Cosmic Water
Exploring the history, mythology, and future of the sacred land called San Antonio
Cosmic Water
White Shaman Mural: San Antonio's Cosmological Heritage w/ Gary Perez & Matilde Torres
Join us on a remarkable journey as we uncover the sacred and historical significance of San Antonio in conversation with our guests, Gary Perez and Matilde Torres. We delve into compelling narratives of the White Shaman Mural and the spiritual role of the San Antonio River to reveal the rich tapestry of mythology, spirituality, and astronomy. This intricate exploration takes us through the liminal space between culture and history, creating a profound understanding of our collective ancestry and the enduring narratives written in the stars.
Our conversation focuses on the sacred constellation Eridanus, prompting discussions on how our ancestors used astronomy, mathematics, and language to forge connections across the world. We reflect on the essence of cultural authenticity, the duality of masculinity and femininity in native ceremonies, and the critical responsibility we have to protect our descendants from cultural appropriation. This riveting dialogue emphasizes our deep connections between history, culture, and cosmology while scrutinizing the delicate balance between cultural reconnection and appropriation.
As we delve deeper, we express gratitude for lineage and discuss how we can honor ancestors through our everyday actions. We also shed light on the hidden depths of ancestral connections and ancient civilizations, stressing the importance of preserving language and cultural practices for future generations. With fascinating insights about indigenous heritage and cosmic connection, this episode of the Cosmic Water Podcast is an enlightening journey you won't want to miss.
As the cosmos connects the universe, water connects life. At the Cosmic Water Podcast, we're exploring the history, mythology and future of the sacred land known as San Antonio.
Maureen:Welcome to Cosmic Water Podcast. I'm Maureen, I'm Angela, and today we are so honored to have Gary Perez and Matilde Torres with us. I'm going to read from a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio with the Alas of Plant Tiffs, which is just really incredible to read and I feel like has everything in such a consolidated matter about what's going on at Brock and Ridge Park specifically. So in it it says that plant tips and other groups indigenous to North and Central America believe the park is where life was created in the region. According to their beliefs, the park provides a special connection to the spiritual world. Plant tips and their fellow members of the Native American Church gather in the park for personal and communal religious worship, following the traditions that their ancestors have observed for thousands of years. The shape of the San Antonio River within the park, the floor that surrounds the river, the constellations in the sky above these come together to form a pilgrimage site for indigenous persons across North America, and they form one of the holiest sites on earth.
Maureen:So I went to UTSA.
Maureen:I graduated in 2010 and I moved back six years ago when I became a single mom.
Maureen:Like I only had one friend at the time, I actually met Angela the second day that I moved here, which seems just so meant to be, and since then San Antonio just created the most incredible community for me.
Maureen:I say all the time. It's just treated me and my kids so well, and I've actually heard this from other single moms too that came here and raised kids and they're like I knew something was special about this land and so when Angela told me everything about the stars that you know she learned from y'all, for me it just like all made sense and I was like, yes, this truly is like the most holy land on earth and with my knowledge of astrology and stuff, and with them, the way that Orion sits right, the birth, which is the nursery of stars, where stars are born Just like squirts basically, like kind of like water breaking into Irredinus, it's like it feels like the birthplace of all of the universe to me. And so with that like that being one of the most incredible like realizations of my life, and that information kind of coming from y'all, I was wondering like, at what moment did you realize that this is like the most sacred place in my, not just on earth but like in the universe, what it feels like?
Gary:Yes, sacred space has always been contentious all over the world, in the Middle East, okay, mexico here in.
Gary:Texas, because there's always a fight over interpretation and who gets to own it and who gets to create the narrative, and blah, blah, blah. But we've known the shape of the river through Breckenridge Park has always been important because it mirrors the constellation in the sky. So as long as the river has been there and as long as the stars have been there, this has been the truth. And it's only in the last, I want to say last 4,000 years that the greater community, indigenous community of North America has come together around this phenomena, because it's directly attached to from Breckenridge Park and a little bit further north is attached to the blue hole, an incarnate word, which is an, a star in the sky. And so this has been going on for a long, long time.
Gary:And when I was caretaker of the peyote gardens for 12 years, I saw other indigenous people that traveled from the north, some from the south, this in this direction knew that, intuitively or not intuitively, it was in their ceremony songs, songs.
Gary:You know one of this, you know one of that, it was just. And then, sitting in that position, it just envelops you. So there's a constant reinforcement, positive reinforcement, from North American tribes as far away as Canada that are telling you hey, man, this is, you know, want to, this is, this is, this is the thing you know. They still travel further south to the gardens where I was at and have their ceremonies there on our grandmother's property, but they never missed a chance to stop at the blue hole or at BRAC or watch the birds and, you know, reconnect ecologically because that's a tenant the water bird, feathers and water, and a moment in the in time and a start-stop station in our ceremonies is, you know, want to the water bird, the water, midnight water. It's a constant and everyone uses it, everyone and and some people know, some people don't, some native tribes do know, some people don't, some know and don't tell anybody that they know it's really, it all depends on who it is you talk to and who's willing to share, or.
Gary:But at the gardens where I was at, that came willingly through because they're, and the further away they had to travel, the more questions they had. You know, and they would come and ask Gary, what is this phenomena? What is midnight water? What is morning water?
Gary:and who was that first woman who found peyote all those thousands of years ago. And so we in my my office immediately had answers to those questions, especially when someone traveled so from so far away. So it's always been there and when, when indigenous people or my people's picked it up, that's thousands of years ago. It is and and it's and and it's been. It's recorded in the rock art out in West Texas so for you, it's just always been it's always been an inspiration, always still is moves.
Maureen:It moves you yeah, yeah, how was that for you until day.
Matilde:I've been practicing for the last 15 years, you know, reconnecting with my roots and my culture.
