Walking the Land: Montezuma’s Well: Sacred Birth Center with Marchiene Rienstra
Hi Everyone
Marchiene was with me the day we went to Montezuma’s Well. The first blog was published on March 14th. This is Part 2 from Marchiene’s experience and perspective:
On the day Eileen and I had planned to visit the ancient ruins of the ancestors at Palatki, we were led instead to go to Montezuma’s well, which Eileen described beautifully in her blogs with words and pictures. It is an extraordinary place with a special deeply peaceful energy.
As we followed the carefully crafted path around the top of the “well” on a sunny spring afternoon, we took note of the signs telling what plants we were seeing, and the many uses they had for the ancient inhabitants of this area. At one point, we descended a steep set of stone stairs and ended up on a bench in a lovely secluded spot overlooking the waters of the well, where many kinds of ducks were having a marvelous time floating and diving for food.
Eileen remarked it was a great place to journey (go into an altered state) because of the lack of oxygen in the air combined with the increase in carbon dioxide, which she explains in her blog. I found it was very easy in that place to “journey,’ and when I did, I was taken to a ceremony at the Well held long ago for women elders, to initiate them into their elderhood and its special responsibilities. I felt I was one of the women being initiated. It was night, and a full moon shone directly overhead, reflecting itself in the center of the waters of the Well. I was told to dive as deep as I could straight down through the moon’s reflection. I was given a white stone and a white pearl, both the size of a small hen’s egg, to release at the bottom of the dive.
As I dove headfirst into the water, it felt warm and tingling with tiny bubbles. I was surprised at how far down I could go. I released the white stone and the white pearl at the moment I turned upward to ascend towards the surface. I said a prayer of blessing as I did this, asking that I and the waters would be purified and blessed by the offering. As I surfaced into the reflection of the moon, my vision faded. Everything was now dark, and I was told that elder men were also initiated in this place at the dark of the moon. The deep dives into the waters of the Well, for both elder men and women, were part of a preparatory initiation for death and emergence into the next life.
At this point I came back to where we were on the bench, and Eileen and I shared what we had experienced. Then we went down a path to the lover level by Beaver Creek and the irrigation canal created centuries ago by the Sinagua tribe. We ended up sitting in the shade of an ancient Grandmother sycamore at the trail’s end. I was drawn to a place nearby where the water emerged from the Well through a large opening in the face of the stone cliff just opposite us. I was able to enter this opening, which was very much like a birth canal. I spent a little time in it, feeling the rebirthing energy of this special place. Then I dipped my hand in the waters and put it to my head and forehead as a symbol of this rebirthing, and my decision to use my birth name “Marchiene” from now on instead of the nick-name “Marty” which my parents assigned me. Marchiene is also my grandmother’s name, and I imagined the great grandmother Sycamore tree that witnessed this ceremony was approving of it!
Having soaked in the energy of Montezuma’s Well, we felt that it would be good to go next to the Petroglyph site at the V Bar V ranch not far away.
More on that in the next blog that involves us going two miles up Beaver Creek from Montezuma’s Well to the V Bar V Heritage Site where there are 1100 petroglyphs on three large slabs on a cliff! More to come.
In Spirit, Marchiene
