The people with sick minds

 Dead Babies Used for Good Luck Charms 

In November of 2014 arrest warrants were issued for Ryan MacPherson and Daniel Tanner, the producers of Bumfights, for allegedly attempting to ship dead baby body parts into the United States from Thailand.373 The two men made millions of dollars from their exploitative DVD series in the early 2000’s which consists of homeless men beating each other and doing other self-destructive acts including smoking crack and pulling out their own teeth with pliers on camera. The producers were charged with multiple felonies and sued civilly for exploiting the intoxicated homeless men.374

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that people with such sick minds who enjoyed watching poor homeless men torture each other would also be interested in owning dead babies. A similar discovery was made just a few years earlier when six roasted dead babies covered in gold were discovered in a suitcase in Bangkok, Thailand.375 Police reported the bodies were from children between seven months and two-years-old and are purchased for over $6,500 each by wealthy men who use them in black magic rituals.376 Lieutenant colonel Kittima Thongchai, the police officer who made the arrest, told the BBC, “Some believers keep fetuses and bodies of babies wrapped in gold leaf at home to bring good luck. They believe that young babies and fetuses have good spirit.”377 It was rumored that Michael Jackson wanted to buy bones of the Elephant Man and a former bandmate of Marilyn Manson named Stephen Bier alleged in a lawsuit that Manson had purchased masks made out of human skin from Africa and a skeleton of a 4-year-old child from China.378 One can only imagine what kind of collectibles some Hollywood elite are hiding in their homes that nobody knows about.

(...)

A film maker named Amy Berg, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for her documentary Deliver Us From Evil which exposed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, was commissioned to investigate Corey Feldman’s claims of high-powered pedophiles in Hollywood and produced a documentary titled Open Secret about pedophile producers who are alleged to have held organized parties at luxurious mansions where they were said to have enticed young boys to go skinny dipping and “pull away the better-looking younger kids and keep them for their own after-party.”401

The film focuses on several cases including an Internet company in the late 1990s called Digital Entertainment Network and its founder Marc Collins-Rector [a convicted sex offender] and his boyfriend Chad Shackley who were said to have held lavish alcohol and drug-fueled pool parties at their 12,000-square foot mansion allegedly to entice underage teenage boys into sex with them and their other gay friends.402 Hollywood Talent manger Martin Weiss who was charged with eight felony counts of child molesting pleaded no contest to committing lewd acts on a child he represented in 2012.403

Another talent manger named Bob Villard, who represented Leonardo DiCaprio when he was young, also pled no contest to molesting a 13-year-old boy and was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005.404

“People like this are predators who prey on little kids who want to be the next Justin Bieber—and they’re told, ‘That’s what’s done, this is all normal in the industry,’” said the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who prosecuted Villard.405 A 2012 Los Angeles Times article noted that, “At least a dozen child molestation and child pornography prosecutions since [the year] 2000 have involved actors, managers, production assistants and others in the entertainment industry.”406

Just before the film X-Men: Days of Future Past was released in the summer of 2014, the director Brian Singer was sued by a man named Michael Egan III who claimed Singer abused him years earlier when he was a teen.407 Eagan claimed that another top TV producer and a former Disney executive abused him as well.408 He later dropped his lawsuit and the allegations were said to be false, but for some, a cloud of suspicion remained.409

It’s not just powerful Hollywood executives and talent agents who are plagued by pedophile allegations—some prominent politicians have faced the same claims. In 1989 the front page headline of the Washington Times read “Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush” and blew the lid of a gay call boy ring operating in D.C. that catered to elite clients.410 The man running the ring was a lobbyist named Craig Spence who actually was able to bring several teenage boys on a midnight tour of the White House because of his connections in D.C. 

Similar allegations have been made about supposed organized elite pedophiles abusing children inside the Bohemian Grove around this same time in the late 1980s.411 Former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp, who is also an attorney, wrote a book in 1992 about what he called The Franklin Cover-Up and alleges that a group of powerful pedophiles were sexually abusing children inside the Bohemian Grove and even murdering them afterwards in satanic rituals.412

The former director of the CIA, Bill Colby, told DeCamp to, “Get as far away from this thing as you can. Forget you ever saw it or know it, heard it or anything else.”413 Colby later drowned in a strange “canoeing accident,” but the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death lead many to believe he was murdered because of his acknowledgement of an elite sex magic ring operating within the government.414

These instances beg the question—how in the world could anyone commit these kinds of crimes, let alone how could groups of men in positions of power agree to allow—and participate together—in such horrific, perverted and evil acts? One would assume that if any normal person were asked by one of their friends if they wanted to abuse a child with them, they would call the police! The answer to this difficult question may be found in what’s called sex magic (or magick)—something that is considered to be one of the highest guarded secrets of certain secret societies and hidden within the capstone of the of the Illuminati pyramid. 

Evidence indicates that certain secret societies believe that sexually abusing children gives them supernatural powers. The idea is apparently that by engaging in such cruel, unnatural and perverted acts, it floods the brain with some kind of hormones that supposedly gives the perpetrator advanced metaphysical or manifestation abilities. It is believed that by incorporating sexual activities into esoteric rituals, it somehow dramatically multiplies the practitioner’s ability to consciously alter the fabric of reality, giving them God-like “magical” powers. 

While not exactly headline news or common knowledge, such beliefs are actually well documented. In parts of Africa today, men believe that raping babies is a ‘cure’ for AIDS.415 In the year 2000 there were more than 67,000 reported cases of rape and sexual assault against children in South Africa alone.416 Many African men also believe that raping an albino woman cures AIDS as well, or think it gives them magical power.417 Such twisted and sadistic beliefs are not just something found in remote regions of third world countries. 

The singer of a fairly popular heavy metal band in the United Kingdom called Lostprophets was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison in 2013 for sexually abusing babies in black magic rituals.418 What’s even more disturbing is several women willingly handed over their infants to Watkins knowing what he was going to do to them. The thirty-six-year-old singer was a fan of Aleister Crowley—who wrote instructions in his 1929 book titled Magick: In Theory and Practice about how Satanists can supposedly access metaphysical powers by sacrificing children in black magic rituals.419

In the chapter on blood sacrifices, Crowley wrote, “For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.”420Some of Crowley’s other writings also suggest murdering children to receive magic power. He claims his Book of the Law (published in 1904) was dictated to him by a demon that possessed his wife while they were on their honeymoon in Egypt. He wrote down what the demon was telling him which includes statements like, “Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong, this is our law and the joy of the world.”421 

Other passages of his supposed ‘divinely inspired’ text read, “Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords and with spears, is the command…let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat! Sacrifice cattle, little and big, after a child.”422 

It continues, “Damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them! The best blood is of the moon, monthly, then the fresh blood of a child.”423 The demonic entity voicing its instructions finally said, “I am in a secret fourfold word, the blasphemy against all gods of men. Curse them! Curse them! Curse them! With my Hawk’s head I peck at the eyes of Jesus as he hangs upon the cross.”424 Crowley’s personal secretary and protégé, Israel Regardie, believed that, “certain sex magick techniques could be used by advanced students to incarnate ‘spiritual’ energies on the physical place, as well as making important shifts in the orientation of the Psyche and the Universe. In other words, if these methods were used properly, couples could bring into the world ‘divine’ forces in the children they generated, who could influence the future of the race.”425 

Crowley revealed in his autobiography that the O.T.O., the Ordo Templi Orientis fraternity, “is in possession of one supreme secret. The whole of its system at the time when I became an initiate of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis was directed towards communicating to its members, by progressively plain hints, this all-important instruction. I personally believe that if this secret, which is a scientific secret, were perfectly understood, as it is not even by me after more than twelve years’ almost constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice…I make these remarks with absolute confidence, for even the insignificant approaches that I have been able to make towards the sanctuaries of this secret have shown me that the relations between phenomena are infinitely more complex than the wildest philosophers have ever imagined, and that the old proverb ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’ needs no caveat.”426 Former members of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the group that uses Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law as their Bible, have admitted that the 11th degree is dedicated to homosexual sex magick.427 Former OTO member Jason Miller revealed in his book on sex magick, that, “the OTO’s 11th degree is largely dedicated to the cultivation of sperm in the anus,” and goes on to say that according to Crowley’s diaries, “In some writings the point seems to be to cultivate the sperm alone, but in others it seems to be to combine it with blood that seeps in from tearing in the anus and remnants of feces. In this theory the blood attracts the demons and the sperm brings them to life.”428

While the O.T.O. vigorously denies they are involved in, or teach any kind of sex magic involving child abuse and insist their sex magic teachings strictly involve consenting adults, many still believe that perverted splinter groups of Freemasons and other occult fraternities have embraced child-abusing practices and use them as an initiation into certain levels of their hierarchies. This is really the only plausible explanation for why organized groups of child abusers could possibly come into existence. 

If any normal person was asked to even consider participating in such horrific acts, they would undoubtedly call the police, but if a small group of powerful men have secretly incrementally delved deeper and deeper into darker black magic activities with the belief that they will gain access to supernatural forces which will grant them unimaginable power, then these allegations of organized pedophile rings move far beyond just a “conspiracy theory” into something that most likely exists. 

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that organized ritual child abuse is carried out by a network of powerful perpetrators, and not just in isolated instances. In fact, the London Guardian reported that news agencies in England had been gagged by the government in the 1980s and prevented from reporting on powerful members of the British government who were suspected of being involved in an elite pedophile ring.429

The Guardian article reads in part, “Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices—warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security—when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984. One executive said he had been accosted in his office by 15 uniformed and two non-uniformed police over a dossier on Westminster pedophiles passed to him by the former Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle.”430It continues, “The other said that his newspaper had received a D-notice [similar to a national security letter in America] when a reporter sought to write about a police investigation into Elm Guest House, in southwest London, where a group of high-profile pedophiles was said to have operated and may have killed a child.”431

Two retired Scotland Yard detectives came forward and said that a VIP network of politicians sexually abused and murdered young boys at parties but they were powerless to further investigate or arrest them because they were part of what were called The Untouchables.432 The officers named names, including Cyril Smith, a popular member of the British Parliament who died in 2010. 

Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood said in a statement, “Although Smith cannot be charged or convicted posthumously, from the overwhelming evidence we have it is right and proper we should publicly recognize that young boys were sexually and physically abused.”433 One hundred and forty-four different complains had been made against Smith over the years, but all attempts to prosecute him were blocked.434 In the 1970s a police file on Cyril Smith had been supposedly “lost,” but special branch officer Tony Robinson of the Lancashire Police said the documents were actually seized by MI5, the British equivalent of America’s FBI.435

A major star on the BBC [the British Broadcasting Corporation] named Jimmy Savile is believed to have abused hundreds of children, some as young as two-years-old, and allegedly had sex with dead bodies too, according to reports in the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets.436

While not much has been done to investigate these kinds of Illuminati crimes in America, the British police have launched several investigations into a secret society of high-powered pedophiles in the British government. Operation Fairbank was started in 2012,437 followed up by Operation Fernbridge in 2013,438 and Operation Midland in 2014,439 which are all serious inquiries into these kinds of activities. Prominent people in Europe said to have engaged in such heinous crimes include Cyril Smith, Antony Blunt, Sir Peter Hayman, Colin Peters, Sinn Fein, and other politicians, judges, and pop stars.440

South Park, the foul mouthed adult cartoon has been known for skewering public figures, religious groups and political ideologies with their anything goes no-holds-barred raunchy satire. While it’s mostly just mindless entertainment, sometimes the show contains some blistering truths and serious social commentary.441 One of the more bizarre episodes was about a group of men called the “Super Adventure Club” which was depicted as an international organization of pedophiles who travel the world having sex with young boys because they believe that it gives them magical power.442 In the episode, the leader of the club explains, “Our club offers hope. Do you think we go around the world molesting children because it feels really good? No. Our club has a message and a secret that explains the mysteries of life.”443

The leader goes on to reveal the history of their club, saying their founder (who he called William P. Finius) was a pedophile who happened to discover the secret of sex magic while he was abusing children. The character says, “You see, after having sex with all those children, Finius realized that molesting all those kids had made him immortal. He discovered that children have things called marlocks in their bodies and when an adult has sex with a child, the marlocks implode feeding the adult’s receptor cavity with energy that causes immortality.”444 The show’s creators (writers and voices) Trey Parker and Matt Stone appear to have heard whispers around Hollywood about sex magic, and while most of the audience thought the episode was just one big sick joke, the scary reality is the premise of the show is based on this obscure, perverted esoteric occult practice. Just like in previous South Park episodes when the show was making fun of Scientology and Mormons, this episode included a banner on the bottom of the screen reading, “This is what the Super Adventure Club actually believes.”

A few years ago a paparazzi working for TMZ, the popular celebrity stalking website, bumped into the former bassist from the Scorpions, a popular rock band from the 1980s, and asked him if he would be attending any fetish parties while in Germany, which are apparently very popular in Berlin. Ralph Rieckermann’s answer stunned the TMZ staff. “I went to one, one time—I seen some really bad shit,” he started.445 When the TMZ cameraman asks, “Was it a donkey show?” Rieckermann responds saying “No, they actually, I think, it’s…they actually killed people there and stuff. They pay up to $100,000 to see people get…” The cameraman finished his sentence for him…“executed?”

“I’m not kidding,” Rieckermann continues. “I went to another one where literally I saw like…the grossest…I wanted to throw up.” The video then cut back to the TMZ studio to get reactions from the staff. “He is dead serious. He’s not laughing, there’s not a smile on his face,” one man comments. Another says, “I’m disgusted right now.” Harvey Levin, the head of TMZ, looked absolutely horrified, and said he was shocked and just shook his head. 

When I made a YouTube video about Rieckermann’s statements it immediately went viral, getting ten times as many views as TMZ’s original interview. Rieckermann himself then caught wind that the story was spreading around the Internet like wildfire, which prompted him to make a public statement to clarify what he had said to TMZ. 

He posted a video on YouTube saying he wanted to clarify his statements that he made in the TMZ interview, and he went on to say that he did not personally witness anyone getting killed at a party, but said when he was at a party, the host (and owner of the estate) gave him a tour of the house which included various bondage/sadomasochism/ fetish rooms where Rieckermann says the host told him that he and his friends sometimes murder people for fun during special events.446 Rieckermann emphasizes that he did not witness anyone get killed, but did appear to believe what the host told him was true. He did not say whether or not he reported the murder scenes to authorities, but it’s most likely he just looked the other way. 

It should not be surprising to find that various underground subcultures or secret societies enjoy murdering people for fun during satanic rituals or fetish parties. Tens of millions of people enjoy watching the latest horror films and find it entertaining to watch people getting tortured and mutilated, and it’s certainly reasonable to believe that a fairly large number of people like to go beyond just watching simulated murders in movies, and witness actual killings with their own eyes, or even participate in murders themselves. 

In 2005 the film Hostel was produced by horror director Eli Roth which is about a black market business in Europe where wealthy men pay large amounts of money to torture and kill people who are kidnapped for this very purpose. The popular Faces of Death series shows that many people’s appetites for murder aren’t satisfied by fictional murder scenes and instead they crave to see actual murders—so again—it shouldn’t be surprising to learn of organized snuff parties happening in extreme segments of the sadomasochism community, fringe satanic secret societies, or at the highest levels of the Illuminati.

Illuminati in Hollywood 

About the Author

Mark Dice is a media analyst, author, and political activist who, in an entertaining and educational way, gets people to question our celebrity obsessed culture and the role the mainstream media and elite secret societies play in shaping our lives.

Mark’s YouTube channel has received over 85 million views and his viral videos have been mentioned on ABC’s The View, the Fox News Channel, CNN, the Drudge Report, TMZ, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and other media outlets around the world.He has been featured on various television shows including the History Channel’s Decoded and America’s Book of Secrets, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, Secret Societies of Hollywood on E! Channel, America Declassified on the Travel Channel, and is a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM, The Alex Jones Show, and more.

Mark Dice is the author of several popular books on secret societies and conspiracies, including The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction, Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True, The New World Order, Facts & Fiction, The Resistance Manifesto, Illuminati in the Music Industry, and Inside the Illuminati, which are all available in paperback on Amazon.com or e-book on Kindle, iBooks, Nook or Google Play. 

While much of Mark’s work confirms the existence and continued operation of the Illuminati today, he is also dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories and hoaxes and separating the facts from the fiction; hence the “Facts & Fiction” subtitle for several of his books. 

While having respect for all authentic religions and belief systems, Mark Dice is a Christian and holds a bachelors degree in communication from California State University. He lives in San Diego, California.

He enjoys causing trouble for the New World Order, exposing corrupt scumbag politicians, and pointing out Big Brother’s prying eyes. The term “fighting the New World Order” is used by Mark to describe some of his activities, and refers to his and others’ resistance and opposition (The Resistance) to the overall system of political corruption, illegal wars, elite secret societies, mainstream media, Big Brother and privacy issues; as well as various economic and social issues. This Resistance involves self-improvement, self-sufficiency, personal responsibility and spiritual growth.

Normalizing Sexual Perversion

 

The Meaning of Perversion 

 Since the world is controlled by a satanic cult, the meaning of the word "perversion" is naturally obscured. 

 Perversion is anything that deviates from what is natural and healthy. The word "perverse" is synonymous with "sick." 

 For the last 100 years or more, the Illuminati has sold sex for its own sake under the labels of "free love" and "sexual liberation." 

 Satanists invert sick and healthy. Perversion is sold as "liberation." 

 Next to survival, reproduction is our most powerful natural instinct. The purpose of sex is to ensure the survival of the species and the continuity of civilization. To turn it into an end in itself, for sensual pleasure, is a perversion. 

 Female sex appeal is mostly a function of fertility. After menopause, women are rarely sexually attractive to males. Male sexual attraction is largely based on natural reproductive programming. 

 In a healthy society, sexual intercourse would be confined to marriage or at least to long-term committed relationships. Thus, sexual energy would strengthen the marriage bond and provide a firm foundation for family. Women want to be desired exclusively rather than used and discarded like kleenex . 

 "Sexual liberation," on the other hand, weakens the institution of marriage by normalizing promiscuity. It dehumanizes us by promoting physical intimacy without human intimacy. 

 Young women have been told promiscuity is "empowering." In fact, marriage is empowering. Marriage ensures a woman is loved as a human being. 

Women were always cherished for the love they gave their husbands and children. Now that Feminism has reprogrammed them to be self-seeking, young women have nothing to offer but their bodies. They have been transformed into sluts and would-be porn stars. This is perversion and satanic possession. 

Society Blind to Psy War on Heterosexuals 

 Every day, heterosexuals are immersed in a toxic bath of lesbianism, homosexuality, obscenity, pedophilia and sexual promiscuity designed to transform them and society. Yet, they are blissfully unconscious of this attack. 

 In June 10, 2011, NYC police ticketed two women sitting on a park bench eating doughnuts. 

 They violated a regulation, (one of 15 listed on a sign,) prohibiting adults from entering the playground unless accompanied by a child. 

 This is supposed to deter pedophiles. Other US cities, including Miami Beach and San Francisco, have similar ordinances which have been extended to libraries and children's museums. 

Last winter, seven NYC men were ticketed for playing chess in a playground. In Idaho, a man was arrested for taking pictures of a child, who turned out to be his grandson. 

 "It's pedophile panic," says NYC writer Lenore Skenazy. "Everyone is a pedophile until proven otherwise." 

 In a clever sleight-of-hand, they transfer the stigma of pedophilia to heterosexuals. Studies show that while homosexuals are only 2 per cent of the population, they account for 25-40% of child molestation. But the goal is for heterosexuality to be seen as a pathology (e.g. domestic abuse, etc.) 

 "I for one would want a couple of women sitting in a playground as an extra pair of eyes," Skenazy writes. "When you start treating everyone as evil, you can't have community." (Playground Panic,Maclean's, Sept 5, 2011) 

 Bingo. Instead of one big human family, we are a world of sexual predators. You must hand it to Satanists; they know how to create hell. 

 HETEROSEXUALITY ERASED 

 The Illuminati are trying to transform our human identity from father, mother, husband, wife, sister, brother, son and daughter to isolated and autonomous worker-consumer-drones. 

 If we want healthy families, society must encourage men and women to consecrate themselves to the task. Our children represent our organic growth, our tie with eternity. 

 Instead, heterosexuals are under constant psychological attack. 

 "Progressive" young women march for the right to behave like "sluts." Schools favor homosexuals for scholarships. Pop songs like Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl (and I liked it!) get four million paid downloads. Mainstream TV story-lines feature gays and gay porn. Teachers encourage children to engage in sex, and gay sex, under the guise of "sex education." Little girls are sexualized. Sesame Street had to fight off demands that two puppets, Bert and Ernie, serve as positive role models for gay marriage. 

