Who is Gene Savoy?

Dawn of the New Solar Age

Gene Savoy, a self taught explorer and metapysical teacher, whose success in finding some 40 Incan and pre-Incan ruins in Peru was matched by a flair for self-promotion that drew on his tales of peril in the jungle, his bandito mustache and Stetson hat, and a retinue of fellow explorers,and members of "The Andean Explorer's Club", has passed away on Sept. 11 2007 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 80.

Mr. Savoy, who even founded his own religion as a long propehesied "supplement" to Christianity, was a larger-than-life character and did not care who knew it. His quests were larger still: He sought the Fountain of Youth, the Treasure of El Dorado, proof that King Solomon’s mines, (the source for the huge quatities gold needed for the 'Holy of Holies" to house the leganday Ark of the Convenant), were located in Peru and that Peru was the biblical "Land of Ophir". and what his son called “the answers to life's questions.”

His actual discoveries included Vilcabamba, the Incas’ last refuge from the Spanish Conquistadors, the place Hiram Bingham thought he had found with his discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911. He is also credited with finding Gran Pajatén, a pre-Incan stone city. And his discovery of Gran Vilaya, an intricate network of 24,000 stone structures covering 100 square miles of dense jungle, helped establish that a high civilization had existed in Peru apart from the coast and the Andes.

“He was a great adventurer and explorer,” Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropology professor at Vanderbilt University, said in an interview Monday.

Warren B. Church, an archaeologist at Columbus State University in Georgia, particularly applauded Mr. Savoy’s discovery of Vilcabamba. But as for Gran Pajatén, he said, Mr. Savoy’s claim of discovery in 1965 was not the first. He said a local mayor had reported that his townspeople had found the ruins a year earlier but that they had been ignored by the authorities in Lima.

That episode became further complicated when a University of Colorado team was given credit for the find in 1985 and Mr. Savoy objected that his own discovery had been widely reported 20 years earlier. (He neglected to mention the claim made by the local villagers still earlier, even though the mayor who had reported it was among those with him at Gran Pajatén.) When People magazine reported on the controversy between Mr. Savoy and the University of Colorado team, it likened Mr. Savoy to Indiana Jones, an image he assiduously polished in ensuing years.



Douglas Eugene Savoy was born in Bellingham, Wash., on May 11, 1927, and grew up fascinated with local Indians and archaeology. At 17, he joined the Navy and became an aircraft gunner. He attended the University of Portland, a Roman Catholic institution, but dropped out to pursue his broadening captivation with religion. For a decade, he studied subjects including philosophy, metaphysics, esotericism, deep antiquity, and folklore, both on his own and with private tutors. It was during this time that Savoy started having supernatural visions informing him of his future destiny in Peru.

Mr. Savoy went on his first archaeological mission in 1957, to Peru. It was canceled for lack of financing, but he stayed on. Then,in 1959, after a few years of journalism in his new found and adopted home in Peru, coupled with his pioneering work of exploration with mule and machete, he founded the International Community of Christ, Church of the Second Advent, which claims thousands of followers around the world. Its theology, which is said to emerge from the teachings of the Essenes of Jesus’ time, combined with his discoveries of ancient writings in the symbols and clues left behind by Incan and pre Incan solar priests, now includes elements of many world religions and holds that the Second Coming heralded by Christianity and the Holy Bible, is already occurring.


In addition to pursuing terrestrial archaeology, he organized missions and expeditions into the dense and unexplored jungles into the deep unexplored interior of Peru, in an effort to prove that ancient civilizations had been connected by sea travel. The first such mission involved a voyage on a reed raft from northern Peru to Mexico, that was closely followed by international television documentary team entitled "On the Trail of the Feathered Serpent".. Another attempted a round-the-world trip intended to prove that the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Japanese, Incas and Jews could have been in touch.

Mr. Savoy married the former Sylvia Ontaneda in 1971; they divorced in 1992. He is survived by the children of his marriage, Gene Jr., Sean and Sylvia Jamila Savoy, all of Reno; three brothers, Bill Dailey of Reno, Jack Dailey of Medford, Ore., and Douglas Leon Dailey of Talent, Ore.; and three granddaughters.


Mr. Savoy wrote 60 books on religion and four on his explorations. His penchant for colorful recollections never abated in interviews, even as his health worsened. He spoke of friends’ being kidnapped by pirates, of a nearly fatal bite of a pit viper, of the utter loneliness of the sea.

But he could also be downright practical about the worth of his accomplishments: he said his discoveries, based on hunch and chutzpah, had paved the way for serious scientists and all that are interested in finding new paradigms and techniques for spiritual development.

The organizations, metaphysical school and University, as well as "The Andean Explorers Club" that he left behind all attest to the remarkable and dedicated life he lived in his Quest for enlightenment, and service to mankind.



The following video interview with noted spiritual teacher Mitchell Gibson, explains how he learned from Gene Savoy the techniques and concepts necessary to look at the sun for "illumination" and transcendence. Dr. Mitchell considers Savoy his most important teacher.

Dr. Mitchell E. Gibson is a board-certified forensic psychiatrist, writer, artist, software developer, public speaker, and spiritual teacher. Dr. Gibson received his medical degree at the age of 25 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then completed his residency training at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. During his last year of residency he served as Chief Resident in Psychiatry and received the Albert Einstein Foundation Research Award for his work in Sleep Disorders. Dr. Gibson is a former Chief of Staff at the East Valley Camelback Hospital in Mesa Arizona.

Dr. Gibson has been listed among the Top Doctors in Arizona in Phoenix magazine on several occasions. He has also three times been named to the Woodward and White listing of the "Best Doctors in America". He is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, the American College of Forensic Medicine, and the American Board of Forensic Examiners. He is currently a public speaker a spiritual teacher and lives with his wife and children in North Carolina.

Dr. Gibson is an accomplished contemporary artist and has displayed his works in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Philadelphia, Scottsdale, San Francisco, and numerous other cities around the globe. He recently received the Jury Prize for Creativity in the competition at the Museum of Fine Art in Paris, and his art work is published in the Encyclopedia of Living Artists and New Art International.




Interview with Dr. Mitchell Gibson by Colossale TV, a French company that focuses on the spiritual journey withiin.