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Orion Temple in ColoradoGary A. David

Solar Line-up

Mesa Verde is a green sanctuary for the soul. Located in southwestern Colorado near theFour Corners region, this massive geological uplift was once home to many Ancestral Puebloans,the term that has recently supplanted “Anasazi” in the archaeological world. Mesa Verde isSpanish for “green table,” and the area covered with juniper and piñon trees indeed providedrefuge from the harsher and drier landscape of the high desert below.

Some of the continent’s most spectacular cliff dwellings are found here, including CliffPalace and Spruce Tree House. Occupied between 600 and 1300 AD, the mesa is cut bynumerous canyons running generally north and south. These canyons are pocked with giant rockalcoves under which the ancient people built large villages of sandstone.

Cliff Palace, for instance, was inhabited between about 1190 and 1300. It contained some220 rooms and 23 circular kivas (subterranean, communal, ceremonial chambers)—the largestcliff dwelling in the American Southwest. This pueblo, a sort of ancient stone apartmentcomplex, also included a round tower and a four-story square tower from which the sacred “sunwatchers” made their celestial observations.

Figure 1: Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Unlike the cliff dwellings, the so-called Sun Temple was used exclusively for watching theskies. It is located on top of the mesa rather along cliff sides within the canyons. Perched at thesouthern edge of the mesa near the juncture of Fewkes Canyon and Cliff Canyon, this D-shapedstructure lies a bit more than 300 yards southwest of Cliff Palace, which is located on the far sideof the latter canyon. These two canyons, by the way, contained a total of 33 habitation sites.

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Most pueblo villages grew by accretion, as rooms were gradually added on to each other. Onthe other hand, the form of the Sun Temple was preconceived and executed with a single,coherent symmetry in mind. The structure, built probably about 1250 AD, consists of twoconcentric bows. Its southern wall (the metaphoric bowstring) is 122 feet long, while the curvednorth wall provides the temple’s 64-feet width. The inner “bow” is bisected exactly to the inch bya recess a few feet wide in the outer southern wall. Although the reconstructed walls are now anaverage of six feet high, they once rose to an estimated 11 to 14 feet. They were generally aboutfour feet thick and composed of a central core of rubble and adobe dressed with finely placedsandstone blocks. The floor of the building consisted of the mesa’s bedrock, with no additionaladobe flooring added.

No external doorways or windows are found, except for one walled-up entryway near thesouthwestern corner of the structure. However, a number of inner windows and covereddoorways connect to some of the rooms, which total 24. The lack of wooden beams shows thatthe structure was unroofed and open to sunlight and starlight. No household goods of any kind(i.e., bowls, baskets, grinding stones, etc.) were found in or near the building, which indicates thebuilding’s purpose was ceremonial rather than domiciliary. In other words, this edifice trulydeserves the name “temple.” Whether or not this was strictly a sun temple will be dealt withshortly.

Figure 2: Bird's-eye view of the “Sun Temple,” looking northeast

Figure 3: Satellite view of “Sun Temple,” Cliff Palace to northeast.

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The archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes, who worked initially to unearth and reconstruct it in1915, observed the following: “…the building excavated shows the best masonry and is the mostmysterious structure yet discovered in a region rich in so many pre-historic ruins.”

Almost every masonry block was assiduously pecked and shaped in order to fit perfectly intothe walls. Some of the blocks were even sculpted or incised with geometric designs similar tothose commonly found on the indigenous pottery of the region. Other designs in the blocksinclude the so-called crows-foot, flowing water, and what looks like a ladder leaning against awall. A few blocks are cut with the T-shape that resembles many of the doors and windows ofother pueblos (though not in this structure). The designs in these blocks suggest that the wallswere not plastered. This style of sculpted stones is very rare in the American Southwest andindicates an influence from Mexico and Central America.

There are three circular kivas incorporated into the architecture. These are not typical kivas,however, because they lack the normal features, such as a fire pit, an air deflector, a banquette(bench along the wall), and a sipapu (a tiny hole in the floor that conceptually leads to theunderworld). In addition, they are above-ground, not subterranean. The two eastern “kivas”(marked B and C on the diagram) each have a narrow subterranean trench that leads from theplaza through an inclined shaft to a spot just south of the center of each circular room. Thewestern “kiva” (marked A) has a similar access from one of the small rooms to the south.