 This undermines marriage and family. Almost 50% of women who lost their virginity as teenagers were divorced within ten years. Forty three percent of the college-educated women born between 1965 and 1978 have no children. 

 Our society has been subverted by satanist (Cabalist) Jewish central bankers and their traitorous Masonic minions who want the state to handle procreation, (as envisaged in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.) We are being re-engineered to serve them. 

 The reason we are blind to this vicious underhanded attack on our identity is that it is disguised as "homosexual rights;" and they portray opposition as "homophobia." In fact, they practise "heterophobia" which is not even in the dictionary. Orwellian. 

A few Google searches illustrate how this vicious heterophobic assault flies under our radar. 

 If you google "heterophobia" (i.e. fear of heterosexuality) you'll get 115,000 entries, most unrelated to what is really happening. 

 Google "homophobia" (i.e. fear of homosexuality) and you'll get 9,270,000 entries, eighty times more references, mostly disparaging. Since gays are 1/50th of the population, the awareness disparity is roughly 4000 to one. 

 I first noticed this when looking for a Google image for heterophobia. There were 11,700, but hardly any were applicable. There were 979,000 images for homophobia, 836 times as many. 

 Homosexuality gets almost seven times as many hits as heterosexuality, despite being 1/50 the demographic segment. 

We are mind controlled and manipulated and we haven't a clue it is happening. 

 DENIAL OF GENDER = DENIAL OF REALITY 

 Male and female gender spans nature from the human to the most rudimentary sea creatures. Gender differences are documented in science: 

 "There has seldom been a greater divide between what intelligent, enlightened opinion presumes-that men and women have the same brain-and what science knows: that they do not," neuropsychologist Dr. Anne Moir writes. 

 "Conclusive scientific research presents an irrefutable truth: The difference between men and women is not merely physical. It is neurological, too. Male and female human brains are wired differently, causing us to think, feel, react and respond in strikingly different ways." (http://www.brainsexmatters.com/index.php) 

Women are different because they have babies. Children must be conceived in love and raised in a secure and wholesome environment. Men and women have complementary roles based on different skills and temperaments. 

 Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not compatible. If heterosexuals don't determine societal norms, the tiny homosexual minority will (empowered by the Illuminati.) As this happens, the majority will erode, become a minority and eventually disappear. 

The 1852 Occult Plan to Worship Women & Disinherit Men 

M. Comte aims at establishing …a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers -John Stuart Mill 

 August Comte 

 In Brave New World (1931), Aldous Huxley envisioned test tube babies. But as early as 1852, Illuminati philosopher Auguste Comte had similar visions of reengineering society. He said social progress required that human reproduction "depend solely on the woman." Men should be shut out of the family. 

 "If in human reproduction, the man contributes merely a stimulus, one that is but an incidental accompaniment of the real office of his generative system, then it is conceivable that we might substitute for this stimulus one or more which should be at women's free disposal…" he wrote. 

 The goal seems to be to eliminate sexual attraction altogether. 

 "Woman, even in her physical functions, may become independent of men…The highest species of production would no longer be at the mercy of a capricious and unruly instinct, the proper restraint of which has hitherto been the chief stumbling-block in the way of human discipline." (System of Positive Polity,1851-1854, Vol. IV, P. 60, 61.) 

 In a chilling presentiment, he wrote, "A female friend, if well chosen, who could make herself a member of the family, would in most cases do better than the father himself." (Vol. IV, P. 195.) 

 The Illuminati believed they could control society by "liberating women" from marriage. Cults anticipated the "single mother." 

 "The change would complete the just emancipation of women, thus rendered independent of men, even physically, it would no longer be possible to contest the full ascendancy of the affective sex over children which were its offspring exclusively." (Vol. IV, P. 244) 

 Mankind would be members of one great family as "the offspring of a spouse-less mother." (Vol. IV, P. 359) 

THE WORSHIP OF WOMAN 

 Comte said the first step in the "worship of humanity" (Humanism) was to make women goddesses. 

 "By substituting goddesses for gods, we sanction the legitimate preeminence of women…. In a word, the new doctrine will institute the worship of Woman, publicly and privately, in a far more perfect way than has ever before been possible. It is the first permanent step towards the worship of Humanity." (Vol. 4, 446; Vol. I, P. 205.) 

 While Comte himself supposedly was not a Freemason, according to one source, [Comte's philosophy] positivism "played a particularly strong role in French Freemasonry in the nineteenth century. Part of the reason for this partnership was positivism's own political undertones of resistance against authoritarian means of knowledge, most notably from the Church. " 

CONCLUSION 

 With the "Enlightenment" the Illuminati embarked on a multi-generational project to wrest humanity from its natural and spiritual moorings, and re-engineer it into a large penal colony that serves their interests. 

 For religion, which seeks to obey the Creator's Design, the llluminists substituted the religion of man, or Humanism. 

 Man becomes "his own God" as he makes the world a heaven. This is just a ruse to re-engineer him according to elite specifications. Comte is known as the "father of sociology"-an indication that the social sciences are really devoted to establishing a totalitarian society. 

 Any substitute for God is satanic. Auguste Comte is proof that modern social trends-the idealization of women, the destruction of marriage and family-are satanic in origin and have deep roots. 

 ----- 

 This article is based on research by Erica Carle in 2010. http://www.newswithviews.com/Erica/Carle172.htm

HENRY MAKOW Ph.D. ILLUMINATI 3

Satanic Possession

As for Cassiodorus’s own library, its fate is unknown

 A dim, uncertain flame still flickered, however, among early Christian monastic communities. Despite material poverty and religious mandates, the literary culture of antiquity persisted among the monks: in one anchorite community in Egypt around 600, the brethren scratched out not only scriptural passages but even lines from the Iliad and the Sentences of Menander, on ostraca, or potsherds. That no more suitable writing material could be found in a monastery in the homeland of papyrus may indicate the poverty of the community, although that didn’t stop the monks from pursuing reading and study. But perhaps it also suggests changes in the uses of reading and writing. After the fall of the Roman Empire, writing became a perishable medium; its uses were temporary and expedient. Without the empire’s hunger for stone inscription, without official decrees and speeches to put down on vellum and papyrus, little was being written for a permanent record. The monks wrote to learn to read and copy Scripture, and to exert themselves in spiritually rewarding labor. Besides that on ostraca, most writing in this time would have been inscribed on wax tablets, which by their nature do not survive long. It was probably from such wax tablets that Coptic monks in Egypt had first taken the inspiration to invent, or at least to perfect, the form of the book as we know it today: the codex. The wax tablet was an important writing medium from Mesopotamian days well into the Middle Ages. It has been speculated that the English word “book” in fact comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for beech (boc), the favored material from which the panels of tablets were fashioned. The panels typically were carved with a shallow reservoir into which beeswax could be poured; cool, the beeswax made a soft surface into which letters could be inscribed with a sharp stylus. A vigorous rubbing quickly erased the panel—very convenient for the writer, less so for the historian; no wax-tablet literature survives. Often two such panels were joined together with cord, though some writers preferred tablets of several panels. Possibly in Egypt, scribes adapted papyrus sheets to the format of the many-paneled wax tablet, replacing the scrolls that were the staple of antiquity. 

Near the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt is the site where the monastery of Chenoboskion stood in the fourth century. In 1945, thirteen simple codices dating from the second half of the fourth century were found there, sealed in a clay jar. The texts these books contain have provided scholars with a fuller picture of the intellectual and spiritual world of the early Christians and the Gnostic sects with which they were in contact and conflict. The bindings survived as well, and they offer the best examples of the Coptic origin of the codex. The books consisted of simple folded gatherings of papyrus sheets sewn loosely into a leather cover. With their tied flaps, the Nag Hammadi codices look stylish, even by today’s standards. Fancy journal books constructed exactly like those of the Nag Hammadi library can be found in any stationery store today. 

And it was not only books that survived; in at least one case, the small monastic libraries preserved a whole literature as well. In the tenth century, a Syrian monastery led by Moses of Nisibis preserved some 250 manuscripts. Many of these were in Syriac, a Semitic language, close to Aramaic, which was spoken by the Nestorian community. In the Middle Ages, Syriac was a widespread language, of great importance to early Christians (Jesus, after all, spoke Aramaic). Syriac’s importance was not limited to Christian theology, however. Eighth-century bilingual stone inscriptions, in Chinese and Syriac, survive in modern Xian in China. Syriac had its great poets, too, such as Ephrem of Nisibis, who wrote in forms that had their roots in the cuneiform literatures of Mesopotamia. Tenth-century Moses had collected the books of these authors and others just in time, for the invading Turks nearly destroyed the Syriac tongue along with its speakers. The language is alive today in the mouths of those surviving speakers’ descendants, most of whom live in Syria, Iraq, Iran, and a diaspora spread from Turkey to western Europe. Much of what remains of Syriac literature, however, was preserved in the collection Moses made. 

Medieval trends not only in librarianship but in the entire monastic way of life sprang from Cassiodorus, a Roman noble and Christian who flourished in the sixth century. Cassiodorus had served the Ostrogothic king Theodoric until the eastern emperor Justinian laid siege to Rome and brought Italy under the rule of Constantinople. Cassiodorus lived to see the destruction of the last of Rome’s great libraries, the Palatine and Ulpian libraries, during the siege of the city. After the capital fell, Pope Agapetus established an important library and academy of his own; but Cassiodorus, nervous about the political role the established church had come to play, preferred to pursue the vita contemplativa outside of the church’s struggle for power with secular authorities. At his Calabrian estate, he founded a monastery that was to set the pattern for the medieval orders to come. Southern Italy was largely saved from the travails of war Rome suffered in those years. Cassiodorus’s haven, called Vivarium after nearby fishponds (evoking one of early Christianity’s guiding metaphors, that of the fishes), sheltered a program of library building and manuscript making of extraordinary energy and importance. At Vivarium, early versions of the Gospels were collected that would prove crucial to the transmission of Scripture through the Middle Ages. Sacred writings were, of course, privileged, though Cassiodorus took great pains to preserve the literary legacy of Greece and Rome as well. While nine of the armaria in his library were devoted to theological writings, another cabinet contained books of the Greek classics. Cassiodorus had his monks work assiduously on a program of translating and copying these works. His own great work, the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, helped put in place the epistemology of medieval Europe. A kind of encyclopedia, it ordered and explained all of sacred and secular thought for the benefit of the monks of Vivarium. In Cassiodorus’s view, each side of culture mirrored the other in a set of hierarchies that ranged, on the one hand, from the Bible through the writings of the Fathers of the church down to latter-day commentaries and, on the other hand, from the heights of Homer through the orators, dramatists, and historians of antiquity. This image of literature as a diptych of mirrored orderings of the divine and the worldly helped organize the libraries of the Middle Ages, down to great Renaissance libraries like that of the Vatican. 

