Pahana Connection?
page.Hopi Prophesy?
Some peculiar things have happened that I think may tie my spiritual mission in with Hopi prophesies. I mean, I am part of the Hippie culture spawned in the '60's and hippies sort of fit the Hopi Prophesies of the people Pahana belongs to. So does the fact that I am the prophet and founder a brand new religion, Aquariana Christianity, the new Universal and non-Abrahamic Christian religion. And then there's my artwork like above and some others seen in the Kushstone Gallery page. But back to another one of my endless delusions of spiritual grandeur, my Pahana-wannabe, could be story..
Somewhere around 1965-66 I read the Book of the Hopi. I think my first wife gave me a copy of the book. She had visited Mesa Verde and was interested in southwest Indian history. I started college as an anthropology major so I was naturally interested too. In the book, according to my memory of it now, Hopi elders talk of a prophesy of a long lost White Brother, Pahana, who returns to the Hopi, bringing back a missing corner piece of a Fire Clan stone tablet with designs on it. For some reason when I read about the missing corner piece I thought, well, I don't know of any European tradition of a white brother having a missing New World tablets or pieces of tablets. Then the strange blend of skepticism and vision came over me and I "knew" where the missing piece was.
I should explain here that I had an ability for a while to locate missing objects in our house by closing my eyes and spinning around, stopping to point to where a missing thing was. I had done it about three times successfully before the talent failed and I don't use it now. But when I read about the missing Fire Clan tablet piece I imagined spinning around in Oraibi or Hoteville and pointing to the walls of an old kiva. The missing piece was hidden in the walls. It never left the area. Pahana was meant to find it right there-not bring it back from the Old World. But I never acted on this vision-it seemed too far fetched to travel all the way to Hopi country to check it out. Since this first vision of the location of the missing Fire Clan tablet I've had two more and each different. (see below) It may be that only the work of a White Brother helping his Red Brother is my " almost Pahana" connection.
"Pahana" came back again into my communitarian work. Some time around 1970, I responded to the "Pahana Town Forum" group that formed near to where I and my family lived for a while in So. California. They were going to start an intentional community in western Oregon near Cottage Grove to be called Pahana. Their community plans though were too capitalistic and not communitarian enough for my political tastes then and we went on to form our own intentional community group with our own new community model, the Communitarian Village project. Our village project ended up not getting as far as the Pahana community but they're both 1970's failed intentional community history now.
In 1990 I first made contact with the Bear River Band in Northern California. They were looking for a new rancheria site and I knew of an old homestead for sale near Bear River that I thought might fill their rancheria needs. But they chose a site closer to town and I didn't get back to them until 1995 when I brought the Headwaters Lottery proposal* to the Bear River Tribal Council.
My life started getting directly involved with Native Americans when I became involved with Sharon, a Cherokee-Pomo woman, in 1992. The Tribal Truth Institute proposal came about from that friendship.**
** See the Tribal Truth Institute proposal
Around 1992 I was also thinking the time has come to start making and distributing Rainbow Bibles.*** As you will have seen from the Rainbow Bible Story page, Rainbow Bibles are meant to be made of wool felt. Wool felt in colors is very hard to find now since acrylic felt has been introduced and taken over the felt market. Then the Spirit told me that the Hopi, being recognized as the people of peace, should really be the ones spiritually qualified to make Rainbow Bibles, and they should make them out of wool from sheep raised by their neighbors, the Navaho. But my life became busy and I put aside any plans for acting on this vision.
*** See the Rainbow Bible Story page.
In 1993 I went to Joseph, Oregon with my sister where she was checking out the town's art community. I was puzzled by the fact that there didn't seem to be any Indians around the town even though the whole town has these Indian motifs and artifacts and galleries featuring Indian art. The town is named after Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce. While babysitting my sister's boy by letting him play in the rocks on the edge of Wallawa Lake right at the spot where Chief Joseph had his village camp, I wondered up to the cemetery on the rise overlooking the lake. I found not Chief Joseph's but his father's marker there. His father was also named Chief Joseph. The Chief Joseph known to history died in exile in Washington I believe and the Nez Pierce were driven out of their homeland.
At Chief Joseph's father's grave tombstone I said a prayer asking the Great Spirit of the Holy One to return the Nez Pierce to their homeland. In 1998, seven years later, I read an article in the Sunday paper which told about local ranchers and landowners around the town of Joseph, Oregon donating land to the Nez Pierce tribe so that they could begin to return to their old homeland. Now there has been established the Wallowa Nez Perce Interpretive Center which is coordinating plans to regain a 160 acre site for the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce.
