32 - Atlantis Rising Magazine Library · The Nuragic civilization is thought to have been wiped out by a tsu-nami around 1175 B.C. As with most other Mediterranean-area Atlantis theories,

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42 Supernatural:the World ofGrahamHancockThe Best-SellingWriter Speaks Out

44 Gnosis & theSecrets ofSolomon’sTemple

46 AppreciatingAncientAdvancementJohn Michell onOur Lost Legacy

48 Astrology50 Videos57 Puzzle

29 The ProjectSerpo Saga

32 Lost City of theFar NorthThe Strange Caseof Ipiutak

34 Ancient HighTechnologyHas the EvidenceBeen Ignored?

38 The Pavarottiof ChantA Conversationwith Musician andPilgrim Krishna Das

40 Doris Lessingand AtlantisUnderstandingAncient Origins

6 Letters

10 Early Rays

17 Report fromthe FrontOur Lost “TrueElectric Age”

18 The ForbiddenArchaeologist

23 TelephoneTelepathyNew ScientificProof for ESP

24 The Grail inAmericaA Closer Look atthe Secret Charles II / VirginiaConnection

ANCIENTMYSTERIES

FUTURE SCIENCEUNEXPLAINEDANOMALIES

®

PUBLISHER & EDITORJ. Douglas Kenyon

CONTRIBUTORSSol Aris

John ChambersMichael CremoPhilip GardinerJulie GillentineFrank JosephLen KastenJohn KettlerPeter King

Glenn KreisbergCynthia LoganJeane ManningMarsha Oaks

Carly Svamvour

COVER ARTRyan Hammer

(Based on photo bySantha Faiia)

GRAPHICSRyan Hammer

Randy HaraganDenis Ouellette

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he well-known game of arguing thatyour own country or its environs was

once the site of Atlantis is still afoot. Overthe years nearly every place on earth hasbeen entered in the Atlantis sweepstakes.From Emanuel Swedenborg’s Sweden, to theclaims of many anglophiles for the BritishIsles, from arguments for South and NorthAmerica to the Mediterranean, all have foundnew and chauvinistic ways to reinterpretPlato. The latest comes from the Italian is-land of Sardinia, where, not surprisingly, anItalian is making the argument.

Journalist Sergio Frau has written a bookThe Pillars of Hercules on the subject andseems to have excited quite a bit of interestin some sectors. In fact the United Nationscultural heritage body UNESCO staged anOctober symposium in Paris to suggest that

T

urkey and Syria are both providing new evidence for the greaterantiquity of civilization, and establishment researchers are once

again being challenged to reexamine their assumptions and readjusttheir timelines.

In October, archaeologists reported finding a building in Syriadating to 8,800 B.C. and in the meantime artifacts in Turkey havebeen dated to 10,000 B.C.

The Syrian building is a large circular affair near the town of Ja’deon the banks of the Euphrates. Eric Coqueugniot, a French archaeol-ogist who led the investigating team, says the building takes theshape of a bull’s head and apparently served a ceremonial purpose.Many multicolored geometrical paintings, said to be the oldest everfound, decorate the building.

At Gobeki Tepe in Turkey, researchers believe they have made dis-coveries even more dramatic. Unearthed has been what could be atemple older than the one in Syria. The sculpture of some sort of rep-tile or dragon is carved in great detail, and many standing stones onthe site bear neolithic carvings. Klaus Schmidt, the lead archaeolo-gist, thinks the artwork tells the story of the Garden of Eden, whichhe believes represented the transition from hunter-gatherer toagrarian society.

Like recent discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay in India and else-where, the new finds provide evidence for advanced culture before theend of the last ice age, but some suspect that despite all the drama,we have, so far, barely scratched the surface of the ancient records.

T

he ancient Thracians, according to theIliad, were allies of the

Trojans. Now a new dis-covery in in Bulgaria in-dicates they were alsobrain surgeons.

A skull unearthednear the city of Svilen-grad contains a pre-cisely cut hole whichappears to have been forsurgery. Dated from 2500to 1800 B.C. the skull is saidto be the first evidence of suchmedical practices from Thracian times.

Archaeologist Georgi Nehrizov, whoheaded the team of researchers, announcedthe discovery.

Other ancient skulls with similar surgicalholes have turned up in other regionsthroughout the world. Recently discoveriesin Pakistan and China show the ancientswere capable of drilling very small and veryprecise holes in teeth and elsewhere, as longas 9,000 years ago. Maybe the primitive ster-eotyping of our ancient ancestors can soonbe replaced with a little respect.

T

EARLY RAYS

NEW CHALLENGES TO CIVILIZATION’S AGE

Prehistoric dragon inTurkey (photo:

www.thefirstpost.co.uk)

Workers clear ancient Syrian site

the idea is worth serious consideration.Plato was the earliest writer to mention

Sardinia. The island was destroyed by a nat-ural disaster which some believe was a tsu-nami in the third or fourth century B.C.Frau’s main point is that Alexandrian geogra-pher and librarian Erathothenes, in the thirdand second centuries B.C., made a mistake onthe location of the Pillars of Hercules, whichbecame the basis of our modern designationfor the spot. Frau says the actual Pillars ref-erenced by Plato were, in fact, on Sicily. Iftrue, then Sardinia, he says, becomes the ob-vious location for Atlantis.

