The Pyramid of Ameterasu O-mikami
by T.L. Kelly

Published in 'Tokyo Money Market', June 1991  

The enthronement ritual of Japan's Emperor Akihito in November 1990 might not have been clouded by so much controversy if he had chosen to honor his mythical ancestor not in Japan, but "stateside," California style. As it turns out, there is a perfect place on the California north coast to carry out such a ritual, and score a few points with American women entrepeneurs at the same time.

In a rare 'harmonic convergence" of cultures, economics and engineering, three American women built an awe-inspiring structure on a coastal bluff about 85 miles north of San Francisco. Perched above the wild surf of Russian Gulch is the Pyramid of Ameterasu O-mikami, dedicated to Japan's Sun Goddess by three women professors of Oriental studies, who built their communal home to the scale of Egypt's ancient Giza Pyramid.

The pyramid house has stood guard over the Pacific Ocean since the fall of 1976. It has been on and off the real estate market for about as long, attracting many curious investors, but so far, no buyers. That may be partly due to the pyramid's price tag, which has risen sharply over the course of California's turbulent real estate economy in the last ten years.

The owner wants $495,000 for the pyramid house, which is surrounded by 40 acres of rolling hills, three "babbling brooks" and a spectacular ocean view. That's within range of what traditional properties are selling for on that part of the pristine coast, but it is too expensive for the sort of "enlightened" American who appreciates "pyramid power," according to the pyramid's owner, Mari Shore.

"It is truly a power spot," says Shore, one of the three builders, now working as a nurse and living the city life near Seattle, Washington. "The pyramid has an intensifying effect on people. It's not for the weak and meek."

Indeed, the "pyramid lifestyle" seems to have proved to be too powerful (and costly) even for the three scholarly women who built it at the peak of the 1970s "me-generation," when California was a haven for self-realization cults like EST, Dianetics and Lifespring. Shore laments the loss of this brief Age of Enlightenment, as she narrates how the pyramid came to be built, dedicated, and eventually abandoned.

The inspiration for a "New Age" type women's center came to Shore while she was completing her master's degree in comparative religions in the mid-70s at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She and her sister, Alisha, and a classmate, Claire, were impressed with such a facility at Big Sur, called the Esalon Institute. But the women found that the sprawling Esalon Institute--though famous for being "ecletic" as opposed to cultish--was also very expensive to attend and therefore exclusive.

"We wanted to build a poor man's version of Esalon," said Shore. "A place where people could go for spiritual upliftment, and where costs were more reasonable." The women together and separately searched out a location for their "growth center" along the the north and south coasts of the continent. It was Shore who found the Russian Gulch property, and it was Shore who would invest the money needed to put the property in escrow. The others soon agreed that "this area was ideal."

"One day, I went to visit the property alone. I sat on the knoll top, meditating and watching the hawks and eagles fly overhead, and I had a vision of the pyramid," said Shore. She said the three women had already visited the property together, and had all "felt" that the land was divine, that "it had been a sacred land in the past and that it would be a sacred land again."

"My vision occurred with such strength that we knew we were being divinely guided and that a pyramid must be built on this divine land," said Shore in a story she wrote about the pyramid for a New Age magazine in 1976. But the vision was soon clouded by the reality of obtaining state and county permits for building such an unusual structure. In fact, there were no official guidelines to go by for engineering a pyramid in wood and glass that would mimic the Egyptian monument. "We eventually had to draft our own blueprints," said Shore. And the cost of the permits, building materials and other aspects of the unique construction "upped the cost two to three times what we first estimated."

Shore recruited volunteers--mostly women--to build the pyramid, which helped alleviate construction costs somewhat. During the typically clear, sunny "Indian summer" along this coastal fringe of California's wine country, local natives watched the building of the pyramid with intense curiosity, perhaps not solely because of the strange dimensions of the structure.

"We were able to work topless a lot," quipped Shore. "Men and women both. We all became very close, working together for such a sacred cause."

The pyramid, a sturdy, spacious, large beam custom built structure, took nine months to build, nine months to the day, just like having a baby," she said. It shelters 2,500 square feet of interior space, including a 40x40 foot main floor, a large basement apartment, a large loft, plus an "apex meditation space," according to the real estate brochure Shore mails to prospective buyers.