Matilde:I started as a danceante Mexica, mexica, danceante, that was like. And I remember having Bellacion and having ceremony for in March at the blue hole, and I would say, like, what's the blue hole? You know, didn't know too much and I was born and raised here in San Antonio, you know, but there was always, there was not a connection, I guess, for me, you know, because you felt disconnected, because you know that your parents were born in Mexico, right, and so they, you know, migrated back this way when I started, wanted to know more about my roots, more about my culture, and so when I met Gary and I knew about his, you know, he started teaching me about his work and the research and, and for me it just like wait a minute, here you mean to say there's like and I remember seeing it sitting at Bracken Ridge too, because we would work most of the time at the witty and then we would go to Brack. And then I remember like wait a minute, are you telling me this is a city of gods? Like we have that here, like you're kidding me.
Matilde:I was again reconnecting with my roots, my culture and I was kind of learning more about the, the pyramid in Mexico and and so forth, like there was more of it, right, these alignments are how they're aligned, or you hear the pyramids of Egypt, right, all the time, but it's like what is here in Texas, you know. And so when I began doing ceremonies, more of it, it just, it just hit me all at once what you know, what I meant with spirit, waters in the river and so for them, and just everything, just and just. Not only that, but I think, learning about what's in the white shaman, right, this mural, it's like wait a minute, and this is depicted, you know, on on this rock art, right, and there's just so much information. And so, throughout the years, again, ceremony is what helped me ground myself more to San Antonio and again, like you said, you mentioned earlier that it's a birthplace, right, and then you start making those connections to the other springs and these constellations and so forth, and I'm just like, oh, my god, right.
Matilde:So you begin to see this story coming together. You know about the universe and about nature and how, you know, this was all just put together again in this mural, you know, and so I think that, or we know that our ancestors were all about nature and universe because that was their way of life, and for me to get to live that way, or to to know that we can still do it, I mean it's, it's mind-blowing for me, you know.
Maureen:It's just, it's a lot, you know when you talked about like I was born here in San Antonio and didn't know this so many people that I talked to and I try to like put this all together. I'm like an aerodinist, this and the springs here and the murals down in South Texas, and it's like they're like first they like to think I'm crazy and then I'll like bring up something that it seems like it just like makes sense for them and they're like whoa, like that's wild. I am born and raised here and I never knew any of this. And yeah, you also mentioned the blue hole and when you said that that was a star, is that Regis or Regis?
Gary:no, that star is Fecta. Fecta, it's on the tail of Ursa Major and when, when Iridina's is laying on the horizon, like it is in the, in the picture here and on in our horizons, when Fecta, the star Fecta, that represents the blue hole, it's just rising above the horizon, it to the right of it, it's connected to along horizon, is connected to the constellation of Leo, and the Leo is the cat, the, the cat that, the blue panther that lives in the water, represented by the star, in the left to the right of that is the horizon, which is the surface of the water Yanawana and to the right of that is the constellation of Phoenix, which is the bird that flew into the blue hole and got chased out again.
Gary:So it's that perfect alignment across our southern skies that tell the story, that mirrors exactly what's happening on the earth is that what's in the white shaman mural? Iridina's.
:Yes, iridina's is in the white shaman mural. All of it is in there and different and different.
Maureen:I'm gonna go back to it. You can keep talking, it's not?
Gary:it's not laid out perfectly because they used abstract to protect some of this information. It's very guarded a lot of this information. You have to know how to unlock the key to what it is that you're looking at, so you pause it there that's a good one the springs yeah because it can show the the connection of.
Gary:Yanawana with those with the four springs. You see how, see how the arrows are pointing. If you seen this one, there are, those are pointing to geographic locations in Texas. And if you're standing in front of the painting and you look, and you look to your left, where the sun is rising, on the left, that's San Angelo, slide you to the right is paint, rock, the slain, deer, and then all the way across Texas, from north to south, and then you'll come on to the springs, along I-35, along the Baconesus garment. It was all laid out perfectly and this was our geologist who did this.
Gary:Our geologist made this discovery, I didn't. He was able to put himself in one spot in front of the painting and close his eyes and imagine the Texas landscape in front of him, if you could see it without you know. And so so we know that the southernmost spring on the right, the southernmost area in the painting, is Fecta, star Fecta, and to the left of that, that big lobular thing, was everything, yeah, everything else emanating, that's the constellation of Eridinas and then to the right, to the right of that, where the deer is to the right, is those nine lobes, those nine right here in this region, right here, those nine are that's nine, that's Jaguar, that's Pether you know, that's Leo mm-hmm so it's all.
Gary:It's all laid out in the painting that way, but that's just as a little little subset of the entire painting. I mean. San Antonio is. San Antonio is unique onto its creation story, but it only tells us that story only represents the region locally.
Maureen:It doesn't do the whole thing the way the white shaman mural does oh wow, there's much more to it yeah, I think I, when I was researching it, said that it has like the most murals, maybe in all of America that area, that whole area, that whole area, the lower Pekos region.
Gary:I would say that this painting was someone's dissertation. This puts all of that rock art together and puts it on in one paper right, and then submit it for PhD you know, so that's. It's a magnificent piece of work mm-hmm, it's multiple stories.
Angela:It's multiple stories, right and information on there.
Gary:Those the multiple stories you're talking about came out of, came out of this, its foundation. Like the first woman who found peyote, she's represented in the painting as the Noyesis River. So that's one story. That's one story. And then there's the blue panther over here. That's another story. And then in the Weichold tradition, the Noyesis River and the woman's face along the Noyesis River where she has her open mouth. There are three ancestors in the painting that she has swallowed and the two that survived in the Weichold culture. Well, it was the two that she didn't manage to swallow that killed her in the underworld. So that's a part of the painting too. And that's Weichold and that's like three or four miles away.
