He is said to cure illness, transport believers to other dimensions and help people reach higher consciousness. His owner, Joanne Parks, said he speaks to her about his mission on earth.
Max, an 18-pound skull made of crystal quartz, said to be the inspiration for the movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” will be on display at the Senator Theater in Baltimore until Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
“Max is here to help people tap deep into themselves,” said Parks, who lives in Houston. “He?s a tool for self-reflection and a tool to help people believe they can reach their highest goals.”
Parks said the monk was gifted the skull by a tribe in Guatemala, and that it is probably thousands of years old because the delicate crystal would crack if shaped by modern tools. She has had Max studied by many different scientists and taken him all over the world.
Tom Kiefarb, the owner of the Senator Theater, said inviting Max to the theater was less of a movie promotion than a “dream” he had had for years.
“One of the things we?ve learned from this is this whole sense of destiny in it eventually ending up here,” because he had wanted to see a crystal skull for so long, he said.
Parks and her husband were given Max in 1977 by a Tibetan-trained American monk to help them cope with the death of their daughter to bone cancer. Parks attributed her daughter surviving for three years to the monk?s healing powers.
Many myths and legends surround crystal skulls, which likely number in the hundreds. One such myth says that there are 13 such skulls brought to earth by extraterrestrials, and when they unite they will enlighten mankind, said Jaap van Etten, author of “Crystal Skulls: Interacting with a Phenomenon.”
Jane MacLaren Walsh, an anthropologist who studies crystal skulls in the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of Natural History, is skeptical that any skulls are actually ancient.
“Probably the oldest one is one that?s in Paris and that one was sold in the 1870?s, so it probably dates to maybe the 1860?s,” she said. Of the myths surrounding the skulls, she added, “I don?t think any of them hold much water.”
