To the red people in the east, He gave the Guardianship of the Earth; to the yellow people in the south, He gave the Guardianship of the Air; to the black people in the west, He gave the Guardianship of the Water; and to the white people in the north, He gave the Guardianship of the Fire. Great Spirit warned that if any of the people cast their tablets upon the ground, not only would all people have a hard time but the earth itself might die.
When the white people first came to Turtle Island (America) it was clear that they had forgotten the Original Teachings. The European conquest of America followed. Then the prophecy predicts that, if we do not manage to come together as a human family, Great Spirit will shake the earth three times. The First and Second Shakings of the Earth correspond to the First and Second World Wars. The prophecy states that after each of these two global conflicts we had a chance to change our ways, and missed it. The League of Nations, formed after the First World War, and the United Nations, formed after the Second, both denied access to the red man. Therefore they were incomplete and could not succeed in bringing peace.
One last terrible prediction of the prophecy. At the end of the Second Shaking, “the worst misuse of the Guardianship of the Fire was called ‘the gourd of ashes.’” This refers to the twin atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on 6 and 9 August 1945. Prophecy states that “whoever dropped that gourd of ashes, upon them it is going to drop.”
Discussion
I think the content of the prophecy speaks for itself and therefore needs no further explanation. Those wishing to delve deeper into Native American or Hopi prophecy are free to do so.
The language of the prophecy is simple yet powerful; it feels creative and intuitive, palatable to common sense, and gives the impression of clearing away nonsense in order to reveal truth—as opposed to categorizing, rationalizing, labeling and obfuscating. Though the prophecy appears extremely self-consistent, it contains some glaring inconsistencies with accepted truth. Here are some of the most important points:
The first inconsistency is that of the four people, or races, of the earth. Even if you accept that Indians (I refer to the people of India—note that Mr. Brown refers to Native Americans as Indians) long ago descended from the Indo-European Aryan race (or vice-versa, depending on which school you subscribe to), the concept of the four races still seems a little narrow. It would take some maneuvering to apply it to all people on earth, requiring an advanced history of human origins and migration (one which has never been available) and, of course, a date.
In the spirit of speculation, I suppose the red race could cover everything from the Inuit to the Guarani (Greenland to Argentina); the yellow race, everything from China to Indonesia; the black race, most of Africa; and the white race, everything from Russia to Iceland—including the Arab and Jewish people. Even so, the origin of the indigenous people of Australia still presents a problem, as they constitute one of the earliest migrations, more than 50,000 years ago (Native Americans, for example, migrated from Eurasia no earlier than 25,000 years ago).
“50,000 years ago” turns out to be an interesting date, since the prophecy states that the Hopi tablets are around that age. This means that around that date is when Great Spirit scattered the four races to the four corners of the earth. The date also has special significance apart from this prophecy, as we shall later see.
The positions of these four races—the red in the east, the yellow in the south, the black in the west and the white in the north—present the second inconsistency. They are just not compatible with geographic reality. Even if you concede that North America is east of China, and even if, say, the polarity of the earth were to be reversed, there is no map on which China could be south of Africa (and this, going all the way back to Pangea). Mr. Brown himself states that “if you went straight through the Hopi Reservation to the other side of the world, you would come out in Tibet.” That the two should occupy opposite cardinal directions (such as east and west) would seem a foregone conclusion (as opposed to the east and south they occupy in the prophecy). I offer no solution to this inconsistency, though I suppose the four directions could have been used in other than a literal sense.
In trying to establish a map that would match the four directions mentioned in the prophecy I naturally looked for a center point—and the first center point to come to mind was the one called the center of the world by the Jewish faith: the Foundation Stone found under Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple (standing at the time of Jesus, destroyed in 70 CE), and currently under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that according to the Talmud (Oh, who am I kidding!—Wikipedia) “it was from this rock that the world was created, itself being the first part of the Earth to come into existence.” The idea that the earth originated from a rock may seem ridiculous from the point of view of modern science, unless you consider that “world” could mean “life,” and “the rock” could be conceived of as the cosmic origin of life on earth. But that is a topic for another discussion.
Speaking of the Jewish people, when I think of a law from God handed down on two tablets, the first thing that comes to mind is the Jewish law brought down by Moses from Mount Sinai. However, the prophecy very clearly states that the red tablets are kept on the Hopi Reservation on Third Mesa; the yellow tablets, in the Himalayas of Tibet; the black tablets, at the foot of Mount Kenya; and the white tablets, in the Swiss Alps (interesting to note that all the tablets are connected with mountains). The implication that the Jewish people are not the ones who hold the Original Teaching I believe indicates a much older tradition, one that takes 50,000 years ago as its starting date. I will explore this more in-depth in subsequent posts.
