World Mysteries - John Anthony West

Academics abhor a mystery the way nature abhors a vacuum, but in nature there are no vacuums, while in academia there are many mysteries. In no field of science or scholarship are there more (or more glaring) mysteries than in Egyptology. Yet, at the same time, there is no field in which mysteries are more systematically denied.

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Pick up a book, any book, written by a credentialed Egyptologist and you will find nothing but agreement - about everything but the most insignificant details. In his gloriously mis-titled volume THE COMPLETE PYRAMIDS, Egyptologist Mark Lehner does not bother to even mention the controversies that have swirled (and continue to swirl) about these extraordinary structures for two centuries. Nothing; not a word. It's all been solved by the experts: the pyramids were built as tombs by powerful but deluded pharaohs desperately trying to ensure their own immortality (wink, wink, nod, nod). No matter that there is no evidence, not a shred, that these pyramids -of Giza and Dahshur- were used as tombs originally...and much cogent argument strongly suggesting they were not. The huge stones were hauled up ramps by gangs of laborers and just wafted into place with lapidary precision. No matter that engineers, quarrymen and masons, people accustomed to moving large blocks of stone around, insist it could not be done in this fashion, while toolmakers and machinists study the precision and cannot fathom how it could possibly have been achieved with hand tools. The acknowledged mathematical properties exhibited by the Great Pyramid are mere accidents of design, etc., etc, etc…

No zephyr of doubt ruffles the calm, smooth, viscous surface of Lake Consensus, that bottomless pool where the Church of Progress (un)faithful go for solace, baptism, and to pledge undying allegiance to the Great God Status Quo (this act of ritual intellectual servitude is called, in the quaint terminology peculiar to their cult, 'Critical Thinking' and sometimes even 'Reason'.)

Nevertheless, despite the near-total control exercised by the Church of Progress over the educational systems of the world (especially the Western World) heresy abounds. A vast public simply refuses to acknowledge the infallibility of 'experts' and, indeed, exults in their discomfiture when unwelcome facts breach the walls of their fortified ivory towers.

The Churchmen fume about 'ignorance and superstition', they try to get laws passed outlawing what they don't approve of (e.g. astrology, homeopathy), organized debunkers pressure the media to display to the public only that which carries a Church imprimatur upon it. To no avail. While the mainstream press remains largely obedient to C. of P. directives, television and Hollywood are less docile. They are interested in dollars, not dogma, and in their corporate amorality they will not hesitate to present heretical material. They don't even care if it is both good and true. In other words, as long as it brings in dollars and ratings, academic directives go unheeded. The merely intellectual inquisition mounted by this Church lacks the effective dissuasive powers of the Church that preceded it - since it is no longer considered politically correct to subject heretics to physical torture. And it’s now illegal – sort of. Churches are not what they used to be.

The moral: people are less stupid than our arrogant academics assume. However, people are also undiscriminating. Wildly speculative, even loony work gets accepted as readily, indeed, much more readily, than anything based upon rigorous scholarship. Erich von Daniken is far more popular than R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (which is probably unavoidable except in some ideal world going through its Golden Age) and of course, given the goals of Hollywood and TV, it is always the ratings-and-dollar producing mysteries/heresies/alternatives that get the bulk of screen and air time.

Re: Egypt, most of the heretical attention is focused on the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx - which is legitimate enough since the establishment answers to virtually every question raised about these structures is so manifestly inadequate that the fires of controversy never run short of fuel. But the Giza Plateau has no monopoly on Egyptian mysteries and some of these, unrecognized for what they are, have serious implications, not only for a better understanding of the ancient world, but also for contemplating and understanding the huge, slow processes of history and our own present position within that process.

The founding, establishment and breathtaking rise of Dynastic Egypt (beginning around 3200 BC) is one such mystery. In the space of just a few centuries, Egypt (apparently) went from primitive Neolithic beginnings to a complex, utterly assured command of a spectrum of disciplines. In little more than a blink of the historical eye Egypt somehow developed a sophisticated hieroglyphic system, a complex theology and cosmology, astronomy and mathematics, advanced medicine and a total mastery of architectural construction and artistic form.

Egyptologists sometimes find this mildly remarkable, but by insisting that despite appearances to the contrary (and the careful work of a dozen scholars categorically proving the contrary) Egypt was 'really' still a 'primitive' society, devoid of 'real' science and 'real' philosophy, (and therefore 'real' civilization). The world would have to wait for Greece for 'real' civilization to begin. And therefore, however remarkable, the flowering of Egypt presents them with no mysteries and few problems. Though this is an evasion of great magnitude, it will not be my focus here.