Frau believes the bronze age Nuragicpeople, whose well-known ruins still exist,were the Atlanteans. The Nuragic civilizationis thought to have been wiped out by a tsu-nami around 1175 B.C.

As with most other Mediterranean-areaAtlantis theories, such as the Santorini hy-pothesis popularized by Jacques Cousteau,Frau’s case does not take seriously many ofPlato’s original Atlantean details such as theisland kingdom’s great size (larger thanLibya and Asia Minor combined) and greatantiquity (more than nine millennia beforePlato). By thus discounting Plato’s actual ac-count, Frau makes himself acceptable to or-thodox scholars, who scoff at any argumentwhich takes Plato at his word. The irony isthat despite the near universal rejection ofPlato’s literal Atlantis by mainstream sci-ence, the campaign to explain him away hasnever stopped.

Nuragic Ruins

THRACIANSWERE BRAINSURGEONS

ThracianCoin

10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 61

SARDINIA? SARDINIA? SARDINIA? SARDINIA?ATLANTIS ON

SARDINIA?



p until recently scientists have insistedthat the Americas were populated by mi-

grants from Siberia to Alaska across a landbridge which once joined the American andAsian continents. The great march was be-lieved to have occurred about 10,000 yearsago. The theory has become something likeholy writ in some scientific circles. Now itturns out that at the time the influx is said tohave occurred, the Bering Strait was actuallyunder water, virtually ruling out any suchscenario.

An October report in the journal Geologysays that new evidence shows that the BeringStrait flooded into the Arctic Ocean about11,000 years ago. In other words, about 1,000years earlier than generally believed, so at

ANCIENT-SEA-LEVEL STUDYCHALLENGES ORTHODOXY

the time all the traffic is said to have oc-curred, the land bridge was long gone. Thenew findings are based on the best and mostcomplete core samples ever taken in theregion.

The time of the flooding, coincidentally,corresponds almost exactly with the datePlato—long before modern ice-age theorywas established—gave for the sinking of At-lantis.

The region overlapping the two conti-nents, which, 11,000 years ago, was abovewater, has been call Beringia and much in-teresting speculation about its lost peoplesand their culture continues to this day. Formore on this, read Peter King’s article on thelost city of Ipiutak elsewhere in this issue.

Archaeologists are calling it thelargest “Aztec Idol” ever, and

at 12 and a half tons the stone slaband statue of the god Tialtecuhtlijust unearthed in Mexico City iscertainly spectacular as suchthings go. Perhaps even more in-triguing, though, was the news re-leased in October that the entirestructure may be the door to ahidden chamber. More, possiblygrisly, information to follow.

The site is called the TemploMayor and was used by the Aztecs for cere-monial purposes, primarily human sacrifice.Historians report that at one ceremony in1487, thousands of victims were sacrificed—their still-beating hearts torn from theirchests. The new find is perhaps the most sig-

nificant Aztec find ever but it wasonly last year that scientists founda 2,600-year-old, 30-ton statue inTamtoc, San Luis Potosi be-longing to a much older culture.

Some scholars believe that theincrease of human sacrifice thatcame with the latter stages of theMayan civilization and which ac-celerated to a near-frenzied pacewith the Aztecs was a symptom ofadvancing societal decay, and oneof the reasons that the Aztecs

were so easily conquered by a handful ofSpanish conquistadores. Some have arguedthat the widespread resort to abortion todayis an comparable indication of decay inmodern society, possibly foreshadowing asimilarly catastrophic result.

GIANT AZTEC STATUE FOUND

U




Notes from

Michael A. Cremowww.mcremo.com

Continued on Page 20

COMMENT

LATE-BREAKING STORIESwe’re following on the internet

• Clairvoyant Led Americansto Saddam

Uri Geller, who says he workedfor the Central IntelligenceAgency during the Cold War,said his information camefrom a high-level source in-volved in U.S. paranormalprograms.http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyid=2006-11-06T111647Z_01_L06698651_RTRIDST_0_OUKOE-UK-IRAQ-SADDAM-G

ELLER.XML

• Engineers Building FirstSpace Supercomputer

HAL may soon be getting somecompany. But unlike the fa-mous computer companion inStanley Kubrick’s “2001: ASpace Odyssey,” the firstspace-based supercomputer—so described because it will beby far the most powerful com-puter in space—is alreadynearing reality.http://physorg.com/news810960

07.html

• Long-Discredited Theoryon Dead Sea Scrolls FindsNew Support

Norman Golb, a feisty Univer-sity of Chicago professor, haslong argued that the scrollsare a sort of library of writingsby different Jewish sectshidden near a site known asQumran to protect the textsfrom Roman invaders. No onebelieved him until now.http://www.thothweb.com/artic

le4109.html


ecently there’s been a lotof publicity about the dis-covery of a fairly com-plete skeleton of an Aus-

tralopithecus afarensis infant, andseveral of my correspondents haveasked me about its significance. Iwill comment on that, but firstsome background.

