We headed out in the zero of December to visit a friend. Some hours later, an unexpected surprise appeared. The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull was carried out to greet us and placed on the wooden coffee table in front of us in the dimmed light! I felt immediate vibrations all over my body!
How should I describe this energetic experience? I “felt” rather than heard a humming vibration emanating from the skull rather like an electric sixty cycle hum from an ancient radio I played in my childhood. Weren’t the first radios called crystal sets? Do crystals amplify vibrations?
Not touching the skull, but scooting forward, I peered down into its mystic silver depths. The crystal was clear, yet patterns appeared like untapped universes and oceans of water and stars, infinity deep.
I remember thinking, “This skull is out of this world!” How could human artists have crafted it? If humans fashioned it, they had divine guidance from unseen hands guided by light and unspoken directions. I reflected about my painting, tapping unseen energy from the universe and downloading it into solid light and liquid color. I didn’t think about painting the skull. I didn’t think.
Getting up, like a cat circling, I viewed the skull from every angle. Creeping slowly around the ancient artifact, I thought about how Tai Chi and Qigong practice helps to raise body, mind, and spirit to higher energy states through its ancient ritual forms, some say stemming from shamanic dances at the dawn of time.
Sitting down again, I peered once more into the mysterious depths of the skull absorbing its solidified light. Refractions of color split the night, prisms of light appeared and danced from within and without. These prisms were not arcs of rainbow color, but “pieces of rainbows” as if you’d take a scissors and slash random fragments in various sizes from neon rainbow paper, raw material for a future collage.

Time to Leave

Rising slowly to my feet, I felt connected to the earth by strong vibrations. Walking carefully, I felt I was treading on pincushions! The black velvet night shocked my body with its December chill. Settling into the passenger seat of the car, I quickly performed my “cool down” exercises from Tai Chi class so as to ground my energy and settle my soul which was wild with joy and wonder. Vibrations painted a day and night to remember.

Vision!

Bedtime settled over me like a warm quilt, dreamless sleep enveloped me. About four in the morning, I had a dream vision. The colors and energy were so vivid I awoke with a start! Even waking up could not fade the neon bright image. I had “received” a painting I had to materialize!
The skull image in the center of the vision burned into my consciousness. Looking straight at the skull, it was smiling – though some perceive the skull as female and some feel androgynous energy. The skull radiated neon white and the sunburst around it was vibrant yellow, hurting my eyes. Energy intense rose light appeared, framing the edges of the canvas. Rose is the color of unconditional love.
I lay awake for quite awhile. I knew, with the right timing and energy, I would paint the skull.

Pieces of Rainbows!

Some days later, I talked to my daughter by phone. I did not tell her about the adventure. I wanted her to be surprised!
“Mom, the other day while I practiced Tai Chi, I got rainbows! I knew you were sending them.” We often send and receive thoughts, colors, and images back and forth. “But they weren’t like regular rainbows, they were cut-up ones like someone took a scissors and cut them into random sizes!” I smiled, knowing those were images I had seen reflected in the skull.
“How bright were they?” I questioned.
“Oh, they were very bright, like neon color!” she answered.
I realized that these rainbows had been sent out unconsciously and not directly to my daughter. She tuned into the frequency band, and picked up the brilliantly painted images.

