The Atlas of Mysterious Places: The World's Unexplained Sacred Sites, Symbolic Landscapes, Ancient Cities, and Lost Lands 9781555841300, 1555841309

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THE

THE WORLD'S UNEXPLAINED SACRED SIT. SYMBOLIC LANDSCAPES, ANCIENT CITIES AND LOST LANDS EDITED BY JENNIFER WESTWOOD

34.95

THE ATLAS OF

MYSTERIOUS PLACES Over the past 5 ,000 years man has left traces of himself and his civilizations that remain unexplained mysteries to the populations around the world today. Scattered over the planet are curious ruins of temples and tombs, puzzling earth works and inscriptions on the land, saafed

cities,

where civilizations have sought communion with the supernatural, and the tantaliz ing remnants of lost lands with a proud and prosperous past. With a magnetism of extraordinary power, the world's unexplained places have intrigued and fascinated man. From the legends of Atlantis and Eldorado to the Nasca Lines of Peru and the massive pillars at Stonehenge man has sought explanations and answers to the existence of these mysteri ous sites. The Atlas of Mysterious Places begins to unravel the many questions which surround these landmarks of past civilizations. The book analyzes and interprets the evidence in exciting detail with the most up-to-date archaeological evidence, detective work, and with a wealth of tales and folklore. Clear and concise maps pinpoint locations in moun tain, jungle, desert, plain and ocean. Also dis cussed are the many people associated with these sites - from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table to Thorn as Jefferson (who explored the mysterious mounds at Monti sites

cello).

An extensive guide, detailing many more places and their particular mysteries, makes The Atlas of Mysterious Places a comprehen sive reference to the world of unexplained sites, symbols, cities and landscapes.

Front w.ilu




of the

168

city

Khmer people

Knossos: The labyrinthine

66

1

72

174

city

Susa: Glorious city of the Persians

178

The legendary city of Troy

182

The protagonists of Troy

186

Petra:

The

city

of tombs

Mohenjo Daro: The

first

188

planned

city

192

'

1

.

INTRODUCTION --:

\

and in these ancient lands Enchased and lettered as a tomb '.

.

.

And scored with prints ofperished hands, And chronicled with dates of doom .

.

.

such scenes enshrine their experience count as mine.

I trace the lives

And

nomas Hardy The

past has

sacred

sites,

left

"

'

'

CANADA

a legacy of enigmas. All about us are

symbolic landscapes, ancient

lost lands, fascinating alike to scholars

adventurers, curiosity-seekers

and

cities

and

W

V)

and

tourists.

.

Yet

Bighorn Medicine Whee

fire

the imagination and

Chaco Canyon

OCEAN *

ancient peoples throughout the world.

v**^

% \ MEXIC /

They

\

Chichen ,ltza

(

its

ideas about the

scientific

method. The

A TL

ANTIC

OCEAN

'

-----

•

Tenochtitlan

•

Monte Alban

supremacy of 20th-century technology and the

k}0

•

Teotihuacan

thinking and

Great Serpert

Emerald

£

astronomy, engineering, history and intentions of

Mounds

BIythe

>

generate awe. They raise questions about the religion,

dogma of the

S e,>

"u -l

Cahokia*

Such mysterious places

'foolproof

M

U S A

they keep their secrets.

modern

^^ >— fs^jg

still

PACIFIC

challenge

T

Palenqur

-_

NORTH AMERICA

riddles enshrined in the world's mysterious places

undermine, time and again, any condescending

assumptions about the so-called

'primitive' cultures

SOUTH AMERICA

of our ancestors.

:.e_-'-

/

This atlas courts no fixed persuasion and

ElPanecillo-v

^

champions no point of view. The authors have

COLOMBO *

fan Agustm

ECUADOR

V

applied the research expertise of their separate and

BRAZI B

Machu

various scholarly disciplines to explore each

mysterious place and reveal

its

secrets.