A preliminary description ofthe skeleton was published in Na-ture (September 21, 2006), andsince then the media have beenabuzz with stories about this hom-inin (the hominins are the taxo-nomic group that includes hu-mans and their supposedancestors). The skeleton was actu-ally discovered in 2000 in Ethi-opia. For years, scientists haveworked to extract the small, fragilebones from the rock in which theywere embedded, and that work isnot yet completed. The discoverershave attributed the skeleton to thesame species as the famous austra-lopithecine Lucy, hence all theheadlines about “Lucy’s Baby.”

For those who accept the Darwinian evolutionary account of human origins, Lucy’sBaby is one more piece to fit into the grand puzzle of the evolutionary account of modernhuman origins. First, a few minor points. According to the National Geographic web site,Lucy’s Baby (3.3 million years) is older than Lucy (3.2 million years) by about 100,000years, so the name Lucy’s Baby is not really accurate. It should be the other way around.Lucy is Lucy’s Baby’s Baby. Some scientists, after looking closely at the pelvic structure ofLucy, have concluded that Lucy is actually a male (Science 24 November 1995, pp. 1297-1298). So perhaps we should be talking about Luke’s Baby rather than Lucy’s Baby. Finally,as I documented in my book Forbidden Archaeology (pp. 739-741), many evolutionists, in-cluding Richard Leakey, have at times argued that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afa-rensis, is an artificial concoction of the bones of two or more hominin species. So maybeLucy and Lucy’s Baby are representatives of a phantom species.

But for the sake of this discussion let’s stick with the opinions that the species nameAustralopithecus afarensis really does refer to some hominin type that really did existthree million years ago, that Lucy was female, and that the child’s skeleton represents aninfant of the same species to which Lucy belonged. Even among evolutionists there are dif-fering opinions about Lucy. Some evolutionists believe that Lucy was in the direct line tomodern humans, and that would mean Lucy’s Baby was also. This is reflected in the scien-tific and popular accounts of Lucy’s Baby, which almost all characterize her as “our an-

R

Australopithecus afarensis family on the move


Whatever Lucy’s Baby Was, It’s Not My Ancestor

UnpluggingHAL in“2001”




THE PSI CONNECTION

coverage at both ends, to prevent cheatingvia any number of means, these results havenot only held up but have been duplicated bythe University of Amsterdam.

Contrast this with the old school tech-niques now known to be excellent psi killers,what with glowering, intimidating scientistsin white lab coats and sterile labs, boringmanual and later mechanized, then compu-terized die rolling and coin flipping, staringat those Zener cards (square, circle, star,etc.), and so forth. Even worse were theGanzfeld experiments in which the receiverwas in sensory deprivation with eyelids cov-ered first in cotton, then blacked out halfping pong balls, listening to piped in whitenoise on headphones and bathed in red lightwhile trying to determine which image basedon randomly selected video was being tele-pathically sent.

The “observer effect” in psi research isnow well known. Those researchers who areopen to psi or favor it report results betterthan chance. Those agnostic on it run basi-cally at chance. Those who don’t believe init or are actively hostile consistently get re-sults well below even chance. The observereffect has long been the bane of truly effec-tive psi research.

Then Along Came SheldrakeArmed with that rarest of commodities in

psi research, real university funding, in theform of the top source in Britain, a Perrot-Warrick Scholarship (chartered as “abso-lutely for psychical research”) from the pre-stigious Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K.,Dr. Sheldrake essentially took the entire pre-vious approach to psi research and threw itout the window, replacing it with a simpleapproach which took the research out of psikilling lab environments and put it into theplace where most people feel safe and re-laxed, their homes, therefore are best able toperform psychically. As study after study hasshown, telepathy is most often found be-tween people who are close. Two well recog-nized examples have even found their wayinto TV and film: the link between twins andthe link between either a wife and her hus-band or a mother and her child, famouslyseen in any number of war movies in whichthe mother or wife wakes up screaming inthe night knowing that her dear one hasbeen killed, this days before the dreaded WarDepartment telegram arrives.

Further, he almost single-handedlymoved psi research to the telephone, E-mail,and text messaging, not only taking unprece-dented advantage of burgeoning moderntechnology, but by doing so tapping directlyto that pool of boundless energy and un-


TELEPHONETELEPATHY

Skeptical Outrage Notwithstanding,Rupert Shelldrake Seems to BeWinning the Argument for ESP

• BY JOHN KETTLERhe Holy Grail of psi research haslong been a simple, readily repli-cable experiment which yielded sta-tistically significant results, prefer-

ably way beyond mere chance. Guess what?Iconoclast biologist, scientific free thinkerand author Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, perhapsbest known for his morphogenetic theory,which holds that matter is a kind of flesh ap-plied over an existing energy skeleton in alllife (as perhaps exquisitely exemplified in thefamous Kirlian photograph of a cut leaf) ap-pears to have done just that, in the process,pioneering large-scale psi research usingmodern-day household and personalelectronics.