Gary:So I mean a lot of folks, different native peoples from here everywhere pulled something from this and over time these narratives started coming about because of, maybe nature change. We know that in 536 AD the sun went away for about a year and cultures all over the world suffered from this, including our own cultures. Here it does show there's geological evidence that something went down here in the state of Texas and it was a very unhappy time and a lot of people moved away from this region north and south, which explains the Comanches, u-tua-stekin-speaking peoples in the north and Aztecs U-Tua-Stekin-speaking peoples in the south. So you can see, there was just this great exodus out of this region and these cultures were gone for a long, long time until someone came along and picked it right back up again.
Angela:Could you please tell us the origin story again and translate it to the cosmos? The Blue Hole origin story.
Gary:Okay, so one day a water bird flew into the Blue Hole there at the Incarnate Ward campus and encountered the blue panther. And the panther roared in the water at the blue bird and the blue bird turned back around again, swam to the surface, leaped out of the water and left water droplets all throughout this region as it was escaping, and that's how life came to be in this region. And so we know that relationship between everything that I just told you has something analogous in this guy the Blue Hole Aspecta. The panther is the constellation of Leo, the surface of the water is Yanawana and the water bird is the constellation of Phoenix.
Gary:Over to the right of Phoenix is kind of funny is another constellation that's a fish. So, even though it doesn't mention it in the story, we know that because there's a constellation of I don't remember what it's called, but it's a fish and it looks like a sunfish it looks like a sunfish, everything, the gate, everything.
Gary:So we do know that the blue bird was hungry. We know that there was a motivation behind the water bird's behavior to go into the Blue Hole in the first place because of that constellation still further to the right of the constellation of Phoenix. So you can add more to the story, because there are surrounding constellations that give you hints as to the motivation of the bird, the motivation of the panther of roar, which is the Leonid's Meteor Shower.
Matilde:And when does that?
Gary:occur In November.
Matilde:November.
Gary:In November and when all those stars line up on the horizon in November. When they line up in November, as Leo is coming up, the meteor shower is blasting out of its mouth as it's rising in the east. So it plays itself out like a film, like a short film story and the stars in the sky. What really gives this whole story momentum is that meteor shower as it's rising, as it's coming out of Leo's mouth, as Leo is rising in the east in November, around the 22nd, 24th.
Maureen:And that's when y'all would traditionally have a ceremony.
Gary:But it's also involved in other ceremonies too, not just here locally. You know that meteor shower is also used in the Matilda's experience.
Maureen:And moon dance.
Matilde:Moon dance, yes, which would take place, or takes place in November, you know, during the full moon. So I was a part of it for maybe three years and we would have ceremony for four days and we would fast for four days. So that's one of the things that I was able to make the connection again with ceremony and then what's taking place in the cosmos and then apply it to, you know, the ceremony. So I'm just like, wow, that's part of the story, you know.
Angela:And is that a women's only? Yes, a ceremony, yes.
Matilde:I mean men do run, I mean take care of the fire, but they're not allowed to come close inside the circle where the women are having their ceremony. So we're all dressed up in white and then, so you know again, we do sweats before we go into the circle and then once we come out of the circle which is from sunset to sunrise and then sunrise we have another sweat. But we do fast. So, yeah, but it's beautiful, it's powerful, it's, yeah, too fast. I mean, when I first joined, it was just like am I going to be able to fast for four days? How can you do that? But you actually can. You know you have to prepare yourself. You know mentally, you know, but you can do it, yeah.
Gary:And the fact that these things, these, this meteor shower, is taking place throughout this, it's taking place during and then most intensely in one particular part of the ceremony. That's motivation to keep you going. Yeah. You know these things are really motivating.
Matilde:That's what also she gave me water bear for, like I think, my second year when I was there, and so that's what kind of motivated me to begin a water pilgrimage that actually this year was my fourth year. So, again, you know, using the cosmos, telling the story, reconnecting and just putting it all together right, it just it's. You know, it puts you back into your ancestors way of life or, you know, walking in their footsteps, right. And so, even though it's been said that this pilgrimage would start from north to south, from the Pankas or other pilgrims that were taking place, but I said, well, for me I would, I want to begin here in San Antonio and then go to the other three springs, and that's for me it's kind of bringing it back from south to north. You know, just kind of reconnecting and just bringing something back right. And Angie's been a part of it, for you know she was part of it last, this year and last year. So, and again it's giving back, you know, something to the community, something that we haven't had, you know. But to tell that story right and to actually use the cosmos and share that alignment.
Matilde:I don't post anything about it because it's a ceremony, you know it's sacred, and so you hear what's going on when you're there, and so I try not to, you know, I try to keep, I limit, you know, the number of women, right, because even that for me tells them there's a sacred number that we're working with, right, and so that's kind of part of what I document. You know, throughout the ceremonies as well, I was like, okay, what number is manifesting in this ceremony? And that's how you begin to make other connections. So that's another level of thinking for me as a woman, right.
Matilde:What I wanted to also share about Yanawana and the river, you know, as you mentioned, you know it's a birth, you know, but for me is more also about the rebirth, you know, because of the birds. And then there's also the afterlife, you know. So for me it's in three it's the life, the death and the afterlife. You know that at times we don't, we struggle learning just about life, right, but what about death and what about the afterlife? And so for me that's what the birds tell. They tell that story about the afterlife, so through water and everything.
Angela:I think that's what I feel most connected to, or what speaks to me immediately about all of this, is the darkness, is the underworld, part of it. That's where transformation happens. That's, it's very feminine. And so you know the darkness. I feel comfortable there. I feel comfortable there. It's the womb.
Matilde:Right.
Angela:It's the womb and so it's just. I love all the connections to that.
