Sacred Architecture - Coral Castle

            Coral Castle is known more for the legends that surround its construction and it is often attributed to influence from extra terrestrials. Located in Miami Florida, it is a privately owned area that is available for viewing for the public as a roadside attraction. Much of the public draw surrounds the legend of Edward Leedskalnin and the history surrounding the Coral Castle as well as the supposed puzzles and clues left behind that are believed to explain how Leedskalnin built the Castle. Leedskalnin’s claim to fame was that he constructed this castle of megalithic limestone (coral) stones, each weighing several tons, alone and without the use of heavy machinery. Viewing the massive stones stood on end makes this story appear completely nonsensical; however, the fascination surrounding the site is not dimmed. There is still doubt concerning whether or not this story is actually nonsense. Coral Castle is often referred to as the American Stonehenge as is considered highly in popular culture as a site that has been influenced by forces beyond modern understanding. Leedskalnin often claimed that he discovered the way in which the Great Pyramids were constructed in a mere 20 years according to the Ancient Greek historian, Herodotus.

            Before delving into the mysteries inscribed in the Coral Castle it is important to be aware of the history behind its architect. Edward Leedskalnin was born in Latvia in 1887 and grew up there. He did not come to the Americas until 1913. It is believed he was wronged by his sixteen year old fiancé, after she decided she no longer wanted to marry him. Also the stirrings of World War I gave plenty of reason to leave Latvia. He left in 1912 and slowly but surely made his way to America, his land of opportunity. For most of his first years Leedskalnin lived in Oregon before traveling to Florida where he was found in a heap in the road by a man named Ruben Moser, who is significant later in the story, in the winter of 1922. He was believed to have been diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis and was expected to die from the disease within six months until his sudden and unusual recovery in which he claimed using magnets to heal himself. He was a man of vision that had been chased away from his home and during the next 28 years during which he constructed the Coral Castle, he refused to let anyone see him work. There were purported witnesses who claimed that he could make the massive stones float about as if they were hydrogen balloons. The thought of this is fascinating and the stones which were quarried dwarf even the largest ones at the Stonehenge. The largest of the stones weighs close to 30 tons at a staggering 57,000 pounds. The placement is so accurate between the stones that there is no mortar or cement that is needed in the seams between the stones. Considering the methods available to a person building even the grandest monuments by themselves, there is a way to do so through simply a rope and pulley system or even with levers. Archimedes said “give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” It is not an impossible feat given conventional means and enough time in which to complete the job. There has never been any solid proof regarding the movement of such massive stones with magnets as Leedskalnin claimed. His perpetual motion generator was the supposed invention with which he was believed to break the laws of gravity though it still remains under scrutiny. There is a significant amount of pseudoscience that still surrounds Coral Castle today.

            It is not uncommon to find the Coral Castle mentioned on sites that explore the influence of ancient aliens on the progress of humanity. Leedskalnin claimed to have an intimate understanding of electromagnetic forces and he published works on the subject. When searching for where to build Coral Castle, he was said to have been seen wandering the streets with a dowsing rod, which was a tool that was believed to have the power to determine the energy or presence of water in the Earth. This is the first time when Leedskalnin is told to have been using witchcraft, or the word “supernatural” was attached to his name. He claimed to be guided by forces beyond himself. He eventually bought an acre of land from Ruben Moser and the papers mentioned his purchase of the land, but there was nothing said about his miraculous recovery from the often fatal disease he had contracted. There is still speculation by some that the disease never really went away and remained a lifelong problem that was treated with a type of magnet therapy that also involved extended periods of lying out in the sun. In the Coral Castle one can find the “Sun Couch” which is supposedly where Leedskalnin laid during his therapy sessions. It is a large circular stone carving that is low enough to be a bench. Towards the end of his recovery period, he bought two more acres of land from Moser that had been deemed unfit for commercial development where only a thin layer of topsoil covered bedrock of coral stone that ran down for hundreds of feet. Apparently it had taken Leedskalnin a long time to find these two acres, but once he did, he was ready to construct his new home.

