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Walking the Land: Montezuma’s Well-Sacred Birth Center with Eileen Nauman

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Here is the US Forest Service brochure map of Montezuma’s Well so that you can follow along.

On March 2, 2010, Marchiene and I went over to Montezuma’s Well. According to US Forest Service literature on this blue hole of water that is found out in the middle of the high Arizona desert, this “well” began 12 million years ago.

It is a natural “sink hole,” 368 feet wide. The cliffs tower seventy feet above the water’s surface. Every day, over 1.5 million gallons of warm water (74F) flows through the Well. It is fed by three to four large underground vents, some as deep as 56 feet below the surface. The water exists the well through a 300-foot-long stream. It emerges on the southeast corner of the mound into an irrigation ditch originally

To give you an idea of the circumference of Montezuma’s Well, here is Marchiene resting near it.

constructed almost a thousand years ago way the Sinagua people, a culture who lived and farmed in this areas for centuries.

At that time, Lake Verde covered an area 27 miles long and 15 miles wide. Then, 2 million y ears ago, Lake Verde broke through the sediment dam at its Southern end and enabled the water to flow out to the rest of the valley. Today, our Verde River is all that remains of this ancient lake.

Over millions of years, underground streams dissolved away the soft limestone formed by the sedimentation from Lake Verde. It produced caverns below the surface of the Verde Valley. 11,000 years ago one of these caverns collapsed into a sunken pool, creating Montezuma’s Well.

Here is one of the cliff dwellings and it sits north in the well. You can see how small it is and how hard it would be to get to it. To us, it makes sense that it was used for initiations only…not someone who would live there year around.

Ever since it has been formed, there is a constantly supply of warm water flowing into the well. It has been a refuge for wildlife and people struggling to survive in this harsh climate. This unique and isolated ecosystem enabled amphipods (small, shrimp-like animals) and the leeches which feed on them, to evolve into a species found nowhere else.

Here are all three cliff dwellings. You can see that it would be pretty hard to live full time in these—the rocks and verticalness of it wouldn’t be fun to try and traverse. We feel these were used for initiations such as children to adults and women who were going into menopause, etc.

That’s the science end of Montezuma’s Well. Now, we want to share what we psychically picked up on our visit. Marchiene and I saw the dwellings (they say ‘cliff dwellings’ in the map) on the north-northeast side of the well. These are very small rooms and hard to get too. When I went into my altered state, Bololokan, the Rainbow Snake, immediately rose up and out of the well and greeted me. I asked her about the Well. She said that all those who lived in this Verde Valley came four times a year here to this well to pray to her (because she’s the ‘water’ snake and responsible for bringing the rain to the people’s crops so they can survive and continue to live in this valley). She also told me that boys and girls who were coming of age came here for initiations, as well. And then she said the other dwellings in the well (denoted as “Swallet Ruins” on the map), was a place where pregnant women came. Here, they were given a ceremony that the baby they carried would be birthed easily and without any attending problems. They would stay three days in one of these small homes, drink water, eat and dream. And Bololokan said that she would send each pregnant mother a dream and her unborn child’s name. So, this was a naming place as well.

The Rainbow Snake said that the well was all about birthing or rebirthing. Children rebirthed into adults, as an example. And the equinox and solstice times, they celebrated here at the well and ask Bololokan to give them enough rain for their crops. Further, the Rainbow Snake said that the energy of the water that left the well and resurfaced on the other side of it was also a place of birthing. I thanked her for the information.

And only weeks later when I was typing up the info from the brochure did I get a wonderful double check. Bololokan, the Rainbow Snake who “lives” in the area of Sedona, showed up to us last year. We were, at that time, tracking the chakra system of the Red Rocks around this town. In the literature supplied by the USFS, they note a Hopi legend about Montezuma’s Well. In the legend, the Hopi found the well and decided to live there because it was easier on them. Life became too easy and the people became complacent. The village degraded into shameless corruption. One day, the village began to shake and the housed caved in. Water gushed in and filled the hole where the village once stood. Suddenly a GREAT SERPENT rose up and out of the water in anger at what the people had become. Upon seeing the serpent, everyone became scared and ran way to the north and east, never to return.

I loved the synchronicity of reading this legend today, on 3.14. And to have Bololokan show up and give me the information about the uses of the Well on 3.2. Amazing synchronicity.

For me, it made a lot of sense. Marchiene had gone into her altered state and I’ll let her write her blog about the information she was given.

This is known as the “Swallet Ruin” at the well. It is on the eastern side of the well. Much of it has been destroyed by people in the 1800s, unfortunately.

One thing about this well—the water is going through dolomite limestone, which is porous and holey throughout the entire ‘lake’ area of the Verde Valley. Limestone HOLDS carbon dioxide which is an odorless and colorless. It is produced when animals exhale and when fuels burn, and is used by plants to make food. Carbon dioxide is a “Greenhouse Gas.” It is a fossil fuel gas. As the water run through the limestone, it releases the carbon dioxide.

This is the Swallet Ruin area within the well. Once, these dwellings stood but now, destroyed by man except for the foundation stones.

As you walk down into the well, there is less oxygen because of the continuous release of the carbon dioxide. By the time we left the well, I had a headache. You can imagine that children and pregnant women brought here would, over time, become potentially hallucinatory. They wouldn’t be staying long enough to die from it, but it would certainly altar your reality because you have less oxygen to breathe. And it would serve a purpose of having dreams here which would come easier, in my opinion, because you are “spacy” when inhaling carbon dioxide.