In an elegantly simple experiment usinghousehold phones without caller ID and asample pool of four people, all emotionallyclose to the person (receiver) who must saybefore answering the call who is calling,where statistical expectation on blindguessing would be 25%, Dr. Sheldrake isconsistently getting, based on hundreds oftrials, 45% correct answers among his re-ceivers, nearly twice as good as randomchance. This is astounding by both psi re-search and standard scientific standards, somuch so that Dr. Sheldrake published an in-vited paper, “Testing for Telepathy in Con-nection with E-mails” in the peer-reviewedscientific journal Perceptual and MotorSkills, 101, 771-786 (by Rupert Sheldrakeand Pamela Smart), after publishing a seriesof papers on telephone telepathy in parapsy-chology journals, such as the Journal of Par-apsychology and the Journal of the Societyfor Psychical Research.

For a complete list of his readable onlineand/or downloadable scientific papers, pleasesee: http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Pa-pers /papers/telepathy/index.html.

Even with full experiment duration video

TIllustration by

Randy Haragan




SECRET HISTORY

great deal of literature has seen lightin recent years about the voyage ofthe “Holy Grail" from Europe toAmerica. The idea of a Templar

Fleet sailing the oceans and carrying theirtreasure trove across the Atlantic was exten-sively researched by Baigent and Lee for their1989 “The Temple and the Lodge.” Many au-thors had picked up the theme, tracing anddocumenting the ability of the originalKnights Templar to perform such a feat, asthey escaped from the continent on theirships in Spain and southern France, after thesudden demise of their order in 1307.

Much of this research focuses on SirHenry St. Clair (Sinclair) of Scotland, whosegrandson William built the Roslyn Chapel,and who is said to have voyaged in the late14th century to Oak Island in Nova Scotia,and buried “something” there in the famed“Money Pit.” This location was later also con-nected with two famous contemporariesfrom 16th century England, similarly named“Francis”—Drake and Bacon, one a sea-farerand explorer, the other a philosopher andmystic.

Francis Drake claimed many of the landswhich subsequently became the U.S. andCanada for the Crown of England, includingthe entire East Coast with Oak Island. Talesof his hidden treasures across the regionspur many adventurers even today. AndFrancis Bacon is said to have viewed the

A“virgin land” of the newly discoveredcontinent as the perfect place to prac-tice his mystical philosophy. His work“The New Atlantis,” published a short timebefore his death in 1626, was a utopian vi-sion of a benevolent kingdom.

According to many scholars of the sub-ject, Bacon planned to implement his ideasin America. In 1606 he drafted the charter ofthe Virginia Company, which later oversawthe Jamestown settlement on the east coastand the development of Virginia lands. ThusBacon personally had a very big hand in thefirst permanent and successful white settle-ment in the north of the new continent, onefrom which the nation of the United Stateseventually grew.

In 1610 Bacon was granted land in New-foundland by King James I, which includedOak Island. Many researchers believe thatthis gave him a perfect opportunity to studythe Sinclair “Money Pit” location at length,and enabled him to deeply extend its under-ground levels and secret passages, in whichhe eventually hid his own treasure—hismost secret knowledge and reportedly some“magical” artifacts.

The man possibly most responsible inmodern times for spreading the idea ofBacon’s New Atlantis as the embodiment ofthe “Holy Grail” in America, was the great20th century mystic and occultist Manly P.Hall. In his “Secret Destiny of America”(1958) Hall noted that “For more than threethousand years, secret societies have laboredto create the background of knowledge nec-

essary to the establishment of an enlight-ened democracy among the nations of theworld ... and they still exist, as the Order ofthe Quest ... All were searching for one andthe same thing under a variety of rituals andsymbols. That one thing was a perfected so-cial order, Plato’s commonwealth, the gov-ernment of the philosopher-king.”

Hall contends that Bacon and other in-fluential Elizabethan figures of his youngeryears, like Drake, Walter Raleigh and JohnDee, all belonged to that secret order andsought to perpetuate their ancient traditionon the new “unoccupied” continent. Theorder is said to have been “Rosicrucian,” inthe nature of its symbolism and mystical be-liefs. This is of course a very interesting con-nection for Grail seekers, because thefounder of the modern Rosicrucian Order inmedieval times is said to have been Jean DeGisors, also believed by some to be thefounder of the now famous Priory of Sion,the “guardians of the Grail.”

The voluminous research conducted onthis topic leaves little doubt that “some kind”of an esoteric doctrine is very likely to havelain at the foundation of the United States.In addition to the Baconian philosophy andsimilar doctrinal evidence, this theory also

• BY SOL ARIS

A Closer Lookat the Charles II /

Virginia Connection


Virginia Connection


Virginia Connection


Virginia Connection


Virginia Connection



• BY LEN KASTEN


“I really found my faith when I learnedthat the government was opposed to thefilm. If NASA took the time to write me atwenty-page letter, then I knew there mustbe something happening.”

