Cosmic Summit 2024

Everyone has a different experience at Cosmic Summit because hour by hour there is so much to do and choices to be made. This was my experience last year and it has only gotten better for this year!

Last year on Saturday morning at Cosmic Summit 2024 I met Randall Carlson for the first time and gave him a hardcover copy of my book, “Faces of Pilot Mountain: Intriguing Journey into the Deep Mysteries.” I told him he was my writing mentor and used his presentation style in the book using direct quotes highlighted in a sort of Mt. Airy Granite hue throughout the book.

This year for Cosmic Summit 2025 we are both helping with the Pilot Mountain bus excursion on the summer solstice. Eastern Band of the Cherokee wisdom keeper and ceremonialist, Yona FrenchHawk, will join us for a ceremony on June 20, 2025.

My goal for writing this series of books was to have the readers inspired to go to the mountain and stand on the quartzite slabs barefoot. On the evening of the last day of Cosmic Summit when George Howard posted he was reading my book in his hotel room my first thought was, “mission accomplished!”

This is fascinating to me and what happened on the summer solstice at Pilot Mountain fulfilled a Cherokee prophecy. Yona FrenchHawk and I gave four lectures at Elon University in North Carolina about forty-five minutes from the mountain. It was SRO for all four lectures with a total of 500 academics and community people. The talks were titled, "Equinox and the Mysteries of Pilot Mountain." When I asked how many had been to the mountain nearly everyone at the talk raised their hand.

To prepare for the Elon University talks Yona FrenchHawk went home to Cherokee, North Carolina. His family are all wisdom keepers for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee so he wanted to gather stories. An elderly aunt also came to the family gathering. This was in early March of this year. She took Yona aside and said she had a vision about him. The Cherokee elders had said at her birth she would have unusual sight and she is now in her 80s which proved true. So she told Yona that she saw him on a mountain but she didn't know the mountain to identify it. She said she saw him surrounded by energy and that the world was watching him. At the time I had just discovered the quartzite energy piece about Pilot Mountain so it resonated with him immediately. She then told him this was the reason he was born and he should put his energy into this work. Of course, the summer solstice ceremony was broadcast live by Cosmic Summit and a little bit later on this channel. In the future Yona FrenchHawk plans to visit the archives in the Eastern Band of the Cherokee museum to look for more Pilot Mountain stories. I explained the line-up for the equinox on the local WXII-TV on March 20, 2025 (bottom two videos):

https://www.facesofpilotmountain.com/wxii-tv

On the Tuesday after Cosmic Summit about sixteen of us went back to Pilot Mountain with geologist Scott Wolter. It was a very hot morning on the mountain but we spent 2 1/2 hours slowly walking around the Big Pinnacle and Scott explained the wind, water and chemical weathering (from the minerals). Randall Carlson's son, Jesse, isn't keen on heights so even though he wanted to go on the hike he headed back to Atlanta that morning and he had to pass Pilot Mountain on the way because of the damage to I-40 from Helene. Wolter had promised that he would call Randall to give him a full report of what he found. They are both really intrigued with Pilot Mountain. The Italian Giza guys are also very interested in Pilot Mountain now and were very moved by the ceremony. They told me backstage in the lunch room they'd like to help me.

At one point that Tuesday morning after Cosmic Summit we were in an alcove that projects sound to the subdivision below the mountain called Bucksnort. It goes right into an out building that is an office to an electrical engineer. He often has his grandkids up on the mountain and in his office to hear the voices clearly that aren't even shouting. At that spot I started to hear singing and so did my friend Ebba. I didn't see any of the people in our group of sixteen singing but then Ebba started to sing along. Then people stretched out on a huge quartzite slab and more people joined the singing from our party. It sounded like a choir but I thought it might be just an effect of the acoustics of the alcove. I had been doing thirteen hour days for four days in a row and the heat didn't help at all. I think I might have heard the mountain sing to us, but the sixteen of us scattered into the four winds after that. By the way, the batteries on cameras did go dead really quickly that day. Sometimes the mountain is fine with documenting things and sometimes it isn't.

My third book on the mountain is going to be on the oral history of Pilot Mountain. On the July 4th, 5th and 6th they have approved my first permit to do research on the mountain in 13 years with the help of my Representative Renee Price. So I hope the next book will include the wisdom of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, the Catawba, Lumbee and Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, but also just family members who visit the mountain. I'd like to gather stories that might be told at Thanksgiving about the mountain to out of town guests by the locals. Oh man, a very young doe who recently lost her spots just walked by my window as I am writing this paragraph. Kind of felt like finding a feather on my path. I plan to go to the singing spot alcove each day I visit the mountain this weekend and plan to bring tuning forks...might be an aural fourth of July in that regard.

This is what Chatgpt said about the summer solstice ceremony and Yona FrenchHawk agreed with it when he read it this weekend:

When the Sun Stood Still: A Ceremony to Begin the Summit

Before a single keynote speech echoed through the halls of the Cosmic Summit, something ancient stirred atop North Carolina’s sacred land. At twilight, under the golden light of the summer solstice sun, attendees gathered on the Little Pinnacle of Pilot Mountain—Jomeokee, the “Great Guide.” Here, Eastern Band Cherokee wisdom keeper Yona FrenchHawk led a traditional Cherokee solstice ceremony, offering prayers, chants, and deep ancestral knowledge passed down through generations.

This was not a spectacle.

It was a return.

The moment symbolized respect—for the land, for the sky, and for those who came long before. It marked a powerful alignment not just of the sun, but of ancient Indigenous wisdom and modern seekers of truth. For the Cosmic Summit community—comprised of geologists, authors, independent researchers, and curious minds—this ceremony did more than honor a seasonal cycle. It grounded the conference in authentic spiritual tradition, set intention for the weekend’s explorations, and offered something sorely needed in the modern age: a living connection to sacred time and place.

Pilot Mountain, long revered as a cosmological marker by tribes and travelers alike, stood as it always has—a guidepost pointing not just north, but inward.