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Some "Serious, Substantive Issues" & A Psycholinguistic Analysis
Still more words!! Not long ago, everybody's favorite archaeologist, Garrett Fagan, posted a virulently negative 37 page review of Robert Schoch's most recent book Voyages of the Pyramid Builders on the Hall of Maat Website.
Intemperate and apoplectic, even by Fagan standards, this provoked another tangle of threads, most of them accolades of support and applause from Maatzis-in-Residence but with a few dissenting voices in the mix. It seemed to me the outnumbered dissenters could use some support as well. Moreover, both the tone and content of this Fagan review and the brouhaha that accompanied it provided an opportunity to deal with a variety of topics germane to the ongoing Sphinx controversy and related issues in a new and I like to think amusing way. This essay is the result.
If this is the first you've heard of the Fagan review, before reading my response it's not a bad idea to read it first and even follow some of the threads, anyway, as much of it as you can handle, to put it all into context. Appreciating Fagan is admittedly something of an acquired taste, and many of you probably have not acquired it. If you're one of those,
my essay
is pretty much self-explanatory.
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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF ARCHAEOLOGY FROM JOHN ANTHONY WEST -
Re: Atlantis and Beyond: THE LURE OF BOGUS ARCHAEOLOGY (or: The Anupadeshi
Strike Back) Special Section in Archaeology May/June 2003.
The current issue of Archaeology magazine features a Special Section
devoted to debunking 'alternative' archaeology.
More. |
May,
2003 |
THE
GEOLOGY PANEL AND MAGICAL EGYPT DVD SERIES UPDATE - I'm
off to Egypt May 10 for two weeks with Philip LaPorta, Principal
Scientific Investigator of our planned Geologists Panel to introduce
him to the sites and all aspects of the evidence supporting
the water-weathering theory. Episodes
1-4 of the Magical Egypt DVD Series are now complete and are being
shipped out. More. |
May,
2003 |
Egypt
Trips for Fall 2003 and Winter/Spring 2004.
Dates
for these being set up.
With
luck the Mid-east situation will permit travel. Despite all the
furore, at the moment in Egypt as far as travel is concerned, it's
business as usual. If interested in taking a trip this year or in
the Alumni Trip, advance notice appreciated.
More. |
May,
2003 |
Egypt
Library Bequest from Stevan Baloga purchased and contributed to
the Ancient Wisdom Foundation |
Jan,
2003 |
Indy
Power International: Independent Journalism Reborn? An Essay (in
Embryo) and Participatory Experiment
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Jan, 2003 |
ANCIENT
WISDOM FOUNDATION
I
am still looking for funding for our Geologists Panel. It is imperative
to carry out this survey. More. |
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SECRET
CHAMBERS REVEALED: The Foxification of the National Pornographic
Society |
Nov,
2002 |
THE
ONGOING CONTROVERSY
"Whenever
you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause
and reflect." Mark
Twain.
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May,
2002 |
RIP.
Boris Said.
My
ex-partner (and ex-friend) Boris Said died on March 24, 2002 of
liver cancer, aged sixty-nine. |
May,
2002 |
What's
new in Ancient Egypt |
February
27th, 2002 |
Travel
in Troubled Times
How
safe is travel to Egypt? Not suprisingly, this is the question
everyone about to travel, or thinking about near-future travel
to Egypt is asking. |
October
18th, 2001 |
Magical
Egypt Tour with John Anthony West
For
those interested in traveling to Egypt with me, dates for upcoming
trips in the year 2000 are:
February
13th - February 29th
March
5th - March 21st
October
22nd - November 7th
The
above dates are firm and short of some act of the gods, or major
incident officially forbidding travel to Egypt, these two trips
will run.
For
some time now considerable interest has been shown in a proposed
ten part TV series devoted to the whole subject of the 'Lost
Civilization' -- the legacy of its doctrine, its implications
for the upcoming Age of Aquarius and the extraordinary correspondences
shown between ancient esotericism and leading edge contemporary
physics and cosmology.
