The Mystery of the Moving Egyptian Statue

Gotta say, this is a little weird.

Some have theorized that the statue is moving because of the vibrations of visitors' feet, which would explain why the rotation only happens during the day.

If the glass that the statue is resting on vibrates slightly, "the vibrating glass moves the statue in the same direction," Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, told LiveScience.

But that doesn't explain why the statue only began moving recently - or why it stops turning at 180 degrees, so that its back is facing the museum's visitors.

. . .

There's an inscription on the statue's back that asks for sacrificial offerings "consisting of bread, beer, oxen and fowl." No word on whether the museum has tried any of those.

Where is Scooby Doo when you need him?

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Must See Graham Hancock Lecture

Marvelous, marvelous, marvelous, presentation by Graham Hancock. I've read nearly all of Hancock's books and listened to countless interviews, and yet, there were delicious surprises in this lecture for me.

Needless to say, I totally agree with Hancock's take-down of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins uses his Oxford credentials to lend credibility to totally unscientific arguments. I tire of saying this but you cannot prove a negative; you can only fail to prove a positive.  But I think I've made my own views on this dogmatic, proselytizing atheist clear here, here, and here.

Hancock also gives a wonderful overview of the Gnostic beliefs in Sophia's error and how this resulted in the Demiurge and the Archons. He also explores the use of shamanic tools to free the mind from archontic manipulation.

He also spends a good bit of time on the correlations between alien abductions, shamanic experiences, and faerie lore. This is a theory that he also lays out well in Supernatural. Another lecture on the subject can be found here.

Of course his discussion of Egypt and the Giza pyramids is thorough and beautiful. That's to be expected.

This is a fairly long presentation and worth every minute of it. I was riveted.

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Gloria Steinem: Feminist, Writer, Pagan

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Hat-tip to The Wild Hunt on this intriguing little tid-bit. In an article about Gloria Steinem's collaboration with Egyptian-born feminist Mona Eltahawy, Steinem reveals that she considers herself a pagan.

Steinem’s father was Jewish, her mother was not, and she was raised without religion. She now calls herself a “pagan,” inspired by a trip down the Nile, where she witnessed how the ancient Egyptians incorporated nature into their worship.

Paganism is, compared to the "great religions," much more affirming of women and feminine power. Speaking for myself, it was the goddess imagery that drew me towards earth-based religions once upon a time. It was the only religious construct I'd encountered that didn't view women as lesser creatures. Not necessarily in modern applications of those religions, many of which are progressing on that score, but in the ancient scriptures, and peppered throughout in the language.

What I find most interesting, though, is that Steinem's conversion was inspired by ancient Egyptian religion. What is it about the power of those symbols? There is just something about Egypt that awakens us, in some cases painfully, to some greater awareness.

As discussed here, the great pyramids at Giza forced themselves into my consciousness many years ago triggering a sense of rekindled memory. Graham Hancock describes them as a kind of "alarm clock" possibly designed to wake us up to the mystery of our human origins and past life history. So I found this new add campaign from Toyota kind of interesting.

I'm currently reading Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval's The Master Game which posits a through-line from ancient Egypt, through the Gnostics, the Cathars, the Rosicrucians, the Masons, and more, that found expression in the French and American revolutions. As discussed here, Egyptian icons like Isis, Horus, and the pyramids were an important symbols to French revolutionaries.

Egypt represents the way out of our current morass. So it doesn't really surprise me that one of the greatest way-showers of the modern era would find faith and meaning there.

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Om the Dome for Fifty One Days

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William Henry has been, for some time, calling on people to "Om the Dome" of the US Capitol. Henry's interest in the underlying symbolism in DC architecture, particularly in the Capitol Rotunda, I've discussed previously here, here, and here. An attack on that symbolism is underway by far right Christian groups who are organizing a prayer event called DC40.

The Reformation Prayer Network, led by Cindy Jacobs, and the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, headed by John Benefiel, have joined together to produce a nation-wide event called “DC40.″  The goal of DC40 is to effect “eternal change in our nation’s capitol so our elected officials can govern from a new position of uncompromising light and understanding as we change the spiritual atmosphere over Washington DC forever.” This effort is variously named DC40, Forty Days of Light Over D.C., and 51 Days of Reformation Intercession.

