Cree Code Breaker Keith Ranville and the Oak Island Mystery

Keith Ranville of Vancouver, British Columbia, is a Cree Indian who was born in Winnipeg. Keith has brought a new perspective to the legendary Oak Island mystery of Nova Scotia’s Mahone Bay area, and it’s probably about time. I first read about this mystery myself in Stranger Than Science by Frank Edwards back in the late 1960s. 213 years have passed so far and no one has yet to recover the pirate treasure that so many feel is buried beneath the earth there. Over the years, many people have attempted to translate mysterious symbols reportedly copied from two different stones on the island, hoping to isolate some vital clue or insight into how to retrieve the treasure that is believed to be buried there.

In a statement posted on the Internet two months ago, Keith Ranville was quoted: “I believe these symbols have been incorrectly assumed to stand for something else. In the First Nations tradition that I’m a part of, we believe symbols should simply be looked at in and of themselves, rather than thinking of them as codes that have to be cracked. In the pictograms of Cree Salavics, for example, the images are meant to be descriptive, not abstract.”

Keith noticed the use of triangles from the stone symbols to be a recurrent and possibly a significant theme. “The triangles seemed like they were more emphasized,” he said. “The first line of the symbols were mostly triangles. I got the idea that this thing was mostly about triangles and so I began to look for triangle clues on the island itself. There was one triangular clue, a stone triangle, that was found south of this so-called ‘Money Pit.’”

“I looked on google at aerial photos of the island and I went east of that stone triangle that was there, because on the symbols itself there was an arrow that pointed at the right angle of a triangle, the fourth and fifth symbol, so I went in that direction and I looked everywhere there east on the island. I didn’t see it, so I checked on a neighboring island, and sure enough a big triangle popped out at me from Birch Island.” It was a section of the island that had a triangular appearance.

Speaking of triangles, Keith made another discovery. “I found something while doing Internet research that actually talks about the significance of triangles in Micmac language,” he noted. “It actually means something like God and in Egyptian it means ‘exalted one.’ That’s off of petroglyphs of the Micmacs and their writings, and so that really fascinated me too because the Micmac are native to the Mahone Bay area. If anyone is going to know about this Oak Island mystery it’s going to be the Micmacs because it’s in their back yard.”

Since three young men discovered this vertical shaft entrance back in 1795, which they believed led to a pirate treasure, countless man hours have been spent, and, over the years, it has exceeded ten million dollars in cost to try and get to the proverbial bottom of what has become known as the “Money Pit,” not to mention the tragic loss of human life. So far the lives of six men have been lost. In 1803, the Onslow Company, which had become the first in a long line of treasure recovery operations, discovered at the 90 foot level a flat stone with a strange inscription on it. Reportedly weighing about 175 pounds, measuring two feet long and 15 inches wide, a translation attempt was made by one James Leitchi, a professor of languages at Dalhousie University, who thought it perhaps read, “forty feet below two million pounds are buried.”

“The thing with Oak Island is that it has always been a controversy,” Keith explained to me. “There was so much lost evidence and there were like no significant well documented archaeological finds and it seemed like one thing was bungled up after another.” Yes, unfortunately the inscription stone eventually became lost. We’re told that it became used as a hearthstone in two homes on Oak Island, and then it was placed in a Halifax store front where it went missing around 1900 after the building was torn down. However, the two line and forty-character text was reportedly copied and thus preserved by a Mahone Bay schoolteacher who had hoped that he could translate it. Meanwhile, back in the 1930’s, the fragment of another stone, with similar symbols on it, turned up at Oak Island’s Smith Cove, though it also had a symbol that was different. “It could be Greek,” Keith explained. “I’m not too sure if it is. But four dots and a plus in the middle in Greek means ‘underwater doors.’ I think that around the 100 foot level, the area where the treasure stone was found, they should not have gone any farther.” Reportedly the mine shaft goes down nearly 200 feet now.

“There’s supposed to be another dig going on this summer,” Keith added. “They figure that there’s like a Spanish treasure down there.” So far, fragments of a gold chain have been found, and a camera lowered down into the pit in 1971 reportedly recorded images of wooden chests and human remains.

“It seems more like a spiritual quest than a treasure hunting quest,” Keith confided. “For me to come up with all of these possible and plausible solutions to Oak Island intrigues a lot of people as to how this native guy, out of nowhere, comes to Oak Island, to Nova Scotia, and people are willing to write articles and letters of support. I’ve been on the radio numerous times.”