On
several occasions already, it looked like a contract was shortly
forthcoming, and I sent out warnings that if this became a reality,
my Magical Egypt trips would be severely curtailed or stopped
completely for at least a few years. So far the promised contracts
have failed to materialize and the trips are still running as
usual, 4 or 5 times a year. But the media interest is
real (anyway as real as anything can be in the unreal/surreal
world of TV/Hollywood) and it is therefore worth repeating that
future trips could be curtailed with little warning if a contract
is signed.
Potential
travelers to Egypt take note and act accordingly. Remember that
(in my opinion of course!) if you're not getting Symbolist Egypt
when you go there, you're not getting Egypt at all. Until or
unless I am able to train up the few qualified potential teachers
around to take over my Magical Egypt Trips, I remain, unfortunately,
the only Symbolist wheel in town.
Itinerary
and price changes. After years of holding to a firm price, airfare
increases, hotel and ticket price increases in Egypt oblige
a commensurate rise in prices. The price has been increased
from $3,995 to $4,395. However, this price now includes the
voluntary/obligatory $150 baksheesh (tips) kitty that
used to be a surcharge on top of the $3,995. All else on the
Itinerary remains the same.
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'The Hall of Records'
It
would appear the everyone in the world wants to know when drilling
in front of the Sphinx will commence and reveal to the world
'The Hall of Records'. For the record, I would like to point
out that the notion of the Hall of Records comes from one source
and one source only, and that is Edgar Cayce. While Cayce seems
to have been amazingly accurate in his remote medical diagnoses,
the same cannot be said for his post WWII prophecies. I was
lecturing at the ARE Foundation last August (Mark Lehner and
Zahi Hawass were also there) and had dinner with Cayce's surviving
son, who admitted the prophetic track record was not what Cayce
admirers would like to see. Since there is no mention in any
Egyptian text of a 'Hall of Records' I, for one, would not place
too much reliance on its existence. On the other hand, our seismographs
certainly show what appears to be a large void (chamber?) beneath
the left paw of the Sphinx. Zahi Hawass, however, does not trust
the technology. And since the Sphinx is, arguably, politically
the most sensitive archaeological site on the planet, he does
not want to drill there unless he is absolutely convinced of
the chamber's existence. However, he says that if he can be
convinced the readings are reliable, (via further seismographic
studies and drilling in less sensitive areas around the plateau)
he will consider drilling down in front of the Sphinx. If we
can obtain permission to continue with our research in Egypt,
we will try to satisfy his conditions.
Meanwhile,
in this prevailing dtente atmosphere, I now have very sanguine
hopes that --if we can get the right sort of academic sponsorship--
we can get a proposal accepted that allows us to get back to
Egypt with geologists and archaeologists, seismographs and ground
penetrating radar to follow our initial research where it leads
us. We are presently working on this, via my colleague Robert
M. Schoch. Moreover, there are now at least two orthodox Egyptologists
willing to stand before their colleagues and argue, not necessarily
that they are convinced we are right, but that the opposing
arguments put forward to date do not refute our evidence. This
constitutes a major breakthrough from our point of view.
Along
the same lines, one of Zahi's favorite public arguments over
the years has been that Robert Schoch is the only geologist
who believes in our theory. Actually, this is not true to begin
with. At our initial presentation at the Geological Society
of America's convention in 1991, attending geologists unanimously
agreed, on the basis of the extensive photographic evidence
presented, that the Sphinx was indeed water weathered. Zahi's
response to that has been that none of these geologists has
studied the evidence in the field, in Egypt -- not altogether
an illegitimate objection. Photographs can indeed be misleading.
But dismissing the theory on the grounds that Schoch is the
only geologist to support it is an illegitimate
objection. In 1600 Galileo was the only astronomer who believed
the earth went around the sun. He happened to be right.
Anyway,
we've learned recently that David Coxill, (an English geologist,
unknown to either of us, but author of a number of research
papers and several books) went to Egypt in 1997 specifically
to check out our work for himself.