The change DC40 wants to make is electing leaders who fear the Christian God and “find that compromise is not the way” as it is impossible to “compromise with unrighteousness.” The “uncompromising light” refers to a statement released by Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, which says God’s word should be the legal authority in the United States and Christians should acknowledge no other,  “no power to purpose or accept any compromise of the promises of God, and we declare illegal in the earth any action or any people, Nation or nations that undertake what is contradictory to the Word of God.”

Egypt Then and Now

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I have been watching the unfolding events in Egypt with horrified fascination. Of course, I've watched much of it from my sick bed. I'm not sure these things are unconnected.

The past few months have sure been interesting and I think we can safely say that the Time Monks were onto something with that tipping point prediction: apocalyptic bird and fish deaths, an assassination attempt resulting in multiple deaths (this occurred within 12 hours of the webbot prediction of when release language would "go vertical"), and the revelation of several secrets, some of which triggered revolutions. These are just the most attention grabbing of the bizarro events of that have transpired amidst a steady cascade of "release language." But this thing in Egypt has knocked me over... almost literally.

I have feelings about Egypt -- and the Giza pyramids -- that are indescribably intense. I know this is true of many people in my field. But my feelings were not always so clear or straight-forward. For a long time I felt a kind revulsion at ancient Egyptian imagery. I just did not feel drawn, which I thought odd. Obviously, Egyptian myth and imagery figures heavily into the lives of modern psychics. It's hard to escape if you spend any time in New Age bookstores and I spent a lot of my time in such stores throughout the late 80s and 90s.

My feelings began to shift when a friend gave me a book. It was published by the house she worked for and she figured it was new agey so I might enjoy it. The book was The Search for Omm Sety. I accepted it graciously, though I did not think I'd like it because, you know, Egyptian stuff. I was wrong. The book completely absorbed me. It did not send me on a mad search for all things Egyptian but I began a process of being slowly reoriented. Like Dorothy Eady (Omm Sety) I would have to confront my past life memories of Egypt. Unlike Eady, I did not find the process particularly enjoyable.

It began as snippets of memory. Some were unbelievably vivid. Many were traumatic. In one instance, I was so shaken by what I saw I had to abruptly stop my walk in the park, go home, and have a lie down. Many involved death, sometimes brutal, and the conscious awareness of being prepared for mummification. I began to understand why I had been so turned off to ancient Egyptian material. It was associated with so much past life trauma and memories my twentieth century mindset could not make sense of that I had completely shut down around it.

Some of my most vivid memories of Egypt, though, did not take place during what we know as dynastic Egypt. They took place in prehistory. The context of these memories is sketchy. But these are the memories I have been directed by spirit to turn over now.

The first of these memories emerged during a crystal therapy class. In the course of the class I had become so tired I could barely function. We had been passing around a ruby recordkeeper but I had found myself unable to let it go and pass it to the next person. It just wouldn't leave my hand. Then I had begun to fall into a trance and couldn't keep my eyes open. So the class put me on the mat and placed more crystals on and around me.

I began to see images of myself deep underground in a crystal cave. I seemed to be impossibly tall. I was aware that there was a war going on. The war was not confined to the earth. In the cave was some sort of portal or stargate. In addition to all the naturally formed quartz crystal that made up the walls of the cave, were carved crystal pyramid shapes of various heights and widths. I was aware that the energy of those crystals could be directed in various ways. One of those possibilities was to direct the energy at the stargate and close it. I had a great deal of ambivalence about this. It seemed like the least objectionable of many horrible possibilities. It was unclear to me if I was trying to close something out, keep something in, or both, but I knew at that moment that it was the only way to contain the war and minimize the damage. I was also aware of other consequences related to closing it but it was not clear what those were. I just know that I was deeply ambivalent. I did not want to close the stargate but I could not see another alternative. So I placed my hands behind the elongated crystal pyramids and directed the vibration at the portal. My memory of this brought up feelings of horrible regret. I feel like I have been carrying guilt about this forever.

When I came out of this experience I related it to my crystal therapy teacher. I told her that I was quite certain that it took place in the time of Atlantis but in what is historically, and currently, Egypt. Her opinion was that I was seeing the battle between Osiris and Set. I honestly don't know what that means. I know several versions of the myth but what they could represent in terms of actual events is beyond me. I only know that what was happening was a war that was fought on earth and in space and involved other civilizations on other planets. I know the war was long and devastating and was far from over. In fact, it was just heating up. There were no good options. This is not to say that my choice was the best one; only the best I could think of in that moment.

