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Subject: Sauroids and Reptillians (1/3)
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(INPUT 001)
In the June, 1948 issue of AMAZING STORIES Magazine, pp. 158-190,
'Chief Sequoyah' related the following account, which appeared
under the title: 'SPIRIT OF THE SERPENT GOD':
"Somewhere in the mountains of Oregon there is a hidden cave
with a small stream flowing from its mouth. Within the cave lies
a vast hoard of gold and jewelry surrounded by the crumbling
bones of an ancient tribe of Indians. But watching over both,
guarding them against theft by white man and hostile Indian
alike, hovers the terrible spirit of the great serpent. He has
already wreaked death upon intruders...
"My own father told me this story, and his father told him,
and for uncounted generations it has been a legend of our tribe
which lived along the coastline of Oregon and northern
California. My father was a medicine man and he knew the ancient
legends well.
"White people today have been taught to regard the serpent
as the Devil himself, or at any rate his chief emissary on earth.
"...Now in the east, far east of the mountains in the great
plains, there was an Indian chieftain named Blue Eagle who had
violated the sacred laws of his tribe, They did not kill Blue
Eagle, because the tribe did not believe in the death penalty.
Instead they banished him and all his belongings and his family
forever from the plains. Westward they went, over the plains,
the deserts, the mountains, and ultimately the clan came to the
Oregon shore. Here they settled and after hundreds of years they
became a great tribe. They prospected and mined gold and made
golden ornaments and vessels of shining yellow metal.
"But the curse of the first Chief Blue Eagle's evil deeds
came at last to rest upon his children. An epidemic of disease
hit the tribe at the height of its strength. Enemy tribes they
could fight, and strong wild beasts of the mountains, but they
could not fight this sickness. They died like mayflies in the
early spring, men and women and children. They fell so fast that
there were not enough well men and women to bury the dead. How
could their spirits and their precious belongings be committed to
the 'care' of the serpent god (which they worshipped) if graves
could not be dug for them?
"The medicine man called a last council of all the men in
the tribe who could summon strength to attend. 'We are doomed,'
he told them. 'The spirits of evil who roam the earth have fixed
their eyes upon our spirits and our possessions. We must entrust
them to the care of the serpent god.'
"Since they believed thay had no hope in life, they decided
that all they could do would be to protect themselves in death.
They gathered their riches and precious belongings and their
kinfolk and held sacred rites before the mouth of a cave in the
mountainside. In the ceremony, the medicine man instructed the
serpent to guard over the cave. Then they entered the cave with
their belongings, and as each of them died in the cave, the
spirit of the dead brave would enter into the serpent so that he
would become the stronger to guard it. As a final protection, a
landslide was started which closed the cave for hundreds of
years.
"A special curse was placed against any white man who might
find the cave, and the serpent god who guarded it was enjoined to
protect it especially against men of white skin. If a white man
were to enter the cave, he must die by the strength of the great
serpent. 'No other man but a Red Man, and one with the heart of
the Red Man, can use the contents of the secret cave, and then
only for the benefit of the Red Man'--so ran the injunction of
the serpent god....
"This was the legend. Now what has happened to the cave and
its contents?
"I have heard many stories of people finding the cave and
never having been seen since (Note: whether these people were
gold-hungry or whether they were innocent curiosity seekers,
didn't seem to matter, if they were white and they entered the
cave the chances were they never came out - Branton). I have
tried to trace many of these stories down to find out what truth
there may be to them and to the curse of the great serpent. I
have not been able to verify any of these stories--except one.
"In the early days of the gold rush, three prospectors
started north from California to explore the mountains of
Southern Oregon. They came in with pack mules and mining
equipment, provisioned for a long stay. They panned numerous
streams on their way, searching for the precious yellow color of
gold. They found it one day in a small creek running around the
base of a mountain. Up stream and down stream they panned,
searching for concentrations of the yellow stuff, but they found
very little except at the mouth of a tiny stream which came into
the creek out of a cave in the mountain.
"These men were Peter Jackson, an old-time mountain man;
Mike Burns, who spoke in a Scottish burr so rough it had knobs on
it, and Jed O'Hara, part Spanish, part Irish, and a host of other
mixtures. Jackson was a cold, hard character, experienced in the
wilderness and not caring a damn for Indian or grizzly bear.
Burns was easy-going but stubborn once he got on the trail of
something. O'Hara apparently was a carefree, hard-working man
when the mood was on him, a great whiskey drinker if there was
any whiskey to be had, and undoubtedly the most emotional of the
trio. He was the only one who could rightly be held to be a
superstitious man, and as it turned out this characteristic was
to save his life--what was left of it, that is.