Matilde:Right, and so you're saying that I mean, yeah, I love the darkness too, right, but at some point you must leave that womb right to manifest. Right, and so that's really what the white shaman is, is that's one of the things that I mentioned to Gary, but even though he's more of the science, right, but as women, we began to see all this, right about the transformation, the evolution, transformation and manifestation. They all have to work together, right, and so that's part of what kind of like what I see about this painting is. It's a woman, right, it's the universe, and so, yeah, there's just so much levels in there, right. But, like you said, I think that when we think about the underworld, it's not as we've been taught to look at the underworld, right, it's still beautiful in there. There's sacredness in there, right, and so, yeah, so for me it's the same. I love darkness and that's where, basically, you have, it begins, right, it begins and so, and then from there, just everything else happens, you can't see the light without dark.
Matilde:Exactly.
Angela:You can't see the stars without that dark sky. Exactly.
Gary:Well then, that what y'all are talking about, in a nerdy sort of nerdy sort of way of looking at it.
Angela:Let's geek it out, come on.
Gary:That's called liminal space. You don't know once on the other side of that door until you open it or choose to come through it. You just don't know Ceremonies like that. You begin with, you know you're awake, maybe you're tired, you're thirsty, you're everyone's hasn't had medicine yet, you know, and that's that.
Gary:And I remember from in my 20s, when I joined the Native American church, I wasn't aware that there was a gap between my consciousness and then my consciousness after participating in the ceremony smoking tobacco, eating, peyote, that kind of thing, and that was deep, wide liminal space. You know, it took a long time to get through all night to get through that door. When I came out on the other side, I was I don't know that much better off as a person or as a human being. I knew that immediately that I had just gone through something very special. And so it's necessary, and the liminal space is necessary in our lives.
Gary:We can't shy or hide from it. It challenges us to take that step forward, take that leap of faith. If you want to call it and say, ok, I'm going to walk through this door, no matter how frightened I am. I want to do it. And then you do it. And it's that space between when you say I'm going to do it and when you commit to it, that liminal space that really, really creeps a lot of people out and for that reason most people never get to know themselves spiritually or in other ways.
Maureen:Yeah, I'm feeling like I get emotional when you talk about specifically the water and reconnecting with ancestry and stuff and having the opportunities to do these ceremonies, because my ancestry is in Ireland, which was colonized by the English and had all of their information just kind of erased too and they had these really deep connections with the water and it's all lost now and there are some people trying to revive those connections and stuff and so to be able to see on the land that I live at now people whose ancestry is from this land, reconnecting with that, is just so beautiful to me. And my children are, as far as I know, have ancestry around this region I'm not exactly sure where and so that feels like coming alive again, rebirthing, and that they get to be connected to that, hopefully early in their life, is just really incredible to me.
Maureen:And it really makes my heart just feel really warm that they can't get that from my ancestry, but they can get it from here.
Gary:And so I would love that, especially from a cute story like a bird flying into the blue hole. I'm going to be doing a version of that for the Mission Library in October and my students are going to be kiddos and I've got to figure out a way how I'm going to do the water bird flying in splash and the panther and all these other things to try and get that story across to them, so that it inspires them or at least entertains them, and with truth, with facts.
Gary:Yes, it's a cute story, but it also plays itself out in the stars. You can see it throughout your life, playing itself over and over again.
Gary:And that builds a lot of cultural sense of security in a person when you go back to the same spot again, which is why we return to the bend in the river the way we do we're inspired by the movement of the stars and everything else around it to come back to the same spot so we can reconnect to that little person inside, or what our ancestors painted up on the wall.
Maureen:Yeah, that too. Actually, I was thinking about that too with my ancestry because I follow astrology. I know the stars very well as far as Greek and Romans created the constellations. But over the past few years I'm really in trying to decolonize my mind and all that. I'm like what did my Irish ancestors? How did they see the stars? And there's not a lot of information on that. And so that too has just been amazing for me to see that it's documented. The stars here as they were seen are documented, and that they're still being practiced outside of that Greek, roman astrology that our whole world basically follows, I guess, besides Eastern astrology. And so that too I'm just like, because it's really hard, it's really hard to see outside of that Western astrology way, and so that y'all are bringing it to life is more of just this amazing rebirth, resurgence of actual, true information outside of that colonized mind.
Gary:Sure, or the stereotype, the indigenous stereotype. We see so much in the media, but we all have that in common the Greeks, the Egyptians, Our native peoples. Here we all saw the constellation of Leo as a cat, the arrangements of stars as a cat. That's something we all had common all over the world, or we spoke to one another over the thousands of years that we've occupied this Earth.
Gary:We spoke into one another said hey, how do you see that? Well, over here we see it like this, or over here we see it like that. And I think the one thing we had most in common is Leo, I'm sorry, the constellation of Orion the hunter, which hunter gathers all over the world, and then Leo the cat, the lion, or even in Christianity, christ is the lion.
Gary:And the belt of Orion, the three pyramids in Giza, plato. So there may have been a conversation going on between us human beings all over the world 10,000 years ago about the same stuff, because everyone had their turns. Looking at the skies, like Israel is six, I think it's six hours ahead of us, so they see the same skies that we do in Texas. Every day, every day, every day, every day. They see them first.
Matilde:And that's even through mythology. If you read mythology that's what helped me learn more about this painting is mythology is like what was taking place, Just the mythology of the sun and the moon and what happened. Right, it's telling that story, but when you see it come life, you're like whoa, wait a minute here. So that's how you think you can make the connections of how other countries or other places told their story versus how we told the story. So just think that would help too.
Matilde:Mythology is just. It's helped me understand more these stories of what's taking place in the cosmos with the sun and the moon and the planets and all of that.
Angela:And touching on the history of humans and knowledge sharing. We have the technology now to do our DNA and in my DNA I have no Asian DNA strands in there, nothing. Nothing from Asia. So a lot of us did not come over the Bering Strait directly from Africa. That's very true.
Maureen:And so when I saw that, how yeah you showed me that and how Africa is actually pretty close to South America, like there's not that big of water distance to get out of those places Yep.
Matilde:That helps a lot.