As for Cassiodorus’s own library, its fate is unknown. At its greatest extent, in the seventh century, however, it probably contained no more than a few hundred books. The great Irish monastery at Bobbio, in northern Italy, whose library may have been modeled on Vivarium’s, in the tenth century contained 666 works. For all the aesthetic innovations in the form and illumination of books that flowed from them, medieval libraries in Europe were conservative places, where interest focused on a few venerated texts.

Library 

AN UNQUIET HISTORY 

Matthew Battles

Aztecs, Mayas, and Toltecs ...

 AZTECS, MAYAS, AND TOLTECS: WHENCE DID THEY COME?

“Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century,” wrote Prescott, “was a native of Tezcuco, and descended in a direct line from the sovereigns of that kingdom.… He filled the office of interpreter to the viceroy, to which he was recommended by his acquaintance with the ancient hieroglyphics, and his knowledge of the Mexican and Spanish languages.… He has often lent a too willing ear to traditions and reports which would startle the more skeptical criticism of the present time. Yet there is an appearance of good faith and simplicity in his writings, which may convince the reader, that, when he errs, it is from no worse cause than national partiality. And surely such partiality is excusable in the descendant of a proud line, shorn of its ancient splendors, which it was soothing to his own feelings to revive again,—though with something more than their legitimate lustre,—on the canvas of history.… His earlier annals—though no one of his manuscripts has been printed—have been diligently studied by the Spanish writers in Mexico … and his reputation, like Sahagun’s, has doubtless suffered by the process.”

Others have expressed a much less tolerant opinion of this prince among scholars. The “century of source criticism” considered him to be nothing more nor less than a romantic teller of tales, a kind of Indian bard. They gave no credence at all to his colorful account of his people’s past. And it is very true that some of Ixtlilxochitl’s statements are hard to swallow—indeed, virtually unbelievable. The two most important German students of Mexican archæology, Eduard Seler and Walter Lehmann, were the first to give the Tezcucan chronicler belated credit for having told far more truth than anyone had ever suspected.

Repeatedly in our history of archæology we have encountered situations where some new collection of data has threatened to knock the accepted and hard-won historical picture into a cocked hat. We have seen, too, how often this danger, for a time, has been met either by ignoring the new facts or by carefully skirting them. For there is a self-protective, conservative tendency at work in science as well as everywhere else.

The know-nothing spirit has had its day in Mexican archæology. For example, certain Mexican ruins are half-buried in lava, which suggests that they are very old. These prehistoric artifacts, which were found in the shadow of much younger monuments, could not be fitted into the cultural picture developed through the study of the later Mexican and the Mayan societies. Whenever during the nineteenth century the archæologists ran into one of these antique structures—no one made it his business to seek them out—they turned their eyes the other way. Prescott’s interesting remarks on Teotihuacán, the city of ruins past which Cortés marched on his flight from Mexico City after the noche triste, could not be entirely ignored, one might think. Nevertheless they were, and almost all archæologists can be charged with this obvious oversight until the turn of the last century.

Cautious intimations and many question marks—that was about all the commentary on these very old ruins amounted to. Then, in rapid succession, the ruins were laid bare. An excavation program that could have been undertaken long before was abruptly condensed in three decades. The most surprising feature of this persistent neglect is the fact that no expeditions had to be outfitted to get at these particular pyramids. There was no need here for risking fevers, encounters with jungle animals, fighting one’s way through swamp and forest with the machete, and the like. All the archæologist had to do, believe it or not, was board a train and ride to the sites. He could even see them on a Sunday afternoon walk. For several of these largest and most impressive monuments of Middle American culture lay within an hour’s ride by train from the center of Mexico City—indeed, actually on the municipal boundary lines.

Ixtlilxochitl was a baptized native prince, a well-educated man, thoroughly versed in the religious practices of the Mexican Indians. When the wars of the period of conquest were over, he began to sketch out the history of his people. He kept his ear pressed close to the lips of tradition. His history (which later generations refused to trust) went back to gray primeval times when the city of Tula (Tollan in the present Mexican state of Hidalgo) was founded by the Toltec people. Ixtlilxochitl told great tales about these Toltecs. They had known how to write, he maintained, and how to reckon, make calendars, build palaces and temples. The rulers of Tula also had a great reputation for wisdom. Their laws were just, their religion was mild and free from the cruelties of later epochs. Their empire, according to Ixtlilxochitl, lasted five hundred years. Then came famine, civil war, and dynastic quarrels. Another people, the Chichimecs, got control of the land. The Toltec survivors migrated first to Tabasco, later to Yucatán.

It is notable that the first man—he was a Frenchman—to validate Ixtlilxochitl’s chronicles by an actual find did not even then succeed in establishing the Indian historian’s credibility among archæologists as a whole. In the first place, no reputable archæologist believed in the existence of the city of Tula, which figured so prominently in the Indian Prince’s writings. Ixtlilxochitl wrote factually enough about his Tula, but no matter, he was blandly ignored. Some commentators suggested that Tula and the mythical Thule were somehow connected. Even the very physical existence of a little town called Tula to the north of Mexico City made no impression, for nowhere in the vicinity of Tula were to be seen any of the ruins mentioned in the legends recorded in the works of Ixtlilxochitl. Even when the Frenchman Désiré Charnay in the course of a treasure hunt in the 1880’s found vestiges of a pyramid at Tula de Allende, the archæologists paid no attention to his report.

Not until World War II, at a time when almost all the rest of the world was busy making ruins of contemporary artifacts, did Mexican archæologists begin to excavate the ancient Toltec sites.

And behold!

In 1940 the whole archæological world had to bow before Prince Ixtlilxochitl! Had not similar submissions been exacted for Homer by Schliemann, and for the Bible by Layard? The amazed archæologists found ancient Tula, first city of the Toltecs! Previously they had found the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. They discovered well-preserved reliefs and fine sculptures under three feet of rubbish and earth.

Thus in rapid succession artifacts of the Toltec “culture beneath the cultures” was brought into the light of day. Actually the inhabitants of Mexico City had lived for several hundred years in the very midst of these pyramids without knowing about them. They had walked by them on the way to work in the fields. They had lain at their feet when they took time out for a drink of pulque, that man-murdering agave schnapps which the Toltecs themselves used to ferment. One might say that all the people of Mexico City and environs had to do was follow their noses and bump into a pyramid.

The exploration of the Toltec pyramids proceeded with the typically swift pace of an archæological investigation once fairly launched. Within three decades excavations of the most sensational import were carried out. In 1925 the archæologists digging out the Pyramid of the Serpent at the northwest boundary of Mexico City found that they were working not on one pyramid, but on eight of them—an onion in stone, so to speak, one shell nested within another. Calendrical data revealed that probably every fifty-two years another shell had been added to the pyramid. A little arithmetic shows that this structure alone had been worked on for over four hundred years. Except for the cathedral building of the West, there is no single architectural project anywhere that continued so long. In the middle of Mexico City archæologists dug for the remains of the great teocalli, the one destroyed by Cortés, and actually found the foundation walls. The excavators then betook themselves out of the city, to the present-day San Juan Teotihuacán, some thirty-one miles away. Here was located the largest of all the pyramid fields, the most splendid relic of the ancient Toltec culture, the city “where god was offered prayers.” (Such is the meaning of the name Teotihuacán. Note the peculiarity that the Mexican word teo is the same as the Old Greek word for “god.” It is only proper to add, however, that no inferences of any kind may be drawn from this phonetic coincidence.) The already exposed section of this field of ruins now covers 7.6 square miles—and but a fraction of the whole field has been opened up. This is the city that the Toltecs, before their flight southward, seemingly covered with a layer of earth a yard deep—a supererogatory measure hardly less astonishing than the structures themselves. The larger of the pyramids—they are stepped pyramids with the characteristic stairways—is 128 feet in height.

Eventually the archæologists struck out into the provinces. Eduard Seler was the first to describe the fortress pyramid of Xochicalco, fifty miles south of the Mexican capital. Diggings were carried out at Cholula, where Cortés committed one of his worst acts of betrayal. Working inside the largest pyramid—which once covered a larger area than the Pyramid of Cheops—the excavators disclosed labyrinthine passages five eighths of a mile long. The search then moved farther south. In 1931 Alfonso Caso, a Mexican, on government commission, dug into Monte Albán at Oaxaca—and what every excavator almost certainly secretly hopes for came to pass. Alfonso Caso found a treasure—the treasure of Monte Albán.

“Is there any other spot on earth,” asks Egon Erwin Kisch, a noted journalist of our time, “so completely shrouded in darkness and so mute in the face of all our questions? Which feeling is paramount in us, enchantment or bewilderment?” And then he inquires into the reasons for this conflict of feeling. “Is it the spatial complex, the outlines of which suggest a prospect of infinity? Or is it the pyramids, which look like stately stairways leading on and up into the inner reaches of heaven? Or is it the temple court which—thanks to our powers of imagination—is filled with many thousands of Indians in impetuous prayer? Or is it the observatory, with peepholes let into the masonry walls which provide a line of sight along the azimuth of the meridian? Or is it the spectacle of a stadium such as Europe has never built from ancient Roman days to the twentieth century, one hundred and twenty steeply rising tiers of stone seats?

“Or is it the system,” he goes on, “of arranging hundreds of tombs so that no grave disturbs its neighbor, with consequent avoidance of a cemetery effect? Could it be the gay mosaics, the frescoes with their figures, scenes, symbols, and hieroglyphs? Or the vessels of clay, sacrificial bowls of noble sweep, urns of geometric rectilinearity, four-footed, and within each of the feet a little bell that tinkles for help if an intruder threatens to make off with it?

“Or is it the ornamentation?…

“Who would have ever imagined ‘savages’ could polish rock-crystal with such precision technique, or assemble necklaces in twenty rows made of 854 chiseled and mathematically equal constituent parts of gold and precious stones? A brooch shows a knight of death that Lucas Cranach himself could not have made more apocalyptic. Garters that are like the ones worn by the Knights of the Garter. Ear-rings seemingly woven from tears and thorns. Headdresses—tiaras worthy of a pope of popes. Plaited rings to set off the fingernails. Bracelets and arm-bands with fat embossments, cloak-pins, and clasps made of jade, turquoise, pearls, amber, coral, obsidian, jaguar-teeth, bones, and mussel shells. A gold mask over the cheeks and nose of which is sculptured a trophy made of human skin. Fans fashioned from the feathers of the quetzal bird—what Byzantine empress, what Hindu maharani, what American multimillionairess ever in her whole life owned such a lovely trinket as many of these Indians keep beside them even in the grave?”