Graffiti near the Swallet Ruin. Two cowboys or soldiers named T. Hill and Duke Heflin came along and carved their names and the date they did it: June 30, 1896. Chances were, they were US Army soldiers who were bored with nothing else to do but deface sacred Native American places.

That is why no one ever lived in these dwellings in the well. As a matter of fact, there’s a large group of dwellings OUTSIDE on the slope of the well. I feel this is where the medicine women and men lived. They tended those who came for initiation. Or, perhaps a several-steps initiation. Above the Well along Beaver Creek, which is a year round flowing creek, is the V Bar V Petroglyph Heritage Site (that is another blog). And when you go there, the red sandstone area that is about two hundred feet from the creek, has over a thousand petroglyphs upon it. Even more powerful is walking up to this thirty-foot group off flat sandstone cliffs and getting blasted by the energy. It literally, will make you dizzy and you can’t walk straight.

After visiting the V Bar V petroglyphs, I felt that those who were going through various initiations at various times in their lives, (women would have menopause, as an example of an initiation into the crone cycle, the wise woman), might start at the petroglyphs and then walk/pray following Beaver Creek down to Montezuma’s Well. They are not that far apart. More on the V Bar V Heritage site in another blog. Suffice to say, I know it is a portal, an energy “gate” where you can travel through it to another place/time/dimension. Marchiene and I are going out on 3.21, a day after the Spring Equinox, to visit the site and see what we pick up psychically from it. And then, we’ll create another blog around it.

Because of the carbon dioxide being released by the water flowing through the dolomite that surrounds this Well, low oxygenation is in the water. The only things that live in this beautiful blue water hole are shrimp, leeches, turtles and no fish. It is said that night swimming scorpions are busy capturing and eating the shrimp in the dark hours, as well.

Here is where the stream flows out of the well. It then goes through three hundred feet of limestone to emerge outside the well at what we call the Birthing Place.

Right near the Well is Beaver Creek. It flows year around and many Singaua villages were all along this crucial waterway. As you walk up and out of the Well, another trail leads you around it to the where the water emerges after a three-hundred-foot underground journey to the external, outside world. Right next to the well head is a yoni-like V crack between two huge sandstone cliffs. Marchiene is seen standing in front of it. When you walk up in there, you definitely feel birthing energies of Mother Earth. And the spring rises right next to it; so there is no accident that this place is where pregnant mothers came for dreams and a name for their unborn child.

There are two Grandmother Arizona Sycamore trees that stand guard at the re-emergence of the stream and the Yoni/rebirthing area. They grew and curved out from the cliff overhang. In order not to be up rooted, they grew super thick and large trunks where the roots are in the ground to “hold” the weight of the rest of the tree that curve up and around the cliff to sunlight. Beyond them is Beaver Creek.

Another fascinating thing was the PINK algae that is flowing at the headwaters of this spring. An amazing thing.

Why would it be pink? Pink is the combination of the white of our crown chakra in our head and the red of the root chakra that resides at the base of our spinal column. It is the root chakra that grounds us into our body and also connects us with our Mother, the

Here is the algae flowing out of the headwaters of the reemerging stream from the Well to the outside and external world. I’m fascinated by the PINK strands among the green.

Earth. White plus red equals pink. And where they meet halfway in our body is our HEART chakra. That is why pink is always associated with love and our heart. The color green is the actual color of this particular chakra, but the overlay of pink is appropriate too, on another level of symbolic expression.

Here is the wall next to the yoni-like “V” opening that you can walk into. In there, you can feel the energy and it’s high and beautiful. Right outside it to the left is the emerging stream from underground to above ground. To the right you can see an upside down black heart and then to the right of it a white curve that looks like an apostrophe and below it, a SPIRAL. We look carefully at these (did not touch them as our oily fingerprints do disturb the limestone surface) and they all appear to be natural and not petroglyphs. Although we could be dead wrong about this. And the spiral is of great interest. If these were already in the rock, and not man-made petroglyphs, I’m sure the medicine people of that time knew this was a very special place because or the iconic symbols.

Here is Marchiene at the entrance to the yoni or “V” like area between two massive dolomite stones. You can see the upside down black heart to the right of where she is standing. To her left, you see the re-emergence of the stream to the external world. No accident all these things are here in one small area to one another. This is a birthing place for someone on any level they wish.

Here is the stream as it emerges into our conscious world, the Yoni behind it. This stream of water was created into a huge, long irrigation ditch by the Sinagua people. You can see from the map above in the blog, just how long this hand dug and handmade ditch goes. It was used to irrigate and water the crops of these people while they lived in this area from about 1100 to 1400 AD.

Note the algae is pink and green. Both heart chakra colors. Indeed, whether you are inside the Well or outside of it at the birthing waters emerging, there is a profound sense of PEACE. It is so deep and pervasive that you find yourself simply wanting to “be” in the present in this very sacred place. Marchiene and I spent some time just sitting at the end of the trail. There are two huge Arizona Sycamores that guard this entrance. Two. The combination of male and female. This place is certainly about androgynous energy and it is very balanced and calming.

It was no accident that Marchiene then suggested in the next few weeks that we visit the V Bar V ranch, which was purchased by the US Forest Service in 1994. Clearly, after our initial visit, these two sacred, ceremonial sites are absolutely linked. More on the heritage petroglyph site in another blog.

In Spirit, Eileen

 

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