Before the three inspired women moved their belongings into their new home, they honored it with a symbolic dedication. "Because so much of the energy that went into building it was by women, and because it was such a sunny location, we wanted to dedicate it to a goddess associated with the sun," said Shore. Since they were all scholars of mythology, with a particular interest in Oriental studies, they knew that the only primary female sun diety in world mythology is Japan's Sun Goddess, Amaterasu O-mikami.

"We thought it was neat that in a patriarchal society like Japan, the royal family's mythical ancestor is a female diety," said Shore. "We decided to dedicate it to her, even though we don't know if she has any pyramids in Japan."

After the ceremonial dedication, Shore moved in to the pyramid. The other two entrepeneurs, Alisha and Claire, had to finish up business elsewhere, and didn't move in until the next year. Soon after they moved in, however, economics forced Shore to move out, and seek a teaching job in order to keep up mortgage payments and rising costs of living in California. The other women tried also to offset the economic difficulties by commuting back and forth to San Francisco--a four-hour round trip--where they took on sporadic construction jobs. But soon the hardship began to wear on the women. Adding to the "de-enlightenment" of their divine mission was what Shore calls "the intensifying effect of the pyramid."

The women who lived there seemed to be subjected to going in and out of personal crises. There were a lot of conflicts for three years, due to the energy there. The pyramid seems to make you bring things up out of people who live there, forcing people to resolve things within themselves," she said. Women friends and colleagues moved in and out of the communal pyramid for several years, and Shore hints to an eventual "parting of the ways" of the three women who had first partnered the vision of a low-cost "growth center."

"Mysterious things happen to people who live there..." she said, her voice trailing off as if she were remembering a private struggle. But then she checks herself. "It's not always about conflict, though--the energy, I mean. Later, when my husband and I were courting and falling in love, the pyramid intensified that, too."

When the original vision of the pyramid as a "poor man's Esalon began to fade away, and all former occupants had gone their separate ways, Shore tried to rent out the pyramid as a vacation house, but was dissatisified with the housekeeping by the local weekend rental agency. Finally, a series of leases to rentors ended last year, and the pyramid now stands empty.

Between occupations by rentors, the newly wed Shore and her husband, Frank Stasny, made improvements on the structure to make it "more sellable." They replaced all the huge skylight windows with tempered, double-thick glass, so that the windows would not rattle during the typically fierce winter storms along the north coast. They completely remodeled the kitchen and master bathroom, and added two bedrooms and a bathroom to the basement apartment to make a more traditional total of four bedrooms and two baths for the entire household. A huge redwood deck sprawls out from the ocean view side of the house, jutting out from the knoll like a runway for the gods (and goddesses.)

The couple now resides in Bothell, Washington, and distribute brochures about the pyramid to as many of the curious as they can, given that they are both working full-time jobs in the city. Shore has since left her vocation as a professor--perhaps because teaching jobs are harder to come hy these days for American experts of Oriental studies. Her husband works at the nearby Boeing plant. Together, they hope to sell the pyramid and make at least a slight return on the considerable investment in that once, purely inspirational vision.

"This house sort of makes its own market," said Shore, explaining some of the oddities she's encountered in showing the pyramid. "From the prospective buyers I've shown it to, the ones who had the money felt neutral about it or just plain hated it, and the ones who loved it--the artists and the spiritually-inclined--didn't have the money.

"The wealthy people want more ordinary things, and this is not an ordinary property," she said. "The pyramid seems to weed out people it doesn't want to live there. One time, two couples who had the money wanted to buy it together. The couples ended up divorcing. Both of them!"

Still, Shore and Stasny are confident that the right buyer will come along, especially since they are now working with international real estate brokers along with local and state agencies. Last year's sudden plunge of the California real estate boon has begun to correct itself this year, and requests for out-of-town properties have risen.

But Shore knows that the final test of who will become the new owner of the Pyramid of Amaterasu has something mysteriously to do with the power of the Goddess herself.

"As the origin myth goes, Amaterasu formed Japan by dipping her sword in the ocean and scattering the drops that became the Japanese islands. She represents the clan of the ruling family. She's a powerful diety," she said.

"It takes a fairly sturdy soul to appreciate this kind of power."

The pyramid house can be reached from Pacific Coast Highway One, 10 miles north of Bodega Bay on the Sonoma Coast of California.