This memory came up one other time in vivid detail when I was reading a crystal that had been given to me by a client; again bringing up feelings of deep sorrow and regret.

I had another memory which I think is related while doing a vision quest. In that case I just saw raging war and chaos. I just kept muttering over and over "My Egypt. My Egypt," with tears streaming down my face.

The feelings of sadness and loss associated with these memories make me not want to talk or write about them but I have been directed that it's time. So I really have no choice. My sense is that what is happening there now marks some major energy shift in the region and in the world. How it relates to these memories I can't say, except to say that a revolution is taking place in one of the most important sacred spots on the planet. That can't help but have an impact on our collective psyche. And I know that I'm completely knocked out. So I'll stop there.

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Is it the Apocalypse?

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Okay. I say that a lot these days. But some mornings are so surreal I feel like I've gone to sleep in one world and woken in another. This is what I get for watching the news first thing in the morning. I should probably start with the coffee and work my way up to the news. Tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes...

We're having "the stormiest New Years Eve in 60 years." I just heard that on MSNBC. With the Northeast still digging out from under the massive, Christmas snowfall, and the political fallout from same, fresh blizzards are now burying other parts of the country. All sorts of fun events are occurring, such as this hundred car pile-up on North Dakota. Snow, at least, is seasonal. Tornadoes, however, are not. But a freakish warm front has wreaked havoc down south, with confirmed tornadoes in  Arkansas and Missouri. At least three people have been killed.

A tornado fueled by an unusually warm winter air sliced through parts of northwestern Arkansas early on New Year's Eve, killing three people, injuring several others and knocking out power to thousands of homes and businesses.

The dead were killed at Cincinnati, a hamlet of about 100 about three miles from the Oklahoma border. Washington County sheriff's dispatcher Josh Howerton said the storm touched down near the center of the community. He said "lots of injuries" were reported, and officials in nearby Benton County said the storm injured two people and damaged five homes there.

. . .

"In the winter you don't always have the instability" that would allow tornadoes to develop, Buonanno said. "This time, we have the instability."

And speaking of freak events, a substantial earthquake hit Northern Indiana. Why freakish? Because earthquakes in Northern Indiana are extremely rare; and in this particular part of the state, unprecedented.

Although earthquakes are fairly common in the southwestern part of Indiana and occasionally happen along the edge of Lake Michigan, earth scientists say there has never been an earthquake confirmed in north central Indiana.

"Unprecedented," said Walter Gray, an official with the Indiana Geological Survey, a research group at Indiana University. "There is no historical evidence of quakes in that area. We have no events that have been recorded."

And apparently, it's spring here. My husband woke up to the sound of birds chirping. He looked out the window and saw four or five squirrels... and they were merry. Or married. I'm never sure of that line. Shouldn't they be hibernating or something?

We're capping off a banner year of endless tumult with a freaky-deaky New Years. But as I tool around Google News, it's the human behavior -- not the weather -- that I find truly alarming. Two of the more juicy bits that shocked me out of any possible reverie come from across the pond, where encroaching tyranny seems to have taken a quantum leap. In a shockingly draconian move, Europe has made hundreds of herbal remedies illegal.

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law.

With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades.

But don't worry about the EU. This year, leadership will go to Hungary... which just did away with freedom of the press!!!

Hungary is introducing on Saturday a controversial media law that critics say will turn the clock back and re-introduce totalitarian rule in the former Communist nation. Under the legislation, journalists can face huge fines if their coverage is deemed unbalanced. The controversy comes as Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Saturday.

. . .

There also is international concern that the legislation will lead to censorship. But Andras Koltay, a member of the new media council, strongly disagrees.

Koltay said he  doesn't think there is a danger this legislation will force journalists into self censorship. Instead, he said, the law will ensure more balanced media. He adds that it also will bring order in the media, because they are currently having to work on the basis of confusing laws from the 1980s and 1990s. He argues the law is to the advantage of both the media and the public.

How's that for Orwellian doublespeak? Nah, journalists won't self-censor. Why would they when they'll have a government agency to do it for them?

None of this fills me with optimism about the coming year. Indeed, it reminds that the world is going off the rails; something I've been keenly aware of all year. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold...

