Untitled Document
“You have to understand, I’ve been doing
this for 25 years,” says Joshua “Illinois” Shapiro,
“and for 25 years there were no Indiana Jones films with crystal
skulls. Sometimes I actually have had to take on a job. . . . but my love,
my passion is the crystal skulls, because I know they are important for the
future of humanity.”
Shapiro, who operates the World Mystery Research
Center out of his Niles, Ill., apartment, is one of world’s foremost
proponents of the powers of crystal skulls. In 1988, he co-authored Mysteries of the Crystal Skulls Revealed. He is searching for a publisher for his latest book, Journeys of the Crystal Skull Explorers, on which he collaborated with Blue Arrow Rainbow, his estranged
third wife. Shapiro, 53, has been fascinated with crystal skulls
since his first close encounter. In 1983, he was looking at a photograph of
a crystal skull in San Jose, Calif., when he felt his vibrations stirring,
he says. A half-hour later, the area experienced an earthquake. Shapiro
took this to be more than a coincidence. Acting on his intuition, he later
arranged to have a viewing of the same crystal skull at a nearby art
gallery. “I put my right hand on the top part of the
skull, and I felt an energy or a vibration in my hand, my arm and my right
shoulder,” Shapiro says. “Ever since that time, whenever I
think about the skull, I always see it in my mind, floating over my right
shoulder.”
Shapiro has a similarly strong feeling each time he
visits the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield. “The first time I went I was just overwhelmed by
the energy field around me, as if I were experiencing the spirit of
Lincoln,” Shapiro says. “It was recognizing me on some level.
At that point in time, I didn’t know very much about the paranormal
or psychic things, or whatever. Since that time, I have found out that I
conceivably could have been, in a former lifetime, an officer in the Civil
War. I have a friend who remembers being a general on the other side who
recognized me, also, in this way.”
Shapiro believes he may be the reincarnation of Gen.
Winfield Scott Hancock, who led Union forces at the Battle of Gettysburg in
1863.
With the Union preserved, Shapiro has set his sights
on more universal goals in this lifetime. He hopes that the latest Indiana
Jones film will open up a scientific debate on the alleged paranormal
phenomena related to crystal skulls. “There are a lot of people
having very strange experiences around the crystal skulls,” Shapiro
says. “We really need to do some really good research to try and
understand why that is happening. Is there really some kind of force or an
energy field? That’s what I’ve experienced.”
According to Mayan legend, when all 13 crystal skulls
are united the world will be a better place — but Shapiro thinks
there may actually be four sets of 13 skulls, or a total of 52, that are
part of the grand plan. “They’re a tool that’s
resurfacing now that has something to do with world peace,” he says,
“whether it’s the information encoded inside of it or the
energy it possesses.”
Shapiro’s crystal-skull journeys have taken him
to Peru three times in the past decade. He says on one of the trips an
archaeologist got up from the dinner table, pointed his finger at him, and
said: “Joshua knows where there is a crystal skull in
Peru.”
“It was like something came over him,”
says Shapiro. “This happens in Peru. Right after he did that to me, I
started to feel myself being pulled; my physical body was being pulled to
the northern part of Peru.”
High in the Andes Mountains, he met a shaman who
guided him to some remote lagoons. In 1999, he returned with a group to
continue his search. “We did a meditation in this area where I felt
the skull was,” recalls Shapiro. “After we finished our
meditation, right up in the sky — everybody could see this —
there was a cloud that looked exactly like a UFO, and it was there for
about three or for minutes There was no mistaking what form it was.”
Strange things happen in Peru.
Contact C.D. Stelzer at cdstelzer@yahoo.com.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2008.