Painting the Vision

Months later, gripping my favorite ancient worn bristle brush was like picking up a magic sword. Today, the energy felt just right for painting. As I lifted the sword-brush, I felt intense vibrations streaming into me like lifting my sword for Tai Chi practice. I felt like I was in the presence of the skull itself. I had never had such an intense experience while painting. I prayed to my legions of angels to help me create and guide the brush. How would I paint the skull? With a lot of help!
I stood to paint, poised over the canvas, rotating the brush silently above the canvas without touching it. Picking up spiritual energy from the universe to translate it into solid color, I felt like a Zen calligrapher/painter, picking up vibrational guidelines ready to paint over invisible images and energy. Could I transmit and translate the healing feeling I felt?
I dipped the brush boldly into the titanium white and a smudge of cobalt blue. Its worn, uneven bristles crunched. Tracing over unseen light, I circled in the outline of the skull, a memory from my vision-dream. Slashing the strokes like a Tai Chi sword in action, the skull began to take shape. Picking up vibrant yellow, I stroked timidly around the aura the skull emitted. The yellow faded paler on the canvas than in my vision. I let the color paint itself. Rose light was next in bold slashes outward from the image to frame the edges.
Something mysterious happened. The bright paint whirled out from the skull, not in slashes, but in circles! I knew the otherworld was painting through me! I silently “heard” the hum again as the brush circled. White paint swirls completed circling around the edges, tying the image together like a birthday present. I signed my name. I quit!

Many years later, I saw the results of the photon camera photographs that had been done by the Seraphim Institute of the crystal skull and realized that they were surprisingly like my intuitive painting.

Meeting Anna Mitchell-Hedges

The phone rang. It was a friend coming to call and bringing Anna Mitchell-Hedges with him. What excitement! Angel paintings surrounded the skull image on the stone mantel. Anna, then ninety-five years old, entered and hugged me. We all sat down excitedly, and I showed the skull painting. Anna loved it.

The skull radiates love. Anna’s peaceful, joyful presence is like the energy of the skull itself. Someone commented that in one of the skull’s eyes “I” had painted the pupil in a heart shape.
I tried to photograph this energetic skull painting, but the pictures were cloudy. All the other paintings on the role of film were perfect. Vision or experience? Which is more powerful? I named the painting Crystal Vision.

Crystal Tiger: Out of the Blue

Next I started a second painting of the skull, a unique experience! Taking my ancient worn brush and French ultramarine blue, a deep and vibrant hue like sapphires in the night, I brushed in the canvas with sweeps and swirls. I imagined the skull that would appear later painted over the thoroughly dry blue background. Like diamond sparkles on black velvet, I would draw light from deep blue darkness. My previous paintings added darks and shadows over lightly toned backgrounds.
The lonely blue canvas rested for a year, I checked on it frequently and saw images to paint later. Then I carefully fashioned a faint skull vision with light strokes of radiant white oil paint. The result showed two different skulls superimposed into one. Which one would I highlight?
Neither! One day I was sitting at my computer typing away and listening to music while thinking about painting a white tiger. I had been thinking about this for some time. I read in Chinese mythology a white tiger represents the constellation we call Orion the Hunter. I thought about a textured tiger image carved from crystal. A head and shoulders tiger view suddenly “emerged” fully formed and in sharp detail from an inner vision.
Like an explosion, I pictured the shimmering blue canvas backdrop receiving the tiger and immediately I had the title of the painting: Crystal Tiger!
Excitedly, I prepared to paint the images right away before they escaped! I pictured painting the tiger with jewels of white light as a carved crystal image with the invisible skull as a swirl of star aura around big cat. I took a chisel brush and titanium white and carved in the tiger with sure strokes. The tiger smiled with open jaws as he painted himself against the blue night. Next, I added Sirius, the dog star, and Orion’s belt of three stars. Heading around the painting, I brushed in the Big Dipper and the polestar, Like a ridgepole of a house, the polestar represents a stable center. Ursa Major and Polaris, stillness and motion reflecting the ancient Chinese Taiji practice itself.
Brushing in two stars for the little known constellation Lynx added a catlike energy to balance Canis Major, the Celestial Wolf, belonging to Orion. The Pleiades made their appearance and Cassiopeia, the Queen, as well.
One of my Taiji students saw a crane flying when he looked at color photos of the crystal skull. I smudged a faint flying Chinese crane into the skull and highlighted the crystal a little. In China, the crane symbolizes health, strength, and longevity. It worked! A balance of aura and stars appeared!
Adding my signature, in faint green, the only color besides blue completed the crystal project projecting love (green), communication (blue), and truth (white). I had fun painting this picture. It is important to play with color and words like one plays with daily Taiji practice, helping to open the creative heart of the universe.
Some time later, I presented Crystal Tiger to Anna Mitchell-Hedges, then keeper of the skull. Anna loved the painting and its blue mysterious depths.
Recently Bill Homann, current keeper of the skull, told me that F.A. Mitchell-Hedges’s nickname was White Tiger! Another painted surprise, I had no idea about this connection! The carved tiger surfaced from my subconscious. “Out of the Blue” Crystal Tiger Roars!