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

So I just keep looking to the pyramids and saying "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

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Robert Bauval on King Tut's DNA

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In this Red Ice Radio interview, Robert Bauval weighs in the controversy over Tutankhamun's possible Western European ancestry.

Despite the refusal of the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, to release any DNA results which might indicate the racial ancestry of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, the leaked results reveal that King Tut’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match with Western European Y chromosomes.

The DNA test results were inadvertently revealed on a Discovery Channel TV documentary filmed with Hawass’s permission — but it seems as if the Egyptian failed to spot the giveaway part of the documentary which revealed the test results.

Bauval puts Hawass's recalcitrance in some context explaining the nationalistic attitudes that are very much a part of his make-up. Also discussed, Hawass's bizarre foray into the embarrassing excesses of reality television with the series Chasing Mummies.

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The Secrets of the Queen's Chamber

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Without much fanfare, a fresh attempt to discover the secrets of the Queen's Chamber in the main pyramid at Giza was recently announced.

Leeds University in the UK is teaming with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and a team of international engineers to construct the bot, which is also known as the Djedi project after the magician consulted by Egypt's King Khufu as he planned the layout of his pyramid. The structure was built over a 20-year period thought to end around 2560 BC.

The Djedi bot is equipped with a mini ultrasonic device that can tap on walls and listen to the response to help determine the thickness and condition of the stone, and a coring drill that can penetrate the rock (if necessary) while removing the minimum amount of material necessary.

It has a precision compass and inclinometer to measure the orientation of the shafts. Importantly, it's also fitted with lights and a "snake camera" that can see around corners--and hopefully yield new information into the curved air shafts, which were discovered in 1872 by a British engineer named Waynman Dixon.

During a mission in 1992, archaeologists sent another robot, named Upuaut 2, up one of the tunnels and found it blocked by a limestone door with two copper handles. Ten years later, researchers drilled through that door, only to find another one about 8 inches away.

This history of the original attempt to survey the shafts of the Queen's Chamber and the discovery of the door, the existence of which is no longer in question, is one of political intrigue, obfuscation, and abrupt cancellation. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval report the ins and outs of the bizarre drama, in which they were directly involved, in The Message of the Sphinx.

Perhaps the most exotic researcher ever to have pronounced on the mysteries of the Pyramids was Charles Piazzi Smyth, a nineteenth-century Astronomer Royal of Scotland. Like Edgar Cayce, he believed the Great Pyramid to be somehow linked to Biblical prophecies concerning the ‘Second Coming’ of Christ. And like Edgar Cayce, too, his name turns up most unexpectedly in connection with recent remarkable discoveries at Giza.¹

We will see why, later in this chapter. Meanwhile, as many readers will recall from the international news coverage it received at the time, high hopes were raised in March 1993 of a possible hidden chamber deep within the Great Pyramid. Rudolf Gantenbrink, a Munich-based German engineer, had used a tiny, hi-tech robot camera to explore the long narrow shafts emanating from the northern and southern walls of the Queen’s Chamber and, at the end of the southern shaft (the one targeted on the star Sirius) had discovered a small portcullis door complete with copper handles. Immediately after the find was made, Dr. Zahi Hawass enthused to a German television team ‘in my opinion this is THE discovery in Egypt’ and expressed the hope that ‘records’ on papyrus scrolls to do with the ‘religion’ of the builders and maybe the ‘stars’, might be stashed away behind the tantalizing door.² Similar hopes were also raised inThe Times of London which, in addition, noted a curiouslink with Edgar Cayce and the ‘Hall of Records’:

SECRET PASSAGE POSES PYRAMID MYSTERY: In the 1940s Edgar Cayce, the American clairvoyant, prophesied the discovery, in the last quarter of the 20th century and somewhere near the Sphinx, of a hidden chamber containing the historical records of Atlantis. Whether recent discoveries in the Great Pyramid of Cheops [Khufu] have anything to do with that is far from certain, but the discovery of a small door at the end of a long, hitherto unexplored, 8-inch square shaft has set many speculating about what, if anything, might lie behind it ...’³

As we write these words, more than three years after Rudolf Gantenbrink made his amazing discovery, no further exploration has been permitted inside the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber and the mysterious portcullis door remains unopened. During this period we note that Dr. Zahi Hawass (rather like his friend Mark Lehner over the issue of 10,500BC) has executed a radical volte-face. Gone are the eulogies and the great expectations and he now asserts: ‘I think this is not a door and nothing is behind it ...’⁴

The Independent broke the story in 1993.

