The Hopi Indians and
the Edgar Cayce Readings
By John Fuhler
In the rain shadow of the San Francisco Peaks, west of the Little Colorado River and north of Sunset Crater Volcano, sits Wupatki Pueblo. Onetime home to many individuals, Wupatki was a major trade center. The pueblo was occupied for about 700 years, between CE 500 and 1182, after which the residents moved to more fertile lands.
The name “Wupatki” means “Tall House” in Hopi. It is apparently one of the resting places of the Hisatsinom, or “Ancient Ones.” Hopi mythology teaches that Masaw required the various peoples to migrate to all ends of the Fourth World before settling at their current location, where they were to await his return. They came from such places as Betatakin, Puerco Pueblo, Homolovi, and Tuzigoot.
But the Hopi ancestors did not always live on this Fourth World. Their ancient ones came a very great distance a long time ago.
Until recently American anthropologists held firmly to the hypothesis that all indigenous American peoples were descended from one group of Asian people who crossed the land bridge over the Bering Sea during the last Ice Age. This hypothesis is being challenged on all sides, and not only by the genetic data, but also by archaeological and linguistic data.
So Spider Woman gathered earth, this time of four colors, yellow, red, white and black; mixed with túchvala, the liquid of her mouth; molded them…these forms were human beings in the image of Sótuknang. (from Book of the Hopi)i
“He then projected himself into five centers at once as Adam…” (Edgar Cayce reading 364-13)
“The appearance of man…was in five different places as the five different races, at the same time. The white race appeared in the Carpathian basin, the yellow in Tibet, the red in Atlantis, the brown in Lemuria, the black in Africa. (Edgar Cayce reading 294-202)
The readings tell us that Lemuria was located west of South America (364-13), and it extended to the South Pacific (364-4). Ice caused the poles to shift (5249-1). Remnant residents from Lemuria settled in the American Southwest, in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah (851-2), Colorado (962-1), Southern California, and Mexico (5750-1).
Elements of the Hopi Creation myth corroborate these details:
…the world…teetered off balance, spun around crazily, then rolled over twice…This was the end of the Second World.
…Sótuknang came to Spider Woman and said, ”…It will be difficult; with all this destruction going on, for them to gather at the far end of the world I have designated…Then you will save them when I destroy this world with water.”
So he loosed the waters upon the earth. Waves higher than mountains rolled in upon the land. Continents broke asunder and sank beneath the seas.
…they saw they were on a little piece of land that had been the top of one of their highest mountains. All else…was water.
So Spider Woman directed them to make round, flat boats…For a long time they drifted…and came to another rocky island.
So the people kept traveling toward the rising sun in their reed boats…
At last they saw land stretching from north to south as far as they could see…Before long they landed and joyfully jumped out upon a sandy shore.
Soon all the others arrived and when they were gathered together, Sótuknang appeared…”Look now at the way you have come.”
Looking to the west and south, the people could see…the islands upon which they had rested. “These are the footprints of your journey…the tops of the high mountains of the Third World, which I destroyed. Now watch.”
As the people watched them, the closest one sank under the water, then the next, until all were gone…ii
Interestingly, both the myth and the corpus of the readings can be corroborated by linguistics and genetics.
The dominant language family of the American Southwest is the Uto-Aztecan. Its core members occupied precisely those locations cited in the readings: Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Northern Mexico. The original Uto-Aztecan homeland is in the area of Death Valley; and only later did representatives of the family move southward as far as the Yucatan. It is important to note that the Uto-Aztecan languages began to diverge from each other 9,000-13,000 years ago.iii According to the readings, Lemuria had sunk by 12,600 years ago. (5750-1)
From the perspective of genetics, some astonishing data can be obtained. One of the major American Indian genetic markers is known as Haplogroup B?. This marker is associated specifically with Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest.iv This is a very important fact for a number of reasons. First and foremost of these is the B Haplogroup is shared by Turks, Mongols, Han Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Malaysians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Filipinos, Polynesians, Taiwanese, Thais, Tibetans, and Vietnamese. The B Haplogroup is distributed from Southeast Asia across the Pacific archipelagos into the Americas. Though the haplogroup is greatest among the Pueblo Indians of North America, a greater frequency of Haplogroup B occurs in Central America, and an even greater frequency in South America!v Above and beyond these data, the American Haplogroup B? is most closely related to that of the Han Chinese. Moreover, there is a lack of this genetic marker among Siberian, Arctic, and Subarctic populations, indicating this marker arrived in America via the ocean and not across Beringia. Given the span of time necessary for the divergence between the American and Asian populations, the route across Beringia would have been blocked by the mountain of glacial ice covering southern Alaska and Northwestern Canada.vi Ironically, the so-called land bridge was un-glaciated! but the Aleutians were one massive wall of ice which stretched up into Northern Canada.
