Eons ago, in the depths below what would become Louisiana State University a little known substance began to percolate. Over the years, this globigerina ooze slowly surfaced, unnoticed by most.
There are many reasons people choose locations to congregate. Some might say that certain places just beckon. Over 5000 years ago Native Americans built their mounds in this area. Perhaps they were beckoned by the life-giving forces of the area – the qi. Archaeologists still do not know their exact purpose, but they believe that these mounds are a symbol of identity and a place where groups gathered for ceremony. These symbols and ceremonies continue to be a mystery today.
In the 1920s LSU began their plan to move from downtown Baton Rouge to its current location on the bluff of the Mississippi River. LSU hired the Olmstead firm known for their consideration of the natural environment and attention to strong axial relationships reminiscent of Chinese culture and the flow of Qi to design the new campus. For mysterious reasons, the Olmstead firm was dropped but the new architect, Theodore Link, continued with the plan, retaining the Qi of the new campus.
The original design of the campus placed the quadrangle at the heart of the campus with the relationship of the buildings forming a cruciform – Foster Hall at the northern end, Atkinson at the southern, Hill Memorial library on the west and Memorial Tower to the east. “The main entry into the heart of campus was at the Parade ground, which represented nature; then past the tower, which represented sacrifice; and into the Quad, which represented knowledge.”
The flow of Qi was interrupted with the construction of Middleton Library. In the 1950s, due to the growth of students on campus, Middleton Library was built in the center of the cruciform, dividing the original cruciform and transforming what was a positive cross into its negative. What distress has this blunder caused?
In the early 1970s, Philip Sclater, a washed out geologist and archeologist, was hired by his uncle, Lee Kirby Ditko Chancellor of the University, as a last ditch effort to keep his wife happy. Mrs. Ditko, his third wife and quite a bit younger, was highly disturbed by events on campus and also an avid follower of the teachings of Zhuang Zi who said, “Human beings are born because of the accumulation of ‘Qi’. When it accumulates there is life. When it dissipates there is death.” Sclater was sent on a pseudo mission to discover what could be done to restore the flow of Qi through the campus.
At the outset, Sclater took the job less than seriously, but his findings became undeniable and his belief in the lifeforce grew, perhaps in part due to his tawdry affair with the chancellor’s wife. His archeological search uncovered many historical artifacts along with the mysterious globigerina ooze surfacing on the southern tip of the axis in the ceramics garden. To Sclater’s amazement, the ooze revealed a stunning connection to an ancient civilization.
The globigerina ooze, a pelagic sediment, tested to be consistent with that of an area in the Indian Ocean, directly antipodal to the LSU campus. This area was not unfamiliar to Sclater. Obsessed in his youth with finding the biological father who left his mother penniless and pregnant, Sclater had learned of his namesake and grandfather, Philip Lutley Sclater. The elder Sclater was a zoologist most notable for his theory of “Lemuria”, a lost continent which served as a land bridge between Madagascar and India and accounted for the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India.
The elder Sclater’s theory of Lemuria was not exactly a new idea, only a new name. Sangam literature and Tamil folkore describe an area of a legendary land lost to sea south of the Dravida country known as “Kumari Kandam”. It is said that this land had numerous great cities known for their architecture, music, temples and sculptures.
Driven by ego and desire to please his mistress, the younger Sclater became obsessed with validating that Lemuria did indeed exist and was trying to resurface on the other side of the world on the LSU campus. He became convinced that the energy filtering out through the ceramics garden was the key to returning the flow of Qi to the campus and would reveal Lemuria did exist garnering him eternal fame. After three years of excavating and probing, Sclater disappeared, the dig was never completed, and no answers were found.
Only a map remained hidden in Hill Memorial library.
The disruption of the axis has become increasingly evident over the years as a series of murders occurred along this path. A new effort to return the flow of Qi to campus came with the most recent murders in the Edward Gay apartments in the winter of 2007, the inadvertent discovery of Sclater’s map, and a landscape architecture student’s haunting revelation. One afternoon during Mickey Kleinhenz’s lunch break in the sculpture garden consisting of holly berries and datura leaves, not atypical for the young student, he witnessed what appeared to be a lemur entering the art building. He followed this shadow into the ceramics garden. In Mickey’s lucid state, a garden of ruins held the answer for returning Qi to the campus as he recalled the mysterious map discovered a year earlier in Hill Memorial Library.
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