Archaeologists have discovered the entrance to a previously unknown chamber within the largest of Egypt's pyramids. Some evidence suggests it might contain the royal treasures of the pharaoh Cheops, for whom the Great Pyramid was built 4,500 years ago. The contents of the chamber are almost certainly intact.

The entrance is at the end of a sloping passageway, 65 metres long but only eight inches (20cm) wide and eight inches high. Egyptologists previously thought the passageway was only eight metres long, and that its construction had been abandoned while the pyramid was being built.

. . .

According to the Belgian Egyptologist Robert Bauval, the passage points directly at the dog star Sirius, held by the ancient Egyptians to be the incarnation of the goddess Isis. Other small passages in the pyramid appear to point to other heavenly bodies - the belt of Orion and the star Alpha Draconis, which at the time was in the area now occupied by the Pole Star.

But soon after, the idea of the door or anything else in the "abandoned" Queen's Chamber became the new narrative and the entire project was scuttled. It would be another ten years before Hawass undertook another mission to study the shaft and the mysterious door, only to find another door behind that.

On September 10th, with Hawass and television viewers watching, the robot sent a camera through a small hole drilled in the block only to encounter another stone blocking the way.

Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, was excited nonetheless.

"We can see another sealed door," he said over the shrieks of his team members and television crew crowded into the chamber. "It looks to me like it is sealing something. It seems that something important is hidden there.

"This is one of the first major discoveries in the Great Pyramid in some 130 years, and now what we need is time for further analysis," he said.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Beneath the Pyramids

This Red Ice Radio interview is most interesting for the mythology Andrew Collins has connected to his discoveries. It might actually explain, well, everything. I've also appended an interview with the ARE who published his book on the subject.

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Esoterica

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There are great many news items I read everyday that I haven't the time or inclination to write about in any depth but still like to pass on to readers. I put them in the sidebar under Headlines but no one seems to notice or comment on them so I've decided to do periodic roundups of the more interesting items.

***********

What do King Tut and Rasputin have in common? Missing penis.

Did someone sabotage the Egyptian king's mummy to hide his less-than endowed genitalia? A new report from The New Scientist presents the possibility of a anatomical conspiracy.

An unknown tribe in Papua New Guinea has been discovered. Once the missionaries and census takers find you, it's all pretty much downhill.

"Their houses are in trees, their life is stone age," said Suntono, head of Indonesia's statistics agency for the Papua region, adding the tribe built ladders to huts in tall trees.

After receiving reports from missionaries, census officials needed to walk for up to two weeks to find the tribe, after travelling by boat from the nearest permanent villages, but still only reached the fringes of their territory.

I always thought it was a little too convenient that Jesus happened to die on a cardinal geometric form revered by numerous pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures.

Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed.

A legal setback for the Vatican as the Supreme Court declines appeal.

The Supreme Court won't stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to transfer a priest from city to city despite repeated accusations that the clergyman sexually abused young people.

And the Pope is bristling at the authorities in Belgium.

Pope Benedict XVI lashed out Sunday at what he called the "deplorable" raids carried out by Belgian police who detained bishops, confiscated computers, opened a crypt and took church documents as part of an investigation into priestly sex abuse.

Excavation of giant henge commences.

A site at Marden, near Devizes, rivalled Stonehenge and Avebury in its day, says English Heritage.

The group is about to undertake a six-week dig at the site close to the village, starting on June 28.

Unlike Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden Henge no longer has any surviving standing stones, but its sheer size is astounding.

Massive new crop circle found Britain's "UFO Capital."

The circular 90m (300ft) design, believed to represent the passage of the Moon and Sun, contains 193 rings, including six key circles and a seventh in the centre.

Secret messages in Plato's text claimed by British scientist.

In an extraordinary discovery, a British academic claims to have uncovered a series of secret messages hidden in some of the most influential and celebrating writings of the Ancient World.

The codes suggest that Plato was a secret follower of the philosopher Pythagoras and shared his belief that the secrets to the universe lie in numbers and maths.