Steven Spielberg

n the movie, Close Encounters of theThird Kind, written and directed bySteven Spielberg and released in 1977,an alien spaceship lands, by pre-

arrangement with the U.S. government, on ahigh mesa called The Devil’s Tower in a re-mote corner of Wyoming and an ambassado-rial exchange takes place. A single alien dis-embarks and is escorted away, presumably toa secret site. Then, twelve American astro-nauts in orange jumpsuits and industrial-strength sunglasses, with duffel bags slungover their shoulders, ten men and twowomen, march into the spacecraft to bewhisked away to the alien home planet. Inthe previous scene, they are blessed by a cler-gyman, who refers to them as “pilgrims.”Was this just some inventive touch con-ceived by Spielberg, or did he base it onsomething real? Since it is now widely be-lieved in UFO circles that a pre-arrangedalien landing did take place at or near Hol-loman Air Force Base in New Mexico in Aprilof 1964, it seems not unreasonable, to truebelievers, to suspect that Spielberg may havehad an inside track on classified information,and that the ambassadorial exchange with analien race may also have been a real event.

Now, in what could be an unprecedentedbreak with government secrecy policy, a fewformer military insiders have come forwardto say that the exchange was indeed real, andactually took place almost exactly as depictedin the movie. Under the auspices of a De-fense Intelligence Agency program referredto as Operation Crystal Knight, or what isnow being called “Project Serpo,” it has beenclaimed that twelve astronauts left the earthin July of 1965, and were taken to the planetSerpo in the constellation Zeta Reticuliaboard an alien spaceship, as part of an ex-change program. The bulk of the informa-tion about this program is said to have beendribbled out to the world via 21 e-mails froman individual referred to only as “Anony-mous” to a closed circle of high-level UFOinsiders beginning on November 2, 2005.Anonymous says that he was formerly asenior officer of the Defense IntelligenceAgency, and is now the official spokesmanfor a group of six DIA personnel, three re-tired and three still currently employedthere. It was decided by the group, andagreed to by Anonymous, that a web siteshould be created to publish all the e-mailson the Internet. One of the researchers inthe group, Bill Ryan from England, volun-teered for the job, and so beganwww.serpo.org, what has now developed intothe official source for all Serpo-related infor-mation, including updates from Ryan, a link

SECRET GOVERNMENT

I

to a public forum, and supporting e-mailsfrom other insiders who had knowledge ofthe Serpo project.

For the UFO community at least, the sitehas become something of a sensation. Forwhat it’s worth this is the story offered onthe site.

A Presidential Decree The tale told by Anonymous is indeed

amazing. If it is true, then, at a minimum,the entire history of the government pre-tense of ignorance about UFOs and extrater-restrials is completely blown away. Not sur-prisingly, it all begins with Roswell.

Anonymous says that the Roswell crashdid occur, but that it involved two alien

craft. The first was found relatively intact,embedded into a hillside southwest of Co-rona, New Mexico on July 5, 1947 by a uni-versity archaeology team. This site is about75 miles northwest of Roswell, and is fa-mously referred to as the “Roswell crash” be-cause all the remnants of the crash werebrought to the Roswell Army Air Force base,where the military took control of the infor-mation. The second crash site wasn’t discov-ered until August, 1949. Another downedcraft, it is said, was found almost completelyintact at a remote place outside of Datil, NewMexico by two ranchers. Evidently, the twospacecraft had collided somewhere near the

Art by Randy Haragan

Did the Director of “CloseEncounters of the ThirdKind” Know SomethingWe Don’t?




ANCIENT MYSTERIES

Cave Drawings at Lascaux, France

• BY GLENN KREISBERG

Graham Hancock (Photo by Santha Faiia)


The Best-SellingAuthor Talksabout HisExplorations ina New Domain

The Best-SellingAuthor Talksabout HisExplorations ina New Domain




Editor’s Caveat: In the following inter-view, author Graham Hancock makes anumber of arguments about the reality ofthe invisible world and the strategies whichhave been employed by some to gain accessto these realms. Regarding the use of chemi-cals, drugs, or so-called natural psychoactiveplant extracts, to achieve the desired spiri-tual awakening (what some reductionistshave termed ‘altered states of conscious-ness’), we would like to make a couplepoints. Atlantis Rising does not endorse anysuch technique, in fact, we strenuously ob-ject. We believe that the opening of the spiri-tual centers which leads to true enlighten-ment is best achieved by natural meanswithout resort to chemical assistance,whether advocated by shaman or priest.This, we believe, is an essential messagefrom all great spiritual and mystical teach-ings of East and West. Moreover, there isvery good reason to believe that the use ofany form of hallucinogen for the purpose ofspiritual awakening incurs the risk of dam-aging the natural spiritual centers in such away as to abort a process, which would oth-erwise, with sincere application, in duecourse, lead to the desired liberation. Thedifficulties which may be encountered alongthe way, the wise ones have always said, arefor our instruction and the strengthening ofhearts, and are best overcome by spiritualmeans, not by avoidance or short cut. Weunderstand the impatience which some mayfeel with such a process, but we believe theend result is well worth whatever price maybe required of us. Having said all that, in theinterest of fully informing our readers on theissues involved, we still think that GrahamHancock, for whom we have great respect,has earned the right to have his views on thesubject heard.