In
InScription: Journal of Ancient Egypt #5
(a journal previously unknown to us, but apparently not an 'official'
academic publication) he describes his findings. His independent
survey of the evidence corroborates our own work without reservation.
A survivor of the massacre at Luxor Temple, Coxill (in a letter
in the same issue of InScription recounting that experience)
also tells of sitting next to an Egyptian geologist on the plane
from Cairo to Aswan, and discussing the geology of the Sphinx
with him: 'He, like many geologists, thinks that the excavated
pit in which the Sphnx lies, shows rainwater weathering features.'
So
now there are now at least two known geologists (and one unknown
geologist) with hands-on experience in Egypt, convinced that
the Sphinx was carved at a much earlier date -- forcing, in
turn, at the very least, a revision of that particular objection.
Note:
though atrociously produced, InScription proves to be
a mine of valuable Egyptological information. Written for the
most part by orthodox Egyptologists, it publishes articles -written
for the lay enthusiast- that would not appear in the largely
impenetrable 'official' journals. For further info:
email
or website
There
is also at least one eminent archaeo-astronomer, Dr. Archie
Roy, formerly of Glasgow University, who finds Robert Bauval's
Orion/pyramid correlation intriguing. He will be debating the
negative conclusions reached by Dr. E.C. Krupp at the upcoming
Cairo Debate (see below) in September, 1999
So,
slowly but surely, we attract credentialed support from within
the Establishment itself.
Moreover,
a handful of discoveries/observations made by myself and others
over the past couple of years further support the theory. The
nature of these discoveries is such that they do not look very
spectacular to untrained eyes. Therefore scanning photos onto
this website update that take forever to download would tell
readers very little. At the same time, describing them well
enough to make the point clear would take more words than I
want to write, and, without intimate knowledge of the individual
sites involved (which few reading this website will have) would
also serve little purpose -I'm not trying to be secretive.
It
is enough for readers to know that there is now a body of new
evidence supporting the initial theory. The essential is to
get impartial geologists and archaeologists on site to see if
this evidence can be explained in such a way that the standard
chronology stands. If it cannot be, and the new evidence is
corroborated by independent credentialed scientists, it will
no longer be possible to deny that Egypt's history goes thousands
of years further back into the past -as the dynastic Egyptians
themselves always claimed.
This
in turn must finally oblige that total rewrite of ancient history,
and with it, a reconsideration of the level of knowledge available
to humanity at a time when, by orthodox beliefs, we were still
hunter-gatherers.
So:
stay tuned.
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hosted by
Maury Povich, March 2, 1999.
This
Fox Network 2 hour special was widely viewed but the reaction
--judging from my own email-- by people with a keen interest
in, and some knowledge of, Egypt was rarely positive. No one
believed that the tombs were really opened for the first time
(they weren't) and everyone was disappointed that us heretics
(Bauval, Hancock, myself) were accorded so little time, while
Richard Hoagland was given rather more time (to make a variety
of unwarranted, utterly hypothetical Mars/Giza connections)
as were the Cayce prophecies.
Fox
had ample interesting footage to draw upon, including a spirited
debate on various elements of the 'lost civilization' theory
between Zahi Hawass, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval and myself,
picturesquely recorded at an ancient coffee shop in the camera-friendly
Khan-el-Khalili bazaar. Presumably (and wrongly) reckoning that
its audience couldn't handle the intellectual content of the
debate, all of it was edited out at some point, as was most
of the other footage Fox had shot earlier in individual interviews
with us. On the upside, no lasting damage was done, Fox was
pleased with the high ratings the show logged, which reinforces
the accurate network perception that ancient Egypt = high ratings,
which in turn paves the way for other, less intellectually barren
projects.