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William Henry on Egypt, Stargates, and 2012

This brand new Coast to Coast interview with William Henry is an absolute mind-blower. It actually reduced me to tears at a couple of points because it evoked such a powerful sense of memory.  I don't know where the image used by the video maker came from but there's that concentric circle shape again. For added fun, it also contains the "funny looking mountain range" I referenced here.

In a delicious Jungian synchronicity, I learned something new this morning. I have a feed gadget on my iGoogle page for this very helpful nutrition site. The food of the week this week is onions.

The word onion comes from the Latin word unio for "single," or "one," because the onion plant produces a single bulb, unlike its cousin, the garlic, that produces many small bulbs. The name also describes the union (also from unio) of the many separate, concentrically arranged layers of the onion.

William Henry on the Barque of Millions of Years

This ten minute snippet of a William Henry lecture is surprisingly dense. In it he explores his theory of the correlation between the ancient Egyptian Barque of Millions of Years and the modern depiction of a wormhole. There are more images and some explanation of this theory on his blog here. This theory makes perfect sense to me. Like so much of Henry's work, speaks to images I've been seeing in dreams, meditation, and journeys, for years.

What struck me in particular about this presentation of the theory was the Barque image he chose; the Mesektet, or night, barque used by Ra.

Egyptian Alarm Clock

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"When I'm in Egypt, and I look at the pyramids, I think, that's the real world." 

~ William Henry

Some years ago I recorded something in my journal that, like so many things I scribble in these notes, has taken me years to even begin to understand. An image emerged in my mind's eye of what looked like a mountain range, so I began to draw it. I drew the first peak. The second was a bit higher. Then my hand was forced down to draw a much lower, disproportionate looking third peak. The asymmetry of the drawing bothered me, somewhat, but it was a fair representation of what I saw in my head. Then I heard the following words, which I wrote under my funny looking mountain range. "Trapped in the wrong dimension." The asymmetrical mountain range looking thing became stunningly obvious one day, when I saw a photo of the pyramids at Giza, from that particular angle.  The phrase I heard I still don't really understand, but I have theories.

As I've mentioned previously, Graham Hancock's concept of us as "a species with amnesia" really resonates for me. I found an older interview with Graham Hancock on Coast to Coast with the legendary Art Bell. The whole interview is excellent, but the part that really struck me I've transcribed here:

I can tell you that many, many people, around the world today, have the sense of an awakening memory. There is a sense that the pyramids of Egypt are operating like a beacon drawing people towards them. And, imagine this: Imagine if you were the survivors, as I spoke before, of a lost civilization with a high wisdom and knowledge -- a knowledge that we do not have today -- and you believed in reincarnation. And not just believed; you knew that it happened, and you knew that you would be reborn 12,000 or more years, in the future. And, that you knew that part of the deal with reincarnation is that you do not remember past lives; that at the most you get these faint, haunting recollections that you do not clearly remember. Perhaps you would create an alarm clock for yourself. Perhaps you would create a beacon that would draw you towards it, and an alarm clock -- a symbolic alarm clock -- that would awaken those repressed memories of past lives.

William Henry has a similar take on Egypt's ability to wake us up to a reality that is more "real" than our current, transient experience on earth. In this Conscious Media Network interview, he explains his fascination with Egypt, and with its effect on the psyche.

Both Henry and Hancock express a certain urgency, and the need for those of us who hear this wake-up call to acquire the necessary knowledge. Hancock posits that there is a window of opportunity here, that we may miss. All I know is that the promptings to "remember" are getting louder, and that I also feel there is something (???) I'm supposed to do. Increasingly, I feel like the white rabbit, checking my fob watch.

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O Egypt, Egypt

Carmen Boulter, much like Omm Sety, has spent her life pursuing an obsession with ancient Egypt, that dates back to early childhood. Traveling extensively there, and studying its sacred sites, she has been able to connect many pieces of her past life memory to physical locations, and put forth cogent theories on the land and its secrets.

In this interview she puts forward the tantalizing notion that the pyramids were actually functioning devices, rather than tombs. By putting them into a broader context of surrounding structures, she posits that they were an energy system, focusing sound and light to power their mysterious technology. Her description of the pyramids as sonic resonators reminded me of something I recently read about the Mayans possibly using their pyramids to create sound.