Here again is another rather portentous correlation between the readings and Hopi mythology:
Q. What will the Aquarian Age mean to mankind…?
A. Think you this might be answered in a word? These are as growths. What meant that awareness as just indicated? In the Piscean Age, in the center of the same, we had the entrance of Emmanuel or God among men, see? What did that mean? The same will be meant by the full consciousness of the ability to communicate with or to be aware of the relationships to the Creative Forces and the uses of same in material environs. This awareness during the era or age in the age of Atlantis and Lemuria or Mu brought what? Destruction to man, and his beginning of the needs of the journey up through that of selfishness. (1602-3)
According to the Hopi myth:
Now in the Third World they multiplied in such numbers and advanced so rapidly that they created big cities, countries, a whole civilization. This made it difficult for them to conform to the plan of Creation and to sing praises to Taiowa and Sótuknang. More and more of them became wholly occupied with their own earthly plans…So many people were using their reproductive power in wicked ways…they began to use their creative power in another evil and destructive way…some of them made a pátuwvota [shield made of hide] and with their creative power made it fly through the air. On this many of the people flew to a big city, attacked it, and returned so fast no one knew where they came from…So corruption and war came to the Third World as it had to the others.
This time Sótuknang came to Spider Woman and said, “There is no use waiting until the thread runs out this time. Something has to be done lest the people with the song in their hearts are corrupted…you will save them when I destroy this world with water.” vii
When Edgar Cayce discussed the Indians of the American Southwest, there was no knowledge of mtDNA Haplogroup B. It would be decades before Frank Waters would publish the Book of Hopi. And the hypothesis of a trans-Pacific migration independent of a single overland migration from Siberia was, and to some extant still is considered preposterous. Considering that linguistic evidence regarding the divergence of the Uto-Aztecan language family, Edgar Cayce’s date for the sinking of Lemuria of 12,600 years ago is astonishing! (5750-1)
There is one very interesting disparity between the readings and the Hopi myth. The latter states the pole change caused the world to freeze over; and the former, the ice caused the pole shift. (5249-1)
American anthropologists have considered it impossible for people to have been in the Western Hemisphere prior to the opening of the hypothetical ice-free corridor after the last glacial maximum. Now, however, the fields of genetics and linguistics are challenging archaeologists to dig deeper; and along the way, they are confirming the Edgar Cayce readings, as well as the Hopi myths.
John Fuhler has been involved in the field of alternative medicine for more than 25 years. He received his BA in anthropology from the University of Illinois and studied in Glasgow, Scotland, and Portland, Ore. As an amateur archaeologist, he participated in projects in Ariz., Calif., Hawaii, N.M., and Wis.; reporting discoveries in Ore. and Scotland. His tribal affiliations include: Saxon, Friesian, Bohemian, Irish (O'Meagher clan), and Wyandot. He volunteers his skills with organizations supporting the homeless, forest services, and families. He enjoys reading the bible in Greek and Latin.
i Waters, F. 1963. (Reprinted 1977). Book of the Hopi. Penguin Books. 5.
ii Waters, F. idem. 16-20.
iii These data are based upon vocabulary retention rates of 81% and 86% per millennium. For the distribution of the language family see Silver, S. and Miller, W.R. 1997. American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts. The University of Arizona Press: Tucson. 286-292.
iv Malhi et al. 2002. The Structure of Diversity within New World Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups: Implications for the Prehistory of North America. American Journal of Human Genetics. 70. Figure 2; cf. Malhi, et al. 2003. Native American mtDNA Prehistory in the American Southwest. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 120: 112, 118.
v Torroni et al. 1993. Asian Affinities and Continental Radiation of the Four Founding Native American mtDNAs. American Journal of Human Genetics 53: 585; Brown et al. 1998. mtDNA Haplogroup X: An Ancient Link between Europe/Western Asia and North America? American Journal of Human Genetics 63: 1858; and Mishmar et al. 2005. Natural selection shaped regional mtDNA variation in humans. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=140917
vi For the span of time required for the diversity of Haplogroup B in the Western Hemisphere, see Achilli et al. 2008. The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA Haplogroups: Implications for Evolutionary and Disease Studies. PLoS ONE 3(3). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258150/
vii Waters, op cit. 17-18.