Dahlis Roy

In 1931, F.A. Mitchell-Hedges published a novel, “The White Tiger”. The novel relates the adventures of “White Tiger” – a nickname some would give to Mitchell-Hedges himself – in Central America, where White Tiger, an English ex-pat, becomes the leader of a local Indian tribe. As part of his initiation and preparation for coronation, he is shown the treasure of the Aztecs, over which the tribe guards.
The treasure contains “crystal heads”, which is of course of interest as Mitchell-Hedges’ name would become associated with the most famous of crystal skulls. Coincidence, or did Mitchell-Hedges use a work of fiction to reveal how the skull came to be in his possession?

CHAPTER XVI
THE TREASURE OF THE AZTECS

LATER the White Tiger learned that there was no mystery in the disappearance of his Indians. Too terror-stricken to utter a sound, they had been led away by the silent-footed Maya while he was engrossed in his thoughts. They were taken care of in another part of the city—only the high priest, his personal attendants and the White Tiger occupying this section of the citadel, which was sacred to those initiated into the higher mysteries of their religion.
Undisturbed, cut off from the world, all these strange people had their appointed work. To some was allotted the task of keeping the space round the city clear, and the buildings in good repair. Others devoted their lives to astronomy and mathematics, in which sciences they excelled. They had evolved a calendric system more perfect than our present Gregorian. It had started on a date 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, synchronising with our date 3373 B.C. and had functioned without the loss of a single day from that remote period up to the present.
As the days lengthened into weeks the White Tiger learned much ; their language and customs—religion—and even more than this. He gained a knowledge, though only slight, of the occult.
The mystery of how they had known of his coming—even the exact time of his arrival—and had prepared accordingly to receive him, he could never solve. Neither could he ever ‘ understand how they moved gigantic blocks of stone weighing many tons. Over this a veil of secrecy was drawn. That in some fashion they were cognisant of events taking place in the outside world, was certain. That they practised esoteric rites, and could employ light-rays, he was convinced. He suspected strongly that the secret of levitation, or suspension of gravity locally, was known to the higher adepts. Why they chose to withhold their knowledge, and why they withheld their power from the world was a mystery known only to themselves.
Quick at languages, he rapidly mastered the Maya tongue; and then one morning the High Priest announced that the time had arrived for his initiation. He explained there must be a public ceremony, that before all the assembled Maya he should be proclaimed king in the ancient custom. His coming had been foretold by the gods, who had commanded that he should be obeyed. Further, it was decreed that the vast treasure entrusted to the Maya by the last of the Aztecs should be placed in his keeping.
The gods had spoken. When the moon was at its full the ceremony of coronation should take place.
And so it came to pass. Not a cloud marred the beauty of the night when the White Tiger, dressed from head to foot in a long embroidered garment and wearing the royal mask and towering head-dress, passed along the white roadway between the pyramids. Behind followed the priests, nobles and lesser orders, whilst last of all came the women. A few hundred in all—a pitiful handful. Yet this remnant of a once-powerful civilisation that had numbered millions still retained its ancient dignity.
Slowly the White Tiger advanced. He made a regal figure as he took the place appointed to the ruler of the Maya at the summit of one of the flat-topped pyramids overlooking the arena, where stood the people.
The rays of the moon struck down, illuminating the scene with a ghostly light. The silence was broken by the incantations of the High Priest. The religious ceremony, long drawn-out, was brought to a conclusion by the offering up of the customary sacrifices to the gods of the Maya—a food-offering to Cuculcan, the god of Fertility—the slaughtering of a beast to Cimi, god of Death, but the ancient sacrifice of the maidens was, by order of the White Tiger, abolished.
Then as he rose to his full height, the High Priest drew near and hung round his neck the royal insignia—an enormous jade disc, and placed in his left hand a strange emblem carved from the same stone. The fingers of his right were then clasped round the hilt of an obsidian dagger encrusted with jade. The priest made a sign and the people bowed to the ground, and so remained silent and motionless whilst, with only the priest in attendance, the White Tiger descended from the pyramid and returned along the sacred road to the temple which had now become his residence.
The climax however was yet to come. As they passed into the temple, the priest impressively led him to one of the massive walls, placing his hand in a certain manner upon what appeared to be a solid block of stone. At his touch it rolled slowly back disclosing a flight of steps down which they passed. A lamp which the priest carried flung weird patches of light into the darkness. On and on down countless steps—into the very bowels of the earth until again the priest pressed the apparently solid rock barring their progress. With scarcely a sound the stone block turned as easily as if on oiled hinges and before them yawned a long tunnel. Passing through this they descended another flight of steps. For a third time the priest touched the wall and a huge stone rolled aside. Then in the dim light of the lantern the White Tiger saw that he was in an immense vault cut out of the living rock.