SIT on the steps of Mexico's El Castillo pyramid in Chichen Itza and you may hear a confusing sound. As other visitors climb the colossal staircase their footsteps begin to sound like raindrops falling into a bucket of water as they near the top. Were the Mayan temple builders trying to communicate with their gods?

The discovery of the raindrop "music" in another pyramid suggests that at least some of Mexico's pyramids were deliberately built for this purpose. Some of the structures consist of a combination of steps and platforms, while others, like El Castillo, resemble the more even-stepped Egyptian pyramids.

She also references Walter Cruttenden's theories on precession and the Great Year. According to Cruttenden, ancient writings across many cultures describe great cycles of time in which Earth civilizations rise and fall, volleying between periods of enlightenment and degradation. This, according to Cruttenden, is why some of our most ancient recorded cultures seem to have been more advanced than those that followed them; our current age reaching its nadir during the dark ages. He also posits that our sun and Sirius are actually a binary star system, explaining our cross-cultural obsession with that star. I found two excellent interviews, here and here, with Cruttenden, on Conscious Media Network, in which he thoroughly explains his theories.

O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety. And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and of worship. And so religion, the greatest of all blessings, for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever shall be, that can be deemed a greater boon, will be threatened with destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it. They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that which be has made, ungrudgingly favouring man’s welfare, this combination and accumulation of all the manifold things that can call forth the veneration, praise, and love of the beholder.

Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven ; the pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good. As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you, all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.

And so the gods will depart from mankind, a grievous thing!, and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches by main force into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul. Then will the earth no longer stand unshaken, and the sea will bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, nor will the stars pursue their constant course in heaven; all voices of the gods will of necessity be silenced and dumb; the fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken in sullen stagnation. After this manner will old age come upon the world. Religion will be no more; all things will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear.

But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of his will, which is the good. He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the world from evil, now washing it away with water-floods, now burning it out with fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence. And thus he will bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Kosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing.

Such is the new birth of the Kosmos; it is a making again of all things good, a holy and awe-striking restoration of all nature; and it is wrought in the process of time by the eternal will of God. For Gods will has no beginning; it is ever the same, and as it now is, even so it has ever been, without beginning. For it is the very being of God to purpose good.

~ from The Prophecy of Hermes Trismegistus

A Species With Amnesia

Really excellent interview with Robert Bauval. In it he walks us through some of his thought process in writing both The Orion Mystery and The Egypt Code. The entire interview is fascinating, but I was particularly struck by the explanation, in the tenth video of the series, of an ancient Egyptian code. He cites Graham Hancock's oft stated assertion that, "we are a species with amnesia," and suggests that the Egyptians have left us a blueprint for remembering who and what we really are. This concept particularly resonates for me, because it could explain why the message I get over and over, from my guides, as I trip the light fantastic through the mysteries, is "remember." Another book to add to the list.

John Anthony West Explains Egypt

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I first learned of John Anthony West when I read Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, many years ago. West's theories on the real age of the Sphinx figure heavily into Hancock's ideas about an antediluvian civilization from which Egypt and Latin America may have inherited much. West originally put forward his ideas about Egypt in Serpent in the Sky; a book designed to introduce the much earlier work of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. It is a conception of ancient Egypt very different from the that of most Egyptologists. West has devoted years to exploring a symbolic system he thinks is far deeper and richer than is understood by prevailing interpretations.

West's symbolist interpretation of Egypt is graphically depicted in the television series Magical Egypt. Some industrious soul has uploaded the entire series to YouTube and I've been very much enjoying it. I've broken it down into episode by episode playlists, which are posted on my channel. I cannot recommend these enough, so I'm posting them all.

I should say that West's overall interpretation accords with my own experiential sense of the Egyptian mysteries and the past life memories that I can never seem to escape. One of the most intriguing aspects of the shows is in the introduction. Woven into the opening theme music is something that sounds like a strange, unintelligible whisper. It's a little like the din of conversation one might here at a party, except that it's somehow distorted and diffused; a conversation that you can hear, but can't, even though it's going on right over your head. This is the sound of what I call the "whispering room" of the Egyptian exhibit at the Met. In this room, where a number of the mummies are displayed, this strange, barely audible whisper is ever present. I always find it hard to leave that room to look at the rest of the exhibit. I find it, somehow, comforting. I'm not the only person to have heard it there, and I suspect West has heard it as well; probably in Egypt, itself.