            The Coral Castle was not always known by that name and was originally called Rock Gate by Leedskalnin. He only performed construction a night either by moonlight or by the light of a lantern. There are stories telling of his keen perception and how he often knew when he was being watched. Leedskalnin only worked in the dead of night and the entire town was aware that he did not want anyone to witness his construction methods. However, it was known that he was a master stonemason and a gifted engineer. Because of this knowledge, many who lived in the town during the construction of Rock Gate did not find his potential methods as fascinating as some. There are accounts of his intricate pulley systems that had been set up in order to quarry and move the stones. Many of his tools can still be found in his workshop on the first floor of the castle’s tower. He carved several of the stones into rocking chairs, tables, crescent moons, planets, an obelisk, a telescope, and even a Map of Florida stone. The heavenly bodies are significant in a number of cultures and it is not uncommon for them to appear as decorative finishing on temples or in artwork. Leedskalnin was said to be fascinated with the sky. The gate is a significantly heavy piece of stone that is simple to open with a single finger. The gate is to the right of the smaller crescent slightly hidden behind a small palm tree. It is a piece of stone, weighing close to nine tons, that spins on an axis in the center of the stone. Even a child would have no problem when trying to open the door. This makes some believe that Leedskalnin was able to harness energy from an unseen grid or force within the fossilized coral which makes up the Coral Castle. There were those who attempted to recreate the process by which Leedskalnin constructed using modern technology and found they were unable to move the blocks. The photo in the corner is the only known image of Leedskalnin apparently working. Little is known about the box that is always sitting on top of the tripod with which he lifted the blocks. It can be seen in the image to the right. The box has never been found and many experts believe that inside that box is the explanation as to how he constructed Coral Castle. Leedskalnin said, “I have discovered the secrets of the pyramids, and have found out how the ancient Egyptians and the ancient builders in Peru, Yucatan, and Asia, with only primitive tools, raised and set in place blocks of stone weighing many tons.” This is something that Leedskalnin often said and the quote can be found in numerous places. Any of the images of Leedskalnin and his presence at Coral Castle were often taken by himself with his personal box brownie in the same suit every time. Coral Castle is also no longer located where it was originally built. After an attempted robbery, Leedskalnin moved all three million pounds of his castle to its current location near Homestead about ten miles away. Though he moved, people still had curious motives about Coral Castle and continued to visit Ed and his home. He would always be happy to converse with whoever came to visit and was said to be very polite. Whenever he was asked why he built Coral Castle, he would smile and say it was for his “sweet sixteen”, and her age never changed. The image is an aerial of the entire Coral Castle and shows more than the previous image. The one that appeared earlier shows merely a section of the entirety of Coral Castle. A sign at the entrance says “You will be seeing an unusual accomplishment –ED”.

            Leedskalnin conducted a number of experiments and was said to have no means of conventional electricity. He published a pamphlet in 1945 called Magnetic Current where he explained that you simply reverse the magnetism of an object to make it lighter, and claimed he was on the edge of a breakthrough. Magnetic Current is a record of his preliminary results. Unfortunately his work is as difficult and as incomprehensible as Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. The mysteries of Coral Castle only eroded into stranger phenomena after Ed Leedskalnin’s death in December 1951. He is believed to have died of extreme malnutrition. An official investigation was conducted on Coral Castle and what was discovered were 3,800 dollars in crisp 100 dollar bills and something that resembled a treasure map. Those who found the map attempted to make heads or tails of it, but they could not seem to find anything that resembled the map. Carved into one of the walls was the sequence 7129 and 61015195 directly below the first line. If that actually means something, nobody knows. Also found was a strange contraption known as a flywheel. It is shown in the images below and has gone on to perplex many. No one knew what it was for, but Leedskalnin said in his pamphlet Magnetic Current that he had built ten of these machines. There have been plenty of plausible explanations as to what this machine was for. A recreation of the machine using pieces like those found in the workshop at the museum appears to tell that this machine was used for sculpting the stones and may explain why Leedskalnin was heard singing to his stones as it provided a steady rhythm when running. His original machine was believed to have sixteen “points” instead of 24 and that is the reason for the sixteen pointed sun on the heavy iron door near the entrance of Coral Castle. Also written on the door are the words “RING BELL” in the top right corner near which an actual bell is hung on the wall and “21 Forth” in the bottom right corner with a line starting at the top left corner which passes through the sixteen pointed sun and terminates in the bottom right corner near the “21 Forth”. It is believed this is actually a drawing of his machine setup and the door itself may have been used as a tool to cut and quarry the stones.

