Myth is memory
“Myths constitute historical documents that record information about past events, allowing us to recover lost and forgotten facts from our history.”Anselm Pi Rambla · Umbilicus Mundi
For Mircea Eliade, myth is “a sacred story and, therefore, a true story, as it always refers to realities”. All of this research starts from that idea: myths are not fantasy, but stored knowledge.
The ancients had a science to store it: the Ars Memorativa, the art of memory. Its great masters were the Greeks Simonides of Ceos (556-467 BC) and Metrodorus of Scepsis, although, according to Herodotus, it was the Egyptians who exercised memory “more than all other people”.
The historian Frances A. Yates (1899-1981), professor at the Warburg Institute of the University of London, reconstructed its history in The Art of Memory. Its principle is repeated in every age: artificial memory is made of places and images (constat igitur artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus).
The places, the loci, form a sequence that memory learns easily: a house, a colonnade, a corner, an arch. In each one an image of what must be remembered is placed. Whoever masters the method can walk the series forwards or backwards, like someone reading an inner alphabet.
Today's philologists and historians glimpse behind Homer's poems a mnemonic system built into the verses themselves. With it they were preserved for centuries, with astonishing fidelity.
Yates discovered something more. In the Renaissance, the memory systems of Giulio Camillo, Giordano Bruno and Robert Fludd drew on the Hermetic tradition: on the Corpus Hermeticum, which Marsilio Ficino published in Latin in 1471, and on the Asclepius, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. In the old vessels of the science of Ars Memorativa, the secret knowledge of the currents of occult philosophy from the Renaissance and classical antiquity had been poured.
Plato held that the forms of the realities the soul knew before descending into this world lie latent in our memory, and that this knowledge can be recovered.
The knowledge of the divine is innate in memory.
That is why the ancient accounts of the Primordial Mother Culture are not products of fantasy: they are a metaphysical truth dressed in personified allegories to convey the wisdom of their time, and this science allows us to decipher them. One example is the precession of the equinoxes, the cycle of about 25,770 years of the Platonic year, which the Egyptians and Babylonians already knew long before its discovery was attributed to Hipparchus. Giorgio de Santillana, historian of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dr. Hertha von Dechend, of the University of Frankfurt, argued in Hamlet's Mill (1969) that the myths of the whole world preserve, in their coded language, the knowledge of that slow turning of the sky.
Castor and Pollux, the twins born of Leda, were identical in every respect but one: Pollux, son of Zeus, was immortal; Castor, son of King Tyndareus of Sparta, was mortal. When Castor died, Pollux wished to give up his immortality. Zeus granted them to stay together for ever: half the time in the underworld and the other half on Olympus.
Castor and Pollux are the two main stars of Gemini. When the constellation sets in the west, Castor, the mortal brother, enters the realm of Hades, and Pollux follows him shortly after: there they spend twelve hours, among the invisible stars. Then Castor reappears in the east, followed by Pollux, to spend the other twelve as immortals.
The Egyptologist and archaeoastronomer Jane B. Sellers, of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and other researchers have reinforced the work of Santillana and Von Dechend: ancient myths are direct manifestations of celestial mechanics.
At the Foundation, mythology is a central line of the Research Division, directed by Dr. Sergi Grau, doctor in Philosophy and historian of science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. We study myths with the techniques of Frances Yates and of other world-class specialists in their interpretation.
80%We hold that about 80% of myths have an astronomical content: they speak of the sky, its cycles and its stars.
The full chapter: Umbilicus Mundi → The Odyssey according to Mattievich: HADES → The Research Division →
The meaning of the Candelabro
For centuries, the great geoglyph of Paracas Bay has been an unanswered enigma. Throughout all these years of research we have finally been able to decipher it in its entirety: the Trident / Candelabro is the representation of the World Tree, the Axis Mundi that appears in the traditions of all the peoples of the Earth.
When we are in the presence of a tree with a ternary form, with its central column and its two lateral columns of analogous and opposite duality, joined in balance by a triangle into a single tree, then that tree represents the true Axis of the World, known as the Axis Mundi.
The Triangle that joins the three axes of the geoglyph is regarded as one of the signatures of the Celestial Pole, and represents the Unity that contains the three existing worlds connected by its Central Axis, which gives access to the three regions of our dimensional space: the Cosmos, our Earth and the Inner or Underground World, the three Pachas of the Andean tradition: Hanan Pacha, Kay Pacha and Ukhu Pacha.
