Preserved for us in myths and legends, in folk traditions and in certain very ancient monuments, the testimony of our otherwise lost and forgotten ancestors appears to be trying to tell us That a hideous calamity has descended upon mankind from time to time, that on each occasion it has afflicted us suddenly, without warning and without mercy, Like a thief in the night, and that it will certainly recur at some point in the future.
Should it do so – unless we are well prepared physically and spiritually, unless we behave towards one another with love and respect rather than hatred and scorn, unless we make positive rather than negative choices – The testimony of the ancients warns that we will be obliged to begin again like orphaned children in complete ignorance of our true heritage.
In this context, as we near the end of the first quarter of the turbulent 21 century, let me share the following extract from my book Fingerprints of the Gods, published in 1995.
Walking in the last days, Hopi Reservation, May 1994.
Across the high plains of Arizona, for days and days and days, a desolate wind had been blowing.
As we drove across those plains towards the tiny village of Shungopovi, I went over in my mind all I had seen and done in the previous five years: My travels, my research, the false starts and dead-ends I had encountered, the lucky breaks, The moments when everything had come together, the moments when everything seemed about to fall apart.
I had travelled a long road to get here, I realized – far longer than the 300-mile freeway that had whisked us up into these austere badlands from Phoenix, the state capital.
Nor did I expect to return with any great degree of enlightenment.
Nevertheless, I had made this journey because the science of prophecy is still believed to be alive among the Hopi: Pueblo Indians, distantly related to the Aztecs of Mexico, whose numbers have been reduced by attrition and misery to barely 10,000.
The Hopi believe that we are walking in the last days, with a geological sword of Damocles hanging over us.