In the summer of 2005, Keith traveled to Nova Scotia and spent a year looking into the Oak Island mystery. “I think what most people are intrigued by is how I got there because anyone can jump on a plane and go to Nova Scotia and then come back,” Keith told me. “I got there pretty much on my wits. I hitchhiked most of the way and took a bus a little bit of the way. I rested out in Winnipeg first, for a week or so, and then I continued on my journey. I guess Winnipeg was like the halfway mark. I went from city to city. I talked to many people. I talked to the Freemasons and they’re pretty intrigued with what I was saying about Oak Island. For some reason, I felt a need to talk to them. I have no desire to become a Freemason myself.”

“When I was in high school I was going to do a paper on the Oak Island mystery,” Keith recalled. “I didn’t get to hand it in because there was a death in the family. But I remembered the original concept I perceived on translating these symbols back then but I didn’t follow up on it until years later, until I was in my mid-thirties.”

“I believe it was a universal written language. I feel that it was something made to be understood no matter what culture you are from or what language you speak. It wasn’t something made for just one creed of person or a certain group of people to understand. It was meant for anyone.”

“I believe that there may be a Mayan connection to this, for some reason,” Keith added. “Just by the way that the stones of this triangle were lined up. It just gave me that feeling that this was Mayan, and especially with the symbols themselves.”

Keith also gets insights sometimes in his dreams.

Keith welcomes feedback from our readers. His email address is: keith_ranville@hotmail.com

Check out his website: http://oakislandmoneypitblogspotcom.blogspot.com

The Science and Sacredness of Clay

Even today, after thousands of years it seems, red catlinite that formed from ancient clay deposits is still quarried by American Indians at Pipestone, Minnesota. By law only Indians can excavate the ore there for their pipes.

This ancient site was reportedly visited for centuries by representatives from tribes all over the North American continent in order to obtain this red stone for their pipes. The color red was considered a sacred color of the earth. The smoke from the sacred pipe was regarded as a medium through which the Great Spirit and His children could commune together.

Many ancient cultures the world over held the pigment of red ocher as sacred and special. Ocher, made up of iron and lime, forms in clay. American Indians often painted the faces of their dead with a heavy layer of red ocher. Dr. A. C. Ross, in his book Mitakuye Oyasin, wrote: "NASA chemists have presented evidence that life on earth may have gotten its start in clay. They have shown that clays attract the organic molecules that make up protein and DNA, the ingredients of life, possibly from the sea during high tide. ...I was excited to read that what these scientists theorized is exactly what the Native Americans and the Bible were saying in their creation stories."

Dr. Ross wrote how mankind’s origin from clay can be found in the myths and traditions of many Native Americans, including the Mohawk, the Yakima, Pima, Natchez, Spokane, and the Hopi. I have also found an assortment of interesting creation myths centered around man’s origin from clay described in Raymond Van Over’s book Sun Songs: Creation Myths From Around The World (1980). Besides Native American stories, Van Over cited many clay-based origin myths, often associated with blood, from such diverse cultures as the Babylonians, the Hebrew, the Australians, the Mexicans and the Eskimos.

Dr. Lyall Watson, a widely traveled author of considerable distinction, who has done extensive research in anthropology, archeology, and paleontology, speculated in his book Lifetide (1979) that all the hoopla over red ocher may have somehow indicated that early man had correctly identified it as the source of life on this planet! Watson quoted the work of a Scottish scientist named Alexander Cairns-Smith who presented what sounds like fairly convincing evidence that evolution quite possibly began with clay as clay can absorb other molecules and it has within it growing, evolving crystal structures. Cairns-Smith argued that the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecule, found in all life on our planet, is pretty fragile, and he felt that it unlikely that it was the original source of genetic material. He saw the crystal as a likely candidate because it consists of matter that has the capacity to organize and replicate itself.

I shared this information with Nick Reiter, the author of The Bridges of Avalon. Nick has a professional background in electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering, and he’s always bringing science into the discussion and it’s certainly never dull when he does so. I am delighted to share with you the reader the thought-provoking free association on the subject of clay that he shared with me! He wrote:

Clay has been a keen matter of interest for me since probably about 2003, when I became familiar with how it was used in engineered layers by the Moundbuilding peoples. In 2003 and 2004, I also became involved with some attempted replications of David Hudson's "White Gold Powder" / ORMUS claims. Along the way, I encountered anecdotes about how clays could be both natural and intentional repositories or holding vessels, if you will, for the strange atomic matter that has been alternately referred to as m-state, mono-atomic, high spin, or ormus. This was claimed to be because the micro-structure of clay contains nano-sized voids or layers where the strange matter supposedly likes to "hide". I realized about then that this might account for some of the healing properties of clay, which some have claimed to be analagous to the effects of layered orgone accumulators on the physiology. In fact, layered clay in orgone accumulators from my own experience produces quite a tangible effect - a turbo-charge of sorts. So much so that it seemed quite likely to me that the ancients used these principles in their engineered clay layers for moundbuilding. Build your temple spaces from materials that themselves accumulated and emitted "life energy". Brilliant.

