Like innumerable peoples before them, pre-Columbian Native American tribes practiced a form of sacred architecture for ritualistic purposes. Unlike the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge, these monuments didn’t require herculean feats of strength to construct. They were, however, enormously complex.

Across the Great Plains of Canada and North America, there are more than fifty surviving examples of these ancient Americans’ giant stone circles – today known as “medicine wheels” for their supposed healing properties. Due to their nomadic nature, tribes would construct the peculiar rings next to their camps, and then abandon them after a few seasons. Different builders employed different techniques and, consequently, medicine wheels range in size from only a few feet to 60 yards across.

The most impressive example such a circle lies some 10,000 feet above sea level at the summit of Medicine Mountain in Wyoming. Though it has always been presumed the wheels were used for some sort of spiritual purpose, the 28-spoked Big Horn Medicine Wheel is one of the few that also bears an astronomical alignment. Not only did the 25-yard circle mark the ascent of the four brightest summer stars – Sirius, Fomalhaut, Aldebaran, and Rigel – but the beginning of the summer solstice as well and possibly even served a daily calendar. (Unfortunately for its builders, the Big Horn Wheel was unable to do the same in the winter, as it would have been buried under snow.) Originally built by the Crow people, it is currently supposed that the site was in use from at least 1200 AD onwards.

Due their loose construction and centuries of exposure to the elements, only a handful of medicine wheels can definitively classified as astronomical observatories today (though the distinct possibility that some may have acted solely as ceremonial centers remains.) Saskatchewan’s Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel is one of those select few, and displays solstice alignments every bit as striking as those at Big Horn. Moreover, radiocarbon dating indicates that it is at least 2400 years old — evidence that early North Americans may have been more technologically sophisticated that previously thought.

Though their true origins have lost (one tribe holds that they were built by “people who had no iron”), medicine wheels continue to be constructed by Native Americans today to demarcate sacred sites, such ceremonial teepees and sweat lodges. The old sites too are still held in reverence by an array of tribal peoples and can often be found adorned prayer offerings to this day.

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While every aspect of the taxpayers’ life was inspected by the elite classes, they were often allowed relative freedom in religious worship, as long as they complied with the demands put on them by the religious leaders, such as paying tribute. More often than not, the Incas themselves accepted the Provinces’ gods, or superimposed their gods onto the local pantheon. In this way, the integration of new peoples was smoother and more widely accepted. Religion was therefore, not primarily concerned with the spiritual life of individuals, rather, it was organized to gain more practical result which reflected the reality of Inca power. An example of this is the idea of the Emperor ruling with divine right as he was considered to be a descendant of the Sun god. His connection to the gods gave him more power over the people as he controlled not only their secular lives but also their religious lives.

On an individual level, it was important to maintain a positive relationship with the gods to ensure the nature of all forces acting on the environment remained profitable. This was especially important considering the high necessity of successful food crops which everyone depended on for survival. The Sun god, which traditionally headed the deities, was studied by astronomer who constructed a twelve month calendar which was linked around the agricultural practice. The Scared Valley contained two streams which were believed to be the center of the universe. The Inca population developed a canal system, straightened and walled in these water ways as a way of showing their devotion. Many people believed the waters to have a healing affect and they were therefore used not only to bath in but also for ceremonies and accompaniments to sacrifices.

The most important celebration, during which a sacrifice of up to 200 human children were offered to the gods, was during the coronation of a new Emperor. This asserted his power over the people and his connection to the gods straight off, leaving no one in doubt of his divine right to rule. The sacrificial victims were usually about the age of ten and were taken from their families as part of the provinces’ taxation.

Conclusion
The Inca empire was made up of a strict social organisation, laws and punishments, and religious and community commitments. With the common connection that religion provided, the empire remained centralized even with their expansion into other territories of different ethnic backgrounds. By allowing the nobility of the conquered lands to continue with their administration duties, the Incas were able to integrate new people into its system more smoothly and effectively. The Inca empire clearly reflected a dominate social structure that was flexible and for the elites, especially rewarding.

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About the Author
Charlotte Gardner, a guest blog writer, is currently studying archaeology at the Australian National University. In her spare time she likes to read and write about eccentric historical moments. Her love of old buildings and older stories was sparked when she visited Italy. One of Charlotte’s greatest wishes is that in a few thousand years her skeleton will be dug up by an archaeological investigation team and put on display in a national museum. You may contact Charlotte via email at: charlotteg86@gmail.com.