“Questions, nothing but questions on Monte Albán,” is the Kisch chapter heading for this piece on Mexico. But is it only Monte Albán that invites interrogation?

We must admit that up to the present we know less than nothing about the master builders of pre-Aztec times. Less than nothing also implies, in this case, that we are burdened with a great deal of false information. Mexico and Yucatán are jungle-lands; and when the archæologist begins to interpret the Toltecs, he loses himself in these jungles. How much is actually known?

This much has been confirmed: the Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec cultures are all closely related. All three societies built pyramids, with steps leading up to the gods of sun or moon. All these pyramids, we know today, were located according to astronomical lines of sight and erected under calendrical dictate. Oliver G. Rickertson, Jr., an American, was the first to prove this, in 1928, using evidence found on a Mayan pyramid in Uaxactún. Today we have further proof of this practice in later times from Chichén-Itzá, and for more ancient times from Monte Albán. All these peoples lived under the Damoclean sword of their great calendrical cycles, as for example when they believed that the world came to an end every fifty-two years. The power of the priesthood depended on the universal acceptance of such ideas. The priests alone were able to avert the threat of disaster. The means that they used to do this became with the passage of time more drastic—that is, more cruel—and finally degenerated into frightful human offerings and the feast of Xipec Totec, the god of earth and spring, in whose honor the priests flayed human beings, drawing the bloody skin off the quivering victim while he was still alive.

The sky god Quetzalcoatl as a feathered serpent, from a relief at Xochicalco. Drawing by Miguel Covarrubias from his “Mexico South” (copyright 1946 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.).

The close relationship of Aztecs, Mayas, and Toltecs appears again in their gods, which in this respect are comparable to the Greek and Roman pantheons. One of the principal Aztec-Toltec gods was the great and wise Quetzalcoatl, who was called Kukumatz in Guatemala, and Kukulcan in Yucatán. His image, the plumed serpent, is found on both the oldest and the most recent Indian edifices. Even the mode of life was—and still is—much the same among all the Middle American Indians. And although their languages are numerous, they all belong—if we take into account only the civilized tribes—to one or the other of two large linguistic groups.

Once these basic kinships have been established (recently an almost incalculable amount of detail has been collected on the subject) the question of external relationships arises, of the wavelike contacts among these peoples as they flowed against and over one another—in short, the question of their history. Here, so far as the very oldest phase goes, we are groping in the dark. In spite of outstanding research, which has yielded a highly accurate correlation of the Mayan calendar with our own, we still lack fixed points of reference. The jungle we are clearing away from the pyramids and palaces of prehistoric America gives up abundant architectural remains, but as yet no panoramic vision of the past. We find dates, but no history. We can spin theories, but the supporting facts are inadequate.

Some investigators, basing their opinion on a variety of signs, believe that the great pyramid in Mexico City was built by the Toltecs in the fourth century of our era.

Now, several of these pyramids located at different sites from Tula to Monte Albán have been discussed, yet one of the most important has yet to be mentioned. This is the Pyramid of Cuicuilco, which stands on a mound 22.4 feet high, situated at the southern limits of Mexico City. The Pyramid of Cuicuilco rises up out of a weird landscape of darkly stony aspect. At one time the volcanoes Ajusco and Xitli (perhaps only the latter) erupted. The god within the pyramid was apparently remiss in diverting the glowing flood of lava that flowed about the pyramid, for half the structure was drowned in bubbling muck. The archæologists investigating this phenomenon called on colleagues from another faculty, the geologists, for help. How old is the lava, they inquired. The geologists, not realizing that their answer was knocking a world picture awry, answered: “Eight thousand years.” We have learned since then that this answer was wrong, because the geologists’ methods of dating are inadequate for relatively brief time spans.

We now assume, though without absolute proof, that the early American Indians were descendants of Mongolian tribesmen who came either by boat or by way of a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska and so down the coast to the lower latitudes of the continent. Where the Toltecs in particular came from, assuming the existence of a migratory parent group, and why the Toltecs should have been the only people from Alaska to Panama capable of inventing the ingenious devices that mark their culture, we do not know.

Indeed, we do not even know exactly whether it really was the Toltecs who set the cultural stage in Middle America. What prehistoric role, we might ask, was played by the Zapotecs, or the Olmecs, vestiges of which societies can be found all over Mexico? If we name the Toltecs as the precursors of the Mayan and Aztec cultures, we are using the word Toltec as a collective label for all the creators of Middle American culture. The term Toltec may mean nothing but “master builder.”

We may be justified, in order to clarify the interaction of the three great Indian empires, in taking the liberty of quoting an analogy between Middle American and Old World cultures mentioned in one of the works on Mexico by the German archæologist Theodor-Wilhelm Danzel: “Occasionally in order to characterize the Aztec, as distinguished from the Mayan, culture,” he says, “analogies with the Old World have been adduced, in which the Aztecs have been compared to the Romans, and the Mayas to the Greeks. These parallels, on the whole, are apt. The Mayas were indeed a people who (like the Greeks) split up into many communities, who quarreled among themselves, and who formed temporary alliances only when it became necessary to resist a common enemy. But even though the Mayas did not distinguish themselves as a political power, they have to their credit remarkable achievements in sculpture, architecture, astronomy, and mathematics.

“The Aztecs, on the other hand,” he goes on to say, “were a warlike folk, who built their empire on the ruins of another people (the Toltecs) unable to resist the power of their onslaught. The Toltecs, if we carry our analogy still further, would parallel the Etruscans.”

We might draw still another analogy. In respect of historical function the Toltecs are similar to the inventive Sumerians. The Mayas, in this analogy, then become the Babylonians, who as the usufructuaries of the Sumerians’ superior inventions built a cultural empire of their own. And the Aztecs, in this context, then bring to mind the bellicose Assyrians, who used their superior mentality for pure power ends. Carrying out the parallel still further, Mexico City, “beheaded” at the height of its fame by the Spaniards, compares with proud Nineveh, capital of the Assyrians, which suffered a like fate at the hands of the Medes.

Both analogies, however, fail to hit the mark in one respect. They give no clue to why the Toltecs, long after their own empire had collapsed, should suddenly decamp and penetrate the New Empire of the Mayas, where they left their stamp on the city of Chichén-Itzá. There is no parallel for this in ancient history. But did such a thing actually happen? Everything in fact could have been quite different. There is a Mexican legend that suggests a different historical sequence, a legend in which even the coming of the Spaniards is prefigured in mythical language.

The legend tells how the Indian deity Quetzalcoatl came from the “Land of the Rising Sun.” He wore a long white robe and had a beard; he taught the people crafts and customs and laid down wise laws. He created an empire in which the ears of corn were as long as men are tall, and caused bolls of colored cotton to grow on cotton plants. But for some reason or other he had to leave his empire. He took his laws, his writings, his songs, and went away down the same road he had come. In Cholula he tarried, and there once more gave the people the benefits of his wisdom. Then he betook himself to the seashore, where he began to weep, and ended by immolating himself in fire, whereupon his heart became the morning star. Others say that he went aboard his ship and journeyed back to the land whence he came, across the sea. But all the legends of Quetzalcoatl unanimously agree that he promised to come again.

The Aztecs attack Tehuantepec (Durán). Drawing by Miguel Covarrubias from his “Mexico South” (copyright 1946 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.).

One of the greatest Mayan and Aztec gods, Quetzalcoatl, known in Guatemala under the name of Kukumatz, and in Yucatán as Kukulcan. All these names mean “Feathered Serpent.” The drawing is after a relief found in Chichén-Itzá, and illustrates the Toltec influence on Mayan art of the New Empire.

So often throughout our story have we seen the kernel of a legend historically validated that we must not make the mistake of dismissing this story as mere poetic invention, however fictitious it may appear at first sight. May we not think of the white robe as connoting a white skin? Especially in view of the fact that Quetzalcoatl is supposed to have worn a beard, whereas beards are extremely rare among Indians.

It has been suggested that Quetzalcoatl was actually a missionary from some distant, unknown country. The theory that he may have been an early Catholic missionary of the sixth century may safely be dismissed. Nor need we spend much time on the supposition that he was the Apostle Thomas himself. Those who seek to use the legend of Quetzalcoatl as a possible support for the notion that Mayan culture was founded by Atlanteans—a theory that once appealed to the young Thompson—can hardly expect to prevail. The Atlantis theory enjoys absolutely no scientific probability.

There is simply a great deal we do not yet know.

We know only this: the Spaniards, who appeared to the Aztecs as “the white gods from the east” when they first arrived in Mexico, because the Aztecs remembered the bearded white god and his promise to return—these representatives of European civilization surely did not behave like descendants of Quetzalcoatl, who had preached morality and justice.

Ceram, C. W.,

   Gods, graves, and scholars.

Cast Ashore on the Coral Reef — We Find a Desert Island

 When we realized that the seas had got hold of us, the anchor rope was cut and we were off. A sea rose straight up under us, and we felt the Kon-Tiki being lifted up in the air. The great moment had come; we were riding on the wave back at breathless speed, our ramshackle craft creaking and groaning as she quivered under us. The excitement made one’s blood boil. I remember that, having no other inspiration, I waved my arm and bellowed “Hurrah!” at the top of my lungs; it afforded a certain relief and could do no harm anyway. The others certainly thought I had gone mad, but they all beamed and grinned enthusiastically. On we ran with the seas rushing in behind us; this was the Kon-Tiki’s baptism of fire. All must and would go well.

But our elation was soon dampened. A new sea rose high up astern of us like a glittering, green glass wall. As we sank down it came rolling after us, and, in the same second in which I saw it high above me, I felt a violent blow and was submerged under floods of water. I felt the suction through my whole body, with such great power that I had to strain every single muscle in my frame and think of one thing only—hold on, hold on! I think that in such a desperate situation the arms will be torn off before the brain consents to let go, evident as the outcome is. Then I felt that the mountain of water was passing on and relaxing its devilish grip of my body. When the whole mountain had rushed on, with an ear-splitting roaring and crashing, I saw Knut again hanging on beside me, doubled up into a ball. Seen from behind, the great sea was almost flat and gray. As it rushed on, it swept over the ridge of the cabin roof which projected from the water, and there hung the three others, pressed against the cabin roof as the water passed over them.

