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 twenty-first 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. According to their myths: "The first world was destroyed, as a punishment
for human misdemeanours, by an all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second
world ended when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with
ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the fourth. Its fate will
depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in accordance with the Creator’s plans." I had
come to Arizona to see whether the Hopi thought we were behaving in accordance with the Creator’s
plans…The end of the world. The desolate wind, blowing across the high plains, shook and rattled
the sides of the trailer-home we sat in. Beside me was my wife Santha, who’d been everywhere with me,
sharing the risks and the adventures, sharing the highs and the lows. Sitting across from us was our
friend Ed Ponist, a medical-surgical nurse from Lansing, Michigan. A few years previously Ed had
worked on the Hopi reservation for a while, and it was thanks to his contacts that we were now here.
On my right was Paul Sifki, a ninety-six-year-old Hopi elder of the Spider clan, and a leading
spokesman of the traditions of his people. Beside him was his grand-daughter Melza Sifki, a handsome
middle-aged woman who had offered to translate. ‘I have heard,’ I said, ‘that the
Hopi believe the end of the world is coming. Is this true?’ Paul Sifki was
a small, wizened man, nut-brown in colour, dressed in jeans and a cambric shirt. Throughout
our conversation he never once looked at me, but gazed intently ahead, as though he were
searching for a familiar face in a distant crowd. Melza put my question to him and a moment
later translated her grandfather’s reply: ‘He says, “why do you want to know”?’ I explained that there were many reasons. The
most important was that I felt a sense of urgency: ‘My research has convinced me,’ I said, ‘that
there was an advanced civilization – long, long ago – that was destroyed
in a terrible cataclysm. I fear that our own civilization may be
destroyed by a similar cataclysm …’ There followed a long exchange
in Hopi, then this translation: ‘My grandfather said that when he was a
child, in the 1900s, there was a star that exploded – a star that had been up there in
the sky for a long while … And he went to his own grandfather and asked him to explain the
meaning of this sign. His grandfather replied: “This is the way our world will end – engulfed
in flames … If people do not change their ways then the spirit that takes care of the world
will become so frustrated with us that he will punish the world with flames and it will
end just like that star ended.” That was what his grandfather said to him – that the earth
would explode just like that exploding star …’ ‘So,’ I summarised, ‘the feeling
is that this world will end in fire … And having viewed the world
for the past ninety years, does your grandfather believe that the behaviour
of mankind has improved or worsened?’ ‘He says it has not improved,’ Melza
replied. ‘We’re getting worse.’ ‘So in his opinion, then, the end is coming?’ ‘He said that the signs are already there
to be seen … He said that nowadays nothing but the wind blows and that all we do is
have a weapon pointed at one another. That shows how far apart we have drifted and
how we feel towards each other now. There are no values any more – none at all
– and people live any way they want, without morals or laws. These are
the signs that the time has come …’ Melza paused in her translation, then added
on her own account: ‘This terrible wind. It dries things out. It brings no moisture.
The way we see it, this kind of climate is a consequence of how we’re living today
– not just us, but your people as well.’ I noticed that her eyes had filled with tears
while she was talking. ‘I have a cornfield,’ she continued, ‘that’s really dry. And I look
up into the sky and try to pray for rain, but there is no rain, no clouds even… When
we’re like this we don’t even know who we are.’ There was a long moment of silence
and the wind rocked the trailer, blowing hard and steady across the mesa as evening
fell around us. I said quietly, ‘Please ask your grandfather if he thinks that anything can now be
done for the Hopi and for the rest of mankind?’ ‘The only thing he knows,’ Melza replied when
she had heard his answer, ‘is that so long as the Hopi do not abandon their traditions
they may be able to help themselves and to help others. They have to hold on to what they
believed in the past. They have to preserve their memories. These are the most important things
… But my grandfather wants to tell you also, and for you to understand, that this
earth is the work of an intelligent being, a spirit – a creative and intelligent spirit
that has designed everything to be the way it is. My grandfather says that nothing is
here just by chance, that nothing happens by accident – whether good or bad – and that there
is a reason for everything that takes place …’ When human beings from around the globe,
and from many different cultures, share a powerful and overwhelming intuition
that a cataclysm is approaching, we are within our rights to ignore them. And
when the voices of our distant ancestors, descending to us through myths and sacred
architecture, speak to us of the physical obliteration of a great civilization in
remote antiquity (and tell us that our own civilization is in jeopardy), we are
entitled, if we wish, to stop our ears … So it was, the Bible says, in the antediluvian
world: ‘For in those days, before the Flood, people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking
husbands, right up to the moment that Noah went into the Ark, and they suspected nothing
till the flood came and swept all away.’ In the same manner it has been prophesied that
the next global destruction will fall upon us suddenly ‘at an hour we do not suspect, like
lightning striking in the east and flashing far into the west … The sun will be darkened,
the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of heaven
will be shaken … Then of two men in the fields, one is taken, one left; and of two women at the
millstone grinding, one is taken, one left …’ What has happened before can happen again.
What has been done before can be done again. And perhaps there is, indeed,
nothing new under the sun … Thanks for tuning in to this episode of After
Skool. In my view, this channel is doing an important job, offering a new and engaging way to
explore complex and challenging ideas check out the other offerings here. You won't be
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