Of the dozens of texts held sacred by the school of Judaic mysticism known as Kabbalah, perhaps the most important is the Sefer Hazohar, (literally the Book of Splendor. Indeed, students of this collection of several lengthy Kabbalistic commentaries on the Torah — most commonly known in the West as the Holy Zohar – often assign it the same stature as Judaism’s two most holy books, the Torah and the Talmud.

Written in an arcane form of Aramaic, the Zohar purports to have been authored by second century rabbi and prominent critic of the Roman government in years following the destruction of the Second Temple, Shimon bar Yochai. Yochai claimed to have received the text from God himself, though most modern day scholars, however, attribute the work to Moses de Leon — a Spanish Kabbalist who lived some eleven hundred years later. Historians do concede, however, that, much like the books of the Bible, the disparate pieces of the Zohar were not all set down at one time. Rather, de Leon merely was the first to recorded several different tracts of the Oral Torah that passed been down from father to son, teacher to student over the course of many generations and that Yochai could have been an initial contributor.

The Kabbalah’s own inborn tradition details its spread. As the Jewish Diaspora spread throughout Europe and Eurasia after the fall of the Temple and, later, the crumbling of the Roman Empire, adepts of the “secret chain of mysteries” that is the Kabbalah brought the sacred knowledge with them, but shared it only with a select few. It would have been in this fashion that the original text of the Zohar was secreted out of the Holy Land and into one of Spain’s many Jewish communities.

And there was good reason for Jewish scholars to keep to the Zohar away from public scrutiny. The book maintains that the Torah and, by extension, all of reality exists on two distinct levels: the exoteric and the esoteric. It further posits that there is no one true interpretation of the Old Testament and that every soul is given – and, more importantly, encouraged — to make its own unique reading of scripture.

This statement alone – which happens to share a fair amount of philosophical overlap with the similarly persecuted Gnostics — would have been viewed as heresy by the religions by Spain’s then Judeo-friendly Catholic Church and citizens.

Consider then the anti-Semitism that swelled throughout the country in the years after Leon’s death. In 1492, all Spanish Jews were forcibly expelled; those that chose to convert in order to remain found themselves facing integration the hands of the Inquisition. And so, formal Kabbalic study was largely eradicated from the Iberian Peninsula – but not before the Zohar had managed become a key text of yet another secretive, albeit quasi-secular, sect: the European alchemists.

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Though oracles were commonplace throughout ancient Greece and Rome, the most famous dwelled at Delphi, a limestone temple on the western face of Mount Parnassus. Built in the 6th century BC, the complex was presided over by a chaste and elderly priestess called the Ptyhia who channeled the “breath” of the sun god Apollo into prophecy.

According to legend, Apollo claimed Delphi as his own after slaying its original inhabitant, Python — a dragon born of the earth goddess Gaia – in a battle between the gods of the earth and sky. He then took the seas to conscript sailors into his first order of priests, though he would require a female virgin to serve as earthly mouthpiece.

Supplicants to Delphi would be first required to bathe themselves in the waters of the temple’s Castalian spring — later a popular inspirational spot for Roman poets — to purify themselves before entering the Oracle’s sacred presence. Only after paying a fee would they then be permitted to ask their questions of the presiding Pythia. She would then retire to her personal her chamber and enter shamanic trance. Accounts differ as to the method by which this was achieved, though the drinking blood, the chewing of laurel leaves, the inhalation of smoke or the breathing of hallucinogenic vapors emitted by the temple’s cavernous rock –a phenomenon recently confirmed by modern day geologists – have all been suggested. The Pythia would then speak in a cryptic tongue, which would be converted into hexameter verse by the temple’s priests.

Those seeking divination at Delphi came from all social strata. From criminals to kings, many sought advice from the Oracle, though how they interpreted her predictions differed wildly. Legend holds that King Croesus of Lydia went to war over the Oracle’s prediction that if he battled the Persians a great army would fall. Unfortunately for him, the army in question turned out to be his own.

Tales of the Oracle’s supposed prescience became so ingrained in Grecian culture that she appears as a character in the three most well known pieces of Greek literature, Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s Odyssey, and Sophocles’ Oedipus saga, along with dozens of others. Despite her role in these quasi-mythical epics, the Oracle’s existence as an authentic historical figure is confirmed by the more than five hundred recorded prophesies of the Pythia that survive to this day.

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