We were still afloat.

In an instant I renewed my hold, with arms and legs bent round the strong rope. Knut let himself down and with a tiger’s leap joined the others on the boxes, where the cabin took the strain. I heard reassuring exclamations from them, but at the same time I saw a new green wall rise up and come towering toward us. I shouted a warning and made myself as small and hard as I could where I hung. In an instant hell was over us again, and the Kon-Tiki disappeared completely under the masses of water. The sea tugged and pulled with all the force it could bring to bear at the poor little bundles of human bodies. The second sea rushed over us, to be followed by a third like it.

Then I heard a triumphant shout from Knut, who was now hanging on to the rope ladder:

“Look at the raft—she’s holding!”

After three seas only the double mast and the cabin had been knocked a bit crooked. Again we had a feeling of triumph over the elements, and the elation of victory gave us new strength.

Then I saw the next sea come towering up, higher than all the rest, and again I bellowed a warning aft to the others as I climbed up the stay, as high as I could get in a hurry, and hung on fast. Then I myself disappeared sideways into the midst of the green wall which towered high over us. The others, who were farther aft and saw me disappear first, estimated the height of the wall of water at twenty-five feet, while the foaming crest passed by fifteen feet above the part of the glassy wall into which I had vanished. Then the great wave reached them, and we had all one single thought—hold on, hold on, hold, hold, hold!

We must have hit the reef that time. I myself felt only the strain on the stay, which seemed to bend and slacken jerkily. But whether the bumps came from above or below I could not tell, hanging there. The whole submersion lasted only seconds, but it demanded more endurance than we usually have in our bodies. There is greater strength in the human mechanism than that of the muscles alone. I determined that, if I was to die, I would die in this position, like a knot on the stay. The sea thundered on, over and past, and as it roared by it revealed a hideous sight. The Kon-Tiki was wholly changed, as by the stroke of a magic wand. The vessel we knew from weeks and months at sea was no more; in a few seconds our pleasant world had become a shattered wreck.

I saw only one man on board besides myself. He lay pressed flat across the ridge of the cabin roof, face downward with his arms stretched out on both sides, while the cabin itself was crushed in, like a house of cards, toward the stern and toward the starboard side. The motionless figure was Herman. There was no other sign of life, while the hill of water thundered by, in across the reef. The hardwood mast on the starboard side was broken like a match, and the upper stump, in its fall, had smashed right through the cabin roof, so that the mast and all its gear slanted at a low angle over the reef on the starboard side. Astern, the steering block was twisted round lengthways and the crossbeam broken, while the steering oar was smashed to splinters. The splashboards at the bow were broken like cigar boxes, and the whole deck was torn up and pasted like wet paper against the forward wall of the cabin, along with boxes, cans, canvas, and other cargo. Bamboo sticks and rope ends stuck up everywhere, and the general effect was of complete chaos.

I felt cold fear run through my whole body. What was the good of my holding on? If I lost one single man here, in the run in, the whole thing would be ruined, and for the moment there was only one human figure to be seen after the last buffet. In that second Torstein’s hunched-up form appeared outside the raft. He was hanging like a monkey in the ropes from the masthead and managed to get on to the logs again, where he crawled up on to the debris forward of the cabin. Herman, too, now turned his head and gave me a forced grin of encouragement, but did not move. I bellowed in the faint hope of locating the others and heard Bengt’s calm voice call out that all hands were aboard. They were lying holding on to the ropes behind the tangled barricade which the tough plaiting from the bamboo deck had built up.

All this happened in the course of a few seconds, while the Kon-Tiki was being drawn out of the witches’ caldron by the backwash, and a fresh sea came rolling over her. For the last time I bellowed “Hang on!” at the top of my lungs amid the uproar, and that was all I myself did; I hung on and disappeared in the masses of water which rushed over and past in those endless two or three seconds. That was enough for me. I saw the ends of the logs knocking and bumping against a sharp step in the coral reef without going over it. Then we were sucked out again. I also saw the two men who lay stretched out across the ridge of the cabin roof, but none of us smiled any longer. Behind the chaos of bamboo I heard a calm voice call out:

“This won’t do.”

I myself felt equally discouraged. As the masthead sank farther and farther out over the starboard side, I found myself hanging on to a slack line outside the raft. The next sea came. When it had gone by I was dead tired, and my only thought was to get up on to the logs and lie behind the barricade. When the backwash retreated, I saw for the first time the rugged red reef naked beneath us and perceived Torstein standing, bent double, on gleaming red corals, holding on to a bunch of rope ends from the mast. Knut, standing aft, was about to jump. I shouted that we must all keep on the logs, and Torstein, who had been washed overboard by the pressure of water, sprang up again like a cat.

Two or three more seas rolled over us with diminishing force, and what happened then I do not remember, except that water foamed in and out and I myself sank lower and lower toward the red reef over which we were being lifted in. Then only crests of foam full of salt spray came whirling in, and I was able to work my way in on to the raft, where we all made for the after end of the logs which was highest up on the reef.

At the same moment Knut crouched down and sprang up on to the reef with the line which lay clear astern. While the backwash was running out, he waded through the whirling water some thirty yards in and stood safely at the end of the line when the next sea foamed in toward him, died down, and ran back from the flat reef like a broad stream.

Then Erik came crawling out of the collapsed cabin, with his shoes on. If we had all done as he did, we should have got off cheaply. As the cabin had not been washed overboard but had been pressed down pretty flat under the canvas, Erik lay quietly stretched out among the cargo and heard the peals of thunder crashing above him while the collapsed bamboo walls curved downward. Bengt had had a slight concussion when the mast fell but had managed to crawl under the wrecked cabin alongside Erik. We should all of us have been lying there if we had realized in advance how firmly the countless lashings and plaited bamboo sheets would hang on to the main logs under the pressure of the water.

Erik was now standing ready on the logs aft, and when the sea retired he, too, jumped up on to the reef. It was Herman’s turn next, and then Bengt’s. Each time the raft was pushed a bit farther in, and, when Torstein’s turn and my own came, the raft already lay so far in on the reef that there was no longer any ground for abandoning her. All hands began the work of salvage.

We were now twenty yards away from that devilish step up on the reef, and it was there and beyond it that the breakers came rolling after one another in long lines. The coral polyps had taken care to build the atoll so high that only the very tops of the breakers were able to send a fresh stream of sea water past us and into the lagoon, which abounded in fish. Here inside was the corals’ own world, and they disported themselves in the strangest shapes and colors.

A long way in on the reef the others found the rubber raft, lying drifting and quite waterlogged. They emptied it and dragged it back to the wreck, and we loaded it to the full with the most important equipment, like the radio set, provisions, and water bottles. We dragged all this in across the reef and piled it up on the top of a huge block of coral, which lay alone on the inside of the reef like a large meteorite. Then we went back to the wreck for fresh loads. We could never know what the sea would be up to when the tidal currents got to work around us.

In the shallow water inside the reef we saw something bright shining in the sun. When we waded over to pick it up, to our astonishment we saw two empty tins. This was not exactly what we had expected to find there, and we were still more surprised when we saw that the little boxes were quite bright and newly opened and stamped “Pineapple,” with the same inscription as that on the new field rations we ourselves were testing for the quartermaster. They were indeed two of our own pineapple tins which we had thrown overboard after our last meal on board the Kon-Tiki. We had followed close behind them up on the reef.

We were standing on sharp, rugged coral blocks, and on the uneven bottom we waded now ankle-deep, now chest-deep, according to the channels and stream beds in the reef. Anemones and corals gave the whole reef the appearance of a rock garden covered with mosses and cactus and fossilized plants, red and green and yellow and white. There was no color that was not represented, either in corals or algae or in shells and sea slugs and fantastic fish, which were wriggling about everywhere. In the deeper channels small sharks about four feet long came sneaking up to us in the crystal-clear water. But we had only to smack the water with the palms of our hands for them to turn about and keep at a distance.

Where we had stranded, we had only pools of water and wet patches of coral about us; farther in lay the calm blue lagoon. The tide was going out, and we continually saw more corals sticking up out of the water round us, while the surf which thundered without interruption along the reef sank down, as it were, a floor lower. What would happen there on the narrow reef when the tide began to flow again was uncertain. We must get away.

The reef stretched like a half-submerged fortress wall up to the north and down to the south. In the extreme south was a long island densely covered with tall palm forest. And just above us to the north, only 600 or 700 yards away, lay another but considerably smaller palm island. It lay inside the reef, with palm tops rising into the sky and snow-white sandy beaches running out into the still lagoon. The whole island looked like a bulging green basket of flowers, or a little bit of concentrated paradise.

This island we chose.

Herman stood beside me beaming all over his bearded face. He did not say a word, only stretched out his hand and laughed quietly. The Kon-Tiki still lay far out on the reef with the spray flying over her. She was a wreck, but an honorable wreck. Everything above deck was smashed up, but the nine balsa logs from the Quevedo forest in Ecuador were as intact as ever. They had saved our lives. The sea had claimed but little of the cargo, and none of what we had stowed inside the cabin. We ourselves had stripped the raft of everything of real value, which now lay in safety on the top of the great sun-smitten rock inside the reef.

Since I had jumped off the raft, I had genuinely missed the sight of all the pilot fish wriggling in front of our bow. Now the great balsa logs lay up on the reef in six inches of water, and brown sea slugs lay writhing under the bows. The pilot fish were gone. The dolphins were gone. Only unknown flat fish with peacock patterns and blunt tails wriggled inquisitively in and out between the logs. We had arrived in a new world. Johannes had left his hole. He had doubtless found another lurking place here.

I took a last look round on board the wreck and caught sight of a little baby palm in a flattened basket. It projected from an eye in a coconut to a length of eighteen inches, and two roots stuck out below. I waded in toward the island with the nut in my hand. A little way ahead I saw, Knut wading happily landward with a model of the raft, which he had made with much labor on the voyage, under his arm. We soon passed Bengt. He was a splendid steward. With a lump on his forehead and sea water dripping from his beard, he was walking bent double pushing a box, which danced along before him every time the breakers outside sent a stream over into the lagoon. He lifted the lid proudly. It was the kitchen box, and in it were the primus and cooking utensils in good order.

