Kreisberg - Spirits in stone: the secrets of megalithic America: decoding the ancient cultural stone landscapes of the Northeast

I dedicate this book to my father, Gerald Kreisberg, who passed away during the course of this project.

He always instilled in our family and me the simple strength of truth and knowledge.

SPIRITS IN
STONE

Archaeoastronomy does not have to be incredibly difficult. In fact it can be fun! Guided by Glenn Kreisbergs aptly titled Spirits in Stone, even the untrained reader can share in the excitement of discovery experienced by some of the foremost explorers of Native American and pre-Columbian stone structures in the Northeast. This is a clear, easy-to-follow introduction to a field that was once shrouded in secrecy and clouded by conflicting opinions. Many readers will be shocked by their own proximity to ancient cultures as they turn these pages. I truly recommend this book, especially to young explorers who sense that the old history books are wrong but dont know where to begin. Begin here!

EVAN T. PRITCHARD, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR ALGONQUIN CULTURE AND AUTHOR OF NATIVE NEW YORKERS AND BIRD MEDICINE

Kreisbergs work will contribute greatly to demonstrating the fact that not only did Native Americans construct impressive stone structures throughout the eastern United States but that these sites are sacred and an integral part of their cultural traditions and should be protected!

HARRY HOLSTEIN, PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT JACKSONVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY, ALABAMA

Reading Glenn Kreisbergs deeply and thoughtfully researched book, I can hear Joseph Campbell intoning the words of Hermes Trismegistus, from the Emerald Tablet, As Above, so Below! If you want to understand the truths of prehistory, look for the writings of the heavens on the earth. Spirits in Stone shows us how very substantial the insubstantial lore of mythology can be, in the very caves and megalithic sites of northeastern America. The ground we walk on is hallowed ground!

STEPHEN LARSEN, PH.D., DIRECTOR OF THE STONE MOUNTAIN COUNSELING CENTER AND COAUTHOR OF THE TRANSFORMATIONAL POWER OF DREAMING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T here are too many people to name individually, who either by direct contact or indirect influence assisted in what went into this book. Ah, this way I dont risk leaving out someone truly important in this endeavor. Whether leading me to a new site, providing a site report or map to aid in discovering a new site, or spending time discussing and pondering site features or aspects that play into the bigger picture, this has been entirely a collaborative effort. This has also been an adventure, an outdoor adventure at that, and I am thankful for the companionship of close friends and family on those adventurous treks into the woods. Some of you may appear in this book, and others are included in spirit. You know who you are.

Additional to my writings in this volume are included contributed essays from Ros Strong, David Johnson, and Dave Gutkowski, each bringing a voice, perspective, and unique experience and expertise that allow us to share in a special gift and insight. Ross translation and commentary on the work of French researcher Pierre Mereaux introduces us to important research translated into English for the first time. Davids groundbreaking research is leading the way for Native American tribal nations to rediscover lost links to the watery underworld, and Daves personal story of the discovery and documentation of an archaeoastronomy site in the Northeast provides hope and assurance that barriers are being broken when it comes to academic acceptance of landscape archaeology. Together these researchers bring something special to this project I simply could not, and I thank them. Additionally, I would like to thank my sister, Shari Kreisberg Therrien, for the additional translation work she provided on previously untranslated work and writings of Pierre Mereaux.

Last, but not at all least, I want to thank Jon Graham, Patricia Rydle, and all the kind folks at Inner Traditions for their eternal patience and steadfast confidence and guidance in seeing this project through. The work they do bringing cutting-edge thinking and spiritual research to the eye of the public is truly appreciated and revered in my mind.

FOREWORD

Graham Hancock

I ve had the privilege of exploring ancient cultural stone sites of the American Northeast during a ramble or two in the backwoods, walking the walk through hidden landscapes, with Glenn Kreisberg.

I say hidden landscapes quite deliberately, because Glenn is among those of us who contend that modern, technological, twenty-first-century America sits amid the ruins and remnants of an advanced, mysterious, and remotely ancient culturethe unrecognized and unacknowledged high culture of the Native Americans themselves. Yet in many cases the surviving fragments of their legacyand fragments are all we haveare so different, and so strange to our eyes, conditioned by our particular kind of technology and by the reductionist/materialist bias of Western science, that we literally fail to see them.

What my rambles with Glenn have shown me, however, and what this book will reveal to you, are that those fragments are indeed present, even in the intensively settled, heavily farmed, and economically developed Northeast where the barbaric forces of modernization have been at work the longest, erasing and confusing the record of stone. What is needed is what Glenn brings to the endeavorthe eye to see them and a deep understanding of the very different, very ancient, system of ideas that inspired their creation. Then, suddenly, a meaningful and coherent picture comes into view.

We today, in the midst of our built urban environments, do not see the stars, or if we see them it is rarely and through a glass darkly because the intense light pollution generated by our cities and beltways and industrial zones obscures the sky. But for the ancients things were different. Not because they were primitive, but as result of a profound understanding of the human condition, and as a matter of informed choice, they lived amid an enchanted landscape in which underworld and earth and sky were all intimately connected, and in which it was a sacred duty for humans to keep and tend the earth, to revere and wonder at the majesty of the heavens, to trace out and harness the lines of energy running through the planetary body, and to reaffirm its marriage to the cosmos at key moments of the year.

The Hermetic maxim as above so below can be applied in ancient North America just as strongly and with just such energizing, healing, and soul-enriching effects as it applied in the sacred megalithic centers of the archaic Old World. It is therefore very much to the point that Spirits in Stone does not confine itself to the enigmas of the American Northeast but also spreads a wider net to encompass sites such as Carnac in Brittany and the megalithic temples of Malta, where the exact same principles of cosmic and earthly harmony are shown to have been at work.

What is different in America is only the scale of destruction of this ancient worldwide system, deliberate destruction, pursued for short-term economic gains, by rude and barbarous incomers whose cultures had been cut off from the wellsprings of planetary wisdom for so long that they were literally unable to