This was a most peculiar session, as we were looking for an ancient relic, but were given no clues and, therefore, had no idea where in the world it might eventually be located. We’ve been involved in a number of these Travels where someone will be in search of a well-known artifact from the past and have found it a fascinating use of Bonny’s ever-maturing skills.
But this relic and its description are not the main focus of this session; the focal point here, at least for the moment, is the unusual place that it was found. I have to admit that the ruins in Central or South America have always fascinated me, but neither Bonny nor I have ever been there in person—I’m hoping that this will change as we eventually have the chance to investigate what she so vividly saw.
Bonny: It is in a city with a moat around it.
John: A moat! (I didn’t know what to think, at first. Was she in England?)
Bonny: It is in on a grassy plain. It is South America, in the Guatemala plains, high.
John: Has this place not been discovered? (Now my mind switched across the world to So. America, but could it be one of the many lost cities that archeologists had not yet discovered?)
Bonny: Yes, they know it exists.
John: Are there people around?
Bonny: Some people have gone in and out, but they don't know where it is kept, they have not found it because they have not dug. It is under what used to be a holy place. It has a big moat around it.
John: The city has a moat around it, and the holy place has one, too? (I’ve wished so often that I had a device that gave me a picture of what she sees in her Travels—it’s confusing at times.)
Bonny: No. The city does. The Temple is in the city. The name, they called the lost city of, it begins with . . . Be . . . (She tries to pronounce the word, but struggles.)
John: That's all right, but you see what the Temple looks like today?
Bonny: The ruins are there, and they have uncovered to the floor levels, but not beneath it.
John: If you were to rise above this moated city, what do you see in the surrounded areas? (We discovered long ago that with the mere suggestion of rising above an area, Bonny can describe the place as if she were floating in a hot-air balloon above it.)
Bonny: Nothing, very remote.
John: And beyond the horizon, do you see civilization?
Bonny: Just a small village, peasants, Indians. It has the ocean, not the ocean . . .
John: A large body of water?
Bonny: Yes.
John: Allow your mind to find the nearest modern city nearest to this place?
Bonny: There is Mexico City to the North. It is between there and . . . it's on the Guatemala plains. You have Mexico City and down, is that the Gulf of Mexico, before you really get into to South America?
John: Allow your mind, now, to return to this remote place, in fact, go back to the time when this place was originally discovered. What do they call it? (I felt that we weren’t getting anywhere, so I wanted to start with the name.)
Bonny: I can't pronounce it. They think of it as an Aztec ruin, but it is not. Many people inherited and lived in the place. The thing that makes this place different is that it has a moat around the city; they have talked about that, it has a moat flowing around the city (the tape ends abruptly!—this was before we wised up and used 90 minute tapes. She describes something called Musico, as best I understood her, and hears that this place is called Becan. She also depicts a checkerboard looking wall near the Temple site).
As was Bonny’s custom, she woke up early the next morning and drew what she had seen in her Travels the day before. When we met the next day, she presented me with this drawing (below) that clearly shows an aerial view of a number of structures encircled by what appears to be a river, or a moat. She explained that the two symbols at the bottom were images that she had seen as part of the Travel.
[Bonny writes:Imagine finding yourself in a heavily vegetated area and seeing an ancient city peering out at you, especially one with a mote around it. As I was able to rise high above in order to try and get my bearings, I felt as though I was looking at a map of what appeared to be the southeastern tip of Mexico.]
Even with this help, I was at a loss as to what and where to start looking for information concerning this odd and unique place. Bonny has a heavy southern accent and, at times, gets in the way of my understanding words or names that she’s trying to communicate. I literally didn’t know what name I was looking for, or how to begin to spell it, as I brought up the Internet and began searching.
She explained in the session that it was thought of to be Aztec, but was not, so I didn’t know if I should search for an Aztec city, as it was thought to be, or a Mayan city, or what? Eventually, after spending 20 or 30 minutes searching with no success, I simply entered the name Becan, all by itself, to see what might come up and was amazed when there were actual hits, many hits.
What amazed me even more was the first picture that I came across in my, up until that moment fruitless, search for anything on this obscure subject, was of the sign (below) posted outside the ancient city. If you look closely, the very first line explains what the name, Becan, means in the Mayan language (it means, according to this marker, a trench). It goes on to describe the dimensions of this trench as 5 meters deep and 16 meters wide, with a perimeter of 2 kilometers. I was quickly becoming nervously excited to see what else was there.
Since I had never been south of the border between the United States and South America, I wasn’t sure if the area where Becan is shown on the map (below) is considered the Guatemala plains, or not, but it was close enough for me and definitely fit her description.
I was stunned with the detail that she had seen, but not half as much as when I brought up the next image from the Web (below) that showed a rendering of the city completely encircled by water. I continued through one Web site after another and came to learn that this ancient city had only been discovered in 1934 by archaeologists of the Third Campeche Expedition sponsored by the Division of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C., who also gave it this modern name.
As Bonny had so plainly described, the city had not been excavated below the floor levels of these ruins; in fact, the inscription of this next photo (below) indicates that this pyramid (it’s hard to even recognize it as such) called, Structure IX, being the tallest building at Becan at 32 meters (about 100 feet) high, has only
partially been uncovered, to date.
[Bonny writes: I felt in awe as I lowered myself into the middle of this ancient city, where I began seeing it in greater detail. I found myself marveling at the architectural design and planning. Some ancient artist has actually carved into stone the features of an all-to-human face, as well as other designs of either animals or something that could have related to their religious beliefs.]
This was all exciting information to find, but one of the most uncanny images that I came across on the Internet that stopped me dead in my tracks pointed out a series of walls of one of the building structures within the city (below). Notice the white wall on the right of the photograph and the peculiar patterns.
Well, when you take a look at a front view of these walls, (below) it appears as a checkerboard, exactly what Bonny had seen.
[Bonny writes: All sorts of questions started flooding my mind about the people who had built this city, who they were, their way of life, why they left, etc. Perhaps one day John will send me back to the time when the building of this city took place, when it was inhabited, that I may walk among them.]