JDK

or nearly 20 years Graham Hancockhas been investigating a forgottenepisode in human history, searchingfor evidence of a lost civilization. His

many best-selling books, including Finger-prints of the Gods, Sign of the Seal, and Un-derworld have been seminal works in thefields of alternative history and archaeologyproviding scientists and researchers withfacts, evidence and theories that challengeconventional thinking about human originsand push current theories in profound newdirections.

At the Conference on Precession and An-cient Knowledge (CPAK) this year held at theUniversity of California at Irvine, I met withGraham to discuss his most recent book Su-pernatural: Meeting with the AncientTeachers of Mankind. This new work is a de-parture from Hancock’s previous works,delving more into investigations of the originof human consciousness rather than civiliza-tion. Spurred on by his university studies inAnthropology and a desire to stay fresh andforward thinking, Hancock’s research againchallenges current accepted theories re-garding the dawn of modern human thought.

His first mystery explored: Why were we

so incredibly dull? Here, where Hancock’sviews usually oppose traditional academics,he found himself surprisingly in agreementwith conventional points of view. The fact is,humans were incredibly unproductive for avery long time; this is no mystery, the fossilrecord is clear. But why? And how did thatcircumstance change so abruptly some fortythousand years ago? Hancock explains “Itonly really becomes mysterious after 40,000years ago when, as I characterize it, it’s asthough a light had been switched on in thehuman brain all around the world at onceand the entire suite of behavior that we char-acterize as modern human behavior was in-troduced.” These characteristics were not in-troduced when we became anatomicallymodern 200,000 years ago: they weren’t in-troduced until after 40,000 years ago andthat’s when you see lateral thinking, crea-tivity, spiritual and religious ideas all intro-duced virtually overnight. At the same timethat this happens, these incredible paintings,the art of upper Paleolithic Europe, the caveart, the rock art of tribal and indigenous cul-tures appear all around the world datingroughly from the same period. Hancock real-ized that was a mystery that he wanted topursue. “I wanted to understand why wewent through six million years of doingnothing and suddenly changed, and why itwasn’t connected to any anatomical change.It was a behavioral change obviously de-riving from some change in humanconsciousness.”

Conventional theories more or less assertthat in the course of evolution, humanscame down from the trees and began to walkupright, which freed our hands to create.And what we created were tools, which wecontinued to refine. So, according to scien-tists and researchers, what differentiated hu-mans from other forms of animals was ourability to walk upright on two legs and in-vent and use tools. Hancock found that ex-planation lacking, and he is not alone in con-sidering this an out-moded theory. It’s nowwidely recognized that other animals, suchas the crow, walk on two legs and use toolsto accomplish tasks. What actually separateshumans from other animals, Hancock as-serts, is the ability to express themselvesthrough symbolism and creativity.

In his own research, Hancock began no-ticing a similarity between ancient rock andcave art and the images and descriptions pro-vided by shamans and healers from indige-nous cultures, both past and present. He un-derstood this correlation to hold a deepermeaning. “The creators of this fabulous caveart must have experienced altered states ofconsciousness. And while not a soul fromthat era exists today to tell how and why theymade their images, the images themselvesspeak to the nature of their origin andmeaning. We see therianthropes, half man,half beast, in all these cases.” Therianthropescomes from the Greek “therion” meaning“wild beast” and “arthropos,” meaning“man.” Hancock states, “There’s certaincharacteristic imagery that people in alteredstates always see. That’s true whether it’s in

modern medical research where subjects aregiven hallucinogens or reports from modernshaman who claims to travel to other worldsin search of spiritual truth and enlighten-ment. Images of half-human intelligent be-ings, combined with abstract geometricalpatterns, are examples of images universallyseen in altered states of consciousness anduniversally not seen ordinarily in daily life.”How can we explain this commonality be-tween the images depicted in cave art, theimages that shamans reportedly encounterand the images experienced in medical re-search experiments?

In the past twenty years there has been agreat breakthrough in the research sur-rounding ancient prehistoric cave art,proving that there exists a remarkable simi-larity in cave art found around the world. InSupernatural, Hancock superbly documentsthese findings as part of his exploration ofthis great mystery. Paying tribute to thework of South African Professor David Lewis-Williams, Hancock continues: “And really,David’s latest work in this field has absolutelyestablished beyond any serious shadow of adoubt that these universal features in rockand cave art are to be explained by realizingthat the artists were shamans who exploredaltered states of consciousness.” That ledHancock to ask what it was that inspired theartists to make those paintings. When he re-alized that the very first credible paintings,the art of upper Paleolithic Europe, con-tained imagery that was painted not of natu-ralistic real life beings and events but of su-pernatural beings, Hancock began to feel toothat this was a really fascinating area topursue.

Known for almost literally throwing him-self headfirst into his research—Hancockand his wife photographer Santha Faiialogged over 2000 dives researching Under-world—Hancock headed to South America tointerview shamans and document their expe-riences. He quickly realized that the sha-manic life revolved around ingesting a hallu-cinogenic brew called ayahuasca, producedfrom a combination of jungle plants. Thepsychoactive ingredient in the ayahuasca isDMT or NN-diemethyltryptamine. This com-pound, found naturally in plants and fungiaround the world, is also produced by thehuman Pineal Gland located near the centerof our brains. Interestingly, the ancients re-ferred to this gland as the “seat of the soul”or the gland through which the souls entersthe body and DMT has been dubbed “thespirit molecule” for the compound’s possibleconnection to our state of consciousness. Infact, Hancock states, “Ayahuasca is the hallu-cinogenic brew that is used by more thanseventy different cultures in the Amazonjungle. Ayawasca means the vine of the souland the vine of the dead, and its primary pur-pose is for use entering the spirit world togain knowledge.”