Elder Chief Joseph's gravesite where I prayed for the return of Chief Joseph's people
2004 Update:
Again this gravesite has reappeared in my life as a few weeks ago I noticed another article about two Nez Perce men who are organizing a Nez Perce opposition to a proposed expensive housing development to be built adjoining this graveyard that holds elder Chief Joseph's remains. The whole area is considered sacred by the Nez Perce. In true synchronicity fashion, noticing that the last name of one of the Nez Perce fellows involved with protecting the cemetery site was the same as my Lakota friend who is going to supply the four buffalo horns for the Peace Altar project in Jerusalem, I contacted him. I offered my services of the ancestral lands, sacred sites Native American run lottery plan that I hope to begin working on again with the Bear River tribe.
In 1995, the Tribal Council of the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria accepted the Headwaters lottery proposal as a means of regaining thousands of acres of ancestral land. The Council appointed me to work with Wayne Moon, Tribal Council Vice-Chairman in organizing the tribe's new Headwaters lottery project. About a year later Don Brenard returned to the rancheria after a stay in Montana and I met him for the first time. We soon discovered that we are spiritual brothers. We had much in common, both being visionary types with similar social change and spiritual visions even though we come different cultural heritages. We have remained close friends.
Don "Sparky" Brenard and me (2006)
In 1996, David, the young son of one of my best friends, knowing of my interest in "Indian stuff" gave me a stone to identify that is very likely an old Indian artifact. David found the stone at the edge of the sea, very close to the spot on the beach where the third Paxcalibur baptism was done (see Step Three in the Story of Paxcalibur chapter). The stone has a design carved deep into it. I took the rock to a local Indian artifacts expert, a teacher of archeology at Humboldt State University. He can't identify the design which is shown here from a rubbing taken off the stone. His best guess is that it represents a "zoomorph", a funny shaped ritual club with two appendages making the thing look a little like an animal with a long neck and tail.
I don't know what this stone and its mysterious symbol mean as far as the Hopi prophesy tablets. It doesn't seem to fit the missing Fire Clan tablet but is mysterious in its own right. Four pieces that do not meet at a central point. My spiritual guidance is telling me that the missing corner piece of the Fire Clan tablet is now a symbol for Four Corners and the mess there with the Navajos, Hopi, and the government. Perhaps whoever is destined to be the real Pahana will be the one to straighten out that mess and make Four Corners whole and holy again for both tribes and all peoples. I think that's why Changing Woman is mixed in with Pahana.
Some time ago I had the privilege of meeting Scott Walking Buffalo who is a Seed Carrier, traveling across the country exchanging pure seeds to keep needed plant species from dying out. As he travels about he also gives the Hopi prophesies information out. Under a blood red full moon I heard for the first time about this missing White Brother going to a wall in the East somewhere as I understand it before returning to Hopi land with the missing tablets. Well, coincidences again for me or signs? I have been planning my own trip to the Holy Land to perform my biomystic rituals* and I again "knew" just what wall is meant. It's the Wailing Wall, part of the old section of Jerusalem and a wall I must pass in performance of my own spiritual ritual.** Then it hit me. Yet another "solution" to where the missing stone tablet piece is located! And this one more fantastic than the two before.
Why of course there would be stone tablets, a piece missing from vanishing White Brother. Missing sacred tablets reappear with symbols carrying the key instructions the Great Spirit gave the Old World people that has in turn given them immense power throughout the world. Only these two missing stone tablets aren't known to bear Hopi symbols but Hebrew writing, the Ten Commandments. Perhaps the missing Hopi tablet corner piece Pahana took with him is gone from the form it was originally made in. Maybe the journey across the Atlantic Sea, the journey through time, the arrival in the Old World transformed the Great Spirit's Hopi symbol code into one that Whites could understand, one tailored made for the Old World's people, one that would give them power to dominate and expand their territory and propel them across the sea to the New World where the two tablet systems and their peoples would meet. In time the people of the two worlds would blend together and harmonize to create instructions for the 5th World. I wrote at the time this vision occurred that on my way back from my pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Jerusalem, I will stop by to see the Hopi elders and give them this vision and maybe a Ten Commandment souvenir tablets from Jerusalem.
* This didn't happen as I flew directly back. Actually I did look in my brief day in Jerusalem but I couldn't find any souvenir Ten Commandment Tablets replicas for sale. It may be considered sacrilegious to sell such religious items although the Holy City bustles like a religious Disneyland without theme-park rides but with hawkers of all manner of over-priced tourist trade souvenirs and cheap dime-store goo-gahs. See the Story of Paxcalibur. I did perform the ritual given in vision that I was to do at the Wailing Wall when I finally completed my vision-quest pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2003. See above link. 2008 update: Now there's a new Wall God is directing me to with Paxcalibur, the apartheid Wall Israelis are building to wall out Palestinians and to wall themselves into Fortress Israel. God wants the Wall destroyed.**
** See Part III of the Story of Paxcalibur
David Little Whiteman accepting the Josephine Bundle
David Little Whiteman, me, and Don "Sparky" Brenard (2011)