As myth and

PACIFIC

Picchu,

Nasca Tiahuanaco

OCEAN

legend intermingle with current archaeological and historical findings,

so rich

tales

have taken form. But * Easter Island

it

is

many of these

clear thai

mysteries will never be

resolved, essentially for lack of conclusive evidence.

Perhaps

it

rhese maps

better thai way.

show

the locations ol the mysterious places featured in this bold type are the subject ol major essays; the remainder described in the Gazetteer (pp. 22U 231 or referred to in the text.

atlas. .iir

is

Places

in

)

''

ARGt'.

RNLANE

NORWAY . Maes

Sibbo*

Howe

Khuslanj^-'tlan^

^

IRELANDNewgrainfc

_ -TTUK

—

vct the whole country Despite subsequent changes and modern development, Glastonbury remains still, in William's words, a heavenly sanctuary on earth'. At the foot of the

Tor

is

The ruins of Glastonbury Abbey stand on hallowed ground. From the wattle-and-daub 'Old Church' traditionally built by Joseph of Arimathea to the large and wealthy abbey destroyed in the 16th century, this site was one of the most sacred in England. Tradition points to this place as Avalon, an island of the dead where King Arthur and St Patrick are said to be buried.

On Chalice Hill, between the Tor and the Abbe} lies the magical Chalice w ell egend .

i

how

die shaft of the well was built Of huge "-tones In the Druids and that later the Chalice tells

.'

(

.

12

.

used

at

the List Supper

thrown into waters

its

rusl

was

coloured

• "

:

.V:

*** i*s ^Slis^swjg

~,?fer..

-

•«

A

s-**'

vHf

*wB

1

*

GLASTONBURY'S TEMPLE OF THE STARS THE LADY OF THE ZODIAC English sculptor Katharine

Maltwood

created a wave of controversy in 1929 with the publication of her book The

Glastonbury Temple of the illustrating the

Stars. While High History ofthe Holy

Grail (written c.1200 in Glastonbury), she claimed to have discovered a group of enormous figures laid out in the Somerset countryside south of Glastonbury. Outlined by the natural contours of rivers, paths, roads, hills, ditches and earthworks, these figures represented the 12 signs of the zodiac. Moreover, Katharine Maltwood was able to link the symbolism of these giants with the history of the Holy Grail and the legends of King Arthur.

Aquarius(Eagle)

Pisces-

THE GLASTONBURY ZODIAC Old as the hills that constitute its effigies and the rivers that partly outline them, the Glastonbury Zodiac

is

spread over

the natural landscape in a great circle

Taurus-

16km (lOmi) across. Early man completed the astrological pattern with roads, canals and earthworks. This

Cancer-

Temple of the

Anes-

(Boat)

Stars

is

a synthesis

astrology, Arthurian legend

and

Gemini-

philosophy. Grasping

its

erf

New Age

significance

requires considerable patience m\^\ imagination, for

it

is

associations of place Leo-

rather than

Arthur wife

is

is

on

based largely on the

names and legends

historical fact

Sagittarius.

Guinevere

Virgo, Merlin the magician

his is

Capricorn, and Sir Lancelot is Leo Glastonbury is located in Aquarius which is represented by a phoenix the New Age rising from the ashes o( the old. Chalice Well is its

I

I

is

In the bird's

beak, the

head and the abbey. Grail Castle

I

Of

THE ZODIAC'S LEADING LIGHT English art teacher Man* Caine

is

the

leading light in the study of the

Glastonbury Zodiac. A member of the London Order of Druids, she has added a wealth of additional detail to the Zodiac's rich symbolism and has filmed the Zodiac,

some

of it from the

main contribution

to

air. Her knowledge of the

Zodiac was the discovery of a Messianic

Gemini figure at Dundon Hill Camp, halfway between the towns of Glastonbury and Somerton. Man- Caine face in the

further contributed to the study of such

earth patterns with her discovery of a similar Zodiac

Thames

around Kingston-on-

in Surrey, England.