Before him, piled in endless confusion, lay the treasure of the Aztecs.
Gold chalices, bowls, jars and other vessels of every size and shape; immense plaques and strange ornaments all glittered dully. Of precious stones there were none, but many rare chalchihuitl (jadeite pendants). Masks of obsidian and shells beautifully inlaid were all heaped together with heads carved from solid blocks of crystal, Legend had not exaggerated the treasure of the Aztecs. Almost boundless wealth lay at the disposal of the White Tiger. [emphases added]
Bloodshed, rape and sickening torture, that the wretched Aztecs had undergone at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadores, had failed to wring from them this secret hiding-place. True to the oath which had they had sworn to their gods they had died rather than that their hated conquerors should benefit.
With this vast fortune a man could rise to any height, indulge in any luxury, purchase any title, and become one of the exalted of the earth. But the Indians judged, and rightly, that to the White Lord these things were of no account, and that only for their regeneration would this treasure be used.
The High Priest ceremoniously placed all at the disposal of El Tigre Blanco and instructed him how to gain entrance to the vault. Then turning, the two men left the chamber, the great stone doors rolling back into place behind them.
That night there came to the White Tiger strange dreams—vivid and disturbing in their realism. Blood and fighting, distorted heaps of dead, groans of the dying, quivering bodies rolling in agony. Spectral figures hurried past with gaping wounds and faces impressed with the stamp of death. The scene changed, and now he stood in a palace surrounded by his guards, while he received the ministers of foreign powers—he, the President of a great republic.
The dream of power was abruptly broken. A form appeared —tall, fair, with soft grey eyes and ash-gold hair. Her arms were stretched out to him, pleading. He could hear her whispered words—” I know it is not Good-bye, beloved. Have you forgotten ? ” Suddenly unseen hands snatched her away while her cry of despair rang through his brain. He started from his troubled sleep, the sweat pouring down him. He sat up and a low groan broke from his lips. It was horribly real. Of the bloodshed and his ultimate triumph as the President of a republic he knew and cared nothing. It could be but the fantasy of a disordered mind; but the girl ! the wound, never properly healed, was re-opened. Those words impressed for ever on his mind—” I know it is not Good-bye, beloved”—what could it mean ?
What was the significance of those unseen hands tearing her from him ? Why the despairing cry ? He shivered in sudden fear. Was she dead ? Had her spirit come to him in farewell ?
He rose, dressed and passed into the open. The day was breaking and in the early light the pyramids looked ghostly, and a cold wind whispered across them. Alone in this vast citadel, the resting-place of kings, priests and nobles, whose autocratic word had been obeyed by the Maya through thousands of years long past, he shuddered as over him swept the knowledge that no matter to what heights he might rise, to what power he might attain, what wealth might be his—all would be Dead Sea fruit; each step up the ladder of success would but add to his bitterness, his incompleteness, his utter loneliness. He knew that only if once more he might bold in his arms the dear form that had clung to him on that unforgettable night in the garden of Whiteleaf Manor, and know the indefinable wonder of her soft lips on his—then, and then only would he understand the real meaning of living. He turned. At his side stood the High Priest, enquiry in his eyes.
“Vision has come to me also,” he remarked simply. “Great your future, but red is the road you must travel. Nor shall you attain to the height which I prophesy without much suffering. Failure will be near. Man of blood, hand in hand with you shall Death stalk. At a time when the shadow of eternal night hovers over you, then to you will come the one you have lost and in union you shall become complete and fulfil your destiny. With his dying breath the Emperor Montezuma foretold your coming. The treasure is yours, so take freely what you desire, for it is decreed that this day you depart to that destiny which the gods have appointed. Come—even yet there is much to learn.”
And together they passed within the temple.
The further mystical rites in which the White Tiger was initiated will never be known. Hours elapsed, and when he emerged into the open and stood on the white roadway leading from the lost city, his face showed the strain of a great ordeal, but hope shone in his eyes.
His Indians were waiting, heavily laden with the golden treasure. The entire population was assembled. The ceremony of farewell was simple, as led by the High Priest they broke into a chant—a song of triumph.
As it died away they prostrated themselves and in silence the White Tiger set out to face once more the ruthless jungle.