That modern shamans access the spiritworld by drinking ayahuasca, Hancock be-lieves is a huge clue to the leap in conscious-

F





COMMENT

GNOSISthe Secrets of Solomon’s Temple

&Can Quantum Physics Help Us Understand Mystical Experience?

• BY PHILIP GARDINER• BY PHILIP GARDINER


here is a journey that we all have totake—life. It is one of those thingsfrom which there is no escape and itis the root of most ancient myths,

fables and tales. In this context we open neweyes to the mysteries of our past and seethem with clearer vision.

We are born, it is generally thought, withno knowledge whatsoever other than someminor genetic memories, and many of ussimply follow the patterns that life and ourpeers throw at us. We subconsciously as-sume, it is argued, that we must follow inthe footsteps of our forefathers; to marry,have children, get a job and ride the com-mercial roller-coaster. There is seemingly noway out but most of us seem enthused, if notconfused, by the ride.

It all seems perfectly natural. We are,after all, it is generally believed, apes withless hair. We strive to be the alpha male andfemale; to fit in with the society or “tribe”that surrounds us which appears to be just alarger version of our selves—the creation ofour group of selves.

But, in the times long gone by, our an-cestors saw through it all and recognizedthat there was another way. They discoveredthat in order for man to elevate himselfabove the level of the grindstone, he neededto alter his internal dialogue. Man needed tounderstand himself and the forces that drivehim.

This unique understanding—that therecould be a higher goal for mankind, whethercollectively or individually—evolved intowhat we now call Gnosticism. Of course thisis a massive oversimplification and weshould not forget what we have been told bythe mystics—those who have experiencedwhat most would call otherworldly emotionsor visions. Also, regardless of popular percep-tion, the Christians were not the only Gnos-tics and mystics. Gnostic comes from the

Greek word gignoskein, meaning simply “toknow.” It was applied primarily to “one sectof so-called philosophers in the first ages ofChristianity.”

However, the term is now being usedmore loosely and I personally see the termslightly different than others and probably ina controversial light.

To me the Greek term implies all-knowledge. This is a kind of knowledgewhich might be gained by plugging one’smind into the worldwide web and being ableto download every single piece of data in aninstant. In the same way, the true Gnostic,much like the mystic, could understand allthings in a unique way. Whether this is themind tapping into the collective uncon-scious, the Akashic records, or any othername given to the process, does not matterfor the purpose of this article, the fact re-mains, it was believed. And because of thisbelief, physical manifestations of the internalbelief system emerged the world over. In thisway, the temples of man were exactly that—Temples of Man. Not forgetting that the veryword man means “mind.”

Gnosis, then, it seems to me, meansknowledge of the most esoteric kind, andthis is the story that has been hidden fromour eyes for too long. This is the truth of thesecret societies that we on the outside aresupposedly too worldly to comprehend.

The TempleSo, let us now try our best to compre-

hend the Temple of Solomon and in doingso, let us walk upon holy ground, troddenonly by the initiated.

In the years of my own searching therewere times when I would be found at the feetof the Magi, sitting and listening to the wisewords of the Sufi, joining in the debate atsome Freemasonic Lodge. All the time I waslearning and viewing the process with anopen ear and an open eye, and yet also bal-ancing it all with knowledge of modern-dayscience and reductionism as I understoodthem. And to me it appeared that both

worlds, the one of the esoteric and the one ofscience are useless apart—both are neededtoday if we are to truly understand and be-lieve.

And so down to the true meaning ofTemple of Solomon. Unfortunately,though,we are lacking in any archaeological evi-dence. What we are told is that in the 10thcentury B.C., the wise King Solomon erecteda great Temple to the Lord. Unfortunately, ifany of this is true, then it appears that it wasa temple which encompassed many pagan re-ligions.

According to Professor James Pritchardin his book, Solomon and Sheba (1974,p.35):

“.. the so-called cities of Megiddo, Gezerand Hazor, and Jerusalem themselves werein reality more like villages.. Within wererelatively small public buildings and poorlyconstructed dwellings with clay floors. Theobjects reveal a material culture which, evenby the standards of the ancient Near East,could not be judged sophisticated or luxu-rious. The ‘magnificence’ of the age of Sol-omon is parochial and decidedly lackluster,but the first book of Kings implies exactlythe opposite.”

In fact and in the bright light of day, whatwe actually have, and what most writers areafraid to say, is that there is no physical evi-dence whatsoever for Solomon’s Temple. Infact, we have no significant evidence for Sol-omon, other than these peculiar Biblicaltexts. Neither do we have any convincing evi-dence for the Queen of Sheba, or any of theother characters involved. Instead, there ismore depth than could ever be imagined,more meaning than we would dare to be-lieve.

