Keep winding your way through the tiny Riverside community of Berkshire Hills and you will come to something stark and particularly peculiar at the intersection of Lenox and Madison to the south of the hill upon which this neighborhood is built.
Cut into the southeastern slope of the hill and opening to the south, oriented very slightly southeast, is an almost perfectly rectangular pit. The back wall at the north end is roughly 150 feet wide and the eastern side wall is about 160 feet from north end to where it reaches the open southern approach. The western side is mostly formed by the natural curvature but its face shows the clear sign of cutting. The back and east side walls are angled with the slope of the hill from which they are cut. At their highest points, peaking where they meet in the northeastern corner, these walls are visibly about fifty feet or more above the water line. The water is a brackish black color with a rusty tint. Most of the surface is covered with a thick white mineral deposit at any given time and looks, frankly, like a serious hazard.
Prenda Quarry
When this investigation first came upon this site in December of 2007, the chain link fence surrounding the quarry was old and had literally fallen into disrepair quite a while ago. It was possible to walk right down into the pit area. No one was around. The quarry overlooks an orange grove across the street.
One of many old quarries in Southern California or most anywhere else around the United States, Prenda Quarry was created in the late 19th Century and served by the railroad when the rail used to run right through the neighborhood. It is obvious to anyone that the quarry has not been in use for a very long time and the uneven nature of what remains lends an enigmatic quality to the site especially if you wouldn’t recognize a quarry when you see one. You might even think nothing of it and drive on by it. What’s so interesting about an old quarry with yet another Spanish name in Southern California?
However, the quarry’s name is not Spanish and neither obviously are the street names in Berkshire Hills, itself certainly not a Spanish place name. Prenda Quarry was not named with a Spanish word like so much else in the region. There actually isn’t even a Spanish word ‘prenda’. There is a verb ‘prender’ but none of its proper conjugations end in ‘a’. Interesting. Even more interesting that one meaning of the verb prender is “to turn on”. Turn on what, in this case? The first recorded owner of this quarry, and the people credited with naming it, was a British mining company.
Switching On Hekate’s Diamond
The hill and community that is home to Prenda Quarry is due south of The Peace Tower on Mt Rubidoux. It also stands within the lower isosceles triangle body of the butterfly/ moth configuration, just west of the lower right wing, well within the energy flow of the telluric pathway.
Consider that The Peace Tower may have been constructed to operate like the Irish Round Towers and someone believes the telluric energy flows through the site. Could this quarry with a name similar to the Spanish verb for “turning something on” literally serve as a switch? Is it mere coincidence that the quarry was built just below a street named after another mountain with its own giant round tower?
Does the paramagnetic energy in Mount Rubidoux link to the Prenda Quarry? What significance is there if it does?
Before you answer that, we must again consider what the name ‘Prenda’ actually does mean. Surprised that it wasn’t simply another Spanish place name, we looked elsewhere for a definition and we found one; a disturbing definition, to be exact. Something so startling and rife with implications, within the context of the mystery, that it gave us pause. The Prenda Quarry is the perfect stage where voodoo enters the drama.
The Voodoo That Who Do?
There is a discipline within voodoo called Palo Mayombe and it is considered the darkest practice of the tradition, with the oldest roots. Palo is a group of religions that formed in Spanish Caribbean colonies among slaves of Kongo ancestry. Palo itself means “stick”, specifically a special stick used in preparing altars, one name for which is “el caldera” but also “la prenda”.
During the 19th Century, Palo proliferated through Venezuelan and Latin African communities in the United States. Though Palo originated in Cuba, it was likely influenced by Haitian traditions. Haiti is the classic source of voodoo in the Americas.
Palo beliefs are founded upon the veneration of ancestral spirits and faith in natural forces. Natural objects, especially sticks called “nganga”, are believed to carry the powers of spirits and are central to magical rites within Palo.
What A Coincidence!
Two forms of Palo syncretized to other religious traditions are Cristiano and Judio. Palo Judio literally means “Jewish Palo” but it is not syncretized to Judaism, rather it means the Palo that is decidedly not Catholic/Christian.
Palo Cristiano is syncretized to Catholic imagery, using the cross and various saints as cover identities for Palo entities. Saint Barbara, for example, is said to be the Palo identity for the entity ‘Nsambi Munalembe’ and ‘Shango’ the Santeria god of thunder, though Santeria is technically another religion. Saint Catherine of the Wheel, aka Hekate, is also among the Palo Cristiano spirits. St Catherine corresponds to the Palo ‘Oya’, goddess of the wind, cemeteries and the passage to death; all of which correspond to Hekate’s title Queen of the Crossroads and where she stands at the gate between life and the Underworld.
What now are we to think of the images of St Barbara and St Catherine of the Wheel on the nativity sculpture inside Mission Inn under the circumstances of our mystery? Is there really no association whatsoever? Dismissing an association would be naïve.
Black Cauldron
Palo Mayombe is usually described as the most powerful and most feared form of black magic. It is associated with the infamous Santeria. It is said that the ‘palero’ who practices this form only conducts such spiritual work by referral for select individuals. Refer to EOW1 for more information on how Palo Mayombe associates with our mystery, the purpose of discussion here is to reveal that the Prenda Quarry may very well be a product of palero activity.
The main focus of Palo religious practices is the receptacle altar called ‘Prenda’, a consecrated vessel, usually a cauldron of earth, magic sticks, bones and human remains. Each prenda is dedicated to a particular spirit and inhabited by a dead ancestor not directly related to the owner of the prenda. This dead spirit guides the activities associated to the particular prenda.
Within Palo, as it is often known, a ‘prenda’ contains black water or other liquid and miscellaneous objects and organic items, like the aforementioned human remains and bones. The ‘prenda’ is used to contact and summon the most ancient of voodoo entities, gods and goddesses and other entities. This is astonishing information for there could be no likely coincidence in the resonance between the voodoo prenda of Palo Mayombe and the Prenda Quarry.
Now consider that voodoo was certainly no stranger to the British West Indies and the British were definitely aware of African spiritual traditions as a result of their prominence on that continent. Is it mere coincidence that the British mining company which first owned the quarry would name the quarry with a voodoo word? What did those Brit miners know about the hill in Riverside and what were they actually looking for there? What was their relationship with Saint Barbara?
While you chew on that, we’ll remind the readers of EOW1 of the voodoo Dhamballah wheel.
The Ever Present Wheel
Consider the points of this triple congruence: The name ‘Prenda’ itself, the black water, and the association of Hekate, the Triple Goddess. Recall also the Dhamballah wheel of voodoo discussed in EOW1 – it stands as only one piece of evidence among several that The Zodiac Killer was applying voodoo and Hekate veneration to his attacks. The wheel itself is her symbol and the specific angle at which the Dhamballah is oriented matches the orientation of 17 degrees, or magnetic north, associated with The Zodiac Killer’s own confessions (Ref EOW1).
Here is the astonishing possibility: The Prenda Quarry may be a voodoo prenda cauldron on a massive scale. If a tabletop bowl can be used to summon entities, what might occult operators of the Prenda Quarry have been trying to summon..?