Several years ago, Frank Dorland aired the story of the Mitchell-Hedges skull and brought it on to the Joe Pyne show. Joe Pyne was an American radio and television talk show host who pioneered the confrontational style of hosting, in which the host advocates a viewpoint and argues with guests and audience members. Quite often, his opinions weren’t all that enlightened or enlightening.
I had my Swanson’s Hungry Man TV dinner in the toaster oven. It must have been sometime after 1969. When Frank Dorland entered, the studio audience gasped audibly at what he carried under his arm. It was the crystal Skull of Doom. Dorland was immaculately attired in a very expensive Pierre Cardin suit that crackled blue hot in the cathode ray black & white TV tube with its simple mounts and tau and gold thread console with knobs and channel changer reminiscent of a sci-fi flick interplanetary device called an interocetor.
My TV tray rattled as I got up to retrieve my Hungry Man dinner. I re-entered the living room just in the nick of time to observe “Mr. Camera” focusing in on the Crystal Skull like the lead in sequeying from the monologue to the Outer Limits. “The signpost up ahead” effectively bode ill as Joe Pyne, a one legged ex-marine drill sergeant with a permanent slot in his bulldog jowl for a stagey which all but muffled his clockwork quips for anything resembling the cut of the ordinary. “Sounds to me like highway robbery or like a pinko commie plot!”
This sure fire fizzled into the size of Pyne’s palpable embarrassment matching the crestfallen part of his otherwise brassy arrogance by a short and curlies hair’s breath, with Dorland regarding Pyne with the patience of a sage grandfather on a museum jaunt with a snot nose nephew firmly holding him by the short and curlies.