If Egypt attained such unacknowledged heights so early, what then accounts for the long decline? Egyptologists have no problem responding to this question, and the conventional explanation, while not illogical, is unsatisfactory once you stop to question it.

Plotted on a graph, Egypt's history does not show a long, steady, gradual descent (from the glories of the Pyramid Age to Ptolemaic moral and artistic decadence and ultimately to the dissolution of Egypt as a coherent entity under Roman domination). Rather the graph shows a series of waves, with troughs more or less equal, and each peak generally lower than the preceding peak - like waves on a beach after a storm. But it is unarguably at its height very nearly at its beginning (a bit like starting off automobile technology with the first horselss carriage, proceeding in a couple of years to the 2008 Ferrari and then gradually working backward to the Model T Ford).

The descent is ascribed to a combination of factors: years of famine and failed Nile floods may have brought on the end of the Old Kingdom ca. 2300 BC (an interesting alternative theory: it was a asteroid or comet strike…some sort of major but localized event that destroyed not just Egypt but much of the Middle East along with it.) Then, Egypt's early military superiority was eventually challenged and then defeated by the more warlike (read 'progressive and advanced') civilizations of Anatolia (modern Turkey) then later Mesopotamia to the east and still later Greece to the north. Concurrently, her internal centralized political, artistic, moral and religious authority was eroding from within. One complementary (and attractive) theory claims that the use and abuse of black magic played a significant role. There can be no doubt that magic was rife in ancient Egypt (and actually still is!).

Civilizations come and go; we know that. Roman, Holy Roman (about as holy as Lehner's COMPLETE PYRAMIDS is complete), Mongol, Mogul, Dutch, French, British … all have established themselves, invariably by force, held sway briefly (by ancient Egyptian standards), weakened and ultimately fallen. So where is the alleged mystery?

It lies in recognizing the fallacy of the standard scholarly assessment of Egyptian sophistication - which is actually a deliberate exercise in academic malpractice. As long as Egypt is seen as a kind of magnificent (but primitive) dry run for Greece, leading eventually (by discrete but identifiable stages) to our current state of technological expertise, there is no problem and no mystery. But as soon as that assessment corresponds to reality then the problems arise and the mystery surfaces.

Through the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, Giorgio de Santillana and Herta von Dechend (HAMLET'S MILL) and many other careful scholars over the past fifty years or so, it is now clear that not just ancient Egypt, but ancient civilizations worldwide, were far more sophisticated than the societies that followed them. In other words, for a few thousand years at least, what is called progress is actually regress. Indeed, it is only the major advances in our current cosmological and scientific understanding that has allowed these scholars to recognize that the ancients had this knowledge as well; and that it is written into their mythology and symbolism, their understanding of mathematics, their astronomy/astrology and their religion.

Since Egypt's Old Kingdom, up until very recently (and then it gets very interesting indeed … as we shall see, civilization has been going down, not up; simple as that.

We can follow that degenerative process physically in Egypt; it is written into the stones and it is unmistakable. The same tale is told in the mythologies and legends of virtually all other societies and civilizations the world over.

This is the ultimate heresy to our Church of Progress. Progress does not go in a straight line from primitive ancestors to smart old Us with our bobblehead dolls and weapons of mass destruction; our traffic jams and our polluted seas, skies and lands. There is another, and far more realistic way to view history. Plato talked about a cycle of Ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron (or Dark) Age; a cycle, a wave form - not a straight line. A similar understanding is reflected by virtually all other ancient accounts.

The best known and by far the most elaborately developed of these systems is the Hindu, with its Yuga Cycle, which corresponds to the Platonic idea of four definable Ages (the Hindu Kali Yuga -our current Age- corresponding to Plato's Iron, or Dark Age.) The problem with the Hindu version, however, is the time frame traditionally applied to the separate ages: hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

No matter how wrong archeologists may be in their chronologies as well as in their interpretations of the ancients, it is hard to imagine they can be that wrong! But not long ago, a little known work on the Yuga Cycle came my way that fits the four stage cycle within the cycle of the more managable 20-odd thousand year cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes. There can be no doubt that the ancients were fully aware of the phenomenon of Precession, and that they regarded it as a matter of commanding importance. But it is difficult to see why. I now believe that integrating the Yuga cycle to Precession may hold the key to understanding just why the ancients considered it so important, and also, just possibly, to figuring out with some accuracy just where we stand within that cycle.