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Yonaguni Follow-Up
As a follow-up to our dive off the coast of the Yonaguni island
in 1997, Robert Schoch returned there in late summer of 1998
to continue his research. Bad weather severely hampered the
diving, but in examining the major underwater formation again,
as well as several other sites, Schoch found no reason to alter
his/our earlier negative conclusions. However spectacular the
sites may appear in the photos, he remains convinced that they
are entirely natural, and can be wholly explained in terms of
the nature of the rock when subjected to the long term action
of ocean currents, tides, and typhoons. We'd both like it to
be otherwise, but at the moment Schoch has found no evidence
that would suggest working by human hands.
Those
following the 'Lost Civilization' controversy will be interested
in Robert Schoch's new book, Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist
Looks at Catastrophes & Ancient Civilizations. Schoch
meticulously and critically examines the evidence for and against
the various explanations that have been put forward to explain
the cause of the acknowledged catastrophe that brought on the
demise of the last ice age. This book is a state of the art
statement on catastrophe theory. It will be published in May,
1999 by Harmony Books.
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Atlantis Rising
A Ten Part Documentary Series for Television.
Written
by myself and my colleague Paul William Roberts, this ambitious
project looks at all aspects of the 'Lost civilization' controversy,
studies its implications for our view of history , draws the
parallels between the ancient metaphysical doctrines and the
latest discoveries in leading edge cosmology that look unmistakably
like the ancient doctrine expressed in contemporary scientific
language and speculates on the impact all of this will have
in the next couple of decades as The Church of Progress loses
its grip on the world mind and is gradually replaced by a new,
sound, and constructive doctrine, nothing less than a true Renaissance.
The
project has come very close to contract signing over the past
couple of years. Initially, Disney wanted to do it (as a four
part series) but as everyone in the industry knows, Mickey Mouse
is really Wally Wolf in mouse clothing. We were disinclined
to hand over our life's work for a minimum wage return, just
to have Mickey on the logo and so turned down the deal. Several
other offers from other independent producers were also deemed
unacceptable, but a new production company has recently expressed
keen interest in getting behind it. We have high hopes that
this time it will happen and will be ready to celebrate the
New Millennium not so very long after the clock strikes 2000.
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The Cairo Debate
Initially scheduled for February
1999, rescheduled for May 8-16th, 1999, and, (as this written),
again postponed and re-rescheduled for Sept 23-Oct. 1, 1999
this unique event (if it happens!) will pit the main proponents
of the Lost civilization school (myself, Robert Bauval, Graham
and Robert Schoch, along with Egyptologist Dr. Edmund Meltzer
and archeo-astronomer Dr. Archie Roy) against Dr. Zahi Hawass,
astronomer Ed Krupp (author of Ancient Skies and many
other books on ancient astronomy) and other orthodox scholars.
The week-long event will be devoted to open debate, and to on-site
examination of the evidence and counter evidence as well as
excursions to the Cairo Museum, Sakkara and other local areas
of major interest.
For
further information contact:Visions Travel: Tel (US) 1-800-888-5509,
or 310-568-0138 or e-mail.
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The Temple Of Man
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's masterwork,
The Temple of Man, finally appears in English in an inspired
two volume translation by Deborah Lawlor and an equally inspired
production job by the publishers. This book is, in my opinion,
the most important single work of scholarship of this, or any
other century. It is a work of pure genius; the more you study
it, the more it seems impossible for a single man to have accomplished.
Starting with a single revelatory observation in Egypt in 1937,
Schwaller de Lubicz, over the course of some 20 years, was able
to piece together the sacred science of the ancients and present
it in rigorously documented fashion.
This
is not bedtime reading, but readers willing to put in the effort
to study it in depth will finally understand why ancient Egypt
was regarded by the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome
as the source of all wisdom. Because it was! Readers will come
to understand why it has been opposed so virulently by the priesthood
of our own Church of Progress and they will also learn to appreciate
the manner in which civilized human beings once comported themselves;
why Egypt, even in ruins, remains a magnet for travelers; why
its temples, tombs and pyramids still, and rightfully, provoke
our awe and wonder.
The Temple of Man, by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz,
tr. by Deborah Lawlor, Inner Traditions International, $195
-- but available steeply discounted through Amazon, Barnes &
Noble and other major discount book chains.
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