15

SHAN:

T'AI

A SACRED CHINESE

MOUNTAIN < Z X u H

7fre temples and shrines built on a mountain in eastern China have long been places ofpilgrimage. Why do the Chinese venerate this mountain''' Wlyat gods have their sanctuaries there? Why is T'ai Shan important to the Taoist faith?

The revered mountain of T'ai Shan watches over

the wide flood Yellow River, the birthplace of Chinese civilization. At the dawn of the Chinese Empire, the mountain stood at the boundary between the known and the unknown, between the world of taxes, flood control works, labour and death, and the wild world of Shantung to the east. In Shantung lived magicians who studied the secrets of eternal life and who visited the immortals dwelling on the islands of the eastern sea. The early Han peoples worshipped nature, honouring rivers and mountains among their many gods. T'ai Shan has been plain of the

The made

venerated since those times. traditionally believed to

have

legendary Emperor Shun the great sacrifices to

is

Heaven

Since ancient times, pilgrims have made their way up the thousands of steps leading to the temple of the Jade Emperor at the summit of T'ai Shan. China's most sacred mountain. has been revered for centuries by followers of both the Buddhist and the Taoist faiths, and the many deities that inhabit its stony slopes have been credited with controlling man's It

fate

on

earth. Pilgrims start the

6 or ~ hour ascent in the evening and, passing through the South Gate of Heaven in the early hours of the morning, witness the special aim of their journey - the spectacular rising of the sun over the surrounding mountains.

Shan 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. The who conquered and then united the Warring States, came to worship at T'ai Shan in 219 bc. Emperor Wu Ti made the pilgrimage to the mountain for the great sacrifices in 110 bc. And through the centuries, imperial patronage continued: T'ai Shan was honoured as Equal of Heaven by an 11th-century Sung Emperor and presented with a magnificent and magical slab of jade by the Emperor Chien Lung in 1736. But T'ai Shan has never been linked with the faith of official China, the teachings of Confucius. It is, in fact, the most sacred of the five mountains of Taoism, faith of the magician and the alchemist, the outsider and the rebel.

and Earth first

at T'ai

Ch'in Emperor,

Rudiments of the Taoist Taoism

is

at

religions. In the 4th

Way taught by Lao Tzu, 'Those who know do not speak,

Han peoples

the father of Taoism,

it

is

said:

who

speak do not know.' The Taoist ethic was individualist and democratic, based on the return to the small, self governing communities of free individuals which Taoists believed existed in former times. They regarded strife as the result of failing to act in accordance with the line nature of

human

the Tao.

stresses the receptive, passive

nature. In

The

reality,

those

Chinese philosophy,

and observing aspect of

this

is

the

j'///

early Taoists refused to distinguish

associated with the 16

new Buddhist

faith.

Located in the homeland Confucius, the sacred Ta mountain height o\

Shan ,524m (5,0

ot T'ai 1

rises to a 1

above the plain of the Yellow River in China's eastern province of Shantung, lime and again. Taoist rebels have swept out o( Shantung's hills, ii was at the toot ot'T'ai Shan that the B killed a foreign

thai

missionary in

began -^ uprising shook the world ind so

or feminine

between higher' and 'lower' in the human and animal worlds, but those instead to observe ami seek the essential unity and harmony in all things. As a result they became skilled in alchemy and divination. As lime passed. Taoism became increasingly identified with magical and mysterious popular culls. Indeed, in the minds of most people, the Taoist pantheon was confused with the gods and demons force.

SHANTUNG

faith

century bc, the lands of the

the

Taoism

Al

once the most austere and the most earthy of

were torn by bitter warfare. Peace, thought the first Taoists, could be found only by abandoning material ambitions and seeking instead to observe and understand the inner and outer worlds.