Maureen:Yeah, and mythology wise. I like mythology because it's on my kids. I think that Greek and Roman mythology has colonized the world and that we are all recreating those patterns, whether we like it or not, because they've been so ingrained into us, and so it's important to know what they are, because we're living them and we're going to keep recreating those. And so I read Greek and Roman mythology to make sense out of the current world, or current like matrix, that we're in, I guess. And as far as erudinus goes, yeah, it's right here being looked over as a constellation, as it was for the Greeks and the Romans, and the name erudinus came from a river in Babylon, that's right, it's a battle.
Maureen:And so which was the birthplace of civilization, of law, of legal codes and stuff, and so that was pretty significant. And I also read too that they were trying to find erudinus, like as a river. They were like the Romans and Greeks, as they were colonizing the world, were trying to find this river with this loop, and they thought that they found it like an Italy or something. And so they just sort of were like yeah, we found the constellation river. I always tell that to people I'm like, but it's here it was here the whole time.
Gary:And they know it.
Maureen:They know the sacredness of that river.
Gary:And we've learned in our research that the powers that be in Texas they know it too and they just don't want us to have access to that information. And it's in plain sight.
Gary:It's in plain sight and I guess they think they're being funny or cute by putting it out there openly because they don't think that we know or that we don't remember. But we do know. We know, we're on to the fact that this information is out there but we don't have access to it because they don't want us to have access to it. I've even been told I was going to do a presentation in a small municipality here in Texas a while back about one of those particular types of phenomena and I got a phone call from the city manager telling me don't you dare, Don't you dare come to this town and tell everybody what it is that you have found. We don't want you to do that. You can do your presentation, but you may not reveal that truth or that fact. I said, sure, I won't mention it, but I knew right away. Ok, they know and they don't want anyone else to know.
Angela:There's that interpretation of Eridinus as being the bringer of wrath to his enemies. Do you remember that image? Yeah, yeah, so that's always given me hope.
Gary:Inspired me. You know, the hope. The last part of this conversation was about hope, and what our ancestors? The reason why our ancestors painted the White Shaman mural, was that it's for the hope or the generations thereafter that would have come later.
Gary:It's hope. And then I've been told in our native communities never take the hope away from the people, always give them something to look forward to. You know, the pilgrimages through this region down to the gardens is hope for the next pilgrim. Right, they're going to come down to the gardens, they're going to put down their prayers, pray about their grandma or somebody special. The way our ancestors painted the painting anticipating this year's Annular.
Gary:Eclipse over the missions San Antonio missions. We have absolute proof that shows that our ancestors, 300 years ago, built these missions directly in the path of this eclipse. Wow.
Gary:Absolute, back-full truth that you cannot walk away and ignore from, and so that's been offering myself and my community, the community that I am the chief of, give it us hope for that day when it comes. And there is a second one, a twin, 54 years later. So we've got to build that hope in our grandchildren, in our great-grandchildren, to be there for that moment too. So, yeah, hope is huge. Hope is very, very important.
Angela:Could you tell us how the missions are translated or mirrored in the skies?
Gary:Sure, the way that the missions are laid out along the river, let's just say looking. I want to say looking west early, because my people would have seen the layout from looking towards the west, because San Antonio is in some ways the west, the underworld Right. So mission is father, and then mission San Juan, and then mission so Jose, and then mission conception and mission ballerro, or analogous to Saturn, venus, jupiter, mercury, mars all in that order.
Gary:All in that order, that exact same order. In the rock art. Our ancestors are laid out along the painting. The original Pilgrims to the first sunrise are two to the left of the Milky Way and three to the right, two ancestors in the east, three ancestors in the west. And the missions are laid out along the river the exact same way Two to the left of the river, three to the right, two in front doors facing east and three front doors facing the west. That's directly connected to the rock art and in anticipation of the annular eclipse that's coming this year. And so one of the things that pointed directly to this eclipse, one of the first thing let me just say the first thing that pointed, not the first thing the second thing that pointed directly to this eclipse Was a set of 15 paces.
Gary:just above the deer Right here there's 50. You can't see them in this picture that they're very faint, but there's 15 paces of the deer. On this month, on the 29th, you'll have a full moon, the complete full moon, 100%, and exactly 15 paces or days or phases of the moon. Later, you'll have a new moon and an annular eclipse. That's why we know one way that we know that here's here's the annular eclipse here, upside down. Here's a 50.
Gary:Here's this this Like lobe we the full moon and then, 15 days later, to here is the annular eclipse.
Matilde:And so you have the new moon right in that an area too so so you get a full moon to a new moon, right, and that's what gives you the eclipse, right? And then 15 days later, after that eclipse, that solar eclipse, then you're going to get a lunar eclipse somewhere around the world.
Gary:Yeah, so this math applies to any annular eclipse anywhere in the world. So that goes back to that goes back to the talk that we're having about how our ancestors were sharing information with other people thousands of years ago Information about you know what's going on? I don't believe that Native.
Gary:Americans and North America, central and South America lived in a vacuum. There's just absolutely no way. The world is too big and our ancestors were too brilliant to bring, to allow themselves For that to happen. You know where it took. It took the evolution of the world where it took. It took the evolution of human beings to connect with other peoples around the world, to To keep up with with the times.
Gary:But what's unique about Texas is that everything in Texas and the teachings that we have here are rooted in astronomy and Geography and time. You know math to root it here. And so when the, when the Spanish came here, our ancestors were still living deliberately as hunter-gatherers To maintain that connection to the original source the math, the math, space, time, sacred space, mountains, the temple of the Sun, the tumble of the moon, your adenas, the four fountains, springs along I-35 that this was a foundation that our ancestors here and San Antonio still held on to, had been holding on to for thousands of years. I don't know if they were part of the exodus in 536. They may have stayed and toughed it out, I don't know, couldn't tell you, but this is where it, this is where it all began began. This is I can say this.
