The Feathered Serpent

    The Grand Ophir Sea Expedition is also known as the Voyages of the Feathered Serpent because we associate it with the ancient American legend of a traveling teacher whose symbol was the Feathered Serpent and because it continues in the tradition of the first and second Feathered Serpent expeditions sponsored by the AEF & OSC in 1969 and 1977.

    In oral tradition throughout Central and South America, the Feathered Serpent myths are joined with tales of great ancient teachers. Gene Savoy surmised long ago that all these legendary teachers ­ known by various names, such as Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, Bochica and Kukulcan ­ could be one and the same person, a man who traveled by ship visiting the lands of the Americas, a man who traveled with a retinue that formed a major civilizing force in all these areas.

     Images of feathered serpents appear in architecture and art throughout the Americas. It is a popular image among the Maya, Aztec, Inca and pre-Inca cultures and can be found on temple walls, in textiles, and on ceramic pottery. The plumed serpent was often used in the depiction of sea-going vessels, such as those seen on pottery samples of the Peruvian Mochica culture.

    The enigma of the Feathered Serpent myth is complex. If the teacher, whose symbol was the Feathered Serpent, did indeed live, did he actually traverse the Americas? Was he able to visit Peru, Central America and Mexico by means of sea travel? Where did the teacher come from? Legends in Peru claim that he arrived by sea from a far-off land only to leave again... by sea. Is it possible that he arrived from another continent? Or could it be that he left the Americas in search of distant lands across the oceans?

    With the conjunction of myths and events in ancient times, the figure of this great teacher grew to legendary stature. He is now barely remembered, except in the stone likenesses and in the tales of folklore and oral tradition that escaped destruction during the Spanish conquest.

    In Peru, Gene Savoy first saw stone depictions of the Feathered Serpent, and learned their link to the legendary teacher, in the high jungles when he explored the temple complex at Gran Pajaten in 1965. This early work led him along the legendary trail of this figure through the Americas where legends of the Feathered Serpent abound.

    When Gene Savoy made his landmark reed raft voyage from Peru to Panama in 1969 aboard Feathered Serpent I ­ the "Kuviqu" ­ he showed that it would have been possible for a person, such as the legendary teacher, to sail to all the places in America where tradition knows him, and to sail to all these places with relative ease and in a short time.

    The Grand Ophir Sea Expedition is a continuation of what Gene Savoy began with Feathered Serpent I, but on a much broader scale. As the "Kuviqu" proved that sea travel between Peru and Meso America was possible, the Feathered Serpent-Ophir ships will demonstrate that sea travel between continents in much more sophisticated craft could have taken place.

    Such an undertaking promotes the study of the historical truth behind the ancient traditions of trans-oceanic travel and of global community carried on in the remote past. Such study will reveal all humankind in a new light, with an ancestry and a heritage that is unimaginable to many at present.