"Every evidence seemed to point to the fact that the tiny
stream issuing from the cave mouth was the source of the color.
Considering that fact, it is an odd thing that the three
prospectors did not immediately begin to explore the cave.
Instead they gave the larger creek a thorough going over, and
even explored streams in neighboring valleys from their main camp
near the cave. In view of what happened later, it is probable
that O'Hara dissuaded his two companions from exploring the cave
to any depth until it became evident that if they were to find
any gold at all it would have to be within the cave.
"As they sat around the campfire at dusk, they could see the
mouth of the cave beckoning to them with its promise of gold, and
yet at the same time coldly warning them to stay away. As
darkness fell it might have looked like the black pit of hell
itself to the superstitious Jed O'Hara, and we can imagine him
staring at it until it became indistinguishable against the black
cloak of night. Exactly why he was so reluctant to enter the
cave we cannot say. It may have been the innate
superstitiousness of his nature or it may have been that with his
part Mexican-Spanish origins he understood enough of the Indian
lingo to have heard some legend of the lost tribe of Chief Blue
Eagle and of their guardian great serpent. But the decision had
been made. They would explore the cave.
"It may have been after troubled dreams that the trio awoke
to the greatest day of their lives. They ate their broiled
venison for breakfast in silence and after pipes they prepared
pine torches and were ready for the trip. At the mouth of the
cave they built a large fire, hoping to see it glimmering as a
guide from the dark interior. The entrance was very narrow at
its lower level, and nearly blocked by a huge boulder around
which the stream had eroded a channel just wide enough for them
to squeeze by one at a time.
"The passage continued narrow for several hundred feet.
Jackson, the largest of the three, was in the lead, with Burns
following close behind and O'Hara brought up a somewhat reluctant
rear. They had proceeded about 500 yards when they heard a loud
hissing sound. They halted abruptly. Jackson started to say
something when he felt soft wings brush past him and Burns chimed
in with the reassuring words that it was just a bat. They moved
ahead, always more slowly, held back by a growing dread of the
unknown. It is hard to see ahead very far with the aid of a pine
torch, even when it is held high above the head. The holder is
illuminated far better than anything he tries to illuminate; he
is, in short, a target.
"Realizing this in the stygian blackness of the high-vaulted
cavern, the three continued their ever more-reluctant advance.
And then Jackson screamed in mortal fear. Almost instantly Burns
too began to scream hoarsely. In the light of their falling
torches, O'Hara saw that the two men ahead had turned to run. He
also saw what they were fleeing--a huge coiled serpent with eyes
glowing red in the reflected torch light, jaws agape. The
fearful vision seemed to freeze O'Hara's brain with terror but
his feet grew wings.
"One evening, perhaps three months later, the prospectors in
a mining camp were on their last round of drinks when a fantastic
creature stumbled into the saloon. He appearance was enough to
make even these rugged miners halt the glass on its way to their
lips. His matted filthy beard was long, his eyes sunken, his
cheeks the cheeks of a starving man. He was nearly naked, his
clothes ripped off or worn off by the clawing branches and
unfriendly rocks of Southern Oregon's mountains. This was what
was left of Jed O'Hara.
"It was possible to nurse his body back into a semblance of
health, his mind never. When he was able to force words where
only gibberish had come, and eventually to link words into rare
sentences, there gradually emerged, piece by piece over the
months, a story so obviously fantastic that the prospectors shook
their heads and said that Jed O'Hara would never be the same
again.
"As for his story, prospectors knew better than to believe a
madman's babblings about a giant snake as large around as a
hogshead and as long as a pack rope. But on the other hand,
there might be something to his confused tale (prospectors being
what they are) about an ancient Indian treasure in a cave. Once
several of them organized an expedition around poor old Jed and
tried to find his cave. They had no luck with it.
"People would have forgotten the story of Jed O'Hara and his
lost partners and his snake if two Indian hunters hadn't stumbled
onto an old camp in the mountains 40 years later. There were
some rusty guns, a couple of old cast iron pots, and the rotted
remains of other paraphernalia which suggested their owners had
left in a hurry. And nearby there was a cave, with a tiny stream
emerging from its mouth. The Indians decided to explore the
cave. To their horror they found the bones of two men a short
way inside. They did not go further.