Maureen:I believe I can say this as a published Author that Messer Mesa, america had its beginnings in this region, in Texas well, if you look at the hemisphere hemisphere 1968 their whole theme, going back to, they know, was called the confluence of Civilizations. Yeah, yeah, it's all over Hemisphere Park, remember we went to and there's this one little section by that stinky pool, you know, under by Angel's family's tree. There's this whole little section of all of the people who, like, funded it and all of the participants from all over the world. And yeah, it's whole, like the symbols, like some kind of like swirly circle, and it's the confluence of civilizations. That's what the tower was built for.
Maureen:And so yeah, I was like oh, they know well they used to have what, what.
Matilde:What's interesting is that. Hmm. I think even in the 60s they still had the voladores from Pampantla, from Veracruz. They were they used to have that ceremony right and that's Kind of where. That's part of my heritage too, which is, you know, from Puebla. You know, the Voladores is the Pampantla, so what is that?
Angela:tell me, it is the.
Matilde:So what they do is they cut down a Tall tree the flying.
Matilde:Yes, the flying, you know, I guess there's five of them, and so, yeah, there's five, right, and so you know, they go up to the top and then they come flying down. You know, so that for me it's interesting that they had that there. Huh, you know, and for you, mentioning that, that's very interesting, you know, and again, you know, just to hear a Certain language, right, you make that connection like wait a minute here that you know the confluence of civilizations. You know, like of course and again.
Matilde:So and that's one of the things that I tell I Was tell, gary, no, this was a civilization, you know, it wasn't just People moving around here and there, it. You know, we have to see ourselves that our ancestors were a civilization, right, and not it did not just moving around. Or I have a problem with, I have to say, you know, hunter, gathering or nomad people, because that's like not grounding our, our ancestors to the land, you know. And then, when you Again, when I learned more about this mural and then I learned more about the land, I'm like there's no way there was a civilization here, because Everything that's been found, like all the artifacts you know, throughout the almost basin and incarnate word and bracken ridge, and you know, the golf course, I mean, come on, these people were living here for hundreds of years. They weren't just not moving, passing through. You know, I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that.
Matilde:So for me it's, it's I feel, and that it was a big civilization from, you know, all the way down to either South America, central Mexico and North America. It was just all connected, you know. But I think we, just I, I, we just need a. I think I hope to see the next generation look more into the history, more into what people were here, and not just based on the 200, 300 year history that you know. They just want to stick to us.
Matilde:Right, there's a lot more and so, and again because of them you know, there's this painting you know, tells us that you know.
Gary:So For me, that's what it's basically what it's telling, telling me you know or we should Not disconnect ourselves anymore from well, no, that's Mexico or no, this is Texas, or whatever you know, maybe one day I'll just to what she just said Maybe one day, on Webster Dictionary, the translation of hunter-gatherer will become master of the universe. We can just start making that shift now, yeah.
Maureen:Get it in our minds and just the not negative connotation that it comes with with Texas historians.
Matilde:Yeah because, you know, I think about the, the Toltecs, you know the Toltecas, you know, they were the masters of the universe, you know. And so sometimes we we think, oh, they were, they were in South Mexico, but no, I feel that they were here as well, just like the old mechs, you know. But they just want to want us to believe that we are not part of that DNA, you know, and we are yeah I think we are you know, I mean looking at your tattoos, you know.
Matilde:For me I see Toltec, you know, and if you look at some of the artifacts or some of the, the, the, the, the, the people that are at the Texas culture down in downtown, I mean look at those artifacts, look at those, the way those people were living at one time. Have you gone there?
Angela:and the Institute of Texas. Yeah, yeah.
Matilde:I mean, and they say but a lot of those artifacts were found here in San Antonio, but they won't tell you that which they're gonna knock down exactly that's what I hear, so to put an arena.
Angela:It's already got a name Frost arena. Of course, yeah, and you know, speaking to this, it seems to me that a lot of and we've kind of I've just spoken to you about this a little bit the Eurocentric idea of civilizations has a lot to do with its impact on the land, and so if there's not visual impact on the land, they think there's nobody there, you know, nobody's doing anything, when really these people are living in harmony with it. So, yeah, it has little impact on the land.
Gary:And so Nor no carbon put right, you know leave no trace, or you know.
Angela:And so that's a Another hunter-gatherer gets lumped into this idea that we're just out here. And then the Spanish came and thankfully taught us how to dig ditches or whatever, and saved us Exactly.
Matilde:You know no, yeah, right, but the oldest Assecias in San Antonio we've learned are the ones that the Indians built before the Spanish arrived. Indigenous.
Gary:They're underneath the ones that the Spanish put when they got here, and above that are the Germans after they got here the earliest. Assecias in the New World are pre-Columbian yeah.
Maureen:I believe it. One of the mind-blowing moments to me information hearing that totally wiped out all of the colonized history I grew up learning was that most of the road highway systems in America are based off of Indigenous trails. Yes. So it was very much a civilization, exactly, and for me that goes.
Matilde:Camino Real, right. So the Camino Real is another thing, that you look at it as you hear it on the David Orchard script, as the Old People's Road, or you hear it as the Buffalo Road or Camino Real. So there's different languages there, right. But again, that's, what helps us is getting back to know that language that we don't use anymore, right, or we don't speak that language anymore.
Matilde:The narrative, the narrative, so I mean, and that's one of the things that, like, I have my 12-year-old and I remember him telling me six, seven years ago he must have been like five and he says Mom, are we native? And I said yes, and he says, but we don't speak the language. And I said, yeah, you're right, you know we don't. I said, but what mom's going to teach you is how to read the language, the first language, and he says, really, he says, well, what is that? And I was like I'm going to teach you how to read the stars, that's what I'm going to teach you.
Matilde:And the language of the land, that's where you're going to begin. You know, because I think at times, you know, we're trying to you know, and which is nothing wrong with it, trying to you know, either trying to fit somewhere or trying to learn the language that we don't even know. That's a language. We just want to speak a language, right? And so I said, no, we're going to go back to the beginning. And so for me, it's as a mother, I have that responsibility. You know, to teach my boys it's to get to know the stars, get to know that land, you know, and then we can say now we can speak a language.