            Popular legend believes that the wheel was used to nullify the weight of the enormous stones. This wheel pictured is in the workshop museum and is the last remaining of the ten machines. It consists of U shaped magnets divided into 24 parts. Now an important thing to know is the repetitive appearance of the hexagram all over the Coral Castle. There is a hexagram at the center of the wishing pool and that shape is considered relevant to the flywheel machine. The opposing poles have been labeled as north and south for the purpose of this explanation and the magnets in this wheel are bent such that 48 poles are exposed in an alternating fashion of north and south stacked six high. Contributing to the pseudoscience of Coral Castle and the use of this wheel is a painting of a hexagram in the Norman Hall Room at the Grand Masonic Lodge in Philadelphia. His sign “ADM. 10¢ Drop Below” is carved in the shape of a hexagram with the slot to insert the coins at the lowest point of the hexagram. It is believed there is some significance to the directions in which the smaller triangles are facing. The star pattern is replicated at the center of the flywheel using the six holes as the points of the star. Of course the theory becomes more convoluted with the belief that there are 48 “streams of magnets” flowing out from the star on the wheel and there are 48 lines coming out from the star in this painting. There are also two variations of lines which some believe to represent the north and south poles of the magnets. Of course, people find even deeper symbolism in Norman Hall. In the pamphlet Magnetic Currents there are a number of drawings describing how Leedskalnin believed magnetic currents flow and one of them was the drawing pictured down on the right. There is a throne like chair that resides beneath the hexagram that possesses a similar pattern creeping up the sides of the throne. To further convince those non-believers in this pseudoscience, a parallel is drawn between another piece of decoration in the temple is a sixteen pointed sun above one of the alcoves. It resembles the sun drawn on the iron door at Coral Castle. It is presumed that the knowledge that Leedskalnin possessed was also hidden in this temple in the Norman Hall at the Masonic Lodge in Philadelphia. There are many who believe that the only rational explanation of the construction of Coral Castle is ancient knowledge or influence from other worldly sources. Some claim that the Coral Castle resides upon a ley line which acts as a gateway to energies hidden within the Earth. There are plenty of New Agers who claim to be able to feel the presence of ley lines, though there is no scientific verification that ley lines even exist. It is up to the audience what they chose to believe and what they ignore as poppycock. It all could be a huge coincidence.

            There are those that refer to Coral Castle as the eighth wonder of the world. Regardless of the wild theories that surround Coral Castle, it is still an engineering marvel and an impressive accomplishment. Ed Leedskalnin said, “It’s not difficult really. The secret is in knowing how.” And he was quite right. There is a man named Wally Wallington who has decided to replicate the Stonehenge in his backyard using only sticks and pebbles as tools. He uses no pulley system but is able to lift and move multiple ton blocks alone. He gives plenty of insight into this arduous process and shows those who come to watch how he moves everything around. The stones he is moving are not as heavy or as large in some instances as the stones that Leedskalnin moved, however, he proves that this feat can be accomplished with an intimate understanding of weights and balance. Explaining the methodology of moving these massive stones singlehandedly may perhaps dull the fascination of the Coral Castle, but it is important to keep in mind that Ed Leedskalnin entertained and enthralled an entire town with his magic and much of the mystery likely came from his insistence on keeping his methods a secret. Perhaps it is doubly impressive that he was able to complete much of the project without being seen. Without the validation of a witness to the construction of this megalithic structure, the idea of a single man being able to accomplish it becomes less and less believable. Wild stories about people seeing him move the stone with telepathy does not help bring the construction of Coral Castle back to the physical realm away from the supernatural. There are indeed accounts of floating stones all over the world and this is a prime example of the mind attempting to quantify what it does not understand. After all, something is not as exciting when one can explain it.

References

McClure, Rusty and Jack Heffron

 2009 Coral Castle: The Mystery of Ed Leedskalnin and His American Stonehenge. Ohio:

    Ternary Publishing.

Ancient Knowledge (Mini Series)

 2012 Unknown dirs. 271 min. KilluminatiTheMovie Productions.

In Search Of… “The Castle of Secrets” (5-16)

 1981 Leonard Nimoy pres. A&E Network. 30 min. Alan Landsburg Productions. Syndicated.

    January 24.