A Creation Story lost because of the Genocide is now known because a clear signal to share this fact was given to the person who knew it.
On April 20, 2017, this is what we saw. An Osprey flew right over our heads at the Blessing Mount Ashland ceremony, coming from the direction of Mount Shasta and headed straight for the Rogue River. This flyover happened as I was beginning to introduce the ceremony, as if to remind me to tell everyone just what that Fish Hawk might happen to be doing at 7,000 feet over the snow on the tallest mountain in the Siskiyou Crest —> simply pointing the way to Ti’lomikh Falls, the best fishing spot on the Rogue River, home to the origin story of the Takelma people and the Sacred Salmon Ceremony. One imagines animals to be willing messengers to those open to learning.
Many years ago I discovered this, thanks to Rockman (Jim Carpenter) who knew of a ley line reaching from Mount Shasta through Mount Ashland to the Oregon Vortex, a place where paranormal psychic phenomenon have been reported. For some reason, about 5 years ago I remembered this story. When I took a look at a map, I noticed that directly below the Oregon Vortex on the map was the northern bend of the Rogue River . . . and the falls at Ti’lomikh were right there along the ley line! But the story was too far-out to tell anyone, until the Osprey gave me a clear signal to do so, with perfect timing!
Still, even after the Osprey’s visit, though I now told the story on the internet, I didn’t know what to do. No one seemed at all interested.
This winter, I took time off from the internet, in seclusion at my home for the last few months of the winter of 2021. With my mind’s access to busyness shut down in the remote mountain wildlands where I live, a lovely quiet ensued, and in the midst of this, like a cloud rising from the water, I got an inspiration! Someone could paint this and make the unimaginable tangible with beautiful art and colors.
This feeling, plus strong support for the painting from people like ski area manager Hiram Towle and Windsong (who had both been impressed by the Osprey) helped me to settle more and more into the deep, deep significance of what the Osprey showed us. Then I learned from Steven ReMe that the line of power extended south to Mount Lassen, and this took me to a whole new level. On a clear morning, looking out my window at the Deer looking back at me, the ancient Creation story that is posted on the Homepage came through.
I believe that my discovery of an undeniable connection between Mount Lassen, Mount Shasta, Mount Ashland, and Ti‘lomikh was unlike anything I’d ever heard of anyone discovering.
It really needs to be widely known as a demonstration that Earth is conscious, purposeful, and compassionate — compassionate enough to establish in this spectacular fashion, with focused magic mountain energy, the best fishing place on the Rogue River, the ancestral village and ceremonial center of the Takilma people. The specific revelation was that there is a most wonderful way to get the story out there: a painting.
Personally, it is beyond amazing that Ti’lomikh is linked to Mount Shasta through Mount Ashland in this way. We now have physical evidence for the idea that the Earthly body we live within has a spiritual as well as a physical anatomy. A painting can dramatize this more beautifully than any words.
I think what we have here is part of an Indigenous Creation Story which did not survive the genocide, but which did resurface in the hearts of the first wave of back-to-the-land people who came here in the 1970s. One of these, Jim Carpenter (Rockman), had a profound connection with the mountains of this area. He became interested in ley lines and discovered the existence of a network extending from Mount Shasta northwest through Mount Ashland to the Oregon Vortex by Gold Hill, and another one from 8 Dollar Mountain in the Illinois Valley northeast to Crater Lake. At that time, no one knew about the ancient Salmon Ceremony at Ti’lomikh, just a few miles from the Vortex. No one except those scholars who happened to read Sapir’s Takelma Texts about the Dal Dal brothers’ journey upriver to Ti’lomikh to teach people to share the Salmon, and begin the Ceremony to show them how.
This journey at the beginning of time by the Dal Dal brothers to help the people shows the importance of Ti’lomikh to the Ancient Ones who preceded us on this Earth.
[Click here for a summary of this story that I put together from Sapir’s 1906 transcription of Grandma Aggie’s great aunt, Francis Johnson.]
In fact, nobody knew about the Salmon Ceremony at Ti’lomikh until Grandma Aggie restored it, 101 years later in 2007. I helped with this, and that same year was asked by an Ashland resident to begin the Blessing Mount Ashland ceremonies. It took many years before I thought of Rockman’s maps, took another look, and saw Ti’lomikh right there on the line.
Along the way, over the years I had become more familiar with the knowledge shared by several tribes in northern California of the Ancient Ones who lived here before the arrival of humans, until it finally dawned on me that they would be the ones responsible for the Creation of the Falls at Ti’lomikh.
That said, I certainly have no special knowledge of these things.
As someone trained in science, when I see an undeniable sign, like the Osprey’s flight, showing the answer to the unexplainable fact of 3 mountains alignment with a sacred site, then I take it seriously.
Let’s all put our hearts together to learn how we should best follow through on what we have been shown.