Maureen:That sums up everything that we created this podcast for. I feel like right Of getting to know the language of the stars and the land, and how it all like is interconnected and how we need to know our history and to be able to create the future. I was wondering with that, with like wondering about the future. I remember when the first story about your dynast came out and the Express News was it. Was that like the first? It was like cover page, I think.
Gary:I think it was.
Maureen:And Angelus sent it to me and I was like so excited, I'm like, oh my gosh, people are going to understand now. And at the same time I was like is it going to get appropriated? And I was wondering, like if you have concerns about that.
Gary:I do speak directly to the language itself, our ancestors language. The way that my people see my relatives in Mexico in here is very sacred because it comes from the cosmological worldview, right. So I know that there are language programs out there that are being offered that are our language in Texas. It is recorded in the Smithsonian out in Washington DC and without the cosmology that language is nearly useless. Unless you're going to use that language to talk about honey, I'll be right back. I'm going to go to HEB and get a case of beer and a bag of bologna for dinner. Why, in my opinion, why bother with it if you're not going to use it to re-examine and understand the cosmological narrative? How did the universe begin in here, locally? Or the bigger picture, the White Shaman mural in Texas. The language should reflect the cosmological worldview, not every day, the day life. So when we use our language we're singing directly to that star in the sky, directly to that meteor shower, directly to those ancestors. Does that make sense?
Gary:Directly to that sunrise or that sunset, not, I'll be right back. So the language, the words are sacred themselves because they tell us more about in my opinion, they will tell us more about what was here before the Spanish arrived and wrote it down. It's meaning before it was colonized. So even our language, even though it's still in most ways intact at the Smithsonian, it's been colonized because a European wrote that recorded what we were saying without asking us what it really meant to us. They were just trying to record, you know, right? Oh, this is how they speak, these are the words that they use, but I'll bet you, those who were recording our language never made the connection that we had between us and an annual eclipse, not to mention the fact that there were at least two annual eclipses that took place over the state of Texas an appearance of Haley's Comet over the state of Texas, and in nowhere in the historical record written by the conqueror.
Gary:As I mentioned, those two annual eclipses and Haley's Comet nowhere. Why? Because they don't want us to connect to those things. They deliberately leave these fantastic phenomena that the Chinese wrote about, europeans wrote about. But you get a historian here from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries about what was going on. They won't say a damn thing about the annual eclipses or Haley's Comet nothing. That's where it all you can see. That's where it all began. The colonization is. Don't talk about what they were looking up in the sky. Don't tell them why they lined up along the balconies of Scarborough by the thousands. Just tell them that they were there. Don't tell them why they were there. Don't write that down, because they'll come back to the same spot again after we take it from them.
Matilde:So I want to add to that because of what he mentioned about how we don't need to use that language on our daily base lives. For me, I thought about how some of the Felly recognized tribes a lot of them are losing the language. It's not being passed on right? So now it's something that they say wait a minute, here we're losing the language. What's going on here? They've lost a lot of the elders in the community or in those Felly recognized tribes, and so it just makes me think is there a reason why this language is not being passed on Again? Because maybe that language had a lot to do with, again, the universe and the land, and if we don't know that, then that language is gone.
Angela:Language changes how you think Right.
Matilde:Right, so exactly, and so for me it just I had to say that because it's like hearing him and then what I just said, it's like wait a minute here. Maybe that's why I don't know. Here's what works. We don't go outside anymore to go watch the sunrise Really, and sometimes we think people might look at us. That's silly. What's wrong with that? Every time I'm driving my son to school, every time I give, that's the first meaning that I give thanks to is that sunrise? That creator.
Matilde:Or I always say thank you, father Creator, mother Creator, for waking up this morning, and so those are things that I share with my son going to school. Did you say your prayer, look at that sun, and you give thanks, and at times I think sometimes we think that's silly, but that's really how it began. For me, it's acknowledging that way of life. You don't have to go inside of a church to say thank you.
Maureen:You just got to walk outside your house nowadays and just do it, and so yeah, I love that so much because I hear every morning when I drive my girls to school I see the sun rising. And I don't outwardly say a prayer, but I'm like, wow, isn't the sun beautiful today girls, but that's such a wonderful thing to add to it. Let's give gratitude and starting that day with a prayer.
Matilde:Yeah, because you begin to understand. Well, for me I speak for my experience the colors, yes, the colors of what the sun is at times it's not always yellow, as we think it is right or even the sunset, you know. Or even watching the moon rise, when you said, oh, look at the moon, right, and so not all the time it's the same, you know.
Maureen:Or it's not always rising in the same constellation.
Matilde:It really does blow my mind. So in the morning, with that sunrise, you can see it during sunset you know, and that's how it mirrors.
Matilde:You know, and that's one of the things that I love is that when I learn more about and basically it's observations, you know, because I think a lot of times is well, how did the people do it? You know, they didn't have telescopes, they didn't have this, they didn't have that, you know. But if we become more observant of shadow, of light, of these movements right and sunrise and sunset and so forth, then it becomes a pattern in your life and so you begin to see. Oh okay, you know. I mean, I remember when I first watched Orion it was like in October, during Halloween I was, you know, taking my little one at the time in the stroller and I was doing trick-or-treating just down the street right Because he didn't care much for trick-or-treating, and so I took him. But when I looked and I saw Orion rise for the first time in my life, it was just like whoa, what is that?