John Michell in The Temple at Jeru-salem: A Revelation, gives us an insight intowhat may be the real meaning.:

“Legends of the Temple describe it as theinstrument of a mystical, priestly science, aform of alchemy by which oppositely

There is a journey that we all have totake—life. It is one of those thingsfrom which there is no escape and itis the root of most ancient myths,

fables and tales. In this context we open neweyes to the mysteries of our past and seethem with clearer vision.

We are born, it is generally thought, withno knowledge whatsoever other than someminor genetic memories, and many of ussimply follow the patterns that life and ourpeers throw at us. We subconsciously as-sume, it is argued, that we must follow inthe footsteps of our forefathers; to marry,have children, get a job and ride the com-mercial roller-coaster. There is seemingly noway out but most of us seem enthused, if notconfused, by the ride.

It all seems perfectly natural. We are,after all, it is generally believed, apes withless hair. We strive to be the alpha male andfemale; to fit in with the society or “tribe”that surrounds us which appears to be just alarger version of our selves—the creation ofour group of selves.

But, in the times long gone by, our an-cestors saw through it all and recognizedthat there was another way. They discoveredthat in order for man to elevate himselfabove the level of the grindstone, he neededto alter his internal dialogue. Man needed tounderstand himself and the forces that drivehim.

This unique understanding—that therecould be a higher goal for mankind, whethercollectively or individually—evolved intowhat we now call Gnosticism. Of course thisis a massive oversimplification and weshould not forget what we have been told bythe mystics—those who have experiencedwhat most would call otherworldly emotionsor visions. Also, regardless of popular percep-tion, the Christians were not the only Gnos-tics and mystics. Gnostic comes from the

Greek word gignoskein, meaning simply “toknow.” It was applied primarily to “one sectof so-called philosophers in the first ages ofChristianity.”

However, the term is now being usedmore loosely and I personally see the termslightly different than others and probably ina controversial light.

To me the Greek term implies all-knowledge. This is a kind of knowledgewhich might be gained by plugging one’smind into the worldwide web and being ableto download every single piece of data in aninstant. In the same way, the true Gnostic,much like the mystic, could understand allthings in a unique way. Whether this is themind tapping into the collective uncon-scious, the Akashic records, or any othername given to the process, does not matterfor the purpose of this article, the fact re-mains, it was believed. And because of thisbelief, physical manifestations of the internalbelief system emerged the world over. In thisway, the temples of man were exactly that—Temples of Man. Not forgetting that the veryword man means “mind.”

Gnosis, then, it seems to me, meansknowledge of the most esoteric kind, andthis is the story that has been hidden fromour eyes for too long. This is the truth of thesecret societies that we on the outside aresupposedly too worldly to comprehend.

The TempleSo, let us now try our best to compre-

hend the Temple of Solomon and in doingso, let us walk upon holy ground, troddenonly by the initiated.

In the years of my own searching therewere times when I would be found at the feetof the Magi, sitting and listening to the wisewords of the Sufi, joining in the debate atsome Freemasonic Lodge. All the time I waslearning and viewing the process with anopen ear and an open eye, and yet also bal-ancing it all with knowledge of modern-dayscience and reductionism as I understoodthem. And to me it appeared that both

worlds, the one of the esoteric and the one ofscience are useless apart—both are neededtoday if we are to truly understand and be-lieve.

And so down to the true meaning ofTemple of Solomon. Unfortunately,though,we are lacking in any archaeological evi-dence. What we are told is that in the 10thcentury B.C., the wise King Solomon erecteda great Temple to the Lord. Unfortunately, ifany of this is true, then it appears that it wasa temple which encompassed many pagan re-ligions.

According to Professor James Pritchardin his book, Solomon and Sheba (1974,p.35):

“.. the so-called cities of Megiddo, Gezerand Hazor, and Jerusalem themselves werein reality more like villages.. Within wererelatively small public buildings and poorlyconstructed dwellings with clay floors. Theobjects reveal a material culture which, evenby the standards of the ancient Near East,could not be judged sophisticated or luxu-rious. The ‘magnificence’ of the age of Sol-omon is parochial and decidedly lackluster,but the first book of Kings implies exactlythe opposite.”

In fact and in the bright light of day, whatwe actually have, and what most writers areafraid to say, is that there is no physical evi-dence whatsoever for Solomon’s Temple. Infact, we have no significant evidence for Sol-omon, other than these peculiar Biblicaltexts. Neither do we have any convincing evi-dence for the Queen of Sheba, or any of theother characters involved. Instead, there ismore depth than could ever be imagined,more meaning than we would dare to be-lieve.

John Michell in The Temple at Jeru-salem: A Revelation, gives us an insight intowhat may be the real meaning.:

“Legends of the Temple describe it as theinstrument of a mystical, priestly science, aform of alchemy by which oppositely

T



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32 - Atlantis Rising Magazine Library · The Nuragic civilization is thought to have been wiped out by a tsu-nami around 1175 B.C. As with most other Mediterranean-area Atlantis theories,