The Candelabro does not look at the land, but at the sky and the Pacific Ocean. All its geometry is born from the Southern Cross:
- Its base is a Harmonic Rectangle of 20.40 × 14.40 metres, the proportion between the long and short arms of the constellation.
- Its central arm points to the South Celestial Pole, the “Navel of the Sky” of the American peoples.
- Every 3 May, on the ancient Andean feast of the Cruz Velakuy, the long axis of the Southern Cross aligns with the central axis of the Candelabro.
One axis shared by all peoples
All the great traditions of humanity preserve the memory of one and the same symbol: an axis that joins the sky, the earth and the inner world. Its name changes, but not its meaning.
The Norse Yggdrasil · the Maya Ceiba (Wakah Chan) · the apple tree of Avalon · the lotus of Meru · the palm of the Guaraní Yvymarae
The Vedic Meru · the Iranian Haraberezaiti and Qâf · Gerizim · Golgotha · the Kaaba · Borobudur · the ziggurats, Dur-an-ki
The seven Dwîpas of Meru · the Chinese Residence of the Great Peace · the Vâr of Yima · Asgard · Avalon · the Isles of the Blessed
Hanan Pacha, Kay Pacha and Ukhu Pacha, joined by the axis of Cusco
Mircea Eliade, the great historian of religions, described this same “system of the world”: an axis, the Axis Mundi, joins Heaven, Earth and the world below, and always rises at the Centre of the World, the “Navel of the Earth”. It may be a column, a ladder, a tree or a mountain. Temples are replicas of that Cosmic Mountain, and their foundations sink into the lower regions.
The masters of the Perennial Philosophy —René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Oscar Freire and Adrian Snodgrass— among many others, took this idea further: the Centre of the World is the reflection of a Primordial Seat, the abode of the Wisdom of the Origins, prior to history.
For the tradition, the Centre of the World is the Holy Land par excellence. Its names change from one people to another —Paradesha, the “supreme region” in the traditional reading of the Sanskrit texts; Pardes in Hebrew; Paradise— but they all name one and the same reality: the Primordial Seat.
Historians have read it as a legendary garden or as a place lost on the map. The tradition speaks of something else: a spiritual centre, of which every Holy Land in history —Jerusalem, Delphi, Cusco— is an image, a place where the axis of the world touches the earth.
According to Guénon, the sacred name of the Primordial Seat was Tula, “the Balance”. When the polar Seat became inaccessible, that name and its function passed to spiritual centres made in its image, in America too:
Tollan-Teotihuacán · Tula · Aztlán · Chicomóztoc, “the Place of the Seven Caves” · Tamoanchan, “where heaven and earth meet”
The Guaraní Yvymarae , the “Land without Evil” the flood cannot reach · the “unchanging centre” of the Yagua
Wiñay Marka, the “Eternal City” of Titicaca · the cave of Pacaritambo, from which Manco Cápac emerged
Qosqo, the Navel of the World, meeting point and connection to the Bab Apsû, the sacred gate into the Apsû, in the Ukhu Pacha, the inner world of the Andes.
For us, myths are not folklore. Following the ancient Art of Memory, we read them as documents that hold real, encoded knowledge. That knowledge comes from one and the same source: the Primordial Mother Culture.
8 min · HD
The Tree of the World
The Paracas Candelabra, explored by sea, by land and from the air. And the same Tree of the World carved in the Mesoamerican codices, on the Gate of the Sun at Tiwanaku and in the stones of Cusco. We hold that these physical traces, repeated thousands of kilometres apart and aligned with the same Southern Cross, are the signature of a single culture of origin: the Primordial Mother Culture.
René Guénon
Blois, 1886 · Cairo, 1951
One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century in traditional studies, and a fundamental author throughout the research of Anselm Pi Rambla.
A French metaphysician, he devoted his life to setting out the unity of the great traditions of East and West. In 1930 he settled in Cairo, where he lived until his death under the name Abd al-Wahid Yahya. To him we owe concepts that run through these pages: the Primordial Tradition, the Centre of the World, the Axis and the Tree.