Matilde:you know, and so I began to pay more attention, you know, of Orion, you know, and so for me it's. I became the hunter, you know, I became the hunter of going after that knowledge, you know. And also even I think, as women, we feel that this is a man's world, right, that they are the only ones that can hold this knowledge. But as women, we can do it, right, by making these observations that we can be the masters of the universe too, you know, and Mother Earth and so forth, right, I mean just a number of things. And so when you begin to communicate and you get those answers back from the universe or the land, it's just, it's beautiful, you know, it really is, and so I like to share that. One time I, just when I saw all five planets and I think it must have been like three or four o'clock in the morning I walked outside and I, because I heard that, you know, these five planets were going to be aligned, and I went outside.
Matilde:You know I'm going to go, I want to see that. You know, and I remember, just pointing at every one of them, I said I want to know about you, about you, about you and you and you. And here I am, you know, I find myself knowing more about these ancestors, or, as we know them, as you know, the diastrels, right, but really, you know they're there. You know, and if you have that communication and you ask your ancestors to guide you, and just did you want to know, they're going to let you know. We just have to be patient, you know, and just when that time comes, it's going to come, you know.
Gary:And I have to admit, I have to admit tell the world that we've gotten as far as we have in this research because of her own discoveries in the rock art and her own understandings that led me to change my way of thinking in another direction and guided me to something new I had no idea. So a woman can do it just as well as a man.
Maureen:The balance of masculine and feminine. Yeah, the duality right.
Matilde:Which you hear in the Mishika Zen, Sante Ometeo right, and that's duality. You know the feminine and the masculine. You know, and that's part of creation, you know, it's part of creation, you know.
Maureen:You need a man and a woman to do her own thing.
Matilde:You need, you need exactly, so you know. So not just the feminine is about waters, because without the man we can't be here, right, but without the woman we can't be here. So, it's got to work together, you know and that's another thing about the painting that I love it's again, it's about masculine and feminine coming together.
Gary:It's about creation, man, our ceremonies today, even today the way that we observe for Native American church ceremonies is the masculine and the feminine coming together. Of the two, of course it has more in the Native American church. There's more Christian things, you know, thrown in there too, which kind of makes the church almost dogmatic. Native American church dogmatic through Christianity about the male and the female and the masculine and the feminine, but um, but that's. I don't believe that, that's what it's there for. Honestly, I don't believe that, because what brings in the ceremony, what brings men in common with women, is water. They are both responsible for bringing the water, both the man and the woman in our Native American church ceremonies.
Maureen:Yeah, I was just thinking about when you guys were like because I had asked like, are you fearful of appropriation? And it just feels like all of that some depth to me. Kind of the answer for that, even for me, when I get fearful of appropriation of all things political, is that it just comes down to us and us living in our authenticity. Like, and you were talking about language and it's like you know you can use the language like the Smithsonian does, but it's disconnected, so that doesn't even really matter. Ultimately, what are you doing with it? You know, and like, how are you personally connecting with all of these patterns in the sky? And to me it feels like like doing that for our descendants. It's like how am I creating these patterns so that my descendants, ultimately, are like really deeply connected? And so, whether it's getting appropriated right now by entities or not, like I'm just continuing to work towards what my descendants are going to inherit and how they can continue.
Gary:That's always been a struggle for me and I learned early on with my research that most people didn't want to hear it because it's too hard. Some people wanted to own it because they wanted something for themselves. So I was always concerned about it and what I wound up doing is just publishing, academically, academic papers, and sometimes I deliberately make this stuff so hard. The way I understand it, I'll break it up into pieces to where it's almost unrecognizable, because some people just don't deserve. Just don't deserve because of what their intentions. I'm talking about the people who want to appropriate it and get it out there and saying I'm the master of the universe. Now.
Gary:That is so common in our cultures, the misappropriation of our cultures Native American, church, indigenous cultures, anywhere, if you are not directly involved in the culture, in the community, with the language, with the cosmology, and you have no business having it in your possession, unless unless, of course, you go. Hey, and this was happened, this happened to me. Hey, brother, elder jefe, we want what you have, what you teach us. That is appropriate.
Gary:That is appropriate that you come to the people who know it doesn't matter, that's not me, I'm not the only one who knows these things. But you come to those folks, humble, and say, uncle or grandpa, would you please show me my place in the universe, please, would you just give me a moment? Of chance and they'll give it to you.
Maureen:Yeah, and that's your descendants knowing that information deeply.
Gary:It's like you said you make it complex so that other people might know bits and pieces, but like your descendants will know all of that, and you know, and we're going to my presentation on September, the 16th of Saturday, this coming Saturday For the mission in your descendants. It gives pieces of that information, the academic portion of it is going to be shared academically in order to write a paper based on the why the missions were laid out, the way they were and how. We know without a doubt that they were put in the path of this eclipse deliberately. I can't do that publicly.
Gary:I can give hints publicly because there are people out there who are going to take it and run with it and say, hey, I told Gary at, or Gary, we told that to Gary. I can't afford that.
Gary:Yeah when I, when I want the information that's eventually published to be super accurate, ancestors would have said it exactly using their, their thoughts and their words, their observations. This is how it is, because this is how the universe lays everything out, not because I said so, but because this is how the universe lays it all out in front of you. All we did was follow the universe. We didn't come here and create these missions along this river because we thought we were being cute. Yeah, we were struggling to survive, but our ancestors, ancestors, ancestors, ancestors learned about this universal law that we must live by. Otherwise, we don't know our place in the universe or where we belong in it. Very, very important.
Angela:Well, I'm so grateful for you guys to come and share your knowledge here and share time and space with us.
Maureen:I feel like I have like a hundred more questions and. I hope you guys might come back, yes.
Matilde:Sure, of course. I want to thank you, ladies, for having us. You know, this is awesome, thank you, thank you.
Maureen:It was y'all's information that really inspired this ultimately.
Gary:There are seeds of there's seeds of four new moons right here. I think that they are in November and invited back on the day after this full moon. I won't talk about it.
Angela:Sounds like a plan.
Maureen:Yeah, I'm down. Yeah, All right till then, All right, thank you guys. Thank you, thank you. I really feel like I kind of kept going forever.