Of

.f

&JL

*

—

T'AI

SHAN: A SACRED CHINESE

Worshipping a multitude of gods When climbing the 7,000 steps of T'ai

MOUNTAIN

The ancient Shan, from the town of

Tai-an to the Temple of the Jade Emperor at its peak, the visitor encounters temples, groves of cypress and pine, waterfalls and cascades. In the 1930s, a Western traveller reported that at the time of the annual pilgrimage between February and May, 10,000 people climbed T'ai Shan daily, some making the six-hour ascent

on

traditionally the best time for

such

sacrifices,

placate',

their knees.

At the foot of T'ai Shan

is

the

Temple of the Peak, dedicated

to

God

with the 'Judge of the Dead'. Two temples passed on the ascent are dedicated to female dei-

made to

or bribe, the

believed to

of the Mountain, where a magnificently painted Main Hall depicts a procession in his honour. After the coming of Buddhism in the 4th century ad, this god came to be identified the

ritual of burning paper 'money' is still observed by some pilgrims today, in wayside shrines on the slopes of T'ai Shan. The Qing Ming festival in spring is special

officials

manage the

underworld. Since China has been (and still is) much concerned with bureaucracy, it was thought wise to make such offerings in order to gain a

smoother

final

journey.

Mu Chi, and the Goddess of has a third eye, many arms and perhaps originated in India. Her palace is the constellation, Ursa Major, which eternally circles the Pole Star. Further evidence of ties:

the

Empress of the West, Wang

the North Star, Tai Mu. Tai

the strong link with

place Sutra.

is

the huge

flat

Mu

Buddhism of this essentially Taoist holy rock upon which is carved the Diamond

Most honoured among the Chinese of

scriptures, this sutra teaches that everything

The

last

all

the Buddhist

is illusion.

steep ascent to the summit brings the pilgrim through

the South Gate of Heaven to the temple dedicated to the

Daughter of the Mountain, Pi Hsia Yuan Chun, the Goddess of the Dawn. She is said to be the lady to whom T'ai Shan first belonged. The most important temple on the summit is dedicated to the Jade Emperor, Yu Huang, who was honoured as the supreme deity by the Sung Emperor Chen Tsung about 1,000 years ago. The Jade Emperor has maintained first place in the Taoist pantheon ever since and is Lord of Time Present.

A centre of living energy From

the summit of T'ai Shan the view

is

spectacular,

encom-

passing to the north the course of the Yellow River and to the

south the province where the great philosopher Confucius was born in 551 bc. Together with his disciple Mencius, who was also born in the province, Confucius taught the philosophy that was to guide the government of China for 2,000 years. The ethics of Taoism may not have been needed to help with government, but the services of Taoist experts were required to fulfil correct obligations to people's ancestors. Feng-Shui, the understanding of 'wind and water', was needed to determine the most favourable location for ancestral graves. The Taoists, recognizing the earth as a living organism filled with living energy, were skilled in such matters. The sacred places of Taoism were all chosen as centres of living energy, and T'ai Shan, the most exceptional and mysterious of such centres, draws all powers to itself. Dozens of other temples, where prayers may be offered for fertility, good fortune in business, long life or knowledge of the future, line the path up T'ai Shan. The deities honoured in the temples represent every traditional religion in China, even back to the mountain god of earliest times. Hut to the Taoist, this is not strange, merely natural. No single answer to the deepest questions will be true, lor truth must be found in the variety of nature and human experience. No one god will suffice for all petitions. Today, in Communist china, the gods have departed from T'ai Shan. There are few pilgrims. Tourists come to marvel at the great ascent, the gates, temples, carvings, murals and the jade and bronze, the wood, water and stone, the winds themselves bent to the mysterious purposes ol 18

men and women.

According to legend,

Lao

Tzu was the mystical founder Taoism ,m*J

4S -.•;' '•

S^

%e

..-:•"

3s ..it

jST^M

*

THE SYMBOLISM OF CHARTRES Chartres Cathedral

is

one of the most enigmatic in

the world.

