Thou who art neither alive nor dead, the immortal child of the gods art thou, O Sleep! Varunânî is thy mother, Yama (death) thy father, Araru is thy name. We know, O Sleep, thy birth, thou art the...
The Cult of the Sacred Stones belong to the Sami people of northern Europe. The Sami (occasionally spelled Saami) live in Lapland, a part of northern Europe near Norway, Sweden and Finland, and...
Externsteine is an unusual sandstone rock formation near Ostwestfalen-Lippe in the northwest of Germany. It is unique among other monolithic sites in Europe because it is a natural formation that has...
The Gate to Hell, also known as Pluto’s Gate, was the Greco-Roman entrance to the Underworld. When archaeologists found an example of this sacred site in Turkey they also discovered two guardians who...
Near Trenton in Dade County, Georgia, is a place called Tunacunnhee , supposedly named after a Native American word meaning “Lookout Creek”. Located just a few hundred yards east of Lookout Creek is...
The belief in sacred springs and holy waters goes far back into the earliest religious myths of humankind, and is ubiquitous across every continent. An ancient primordial connection between water and...
Spiritual alchemy is closely linked to secret knowledge and many who have attained this level of wisdom later decided to withdraw from it as they found they were not ready to receive it. The purpose...
A combined Russian-Indian expedition that has been searching the Himalaya Mountain’s area bordering India and Pakistan for the past three years, has discovered 200 “Medieval Stone Horsemen” dating...
The people of the Adena Culture are widely regarded as the first builders of mounds and earthworks in the Ohio Valley. By conventional dating the culture spans the period of 1000 BC to around 300 AD...
Not far from the Moorish splendors of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, and close to the troglodyte cave-dwellings of the residents of Guadix, is the spectacular, living, El Toril Aqueduct. It is...
Wendy Doniger / The Conversation Just this past June, at a national meeting of various Hindu organizations in India, a popular preacher, Sadhvi Saraswati, suggested that those who consumed beef...
The year was 165 AD, and the location was the Edessan necropolis at Sogmatar, in what was then northern Syria. In this year King Wa'el of Edessa had an inscription carved upon the sacred hill of...
Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, inspired by Henry Lincoln and his two co-authors’ The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail . The Norwegian researcher Harald Boehlke was inspired by the same book. Lincoln...
If preliminary analyses of the excavations are right, it appears food preparation and large gatherings have gone hand in hand in Sweden for millennia. 82 holes of varying sizes and a more modern...
The National Museum in Quito, Ecuador exhibits an otherworldly collection of sheet-gold masks representing the Andean sun god Inti. Zig-zag rays of golden light burst from his face and some end in...
The prehistoric petroglyphs near Malyshevo village in Khabarovsk region are among the most remarkable in the world - an ancient art exhibition dating to neolithic times. On the basalt rocks on the...
3,500 years ago, the southern shores of Lake Titicaca, situated in La Paz, Bolivia, were inhabited by the Tiwanaku culture who built stone super-structures such as; the Akapana, Pumapunku, the...
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is considered to be the holiest site in Christianity. According to tradition, this was the place where Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and...
One of the major points of contention between Israel and the Arab/Moslem world is over the most sacred piece of real estate on the planet. At 37 acres, the Temple Mount is the focal point of prayer...
For the past few thousand years, the Indian Epic Ramayana has been among the most important literary and oral texts of South and Southeast Asia. Every autumn, Lord Rama's victory over the demon king...
This summer, Tim Mentz Sr. took to YouTube to tell the world about the destruction of his cultural heritage. A former tribal historic preservation officer of the Standing Rock Sioux, he was upset and...
Archaeologists working in England have excavated a holy well dated to the Medieval period. Local legends speak of pilgrims bathing in its waters to cure their eye and skin diseases. However, a later...
In the modern world, the mere mention of “Sacred Prostitution” may receive raised eyebrows or disgusted grimaces. Evidently, this was also the case for the ancients as many ancient authors describe...
The Four Corners region of the United States is too mediocre a name to describe so vast an expanse of the Southwest, representing the corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. The...