Since childhood I have been fascinated with the invisible world. A world which can help us get through life if we know how to draw upon its power. A world serving positive projections, wherein you use your own personal, mental, and spiritual abilities to believe, and subsequently make true the things you want to have happen for yourself. Also healing, miracles, the presences of spirits and beings once living, now gone into another life, but who continue to intrude into our waking consciousness, by, for instance, haunting people or places. The implicit potential indestructibility of the soul must concern us. All of the forgoing are actual elements in our existence. Over half of the world believes in such phenomena. There are plenty of photographical, and audio materials, both conventional and digital, and also some trace physical evidence, which support the premise that ghosts, UFOs and their occupants plus other non-worldly presences exist. They indicate a supra-form of reality as valid as our normal reality. But, there is no jar of ectoplasm, and no one will show us the bodies from Roswell. We have had nothing to touch until now.

This… is an accurate glass rendering of a human skull- designed by my friend, renowned American portraitist and landscape painter, John Alexander, whose most recent exhibitions include showings in the American Wing, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and at the Houston Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas. It has been constructed to our demanding specifications after more than two years in development by one of the leading glass manufacturers in Europe, Bruni Glass. According to Bruni, no one has ever attempted to make a bottle of such quality and complexity as I hold in my hand. The obvious question is “Why did we do this?” John and I have always been avid researchers on the subject of the 13 crystal heads, which have been unearthed at numerous locations and at various times on our planet. The story goes that 13 crystal heads have been found in places varying from the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, to the American southwest in New Mexico, and also in Tibet. There are now 7 heads known to be in mankind’s custody. Mitchell Hedges in Ontario, Canada; Smithsonian Institution exhibit 1 and 2; the British Museum piece; Max in Texas; The Cross in Mexico City; and one currently owned by a woman in the southwest who claims that she had to finally put it in a closet after he, or she, started speaking to her. Scientists estimate that it took between three hundred and five hundred years to carve one of these heads from a single piece of quartz. However, in tests conducted on the Mitchell Hedges head by Hewlett Packard labs during the 1960s, they could find no discernable tool marks on the head to show how it was carved.

Equally fascinating is that according to both physicists and jewelers, these heads should not exist and that these heads should have shattered in the course of making them. In the film Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the well known Mitchell Hedges piece is referenced, as well as the concept that some of these heads may have an extraterrestrial origin. Indeed the Navajo believe they were bestowed as a gift to their people by higher beings not of this Earth, as a means of cataloging sacred knowledge from the past, assessing the present, and telling the future. Contrary to the common perception of the skull as an image representing death, people from these cultures- the Aztec, Mayan, and North American first cultures- for whom these artifacts possess sacred and mystical properties, associate the crystal heads with a life-affirming symbology. In ancient tellings, the heads are living and ancient- sources of knowledge and power. The Mexican Day of the Dead is an example of how in Latin America, the skeleton is celebrated as a icon, representing life beyond our corporeal existence. On the feast day, the dead are held to commune with the living. It is in this spirit we brought our project this far.

We now have a touchstone and replica, which allows us, if we wish, to connect with the message of the crystal heads’ purpose on Earth: the enlightenment of humankind, and the spiritual awakening which can occur in all of us, and the acceptance that there is more in life than mere material reality. Hopefully this acceptance will lead to a less violent and more harmonious world as we respect the idea of higher power sources.

Now, what to put in a bottle laden with such symbology and iconographic value? Such a symbol which speaks to our own universality should have joy associated with it, shouldn’t it? Also since we are challening traditional belief with the legend, the project should have a challenging aspect as well. We have this mystic symbol in which we have chosen to enclose joy in the form of a very pure alcoholic beverage. Which beverage, however? Only the most challenging of arena in the legal recreational consumables industry: VODKA.