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    A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith
    A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith
    A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith
    Ebook235 pages2 hours

    A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith

    By Ana Pacheco

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    Shaped by early volcanic activity, the Sangre De Cristo and Jemez Mountain ranges surrounding Santa Fe create a uniquely spiritual landscape. Centuries ago, the Anasazi and their Pueblo Indian descendants believed the land was sacred and established communities in the area. In the early seventeenth century, the Spanish brought Catholicism to Santa Fe and christened it the City of Holy Faith. Other European faiths arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, religions from the East, along with New Thought and New Age practitioners, had established a foothold in the capital city. Sikhism, the fifth-largest religion in the world, was introduced to the western hemisphere from Santa Fe. The nature-based UDV religion of Brazil founded its first center in the United States in Santa Fe, which also includes the four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. Santa Fe city historian Ana Pacheco documents the rich religious and spiritual history of this high-mountain metaphysical community.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateFeb 22, 2016
    ISBN9781625856401
    A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe: The City of Holy Faith
    Author

    Ana Pacheco

    Ana Pacheco is the historian for the City of Santa Fe. She was the founding publisher and editor of La Herencia, a quarterly magazine on New Mexico's Hispanic history. Pacheco wrote a weekly column for the Santa Fe New Mexican and is the author/editor of six books on New Mexico history.

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      Book preview

      A History of Spirituality in Santa Fe - Ana Pacheco

      Augustine

      Chapter 1

      A Sacred Land

      And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.

      —Deuteronomy 4:11

      Descending from the crest of La Bajada Hill into Santa Fe, one’s first glimpse is of the surrounding Sangre de Cristo, Jemez and Ortiz Mountains. These ranges are part of a broader landscape created from widespread volcanic activity that occurred seventy million years ago. New Mexico is known as the Volcano State, having the most diverse and largest number of volcanoes in North America. In addition, it contains one of the world’s five continental rifts.

      The greatest concentration of craters created by volcanic stream explosions occurred in New Mexico. The Valles Caldera (caldera is Spanish for cauldron), located fifty-eight miles from Santa Fe, is one of the largest super volcanoes in the world and one of three in the United States. (The other two are Yellowstone in Wyoming and Long Valley in California.) The Valles Caldera spans almost fourteen miles and was formed from the collapse of molten rocks, creating a magma chamber. Two of the largest basaltic lava flows in the world are in Carrizozo, in the southern part of the state, and McCartys Village to the west. It was in New Mexico, not Hawaii, that lava flows were first studied by geologists.

      The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, whose name, given by the early Spanish explorers, means blood of Christ, are part of the Rocky Mountains, one of the longest mountain chains on earth. They were formed from volcanic activity. Major fault lines run along both the east and west sides of the Sangres, with the Rio Grande fault line at the range overlooking Santa Fe.

      La Bajada Hill, New Mexico. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/DCA]. No. 008231.

      La Bajada (the descent) road sign south of Santa Fe. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/ DCA]. No. HP.2014.14.

      In addition to New Mexico’s volcanic terrain, the spiritual landscape can be further explained by the Four Corners region of the United States. It’s the only location in the United States where four states—New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona—connect. The Four Corners are part of the larger region known as the Colorado Plateau, which sprawls across Utah, northern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and western Colorado and covers 130,000 square miles. For geographers, the Colorado Plateau has always been an enigma. While the Rocky Mountains to the east and the basin and land to the west were being thrust, stretched and fractured into existence during volcanic eruptions, the Colorado Plateau remained structurally intact. Geologists and geographers remain puzzled by this phenomenon, which many have described as mystical.

      Within the Four Corners, Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico is the largest, best preserved and architecturally most advanced of all the early villages of the Anasazi, often referred to as Ancestral Puebloans. First inhabited in the ninth century AD, it was designated a national monument in 1907 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.

      The image of a horse’s head on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe in 1948. Photo by Robert H. Martin.

      The image of a thunderbird on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe in 1948. Photo by Robert H. Martin.

      In 1978, Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado also became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The inhabitants built their first pueblos after 650 BC and by the end of the twelfth century had begun to construct massive dwellings in the earth that are thought to be the largest cliff dwellings in North America.

      Over millions of years, wind and water have sculpted the unique sandstone formation at Monument Valley in Utah. In 1884, the area surrounding Monument Valley was designated a Navajo reservation by President Chester A. Arthur, and it became a tribal park under the direction of the Navajo Tribal Council in 1958.

      Canyon de Chelly National Monument, located within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, spans 131 square miles and encompasses three major canyons: Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto and Monument Canyon. It became a national park in 1931.

      Tenth-century apartment house, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 1959. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/DCA]. No. 058339.

      Spruce Tree House looking north, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 1907. Photo by Jesse Nussbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/DCA]. No. 060587.

      Riders in Monument Valley, Arizona, 1915. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/DCA]. No. LS.1499.

      Navajo camp in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, circa. 1925. Photo by Edward Kemp. Courtesy Palace of the Governors [NMHM/DCA]. No. LS.1482.

      In the summer of 1987, thousands of people traveled to Chaco Canyon to observe the Harmonic Convergence, a worldwide meditation event that coincided with the end of one of the cycles of the Mayan calendar. The alignment of the moon, sun, earth and other planets during this time is believed to have marked the beginning of a new age. Like the Native Americans who settled in the Four Corners, the Spanish explorers who founded Santa Fe and the geologists and archaeologists who study this area, droves of spiritual seekers continue to be drawn to this sacred

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