"When they told their story on the outside, a search party
was formed to investigate the mystery. The Indians guided the
party to the cave and its grisly remains. The remains of the
hunting knives, a belt buckle and a few coins indicated that
(they) were the bones of white men. But what were they doing
here, and what had killed them? A rock fall had blocked off the
cave so it would be hard to penetrate it much beyond the site
where the two skeletons lay. But it did not seem in any way
responsible for their deaths. A further mystery appeared when
the bones were carried out of the cave. The ribs and upper
spinal columns seemed literally pulverized by some mighty
crushing force, as a vise. But no satisfactory answer was ever
found by the white men. The bones were buried near the old camp
site and for many years the Indians avoided the place.
"Now the cave is lost again, perhaps covered by the heavy
undergrowth in the hidden mountains, perhaps by a landslide. The
Indian hunters who discovered it have long since gone to the
happy hunting ground... I hope some day to rediscover it an put
its riches to the use of my people."
* * *
(INPUT 002)
John A. Keel, in his book 'THE EIGHTH TOWER' (pp. 97,119), in
keeping with his in depth study of 'monstrology' or in more
scientific terms 'cryptozoology', describes some of the 'monster'
accounts he has come across describing hominoid beasts which
reeked of sulfurous fumes:
"...(An) important characteristics of our monsters is that
they nearly always appear close to water--lakes, streams,
reservoirs, swamps. This has stimulated some discussion that the
creatures might be amphibians who actually live at the bottom of
bodies of water and only rarely venture onto land. If this were
actually the case, they shouldn't be so desperately in need of a
bath. They might be scented with the odor of stagnant water.
But hydrogen sulfide?
"...Eager would-be UFO photographers the world over have
been puzzled when their expensive cameras failed to function at
the critical moment, returning to normal as soon as the UFO had
soared out of view. Holiday (a researcher referred to earlier in
his text - Branton) cites a number of instances in which this has
occurred at Loch Ness. In some cases, the cameras seemed to
work, but the developed film came out completely blank. This has
also happened to innumerable UFO photographers (and) ghost
hunters."
* * *
(INPUT 003)
F. W. Holiday, in his book 'THE DRAGON AND THE DISK' (W.W. Norton
& Co., Inc. New York, N.Y. 1973) relates some unusual facts
concerning the relationship between serpent or 'dragon' legends
and the modern 'UFO' phenomena:
"...To introduce further unknowns when you have not
satisfactorily dealt with the first one is not an ideal way of
solving equations. However, the ancients leave us no option.
For they considered the dragon in relation to an even more
remarkable set of phenomena -- phenomena that have produced a
greater amount of controversy within the last two decades than
any other mystery known to the modern world. This is the riddle
of the Flying Disk or U.F.O.
"Thanks to an excellent analysis of French and Spanish cave-
art by Aime Michel in 1969, we can now be quite certain that
people of the Magdalenian culture... observed the same or very
similar U.F.O. phenomena to those described by recent witnesses.
We can be confident about this because the Magdalenians were
without equal as artists in the world of prehistory as is proved
by their superb coloured murals. When they sketched a Flying
Disc, therefore - and hundreds are depicted in cave art - it
seems obvious that they actually observed such objects just as
they observed the horses depicted at Lascaux and the mammoths at
Rouffignac. Discs are particularly plentiful in one of the most
famous caves of the period - Altamira. These people painted not
only bison, bears and other wildlife, but also 'flying saucers'.
In chapter thirteen, 'THE SERPENT PEOPLE', Holiday begins
with a quote from a poem by the black sorcerer Aleister Crowley:
"'...It seemed to all of them as though the air grew thick
and greasy; that of that slime were bred innumerable creeping
things, monsters misshapen, abortions of dead paths of evolution,
creatures which had not been found fit to live upon the earth and
so had been cast off by her as excrement.'
Crowley however did not hide the fact that he worshipped
such 'excrement', as can be seen by his own degenerate existence
as a sorcerer. Holiday continues:
"Satanism - that is to say the religion of the
dragon...seems to have been contemporaneous in BABYLON and Bronze
Age Britain. In both countries it was probably practiced by
minority groups and became official only in times of decadence.
"When Cryus occupied Ur...a form of dragon-worship seems to
have been in vogue. The priests of this cult escaped the
Persians by fleeing north with their PONTIFF into the mountains
of Asia Minor. They finally came to rest at a place called
Pergamos in Lydia (western Turkey) and there set up a religious
centre which became known as 'Satan's seat'. St. John said: 'And
to the angel of the church of Pergamos, write: These things saith
he [God] which hath the sharp sword with two edges [judgement and
mercy]: I know they works, and where thou dwellest, EVEN
where Satan's seat it...'
"The Romans also knew about Satan's seat AND ANNEXED IT INTO
THEIR EMPIRE IN 133 B.C. after the death of Attalus III, the last
of the Pergamite kings. About this period A PLAGUE BROKE OUT IN
ROME and prayers were offered to the Roman 'gods' in vain. It
was decided, therefore, to appeal to Satan at Pergamos.
