Today, January 1st, 2025, is the first day in the new life of the Octagon in Newark (Ohio) as it opens to full public access after being besieged by a golf course over the previous century.

This Native American-built geometric structure, which has an adjoined circle with an observation mound, is arguably Ohio’s second most popular and mysterious First Nation earthwork when compared to Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio. Fascinating is how the Octagon, believed to be a ceremonial pilgrimage site used hundreds if not thousands of years ago, aligns with the northernmost moonrise which occurs every 18.6 years, and 2024 was that year.

Back in October at the Octagon during a public event on a night when the moon aligned nearly perfect with the Octagon (pictured above), the Ohio History Connection’s Dr. Bradley Lepper told the crowd those Native Americans who built and celebrated the Octagon did so to connect to the “rhythm of the cosmos so they would not feel alone.”

“That is absolutely key, so they would not feel alone,” said Lepper that night. “These places, if nothing else, were places of community and coming together for religious, as well as social, sort of after the ceremony, when people gathered here from literally the ends of their earth.”  

After Lepper’s talk, the fifty or so who came that night, which included a group of Shawnee who claim ancestral heritage to the Octagon, walked to the center of the earthwork’s main corridor to watch the nearly full moon rise and align. Due to the Octagon being crowded by tall trees, it was at first difficult to see the moon connect (so to speak) with the Octagon. But as it continued to rise off the horizon, the moon’s glow bathed the entire geometric structure with its aura. 

“There’s a certain commonality of the human experience, and one is looking into the night sky and seeing this object move across the sky and change shape. A source of light that seems to have a life and will of its own,” said Ray Hively to the Free Press in 2021, the now-retired Earlham College professor who in the 1980s discovered that the Octagon was clocking the 18.6-year major cycle of the moon. “But it’s important to recognize that to a pre-historic culture the moon would appear to be a very powerful and probably divine object.”

This is why First Nations spent generations observing and then building something akin to the Great Pyramids and Stonehenge, says Hively. 

“No other pre-historic structure has the same combination of monumental skill and geometrical precision that the Newark Octagon has,” he said.

In 2023, the Octagon and eight other earthworks in Ohio were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A monumental achievement on the part of the Ohio History Connection (OHC), which spent years lobbying UNESCO and litigating against Moundbuilders Country Club to vacate the property which they made into a golf course. The UNESCO designation depended on Moundbuilders CC leaving, and a settlement was reached last year following the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision to allow the OHC to re-acquire the property’s lease for the greater good of the public. 

Moundbuilders CC, which was the Octagon’s lessor since 1910, should be commended as a caretaker even though it tried in 1999 to destroy part of the earthwork so to enlarge its club house. But because First Nations are demanding greater respect for their heritage from all Americans like never before, the club’s membership was eventually going to leave no matter how hard they pushed back. The Octagon is just ten percent of what’s left of what was the 3,000-acre Newark Earthworks complex (pictured above).

“The Octagon works are now surrounded by the pavement and concrete of modern homes and industry which rapidly grew post WWII,” said Mike Rep Hummel, a fan of all the Ohio earthworks and an amateur archeologist and historian. “Without the presence of the golf course those 114 years, this site would surely no longer exist, hence they should be thanked and honored by indigenous people rather than reviled in my opinion.”

Besides a ceremonial site and a massive calendar or clock, the Octagon has also been theorized by some as a portal to the afterlife even though there are no burial grounds within its earthen walls or nearby.

No doubt, the golf course itself hindered decades of research which could have furthered our understanding of the Octagon, which as Hively stated, is akin to the Great Pyramids and Stonehenge.

Intriguing is how those considered outside the archeology academic mainstream are offering their own insights about the Octagon, and to large audiences who crave more understanding. For example, author Graham Hancock, considered a fringe historian by critics, in his new Netflix series, suggested the inspiration for the Octagon may have come under the influence of psychedelics.

Oddly enough, the Hopewell culture, which is whom mainstream archeologists believe built the Octagon, utilized a “mushroom wand” for whatever purpose during their time (pictured above).

One thing both mainstream and fringe historians can agree upon, the Octagon is to be celebrated by one and all, and never again restricted by rich men playing a game.

“It’s just fun to imagine the throngs of people who would have been in these spaces watching this (the moon align). Perhaps chanting, perhaps with bells on their leggings, perhaps drums and hand pipes, and celebrating this cosmic convergence,” said Dr. Lepper the night the moon aligned after 18.6 years.