Dorland effectively met all of Joe’s verbal uppercuts finally leaning over to tug at Pyne’s sweaty arm to inform him that the skull didn’t take kindly to negative energy and tended to invert same with a magnifying effect on whoever seemed hostile to it.
Joe’s last heckle was interrupted by Mr. Camera #1 crashing into a tripod spotlight while Mr Camera #2 jumped to the dais upon which the Crystal Skull’s exquisitely wrought terrifying countenance had quietly reposed seconds before.
Then, Joe Pyne suddenly turned ashen at what we witnessed and I viewed that day.
The skull erupted from inside like a squid ejecting a cloud of ink which to be visible against the black satiny sheen of its container opened on hinges would have to have been on the halftone grey to color scale of B&W live TV, a nearly burgundy colored purplish violet hue similar to the color of Itz.
Now, this Itz is the “Translinguistic fluid” spoken of by Terrence McKenna as quoted by Daniel Pinchbeck in 2012: The Year of the Mayan Prophecy. The Mayan Wizard-king was considered the chief professor of Itz, the cosmic sap or magical fluid of shamans and alchemists akin or identical to the violet tinged “Translinguistic fluid” sought by the McKennas, which can be used to heal or kill.

When I read of this in Pinchbeck and then read of the Amethyst Crystal Skull, the apparently hitherto mere derivative function that amethyst would afford for example, scrying become crystal clear to wit. The crystal skull had been elicited to manifest the chief function of its evil twin, the amethyst skull, which was probably utilized for death dealing psychic blows to already induced Mayans like the Juju in a bottle wards off West Indian trespassers when displayed on a tree warning potential burglars that the house is the residence of a practitioner of Voodoo, and most probably an Auriesha to a caboe of considerable power as his/her ally.

It took Joe Pyne one year to die. Big daddy Tom Donahue delivered Joe’s epitaph on the KYA radio show. Sadly the live show was before video-tape and I even more unfortunately never realized what was going on until Philip Coppens’ in Nexus 15.3 on Crystal Skulls blindly corroborated Pinchbeck’s citing McKenna and quoting from David Frededel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker’s text in Mayan Cosmos: “For the ancient Maya human beings released their [soul-stuff] from their bodies when they let their blood. Through blood letting they conjured (Tzuk) the Way and the chru the companion spirits and gods.”

My father was a jeweler and if not for my Picassoid stubby digits I would have gone to gemology and become a watchmaker like him. However, being an artist and by inclination interested in art history I caught the splendors of the Dresden Exhibit at the palace of the legion of Honour in San Francisco when it venued there. I was so impressed with the reconstruction of the green room that some years later as an ostensible art agent/art consultant residing in Prague I visited the still visibly war ravaged Dresden, then still in East Germany, in the summer of 1990. I studied the Kunst Kammer in Prague, 114 folios of “every object made by the hand of Plou”, even focusing upon a silvered centaur which I had remembered from the exhibition at SEPL San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honour. I also began to work on a theory which like a spark under a retort distilling sulphur mercury perennially attended on the back burner of my cognizance transmuted the fabulous, reducing it to the albedo ash of normalcy.

I know from my studies of the Kunst Kummer inventory of 1611 that several or more crystalline objects of a most impressive craftsmanship were listed. However, no crystal skulls! Mostly dismantling my earlier suspicion that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull might have been carved from a piece of Calaveras Quartz traded by Franciscan monks otherwise confiscated by conquistadors and sent to Philip II of Spain then forwarded to the Castrucci brothers, artisans and carvers of crystal for Rudolf II Holy Roman Emperor, was the quote from the Hewlett-Packard follow-up by Larry LaBarre that the quartz is very hard, measuring nine out of a possible ten on the Mohs scale, meaning that only a diamond would be able to cut it.
To my knowledge the Castrucci as employees of the Rudolfine workshops, wealthy as he (Rudolf II) was, did not have access to diamond mines. However, there is a particular grainy sand in the water camp region of the CR, which is of such a quality that is also quartz and it (I had thought) might have been utilized, though I would dispute that it would take seventy years or longer. Whoever carved this crystalline marvel must have obtained diamonds to cut with, especially as there must be a question mark whether there were sand sized particles in sufficient quantity. I think the Castruccis can be safely disqualified. But who can’t?

Keith Hendricks