This morning, the setting full moon is eclipsed by our planet’s shadow. A blood moon. It will rise tonight as a blue moon. And a super moon. Blood moons. Super moons. Blue moons. Snow moons. What does it all mean?
I don’t know. But delving into the meanings of things got me thinking about a visit I made to the Cocoraque Petroglyphs. I had avoided going there for over 25 years. But eventually, I needed to see for myself if these mysterious images are a collective enigmatic message. They are. And though many of the stones have been carted away wholesale, I think I pieced together an interpretation from what remains.
Seeing the glyphs surrounded by ironwood was vital to knowing what they say. Ironwood is an evergreen so long lived some individual trees survive for 40 human generations. Other plants seek the nitrogen around its roots. Entire life zones grow under an ironwood’s sheltering canopy. And… ironwood is a monotypic genus–the only one of its kind. Ageless, evergreen, nurturing and monotypic, of course ironwood represents divine female sexual energy: the Creator, the Life Giver.
Cocoraque itself is circular, another symbol of the eternal, save an anomalous lower secondary hill. So the dual peaks are a hierarchical life flow–from the sacred to the supplicant.
And the hundreds of, seemingly pluton, rocks? Born of earth and fire, exposed to wind and rain, they are elemental: the created. They are humans. They are eternal only as a group. Excepting those chosen as prophets they lack divine power or voice. But each rock with a glyph represents a message from a prophet, a manifestation of the divine voice.
So the relationship between the ironwoods around the circular Cocoraque and the glyphs on the individual stones reveals all. The message I have pieced together is this:
A people were here. Now they are gone. They took only what they needed. They did not build. They moved with the rains. But they are gone. Look and learn. The desert is eternal and you are nothing. Your technology will not sustain you. Only the earth will sustain you. Your contempt for her will be your undoing. Make peace with her. Know what is sacred and what is profane. Then live by what you know.
Lizard Tracks 