"The symbol of the cult was A SERPENT and a special ship
was sent to Lydia TO TRANSPORT THE GOD TO ROME. There it was
installed as a deity with great pomp. The disease had probably
run its course and the resulting improvement in public health was
attributed to Satan. The new religion was so popular that snakes
of inoffensive species were allowed to glide around at parties --
at least so Seneca says. In HISTORIA AUGUSTA they are called
DRACUNCULI or little dragons.
"The Aesculapian Serpent - as the 'god' was called - is
shown on a carving at Pompeii and is unlike anything known to
herpetologists. It had vertical humps and snail-like horns,
exactly like the monsters of Scotland and Ireland. A bronze
Urarian cauldron in Rome carries the erect head and neck of the
creature modelled in the round. It is hideous. it has a shovel-
like mouth, bulging eyes and tentacles or sensory-organs hanging
on each side of the face.
"No-one, of course, thought that snakes were dragons. The
malignant Great Serpent of Babylonia was TYPHON or Teitan, Satan,
the author of wickedness...
"Politicians, however, never look a gift-horse in the mouth
as long as it produces results. After giving the Roman people
carnage in the guise of circus entertainment, there was no reason
for the EMPERORS to shrink from a little devil-worship. Even the
national flag was given the treatment. Ammianus Marcellinus
describes the standard 'PURPUREUM SIGNUM DRACONIS'. And when
Julius Caesar appeared in full regalia as the PONTIFEX MAXIMUS he
was dressed in reddish-purple robes the same as the Pergamite
dragon-priests. The reader can trace the rest of the story in
Gibbon's 'RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE'.
"DRAGON-WORSHIP PERSISTED LONG AFTER CHRISTIANITY (and also
'Catholicism?' - Branton) HAD BEEN PROCLAIMED. Tertullian
complained: 'These heretics magnify the serpent to such a degree
as to prefer him even to Christ himself; for he, they say, gave
us the first knowledge of good and evil.'
"[Some of] the Babylonians strongly believed that the
monsters were evil. R. C. Thompson, in 'THE DEVILS AND EVIL
SPIRITS OF BABYLONIA', gives an 'incantation' that was used
against the creatures:
"'...Seven are they, seven are they. In the Ocean Deep,
seven are they. They are reared in the home of the Ocean Deep.
Neither male nor female are they. They are as the roaming
wildbeast. No wife have they, no son do they beget. They know
neither mercy nor pity. They harken not unto prayers and
supplications. They are as the horses reared on the hills. The
Evil Ones of EA, throne-bearers of the gods are they. They stand
in the highway to befoul the path. Evil are they, evil are they.
By Heaven be ye exorcised!'"
Holiday continues: "Various Loch Ness witnesses have said
that the head of a monster looks like the head of a goat... It is
no surprise, therefore, to find that the Babylonians used the
expression 'antelope of the deep' for the creatures. The exiled
Jews at Ur called them chimera or goat-spirits. There are goat-
spirits illustrated on some ancient British coins.
"...Dragon-worship had various appeals. The believer was
bound by no rigid moral code. But obviously the Pergamites had
some sort of a code otherwise their community would hardly have
survived for about 400 years. Another appeal was that Satan, on
EARTH, was said to be more powerful than God. In fact a passage
in the Bible calls him 'the god of THIS world' as distinct from
the God of HEAVEN (According to Hebrew scripture the Evil One
gained possession of this world when the Evadamic descendants
'sold out' the planet to it. The 'New Testament', especially
in REVELATION, states that the 'title deed' to the earth was
'bought back' by Jesus the Messiah or Christ who, even though he
was the ruler of countless billions of worlds nevertheless felt
that this small world, the cradle of life, was worth the price -
Branton). In view of some of the happenings on the planet, this
is still a pretty good argument.
"Our knowledge of Satanism in Bronze Age Britain is based
almost entirely on archaeological remains. British dragon-
worshippers used to build gigantic models of their deity out of
earth and stones. A few examples still survive in Scotland
overlooking waters where the monsters existed.
"There is a huge dragon-simulation on the banks of the Clyde
and another at Ach-na-Goul near Inverary. In 1969 I visited the
dragon-simulation in Glen Feochan near Oban. The hundred yard
long model is at the lower end of Loch Neil. John S. Phene,
F.G.S., F.R.G.S., described it to the British Association in
Edinburgh as being 'in the form of a serpent or saurian'. The
head seems to be represented by a cairn.
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