Posted below are all the episodes. DVDs of the entire series are also available for purchase in the bookstore.

Newly Discovered Pyramid at Saqqara

Announced on 11/11 by Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, what remains of a 4,300 year old pyramid is being excavated in Saqqara.

The discovery is the third known subsidiary, or satellite, pyramid to the tomb of Teti. It's also the second pyramid found this year in Saqqara, an ancient royal burial complex near current-day Cairo.

. . .

"This might be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found at Saqqara," added Hawass, who is also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

The pyramid is believed to be the tomb of Queen Sesheshet, whose son Teti was the first of King of the 6th Dynasty.

Sesheshet's son Teti might have been more motivated than the average pharaoh to pay homage to his mother. Sesheshet had come from a powerful family and probably supported his ascendancy to the throne during turmoil at the end of the 5th dynasty.

"She's one of the important ladies at that time," said Hakim Haddad, general director of excavations in Egypt.

"At the end of the 5th dynasty and the beginning of the 6th dynasty, there was a conflict between two branches of the royal families."

. . .

"You can discover a tomb or a statue, but to discover a pyramid it makes you happy. And a pyramid of a queen—queens have magic."

"Queens have magic," says the very not metaphysical Hawas. Hmm... Well, they can do some very cool things on a chess board. But, in all seriousness, this statement has me thinking. That's not an aspect of the queen archetype I've ever given a lot of thought to. Let's face it. Queens are practically superfluous in most fairy tales... unless they're wicked stepmothers. And, there are certainly many evil, magical queens. The story of Snow White comes to mind. And, of course, Susan Sarandon (Queen Narissa) in the very dear fairy tale send-up, Enchanted. She turned out to be a giant, malevolent dragon. (Shades of Melusine?) And, of course, there's the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Yes, many black magic practicing queens, I can think of. But I digress...

Sun Caught Live on Camera

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Splendid You rise in the lightland of the sky,
O living Aten, creator of life!
You have dawned in the eastern lightland.
You fill every land with your beauty.

from Great Hymn to the Aten

Hat tip to the The Huffington Post, a NASA pictorial, of the sun in active periods, with solar flares and winds. The sun is currently experiencing an unusually quite phase.

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites.

I can't speak to the significance either, but these pics are stunning. (One note of caution. If you want to look at the whole, magnificent pictorial in The Boston Globe, it may take some time to load the giant, bandwidth intensive images. It's worth it.)

Graham Hancock's "Quest for the Lost Civilization"

Some helpful soul has posted this movie on YouTube. It seems to be out of print and near impossible to get, although I have a page set up in the bookstore, where you may be able to purchase it on VHS. But unless and until it is issued on DVD, opportunities for viewing have been limited. It is highly recommended viewing. Enjoy.

Now This is Just Dumb

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As noted here the mummy of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut was recently identified. It's an exciting discovery for archaeologists and Egyptophiles like myself. This morning I opened the Huffington Post to read this idiotic headline: "Mummy Reveals Legendary Egyptian Queen Was Obese, Balding And Bearded." Number 1: Who cares? Number 2: The beard was a false one, and was affected to represent her pharaonic authority. Number 3: Can no woman in history escape objectifying lookism?

Huffington Post is not primarily at fault, here. The headline derives from the source material; an article on Live Science. And it only gets worse from there.

Turns out, Hatshepsut was no Cleopatra. Instead, she was a 50-year-old fat lady; apparently she used her power over the Upper and Lower Nile to eat well and abundantly. Archaeologists also claim that she probably had diabetes, just like many obese women today.

Hatshepsut also suffered from what all women over 40 need—a stylist. She was balding in front but let the hair on the back of her head to grow really long, like an aging female Dead Head with alopecia.

This Queen of Egypt also sported black and red nail polish, a rather Goth look for someone past middle age.

Got it? Hatshepsut was a "Glamour don't." Why this matters roughly 3500 years after the fact is a mystery to me.

Letting alone that Cleopatra's legendary beauty is a subject of some dispute, this article is wrong-headed from the outset. I can't believe it was written by an academic, and female one at that. She does allow that Hatshepsut was extraordinarily successful, but implies that it was in spite of her homeliness. What it was in spite of was a culture that did not allow for female rulers. How ironic that all these years later her memory must still battle a sexist, objectifying standard.