Over his years of research, Anselm Pi Rambla studied almost all of his work. Among the books that marked him most:
- The King of the World1927
- The Crisis of the Modern World1927
- The Symbolism of the Cross1931
- Fundamental Symbols of Sacred Science1962
Guénon and the Paracas Candelabra
In December 1926, in a postscript to his article “Symbolisme et philosophie”, published in the magazine Regnabit, Guénon referred to Peru's “candelabrum of the three crosses”. He knew it only from two notes by V. Forbin and some “unclear” photographs, yet he wrote:
“We think it must be a representation of the ‘Tree of Life’.”René Guénon · Regnabit, December 1926
He connected it with the triple tree of tradition, whose central trunk is the Tree of Life, and recalled that in the ancient temples of Central America that tree often appears in the form of a cross. More than half a century later, from 1982 onwards, Anselm Pi Rambla studied the Candelabra in the field and, without knowing this text, deciphered it as the Tree of the World. He found Guénon's postscript many years later: by two different paths, that of the symbol and that of fieldwork, the same conclusion had been reached.
Guénon placed the Primordial Seat in the north; we hold that its origin is southern polar. This tribute acknowledges an intellectual debt: his work belongs to the study of symbols; the evidence of this research is that of fieldwork.
The Qhapaq Ñan, a colossal work
What the Candelabro represents as a symbol, the Andes show traced upon the land. The Qhapaq Ñan is not just a network of roads: it is a colossal geodetic system, unique on the planet.
The Route of Wiracocha links sacred centres such as Tiahuanaco, Pukara, Raqchi, Cusco, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu and Cajamarca (among others), as described by María Scholten de D'Ebneth. Her studies, those of other authors and those of our own Foundation lead to the same place: the centre of this network is in Cusco.
Discover the Qhapaq Ñan →Cusco, the true Axis Mundi
The axis the Candelabro symbolises exists physically in Cusco. It is the Umbilicus Mundi, the Navel of the World: the centre of the Qhapaq Ñan and the point where the three worlds cross. An interdimensional portal designed to join the sky, the earth and the enigmatic underground world.
Cusco was not founded at random. It rose where the vertical axis of the three pachas crosses the four suyus of the Tawantinsuyu. That union forms a three-dimensional cross that connects all dimensions.
Six directions and the seventh point
The vertical axis of the three pachas and the two horizontal axes of the four suyus cross at a single center. There are three dimensions but six directions: up and down, Hanan Pacha and Ukhu Pacha, and the four quarters of the earth. In the Andes it is the Tawa Chakana; in the universal tradition, the three-dimensional cross.
Tradition knows this figure well. Clement of Alexandria, in a text that René Guénon quotes in The Symbolism of the Cross (1931), describes it like this:
“From God, ‘Heart of the Universe’, go forth the indefinite extensions, one upwards, one downwards, one to the right, one to the left, one forwards and one backwards. Turning His gaze towards these six extensions as towards an ever-equal number, He completes the world; He is the beginning and the end. In Him the six phases of time are completed, and from Him they receive their indefinite extension: that is the secret of the number 7.”Clement of Alexandria, quoted by René Guénon · The Symbolism of the Cross, ch. IV
Hebrew Kabbalah teaches the same. The Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Formation”, places the Holy Palace at the center of the six directions, upholding them all. Guénon sums it up: the six arms of the cross and their center form the septenary. The center is the seventh region of space, and also the seventh day, the Sabbath: the return to the Principle.
The seventh point is not one more direction. It is neither above nor below, nor in any quarter: it is the motionless center where the six meet. We hold that this point is a dimensional gateway, the passage between the three worlds, and that Cusco was founded to occupy exactly that center. That is why it is the Umbilicus Mundi.
Guénon takes the quotation from Clement from Paul Vulliaud’s La Kabbale juive (1923).
For a temple to rise towards heaven, its foundations must sink into the lower world. It is a law of every Sacred Centre:
It rose upon the Bab Apsû, the Gate of the primordial Abyss.
The foundation stone, on Mount Moriah, sealed the “mouth of the Tehôm”, the abyss of the waters.
The Koricancha and Saqsaywaman are the outer crown of a network of galleries, the chinkanas, that descends into the Ukhu Pacha.
Saqsaywaman is precisely the head of the feline, the Celestial Jaguar that represents Wiracocha. Its three great zigzag walls represent the three pachas. According to the amautas, the Andean sages, its original titanic architecture was raised by the Wiracochas, that is, the Primordial Mother Culture, and the Incas later built upon it.
