euny fogou

One man who set out to understand the power of sacred places is Paul Devereux. In 1997 Devereux helped organize the Dragon Project, a group of researchers who used scientific diagnostic tools to study megalithic sites in the British Isles. In his book Places of Power: Secret Energies at Ancient Sites: A Guide to Observed or Measured Phenomena Devereux describes finding abnormally high radiation levels in several curious stone tunnels known as fogous (FOO-goos) in the southwest of England. Devereux says this radiation is what sends some visitors into non-ordinary mental states. It is not unusual for people who go into fogous to experience headaches, dizziness, messages from spirit guides or a distorted sense of space. One artist sketching inside Carn Euny fogou suddenly became aware she was being watched by an Iron-age woman. A visitor who tried to enter Boleigh fogou said she found her path blocked by boulders which do not exist.

In the Preseli hills of Wales, where the bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried, is a mountain-top site called Carn Ingli, where Devereux took compass measurements. He discovered wild deviations in the magnetic field – in one spot his compass needle pointed due south. Devereux reported these observations to a colleague, who replied that he had gone to Carn Ingli with two friends, and all of them witnessed a vivid rainbow in the sky overhead – during the dark of night! Obviously there are more mysteries at sacred places than can be understood by taking readings with a compass or geiger counter.

If the concept of invisible earth energies with mysterious powers seems like a fantasy to you, remember that until recently it was impossible to cook food without heat or send pictures through the air. Today, microwave ovens and email are commonplace in most North American homes. Maybe in the 21st century, earth energies will be understood by establishment scientists. Until then, we can still enjoy the benefits of sacred places even if we don’t understand how they work.

This article was originally published in 2000.

Chimayo photo by Donna Yuen

Mount Kailash photo by Jan Reurink licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Carn Euny photo by Frances Watts licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Earth’s Three Most Powerful Places

When people find out I’m a travel writer who focuses on pilgrimages to places of power, they frequently ask me, “What are the most powerful places on Earth?” Because there are more than 1,000 major power centers around the planet, it’s hard to find anyone truly qualified to answer that question, but I have talked with someone who I believe has inside information. Antón Ponce de León Paiva is a fascinating man whose encounters with ETs and UFOs were referenced by Shirley MacLaine in her book Out on a Limb. About 35 years ago, Antón was taken blindfolded to a hidden village in the Andes, where elders taught him ancient secrets of the Incas about life on Earth and elsewhere. I met Antón in Cusco, Peru, where he was speaking to a small group of people. He told us that great changes were going to be happening around the world, when the energy vortexes at Lake Titicaca, Mount Kailash and Glastonbury would become even more powerful.

Mysterious Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca, on the borders of Peru and Bolivia, is where Inca legends say life on Earth was first created by Viracocha. In the center of the lake is the Island of the Sun, with an ancient, sacred temple. Nearby is Sillustani, where mysterious burial towers called chulpas were once plated with gold and held the remains of Inca royalty.

A few miles away is Aramu Muru’s Portal, a doorway-shaped niche in a stone outcropping, located in a region known as the Valley of the Spirits. The local villagers who walked with us refused to come close to the portal. They tell stories about people disappearing through the solid rock. Although I didn’t have an other-worldly experience there, one of the women in my group experienced a shift in consciousness as she was kneeling in the portal. She says she saw a light filling her inner vision and then felt herself “entering and experiencing the realms of total Unconditional Love.” She heard a voice telling her about a past life experience, and that her life’s work was to help others open the doorway of their hearts, which is the pathway to God. She was utterly overwhelmed by her vision.

Ancient Mount Kailash

Mount Kailash is the oldest pilgrimage site on Earth. In the Himalayas of Tibet, it is near the source of the sacred Ganges river, and it has been a holy travel destination for a mind-boggling 15,000 years. The peak is pyramid shaped, with four sides facing north, south, east and west, so some people believe the pyramids of Egypt were designed to emulate Mount Kailash. In the Hindu religion this is where the god Shiva sits and meditates. Buddhists say walking the 32-mile circuit around the mountain, a three-day trek called a kora, washes away the sins of one lifetime. Make the arduous circumambulation 108 times and you will reach Nirvana!

Sacred Earth: Places of Peace and Power

Sacred Glastonbury

Glastonbury, in Southwest England’s county of Somerset, was once known as the Isle of Avalon. The place has been sacred long before the dawn of recorded history. Ancient Celtic religious leaders performed rituals here, and legends tell of tunnels leading into the realm of the elves and fairies. Glastonbury is associated with Jesus, King Arthur and UFOs.

Dominating the skyline is St. Michael’s Tower on Glastonbury Hill, where there have been several reports of mysterious lights. A local policeman saw “eight egg-shaped objects … hovering in formation over the hill,” and another observer reported “several green and mauve lights hovering around the tower.” Martin Gray, a renowned expert on sacred places, says he slept in the tower one night, during which he saw “the interior of the tower radiantly aglow with a luminous white light.”

A Christian legend says that, as a child, Jesus visited Glastonbury with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. It is also said that Joseph returned with the Apostle Philip in 37 c.e. Joseph supposedly leaned on his walking stick, which took root and grew into a thorn tree that bloomed every Christmas until Puritans chopped it down in the 17th century. Joseph and Philip are credited with building the first Christian church in England, on the site where Glastonbury abbey was later constructed.

In Chalice Well, Joseph is said to have hidden the chalice of the Last Supper, the Holy Grail. Miraculous cures have been credited to the well’s healing waters. The design motif on the well cover is the vesica piscis, an ancient pre-Christian symbol which evolved into the Christian fish. It represents the blending of masculine and feminine, the yin and yang, and the meeting-place of the conscious and unconscious.

Whether or not Glastonbury, Mount Kailas and Lake Titicaca do indeed grow more powerful over the coming years, these sacred places are at the top of my “most recommended” list for anyone interested in spiritual travel.

Glastonbury And The King Arthur Trail – Private Tour From London

Photos:

Robert Scheer in Aramu Muru’s Portal
Aramu Muru’s Portal, believed to be a doorway to other dimensions, is located near Lake Titicaca, Peru. Photo © Robert Scheer
Mount Kailash photo by Jan Reurink under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
St. Michael’s Tower on Glastonbury Tor
Chalice Well cover by Theangryblackwoman at en.wikipedia licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This article was originally published in August, 2000

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