I shall never forget that wade across the reef toward the heavenly palm island that grew larger as it came to meet us. When I reached the sunny sand beach, I slipped off my shoes and thrust my bare toes down into the warm, bone-dry sand. It was as though I enjoyed the sight of every footprint which dug itself into the virgin sand beach that led up to the palm trunks. Soon the palm tops closed over my head, and I went on, right in toward the center of the tiny island. Green coconuts hung under the palm tufts, and some luxuriant bushes were thickly covered with snow-white blossoms, which smelled so sweet and seductive that I felt quite faint. In the interior of the island two quite tame terns flew about my shoulders. They were as white and light as wisps of cloud. Small lizards shot away from my feet, and the most important inhabitants of the island were large blood-red hermit crabs which lumbered along in every direction with stolen snail shells as large as eggs adhering to their soft hinder parts.

I was completely overwhelmed. I sank down on my knees and thrust my fingers deep down into the dry warm sand.

The voyage was over. We were all alive. We had run ashore on a small uninhabited South Sea island. And what an island! Torstein came in, flung away a sack, threw himself flat on his back and looked up at the palm tops and the white birds, light as down, which circled noiselessly just above us. Soon we were all six lying there. Herman, always energetic, climbed up a small palm and pulled down a cluster of large green coconuts. We cut off their soft tops with our machete knives, as if they were eggs, and poured down our throats the most delicious refreshing drink in the world—sweet, cold milk from young and seedless palm fruit. On the reef outside resounded the monotonous drum beats from the guard at the gates of paradise. “Purgatory was a bit damp,” said Bengt, “but heaven is more or less as I’d imagined it ”

We stretched ourselves luxuriously on the ground and smiled up at the white trade-wind clouds drifting by westward up above the palm tops. Now we were no longer following them helplessly; now we lay on a fixed, motionless island, in Polynesia.

And as we lay and stretched ourselves, the breakers outside us rumbled like a train, to and fro, to and fro, all along the horizon.

Bengt was right; this was heaven.

(...)

Among Polynesians

 OUR LITTLE ISLAND WAS UNINHABITED. WE SOON GOT to know every palm clump and every beach, for the island was barely two hundred yards across. The highest point was less than six feet above the lagoon.

Over our heads, in the palm tops, there hung great clusters of green coconut husks, which insulated their contents of cold coconut milk from the tropical sun, so we should not be thirsty in the first weeks. There were also ripe coconuts, a swarm of hermit crabs, and all sorts of fish in the lagoon; we should be well off.

On the north side of the island we found the remnants of an old, unpainted wooden cross, half buried in the coral sand. Here there was the view northward along the reef to the stripped wreck, which we had first seen closer in as we drifted by on the way to our stranding. Still farther northward we saw in a bluish haze the palm tufts of another small island. The island to southward, on which the trees grew thickly, was much closer. We saw no sign of life there, either, but for the time we had other matters to think about.

Robinson Crusoe Hesselberg came limping up in his big straw hat with his arms full of crawling hermit crabs. Knut set fire to some dry wood, and soon we had crab and coconut milk with coffee for dessert.

“Feels all right being ashore, doesn’t it, boys?” Knut asked delightedly.

He had himself enjoyed this feeling once before on the voyage, at Angatau. As he spoke, he stumbled and poured half a kettle of boiling water over Bengt’s bare feet. We were all of us a bit unsteady the first day ashore, after 101 days on board the raft, and would suddenly begin reeling about among the palm trunks because we had put out a foot to counter a sea that did not come.

When Bengt handed over to us our respective mess utensils, Erik grinned broadly. I remember that, after the last meal on board, I had leaned over the side of the raft and washed up as usual, while Erik looked in across the reef, saying: “I don’t think I shall bother to wash up today.” When he found his things in the kitchen box, they were as clean as mine.

After the meal and a good stretch on the ground we set about putting together the soaked radio apparatus; we must do it quickly so that Torstein and Knut might get on the air before the man on Rarotonga sent out a report of our sad end.

Most of the radio equipment had already been brought ashore, and among the things which lay drifting on the reef Bengt found a box, on which he laid hands. He jumped high into the air from an electric shock; there was no doubt that the contents belonged to the radio section. While the operators unscrewed, coupled, and put together, we others set about pitching camp.

Out on the wreck we found the heavy waterlogged sail and dragged it ashore. We stretched it between two big palms in a little opening, looking on to the lagoon, and supported two other corners with bamboo sticks which came drifting in from the wreck. A thick hedge of wild flowering bushes forced the sail together so that we had a roof and three walls and, moreover, a clear view of the shining lagoon, while our nostrils were filled with an insinuating scent of blossoms. It was good to be here. We all laughed quietly and enjoyed our ease; we each made our beds of fresh palm leaves, pulling up loose branches of coral which stuck up inconveniently out of the sand. Before night fell we had a very pleasant rest, and over our heads we saw the big bearded face of good old Kon-Tiki. No longer did he swell out his breast with the east wind behind him. He now lay motionless on his back looking up at the stars which came twinkling out over Polynesia.

On the bushes round us hung wet flags and sleeping bags, and soaked articles lay on the sand to dry. Another day on this island of sunshine and everything would be nicely dry. Even the radio boys had to give it up until the sun had a chance of drying the inside of their apparatus next day. We took the sleeping bags down from the trees and turned in, disputing boastfully as to who had the driest bag. Bengt won, for his did not squelch when he turned over. Heavens, how good it was to be able to sleep!

When we woke next morning at sunrise, the sail was bent down and full of rain water as pure as crystal. Bengt took charge of this asset and then ambled down to the lagoon and jerked ashore some curious breakfast fish which he decoyed into channels in the sand.

That night Herman had had pains in the neck and back where he had injured himself before the start from Lima, and Erik had a return of his vanished lumbago. Otherwise we had come out of the trip over the reef astonishingly lightly, with scratches and small wounds, except for Bengt who had had a blow on the forehead when the mast fell and had a slight concussion. I myself looked most peculiar, with my arms and legs bruised blue black all over by the pressure against the rope.

But none of us was in such a bad state that the sparkling clear lagoon did not entice him to a brisk swim before breakfast. It was an immense lagoon. Far out it was blue and rippled by the trade wind, and it was so wide that we could only just see the tops of a row of misty, blue palm islands which marked the curve of the atoll on the other side. But here, in the lee of the islands, the trade wind rustled peacefully in the fringed palm tops, making them stir and sway, while the lagoon lay like a motionless mirror below and reflected all their beauty. The bitter salt water was so pure and clear that gaily colored corals in nine feet of water seemed so near the surface that we thought we should cut our toes on them in swimming. And the water abounded in beautiful varieties of colorful fish. It was a marvelous world in which to disport oneself. The water was just cold enough to be refreshing, and the air was pleasantly warm and dry from the sun. But we must get ashore again quickly today; Rarotonga would broadcast alarming news if nothing had been heard from the raft at the end of the day.

Coils and radio parts lay drying in the tropical sun on slabs of coral, and Torstein and Knut coupled and screwed. The whole day passed, and the atmosphere grew more and more hectic. The rest of us abandoned all other jobs and crowded round the radio in the hope of being able to give assistance. We must be on the air before 10 P.M. Then the thirty-six hours’ time limit would be up, and the radio amateur on Rarotonga would send out appeals for airplane and relief expeditions.

Noon came, afternoon came, and the sun set. If only the man on Rarotonga would contain himself! Seven o’clock, eight, nine. The tension was at breaking point. Not a sign of life in the transmitter, but the receiver, an NC—173, began to liven up somewhere at the bottom of the scale and we heard faint music. But not on the amateur wave length. It was eating its way up, however; perhaps it was a wet coil which was drying inward from one end. The transmitter was still stone-dead—short circuits and sparks everywhere.

There was less than an hour left. This would never do. The regular transmitter was given up, and a little sabotage transmitter from wartime was tried again. We had tested it several times before in the course of the day, but without result. Now perhaps it had become a little drier. All the batteries were completely ruined, and we got power by cranking a tiny hand generator. It was heavy, and we four who were laymen in radio matters took turns all day long sitting and turning the infernal thing.

The thirty-six hours would soon be up. I remember someone whispering “Seven minutes more,” “Five minutes more,” and then no one would look at his watch again. The transmitter was as dumb as ever, but the receiver was sputtering upward toward the right wave length. Suddenly it crackled on the Rarotonga man’s frequency, and we gathered that he was in full contact with the telegraph station in Tahiti. Soon afterward we picked up the following fragment of a message sent out from Rarotonga:

“- - - no plane this side of Samoa. I am quite sure- - -.”

Then it died away again. The tension was unbearable. What was brewing out there? Had they already begun to send out plane and rescue expeditions? Now, no doubt, messages concerning us were going over the air in every direction.

The two operators worked feverishly. The sweat trickled from their faces as freely as it did from ours who sat turning the handle. Power began slowly to come into the transmitter’s aerial, and Torstein pointed ecstatically to an arrow which swung slowly up over a scale when he held the Morse key down. Now it was coming!

We turned the handle madly while Torstein called Rarotonga. No one heard us. Once more. Now the receiver was working again, but Rarotonga did not hear us. We called Hal and Frank at Los Angeles and the Naval School at Lima, but no one heard us.

Then Torstein sent out a CQ message: that is to say, he called all the stations in the world which could hear us on our special amateur wave length.

That was of some use. Now a faint voice out in the ether began to call us slowly. We called again and said that we heard him. Then the slow voice out in the ether said:

“My name is Paul—I live in Colorado. What is your name and where do you live?”

This was a radio amateur. Torstein seized the key, while we turned the handle, and replied:

“This is the Kon-Tiki. We are stranded on a desert island in the Pacific.”

Paul did not believe the message. He thought it was a radio amateur in the next street pulling his leg, and he did not come on the air again. We tore our hair in desperation. Here were we, sitting under the palm tops on a starry night on a desert island, and no one even believed what we said.

Torstein did not give up; he was at the key again sending “All well, all well, all well” unceasingly. We must at all costs stop all this rescue machinery from starting out across the Pacific.

Then we heard, rather faintly, in the receiver:

“If all’s well, why worry?”

Then all was quiet in the ether. That was all.

We could have leaped into the air and shaken down all the coconuts for sheer desperation, and heaven knows what we should have done if both Rarotonga and good old Hal had not suddenly heard us. Hal wept for delight, he said, at hearing LI 2 B again. All the tension stopped immediately; we were once more alone and undisturbed on our South Sea island and turned in, worn out, on our beds of palm leaves.