On the eastern two-thirds of the structure, fourteen mostly rectangular rooms enclose theplaza that contains two kivas, which are equal in diameter. On the western third, we find tenrooms: six nearly square rooms, one circular room, and three quadrilateral rooms that surroundthe single kiva and conform to its shape. This kiva is slightly smaller than the other two kivas.One small triangular enclosed space also lies just northeast of the circular room.

As the diagram shows, the north-south axis of the structure is shifted five degrees west of duenorth. A line drawn from the southwestern corner eastward past the building is tangent with theinner wall of another kiva (marked D). This separate kiva lies just over twenty feet from thesoutheastern corner of the main structure.

One of the most usual features connected to the Sun Temple, however, is the so-called SunShrine. Located at the southwestern corner of the building, this curious stone slab extends as partof the bedrock a few feet from the building. A masonry enclosure was constructed on two sidesperpendicular to the outer wall in order protect it. The stone seems artificially worked, with sharpgrooves radiating from a central basin. It has been suggested that these grooves represent solarrays. At the center of this depression are three indentations, one of which is offset. If a person saton this stone, the masonry addition would be something like the arms of a chair. Gazingwestward, an observer could watch the equinoctial sunset. Some researchers believe that thisstone functioned as a kind of sundial.

But does the Sun Temple live up to its name? Apparently so. A number of what are termedsolstice alignments are incorporated into the building as line-of-sight connections between twopoints. In the world of the Ancestral Puebloans, the four solstice points on the horizons are moreimportant that the cardinal directions. That is, the exact spots on the horizon where the sun risesand sets in either summer or winter are crucial to maintaining an agricultural calendar. The “sunwatcher” performed the task of determining when to plant or harvest certain crops and when toperform various ritual activities.

At the latitude of Mesa Verde, the Sun rises at 60.5º azimuth on the first day of summer.(Azimuth is an angle measured in degrees from True North. North = 0º, East = 90º, South = 180º,

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and West = 270º.) On this same day it sets at 299º. During the winter solstice the Sun rises at119º and sets at 241º.

The diagram shows how specific architectural features of the structure indicate the solsticetimes. For instance, a straight line extended from the Sun Shrine located in the southwesterncorner of the building to Room i in the northeastern corner is 60.5º azimuth. Remember, the SunTemple had no roof, so a person standing on a ladder at the Sun Shrine could see either anotherladder or a pole that may have been erected in the very northeastern corner of this far room.When the sunrise point, which had gradually been moving northward along the horizon as springprogressed, finally reached this upright marker, the person would know it was the summersolstice. In other words, the Sun had reached its “summer house.” Another summer solsticesunrise alignment can be found between the center of Kiva A and the northeastern corner ofRoom g.

Three winter solstice sunrise alignments can be found in the building: (1) between Kiva Aand the southeastern corner of Room b, (2) between the circular Room s and the center of therecess in the southern wall, and (3) between Kiva C and Kiva D. This was probably the mostimportant time of year for the ancient people. Solstice ceremonies were performed in part tousher the Sun northward from its “winter house.” If these rituals were done poorly or notconducted at all, there was concern that the Sun might not return with its life-giving warmth.

A summer solstice sunset alignment can be found between Kiva B and the small triangularroom. In addition, a winter solstice sunset alignment runs from Kiva C to the center of thewalled-up door along the southern wall of the structure. The redundancy of alignments mighthave resulted from different ceremonial clans, each using either one of the three enclosed kivasor the single separate kiva outside the structure.

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Stellar Line-up

Was the Sun Temple used solely as a solar indicator? Compelling evidence points to anotherpossibility. It may in fact have been a stellar temple as well, especially during the winter months.

The positioning of the three kivas within the structure perfectly reflects the belt stars of

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Orion. Kiva A corresponds to Mintaka, Kiva B to Alnilam, and Kiva C to Alnitak. It is significantthat Kiva A is somewhat smaller than the other two and slightly offset—similar to Mintaka in thetriadic row that forms the constellation’s belt. The relationship of the measurements between thekivas is proportional to the apparent visual distances between the stars (as opposed to the lightyear distances).