Who built it and why? Wlmt is so special about the site? Where and how did the architects find the knowledge to construct it?

W CL.

The town of Chartres stands beside plain about

90km (56mi) southwest

the River Eure in a

of Paris.

Its

cathedral

fertile is

one

of the most venerated and mysterious of all, not least because of the site on which it stands. Even before the Gauls and Celts thrived in this part of Europe, builders who constructed the megalithic circles such as Stonehenge had been at work here, constructing a dolmen and a well within a mound. The dolmen, two or three sturdy unhewn stones supporting a large flattish boulder, created a sheltered

man

chamber

chamber

tall

A church or cathedral

has of Chartres for nearly 1 ,500 years. The present cathedral is the sixth building to be erected there. The Duke of Aquitania set fire to the first

Stood on the

hill

in ad 743, and the Danes burned the second in 858. The third and fourth churches were also engulfed by flames in 962 and 1020 respectively; and the first cathedral was destroyed by

church

fire in

1194.

enough

thought to house a point of power, an important and fertile source of energy eman ating from the earth. Such telluric currents ebbed and flowed with the seasons, revitalizing all who came into contact with for a

to pass through. This

is

them. Thus the mound, the well and the dolmen

became revered

as holy ground.

Gaul and Britain, established and the site became a centre for Druidic teaching. The mound and dolmen took on a new significance. For when a prophetic vision informed the Druids that a virgin would give birth to a child, they carved from a pear tree an image of this virgin, with the infant seated on her knee. The Druids placed this statue beside the well and the power point within the dolmen and called her The Virgin Under The Earth. The inscrip tion was later changed to Virgini pariturae, the Virgin who will Liter the Druids, Celtic priests of

a college at Chartres

give birth to a child.

When

the

first

Christians

came

to Chartres in the 3rd century

ad they saw the carving of the Virgin, by now blackened with age and placed in a grotto, and worshipped her as the Black Virgin. The church they built on the site was dedicated to Our Lady, as were all the succeeding churches and cathedrals. They called her resting place 'The Druid's Grotto' and set it in the church crypt, and

for

no known reason they

English Channel

^Amiens

called the well beside her the Well

of the Strong.

There were six churches in all; the first live were destroyed by but each time a new one arose to celebrate the faith and boundless energy of pilgrims, townsfolk, builders and architects. Yet the construction of the sixth and final Chartres, the Gothic athedral that stands today, is shrouded in mystery. No coherent

lire

i

account exists of the planning or erection of one of the world's greatest architectural masterpieces.

Where was

the knowledge found to build

it?

fragments of information a remarkable story emerges. It begins with Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian Order ol monks, who inspired nine knights oi France to abandon their worldly possessions and make a quest for secrets believed buried in the loly of lolies beneath the ruins of

From

various

I

1

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Thej became known as the Knights Templar and spent nearrj ten years in the Holy Land,

Chartres is one of SO huge Gothic monuments built in France in the hundred years after the Knights

Templar

returned from the Holy land in 1_'S li is also one of several cathedrals of that period dedicated to the Virgin and bearing the name Notre Dame rhe others include Rouen, Amiens. Reims. BayCUX, uvu\ 1

1

.ux\

Laon

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THE SYMBOLISM OF CHARTRES

1 128 as mysteriously as they had left. Gothic architecture began to flower at this time, yet no one knows where and when the seed was sown. Did the Knights Templar discover the key to some arcane knowledge? Did they return to France with secrets which they then put into practice with the help of the Cistercians? Was the Gothic style, of which Chart res is among the finest blooms, the direct result of the

returning to France in

Templars' quest? Controversial claims have been truth

is

elusive. Is

made

for

and

against, but the

possible the Knights unearthed the remains

it

of Moses' Ark of the Covenant or the secrets stored within it namely, the Divine Law governing Number, Weight and Measure? Many years of decipherment by the Cistercian Order's best scholars

and

would have been needed

to

understand such secrets

the principles of sacred geometry

distil

encoded within

them. Whatever the nature of their discovery it seems certain that when the fire destroyed most of the first Chartres cathedral in 194 (but not the Virgin's tunic), the Cistercians were informed enough to put the principles of sacred engineering into practice. 1