Next day we took it easy and enjoyed life to the full. Some bathed, others fished or went out exploring on the reef in search of curious marine creatures, while the most energetic cleared up in camp and made our surroundings pleasant. Out on the point which looked toward the Kon-Tiki we dug a hole on the edge of the trees, lined it with leaves, and planted in it the sprouting coconut from Peru. A cairn of corals was erected beside it, opposite the place where the Kon-Tiki had run ashore.

The Kon-Tiki had been washed still farther in during the night and lay almost dry in a few pools of water, squeezed in among a group of big coral blocks a long way through the reef.

After a thorough baking in the warm sand Erik and Herman were in fine fettle again and were anxious to go southward along the reef in the hope of getting over to the large island which lay down there. I warned them more against eels than against sharks, and each of them stuck his long machete knife into his belt. I knew the coral reef was the habitat of a frightful eel with long poisonous teeth which could easily tear off a man’s leg. They wriggle to the attack with lightning rapidity and are the terror of the natives, who are not afraid to swim round a shark.

The two men were able to wade over long stretches of the reef to southward, but there were occasional channels of deeper water running this way and that where they had to jump in and swim. They reached the big island safely and waded ashore. The island, long and narrow and covered with palm forest, ran farther south between sunny beaches under the shelter of the reef. The two continued along the island till they came to the southern point. From here the reef, covered with white foam, ran on southward to other distant islands. They found the wreck of a big ship down there; she had four masts and lay on the shore cut in two. She was an old Spanish sailing vessel which had been loaded with rails, and rusty rails lay scattered all along the reef. They returned along the other side of the island but did not find so much as a track in the sand.

On the way back across the reef they were continually coming upon curious fish and were trying to catch some of them when they were suddenly attacked by no fewer than eight large eels. They saw them coming in the clear water and jumped up on to a large coral block, round and under which the eels writhed. The slimy brutes were as thick as a man’s calf and speckled green and black like poisonous snakes, with small heads, malignant snake eyes, and teeth an inch long and as sharp as an awl. The men hacked with their machete knives at the little swaying heads which came writhing toward them; they cut the head off one and another was injured. The blood in the sea attracted a whole flock of young blue sharks which attacked the dead and injured eels, while Erik and Herman were able to jump over to another block of coral and get away.

On the same day I was wading in toward the island when something, with a lightning movement, caught hold of my ankle on both sides and held on tight. It was a cuttlefish. It was not large, but it was a horrible feeling to have the cold gripping arms about one’s limb and to exchange looks with the evil little eyes in the bluish-red, beaked sack which constituted the body. I jerked in my foot as hard as I could, and the squid, which was barely three feet long, followed it without letting go. It must have been the bandage on my foot which attracted it. I dragged myself in jerks toward the beach with the disgusting carcass hanging on to my foot. Only when I reached the edge of the dry sand did it let go and retreat slowly through the shallow water, with arms outstretched and eyes directed shoreward, as though ready for a new attack if I wanted one. When I threw a few lumps of coral at it, it darted away.

Our various experiences out on the reef only added a spice to our heavenly existence on the island within. But we could not spend all our lives here, and we must begin to think about how we should get back to the outer world. After a week the Kon-Tiki had bumped her way in to the middle of the reef, where she lay stuck fast on dry land. The great logs had pushed away and broken off large slabs of coral in the effort to force their way forward to the lagoon, but now the wooden raft lay immovable, and all our pulling and all our pushing were equally unavailing. If we could only get the wreck into the lagoon, we could always splice the mast and rig her sufficiently to be able to sail with the wind across the friendly lagoon and see what we found on the other side. If any of the islands were inhabited, it must be some of those which lay along the horizon away in the east, where the atoll turned its façade toward the lee side.

The days passed.

Then one morning some of the fellows came tearing up and said they had seen a white sail on the lagoon. From up among the palm trunks we could see a tiny speck which was curiously white against the opal-blue lagoon. It was evidently a sail close to land on the other side. We could see that it was tacking. Soon another appeared.

They grew in size, as the morning went on, and came nearer. They came straight toward us. We hoisted the French flag on a palm tree and waved our own Norwegian flag on a pole. One of the sails was now so near that we could see that it belonged to a Polynesian outrigger canoe. The rig was of more recent type. Two brown figures stood on board gazing at us. We waved. They waved back and sailed straight in on to the shallows.

“Ia-ora-na,” we greeted them in Polynesian.

“la-ora-na,” they shouted back in chorus, and one jumped out and dragged his canoe after him as he came wading over the sandy shallows straight toward us.

The two men had white men’s clothes but brown men’s bodies. They were barelegged, well built, and wore homemade straw hats to protect them from the sun. They landed and approached us rather uncertainly, but, when we smiled and shook hands with them in turn, they beamed on us with rows of pearly teeth which said more than words.

Our Polynesian greeting had astonished and encouraged the two canoers in exactly the same way as we ourselves had been deceived when their kinsman off Angatau had called out “Good night,” and they reeled off a long rhapsody in Polynesian before they realized that their outpourings were going wide of the mark. Then they had nothing more to say but giggled amiably and pointed to the other canoe which was approaching.

There were three men in this, and, when they waded ashore and greeted us, it appeared that one of them could talk a little French. We learned that there was a native village on one of the islands across the lagoon, and from it the Polynesians had seen our fire several nights earlier. Now there was only one passage leading in through the Raroia reef to the circle of islands around the lagoon, and, as this passage ran right past the village, no one could approach these islands inside the reef without being seen by the inhabitants of the village. The old people in the village, therefore, had come to the conclusion that the light they saw on the reef to eastward could not be the work of men but must be something supernatural. This had quenched in them all desire to go across and see for themselves. But then part of a box had come drifting across the lagoon, and on it some signs were painted. Two of the natives, who had been on Tahiti and learned the alphabet, had deciphered the inscription and read TIKI in big black letters on the slab of wood. Then there was no longer any doubt that there were ghosts on the reef, for Tiki was the long-dead founder of their own race—they all knew that. But then tinned bread, cigarettes, cocoa, and a box with an old shoe in it came drifting across the lagoon. Now they all realized that there had been a shipwreck on the eastern side of the reef, and the chief sent out two canoes to search for the survivors whose fire they had seen on the island.

Urged on by the others, the brown man who spoke French asked why the slab of wood that drifted across the lagoon had “Tiki” on it. We explained that “Kon-Tiki” was on all our equipment and that it was the name of the vessel in which we had come.

Our new friends were loud in their astonishment when they heard that all on board had been saved, when the vessel stranded, and that the flattened wreck out on the reef was actually the craft in which we had come. They wanted to put us all into the canoes at once and take us across to the village. We thanked them and refused, as we wanted to stay till we had got the Kon-Tiki off the reef. They looked aghast at the flat contraption out on the reef; surely we could not dream of getting that collapsed hull afloat again! Finally the spokesman said emphatically that we must go with them; the chief had given them strict orders not to return without us.

We then decided that one of us should go with the natives as envoy to the chief and should then come back and report to us on the conditions on the other island. We would not let the raft remain on the reef and could not abandon all the equipment on our little island. Bengt went with the natives. The two canoes were pushed off from the sand and soon disappeared westward with a fair wind.

Next day the horizon swarmed with white sails. Now, it seemed, the natives were coming to fetch us with all the craft they had.

The whole convoy tacked across toward us, and, when they came near, we saw our good friend Bengt waving his hat in the first canoe, surrounded by brown figures. He shouted to us that the chief himself was with him, and the five of us formed up respectfully down on the beach where they were wading ashore.

Bengt presented us to the chief with great ceremony. The chief’s name, Bengt said, was Tepiuraiarii Teriifaatau, but he would understand whom we meant if we called him Teka. We called him Teka.

Teka was a tall, slender Polynesian with uncommonly intelligent eyes. He was an important person, a descendant of the old royal line in Tahiti, and was chief of both the Raroia and the Takume islands. He had been to school in Tahiti, so that he spoke French and could both read and write. He told me that the capital of Norway was called Christiania and asked if I knew Bing Crosby. He also told us that only three foreign vessels had called at Raroia in the last ten years, but that the village was visited several times a year by the native copra schooner from Tahiti, which brought merchandise and took away coconut kernels in exchange. They had been expecting the schooner for some weeks now, so she might come at any time.

Bengt’s report, summarized, was that there was no school, radio, or any white men on Raroia, but that the 127 Polynesians in the village had done all they could to make us comfortable there and had prepared a great reception for us when we came over.

The chief’s first request was to see the boat which had brought us ashore on the reef alive. We waded out toward the Kon-Tiki with a string of natives after us. When we drew near, the natives suddenly stopped and uttered loud exclamations, all talking at once. We could now see the logs of the Kon-Tiki plainly, and one of the natives burst out:

“That’s not a boat, it’s a pae-pae!”

“Pae-pae!” they all repeated in chorus.

They splashed out across the reef at a gallop and clambered up on to the Kon-Tiki. They scrambled about everywhere like excited children, feeling the logs, the bamboo plaiting, and the ropes. The chief was in as high spirits as the others; he came back and repeated with an inquiring expression:

“The Tiki isn’t a boat, she’s a pae-pae.”

Pae-pae is the Polynesian word for “raft” and “platform,” and on Easter Island it is also the word used for the natives’ canoes. The chief told us that such pae-pae no longer existed, but that the oldest men in the village could relate old traditions of them. The natives all outshouted one another in admiration for the great balsa logs, but they turned up their noses at the ropes. Ropes like that did not last many months in salt water and sun. They showed us with pride the lashings on their own outriggers; they had plaited them themselves of coconut hemp, and such ropes remained as good as new for five years at sea.

When we waded back to our little island, it was named Fenua Kon-Tiki, or Kon-Tiki Island. This was a name we could all pronounce, but our brown friends had a hard job trying to pronounce our short Nordic Christian names. They were delighted when I said they could call me Terai Mateata, for the great chief in Tahiti had given me that name when adopting me as his “son” the first time I was in those parts.

The natives brought out fowls and eggs and breadfruit from the canoes, while others speared big fish in the lagoon with three-pronged spears, and we had a feast round the campfire. We had to narrate all our experiences with the pae-pae at sea, and they wanted to hear about the whale shark again and again. And every time we came to the point at which Erik rammed the harpoon into its skull, they uttered the same cries of excitement. They recognized at once every single fish of which we showed them sketches and promptly gave us the names in Polynesian. But they had never seen or heard of the whale shark or the Gempylus.

Kon-Tiki

Across the Pacific by Raft

Thor Heyerdahl