Many readers are familiar with the Orion Correlation theory developed by Robert Bauval inThe Orion Mystery. His book posits that the arrangement of three major pyramids on the Gizaplateau directly corresponds to the belt stars. As seen in the diagram, the pyramids, the trio ofstars, and in this case the three kivas all coincide.

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Orion dominates the celestial landscape during December, rising in the east, arcing across thesouthern sky, and setting in the west. It achieves its highest point (meridian) around midnight. OnDecember 21st, winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun rises and sets at the farthestpoint south on the horizon. During the night of the same date, the spot between Alnitak andAlnilam (the left side and the middle of the belt respectively) reaches 175º azimuth at exactlytwenty minutes past midnight.

As the diagram shows, the nearly vertical line runs from a point halfway between the twokivas of the main part of the structure, past the recess in the southern wall and continues along animaginary line to the stars just mentioned. Why 175º and not 180º (due south)? Was this thesignal to begin the winter solstice ceremony—when the line-of-sight from a point equidistantbetween the two main kivas ran through the southern doorway and reached toward thecorresponding position in the heavens?

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Figure 6

Another piece of architectural evidence in favor of a dual function –both solar and stellar– isthe previously mentioned Sun Shrine in the southwestern corner. Although the basin hasradiating from it like the Sun, its center also has three indentations, one of which is offset. Thesemay have been artificially worked in order to resemble Orion’s belt.

Figure 7: “Sun Shrine” with three cupules, possibly representing Orion's belt setting in thewest.

One tribe that claims to be direct descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans is the Hopi. For thishighly ritualistic native group the most important part of the winter solstice ceremony, or Soyal,occurs after midnight. In fact, the ethnographer A. M. Stephen witnessed this ceremony in thevillage of Walpi in 1891. He claims that the “Star Priest” signaled the most crucial phase of theceremony just after 1:00 a.m., when Orion’s belt begins its descent toward the west. Or as FrankWaters puts it in his classic Book of the Hopi, “…when Hotomkam [Orion’s belt] begins to hangdown in the sky.”

In regard to what may with impunity be called the Orion Temple, the exact moment when the

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belt stars were just five degrees prior to reaching their highest point in the sky was the signal forthe ceremony to begin. Thus, the “Sun Temple” may have been oriented according to the positionOrion assumes when the most important ceremony of the year was supposed to commence.

Whether one believes that this “temple” at Mesa Verde is primarily a solar structure or astellar one (or perhaps both), it is hard to deny the exquisite beauty of its architectural design.This is not merely an accident or the result of a talented but uninformed builder. A special type ofspiral is instead incorporated into its very master “blueprint.” We recall how the Ancient Ones ofthe American Southwest were fond of carving spirals into stone to serve as solar calendars.

The specific spiral found within the structure is created in nature according to what is calledthe Golden Mean, Golden Section, or Divine Proportion, which is simply the ratio (phi) of 1 :1.6180339... It is derived from Fibonacci’s series, or a numerical list whereby each new numberis the sum of the previous two numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... ad infinitum.Regardless of how large the spiral becomes, the ratio of its dimensions remains constant. Forinstance, the proportion AB to AC is the same as BC to BD or CD to CE.

The growth of many objects in nature is determined by the Golden Mean, including the whorlpattern of sunflowers, the distribution of leaves on a stem, the horn of the bighorn sheep, theindividual seeds of pine cones, and even the rotating shape of hurricanes.

In the case of the “Sun Temple,” a natural aesthetics overlays the complexity of encodedastronomical relationships. Amid the lost echoes of Mesa Verde, it is the soul’s task –not themind alone– to synthesize both the natural and human-made worlds into a sacred cosmology.

Figure 8: Orion Temple with superimposed Golden Mean Spiral

Copyright © 2014 Gary A. David. All rights reserved.

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Gary A. DavidFor more on his books, see website: www.theorionzone.com

Email: garydavid52@hotmail.com