Within 30 years masons, glaziers, sculptors, geometers, astronomers and others had created a sacred shrine so incredible that few people entering it fail to be moved. For its proportions, orientation, position and symbolism have all been designed to alert the psyche and refresh the spirit. The sacred centre of the cathedral lies between the second and third bays of the choir and is the position of the original altar until the latter was moved in the l6th century. Lying some 37m (131ft) below this point is the level of water in the well. Towering the same distance above it is the pinnacle of the Gothic vault where the

crossed ogives, the pointed arches characteristic of Gothic archi tecture, are so perfectly proportioned they seem to bear no weight at all.

Why was Chartres a centre for pilgrims? The cathedral is a place of spiritual action. It is said to possess the power to transform men, to transmute them into a higher spiri tual state, just as the alchemists would transmute base metal into gold. Pilgrims arriving at the Great West Door, the threshold of the cathedral, found they stood more upright with their heads upraised. For the interior design of the cathedral seems to create a definite uplifting effect on the body, as if to prepare it for the telluric emanations from below and divine inspiration from above. As Louis Charpentier, the French investigator of Chartres' mysteries, says: physiologically, telluric and other currents can only enter man via a vertebral column that is straight and vertical. Man can only move to a higher state by standing upright.' The pilgrim would progress shoeless up the nave to the labyr inth, a maze 13m (42.5ft) across and set out in the flagstones of ',

.

the floor.

.

Dancing around and around

until

reaching the centre, a

commonly seen at each of the four annual Virgin fairs, the pilgrim became more and more sensitive to the power accumuritual

chamber. middle point where the transepts cross the nave,

lated in the vast cathedral

Moving

to the

the pilgrim

was supposed

to receive the full alchemical force

from the luminous light emanating from the three stained glass rose windows. If the pilgrim experienced the entire sensuous ness of the cathedral, would be because the body's senses had apprehended all the musical and geometrical proportions, and all the numbers and lines expressed in the building's interior For the pilgrim came not to worship Our Lady the Virgin, nor to kneel in obedience, but rather lo Iuk\ awareness through her, to replenish spiritual energy and refresh the soul. it

i

>

Chartres Cathedral has many small mysteries, not least the purpose ot the large rectangular flagstone, set aslant to the other

stones in the west aisle of the south transept. At midday on the summer solstice, a ray of sunshine streams through a clear pane of glass in the stained glass window of St Apollinaire

and illuminates exactly the conspicuous tenon on the flagstone. The arrangement

is

evidently a deliberate collaboration between

astronomer, geometer, glazier

and stonemason. The groundplan of Chartres (below) has probably been designed according to

pn ip< >rtions which obey the law of the Golden Number. 1.618. Distances between pillars, and the lengths of the nave.

and the choir, are multiples of the Golden transepts

Number.

all

v%C

.

.

-w. -3^» V*.

THE POWERS BEHIND CHARTRES THE SACRED VIRGIN is renowned for its windows and for its veneration of the Virgin Man-. The two

Chartres Cathedral

t-

stained glass

reputations

come

together in a

remarkable 12th-century figure window, the Notre Dame de-la Belle-Verriere, Our Lady of the Beautiful Glass. Today the centrepiece of a large

window

in the

choir, the larger-than-life Virgin sits

on

throne with the young Jesus on her

lap.

a

Together with the tunic worn by Mary at which had been donated by Charlemagne's grandson in 876, the window miraculously escaped the fire of 1 194 which destroyed the first cathedral.

•