Beneath the citadel opens the entrance to the Ukhu Pacha: a network of galleries that links Saqsaywaman with the Koricancha. Anselm Pi Rambla entered the Chinkana in 1982, and in 2023 3D ground-penetrating radar detected those structures underground. Opening this Axis Mundi is the goal of the Qosqo Project.
See the Qosqo Project →Those who built it
The World Tree, the Qhapaq Ñan and the Axis Mundi of Cusco are the work of one and the same civilization: the Primordial Mother Culture, the Solar Race of the Origins. It built this legacy for us.
- Its origin: a southern polar region. After great cyclical cataclysms, it established its refuge in the Andes, in South America, the “Dragon's Tail” of ancient cartography.
- Its names: in the Andes, the pre-Inca and Inca peoples called them the Wiracochas; in the Indo-European tradition it is the planet's original Solar Race, the Hyperboreans of Greco-Roman literature. They are the same people.
- Its science: extraordinary scientific, astronomical and mathematical knowledge, written in stone, in the sky and on the land. Its trace is found in Egypt, Sumer, India, Greece, Mexico and Peru.
- Its physical traces: the same Tree of the World, in the Paracas Candelabra, in the codices, at Tiwanaku and in Cusco. See them on film →
- Its guardians: the Capaccuna, the first Andean amautas, guarded this science and hid it from the conquistadors.
Two paths, one land
In the sky, Enrico Mattievich projected the constellation Draco, the Dragon slain by Cadmus and Heracles, onto South America: it spans the length of the Amazon. On the maps, historians of cartography such as Paul Gallez, Gustavo Vargas Martínez and Dick Edgar Ibarra Grasso identified the “Dragon's Tail” of the ancient maps with South America.
Mattievich found the Dragon in the sky; Paul Gallez and other historians, the Dragon's Tail on the ancient maps; Pi Rambla identified it with the Mythical Land of the tradition. Sky, maps and tradition point to the same land: South America.
This is the foundation of the Prime Civilization: more than forty years of research and exploration by Anselm Pi Rambla, from Tibet to the Andes. Our purpose is to bring its tangible legacy to light: not as legend, but with evidence measured in the field.
How we research
Every conclusion on this page comes from a specific discipline and a verifiable result. This is the Foundation's method.
With Dr. Sergi Grau, the Foundation studies myths with the techniques of Frances Yates and other great specialists. We hold that about 80% have an astronomical content.
See the key → 3D ground-penetrating radarThe Chinkana undergroundIn 2023, radar detected beneath Cusco the galleries Anselm Pi Rambla walked in 1982.
See section 04 → ArchaeoastronomyThe Candelabro and the Southern CrossIts geometry is born from the constellation and its axis points to the South Celestial Pole. Every 3 May, the Southern Cross aligns with it.
See section 01 → PalaeocartographyThe ancient mapsThe Dragon's Tail in Martellus (1489) and the Earthly Paradise in Walsperger (c. 1448).
See the Dragon's Tail → GeodesyThe axes of the Qhapaq ÑanThe two great 45° axes and the 22.5° Chekkaluwa, measured at the royal doorway of the Koricancha.
See section 03 → Comparative mythologyHades on the AmazonWith Enrico Mattievich: the Odyssey and the Theogony read against the real geography of South America, and Draco over the great river.
See section 05 → Chronicles and archivesThe documentary sourcesGuamán Poma and Pedro Pizarro describe the Chinkana; the documents of the Dominican order speak of what it holds.
See section 04 →Born from this research
The Prime Civilization is the Foundation's mother research. Each field project puts a part of it to the test.
HADES
The result of the convergence between Enrico Mattievich and Anselm Pi Rambla: the bridge between physics and cutting-edge archaeology.
UMBILICUS MUNDI
THE LATEST BOOK BY ANSELM PI RAMBLA
The book Umbilicus Mundi is a master index that articulates the Prime Civilization research in pre-Columbian America. It brings together the scientific thesis that connects an unknown ancient cartography with the Paracas Trident/Candelabro and the Andean geodetic network. It is the master map that turns legend into a real archaeological quest.
Strategic Collaboration
We believe that science advances through cooperation. If you represent an academic institution, research centre or technology organisation interested in collaborating with our exploration protocols, we invite you to contact our Directorate:
Marc Qumran (CEO)
info@piheritage.org