The other little clay trivium I have to offer was something I noticed in about 2004. Clay of course is a complex composite of silica and alumina, with minor components of feldspars, micas, iron, chlorites, etc. The basic building blocks of clay, though, are the silica (SiO2) and alumina (Al2O3) unit cells, which bond to form the aluminosilicate basis for all clay, pinning together at the oxygen atom sites. In crystal chemistry, we use ball and stick figures to show the basic forms of crystals - the lattices or space groups as they are called. I realized that when you take a silica lattice (which is hexagonal) and bond it to an alumina lattice (which is tetragonal) you end up with a very familiar figure...

The Sephiroth of the Qabalah - the Tree of Life. See my attached quickie diagram (which you can use if you like).

The convoluted shape of the Tree of Life is the shape of the basic building block of clay! You can figure the rest out and take it where you will!

A burial site in France, estimated at 46,000 years, consisted of the remains of an old man whose body had been packed around with red ocher. In Africa's Swaziland, the burial site of a child estimated at 80,000 years was found dusted with ash and ocher. The oldest mine known in the world is near there, at a placed called Lion Cavern, and it was a red ocher mine. The mine is so old that carbon dating has proven ineffective.

The Swazis referred to such ocher mines as ibomvo, which means "the holy red." To the Bakgatla of the western Trasvaal it was "the blood of the earth," and was an essential ingredient in the enactment of ancient rituals and ceremonies.

I also shared my thoughts on the subject of clay with Don Wright, New Mexico’s Keeper of the Peruvian Whistling Vessels, who wrote me: “I have been irresistably drawn to the red color of the clay of the red vessels, striving to create the absolutely correct shade of red.

You might also be aware that the Hebrew Bible states that Adam was created of red clay.

The original Christian Bible (in Hebrew and Greek) denotes that mankind is the "red Earth", or metaphorically blood of the Earth (and you know that I am NOT religious, although have a minor in theology from Boston College, but am fascinated with the incredible power of religious superstition!).”

Don recommended this website for more information. http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/adameve.htm

In his 1979 Lifetide, Watson explored how some scientists were pondering the possibility of comets as “cosmic storks,” spreading life-giving organic molecules around the universe. He added that even various ancient traditions and folklore hinted at such. He cited how the Navajo Indians described comets as the spittle of a creator “Black God” who sent his seed to the dark parts of the heavens. The Tukano of the Amazon saw shooting stars and comets as signs of celestial sex, adding that the fertilizer fell to the earth as dew.

The life from comets theory is still alive and well. In fact, in 2007 Cardiff University’s astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe was quoted: “The comets and the warm watery clay pools in comets are settings in which the organic molecules are transformed into living structures in comets. That transformation is more likely in some comet somewhere in the galaxy than in any small pond on the earth.”

Wickramasinghe is a long time proponent of life originating from space, a concept popularly termed “panspermia.” His name even pops up in Watson’s Lifetide. This concept has long encountered resistance from others in the scientific community and it continues to do so.

For an update on this matter go to an official NASA website: http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=176

The Passing of Sir Arthur C. Clarke — Literary Legend and Science Visionary

Famous science fiction writer and visionary Arthur C. Clarke passed away at his home in Columbo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956, early Wednesday, March 19th. He was 90 years old. Sir Clarke had authored nearly a hundred books during his long writing career.

Robert D. Morningstar made a wonderful tribute to his passing and how deeply Sir Clarke influenced his life. “My own life received a major course correction and my career path changed (from physical sciences to parapsychology) in one instant upon seeing the ‘Star Child’s’ face in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ for the first time in 1968. Like the monkey, ‘Moon Watcher,’ I did not know what I would do with the new found knowledge, ‘but I would think of something.’ Ironically, just this week, I gave my latest copy of ‘Childhood’s End’ to a 10-year-old who had never heard of Arthur C. Clark. Our minds pass through ‘Clarkeian thought forms’ daily without noticing their roots in our global consciousness, embedded there by Clarke.” (Morningstar’s complete tribute can be found at: http://www.ufodigest.com/phprint.php)

On March 22nd, Robert emailed me with this bit of interesting synchronicity: “I received news today that the brightest gamma ray supernova ever recorded in history occurred on the very day he died. How amazing! Just like in his short story ‘The Star.’”

In his book The Way of the Explorer, Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell described getting to spend several days in the summer of 1971 with (to use his words) “world-class visionaries” Wernher von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke, writing that it was “a highlight of my career” and rated “second only to spaceflight itself.” In a recent phone conversation, Dr. Mitchell told me: “I consider him (Clarke) a pioneer for opening up new vistas. I’ve always admired him.”