Of Myth and Meaning

Microsoft Word’s in-pc thesaurus lists two meanings or synonyms for ‘myth’:
1) Legend and 2) Falsehood. Interestingly, the synonyms for ‘legend’ do not include ‘falsehood’, while the synonyms for ‘falsehood’ do not include ‘legend’. Nevertheless, in common usage, both definitions are used, often indiscriminately, and in some cases both actually apply. Utterances made by George W. Bush, for example, achieve legendary status instantly, and in most cases, they are also falsehoods. But in dealing with the myths of the ancients, it is wise to exercise caution before summarily equating a legend with a falsehood, no matter that it generally does not correspond to our modern manner of communicating fact. The ancients, obviously, did not think of their legends as falsehoods. That negative meaning is a contemporary judgment, promulgated by Victorian proto-anthropologists of the 19th Century and turned into dogma by Church of Progress devotees in the 20th. (James Frazier’s exhaustive, contemptuous GOLDEN BOUGH was probably the most influential single work of the genre.)

Though still prevalent, especially in academia, that Victorian assessment has been under attack almost since its beginning. It is now becoming clear that these strange, seemingly haphazard and irrational ancient tales contain within them forgotten history and profound psychology, but also, amazingly, astronomy, cosmology, physics, genetics and an understanding of the workings of the universe so advanced and comprehensive that it is only the most recent advances in our own sciences that allow us to begin to understand what knowledge was available in the very distant past -- at a time when, according to our ‘experts’, there was no civilization to speak of at all.

In short, it is time for a total re-evaluation of the knowledge of the ancients. Not only did they know more than we thought they knew; it is also very possible they had knowledge we do not yet have, and that might be extremely useful, even crucial for us to acquire.

An Egyptian myth may be one place to start looking

Introducing Sekhmet

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet, the goddess portrayed as a woman with the head of a lioness, is associated with vengeance, warfare, and also, curiously enough, with healing; but healing by fire, or purgation. (Esoterically, she represents the female aspect of the fire or initiating principle. Ptah (architect of heaven and earth) creates the Universe with ‘words’ furnished by Djehuti (Cosmic Wisdom) but it is Sekhmet, Ptah’s female consort, who actually gets the work done. Her name ‘Sekhem’ means ‘power’; the addition of the feminine suffix, ‘t’ makes it ‘feminine power’.

The warrior goddess Sekhmet, shown with her sun disk and cobra crown
Image Source: wikipedia.org

In one well-known myth, Re, the Sun (Creative Principle) is old and tired; fractious, disobedient mankind no longer pays him homage. So Sekhmet is dispatched by the gods to punish humanity and bring it back into line. She proceeds to carry out this task with the gleeful fury proper to her lioness nature. By day she massacres; by night she returns to gorge herself on the blood-covered fields … until a point is reached when it becomes clear that unless checked, she will soon destroy mankind altogether, and she is not distinguishing between those few still obedient to the gods and the scornful and skeptical majority. (This attitude will show up periodically throughout subsequent history, most memorably perhaps at the Siege of Bezier, during the Albigensian Crusades, when the general in charge of the siege, and about to storm the walls, asked the Papal Legate, Arnald-Amalric, Abbot of Citeaux, how he was to distinguish between the true believers in the town so that they might be spared, and the targeted heretics who, needless to say, deserved to die. The Abbot is reputed to have said: ‘Kill them all. God will recognize his own.’ .

In any event, in the Egyptian myth, the gods prove more merciful. For reasons difficult to ascertain, they decide mankind has been punished enough and something has to be done to stop Sekhmet before she annihilates the race entirely. A trick is played upon Sekhmet, instigated by the wise Djehuti. While Sekhmet sleeps, the blood covering the fields is replaced by wine. And when Sekhmet wakes and visits the fields to gorge herself as is her wont, the wine has its intended effect. Sekhmet falls into a drunken stupor, goes to sleep, and wakes up transformed into the beneficent Hathor, provider of Cosmic Nourishment and associated with sexuality, song, dance and the cycles of time. There the Egyptian story stops, but extrapolating, it is probably safe to suppose that the mythmakers assume that at this point, with Sekhmet pacified, mankind regroups and proceeds along its not-so-merry way.

Consider the Kali Yuga

Earlier, I left off with a brief discussion of the Vedic/Hindu doctrine of the Yugas, the idea that history follows a cycle, corresponding to the Platonic doctrine of Aeons or ‘Ages’ (A Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron, or ‘Dark’ Age). Most Hindu accounts assign improbably long time periods to each of these ages, but one relatively modern thinker Sri Yukteswar, the guru of the influential 20th Century yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote that originally, the Yuga cycle was supposed to correspond to a precessional cycle (Yukteswar allots approximately 24000 years to this cycle, modern astronomy puts it close to 26,000 years but variable within narrow limits, Plato gives a precise numerologically interesting canonical number of 25,920 years – 6x6x6x12). Moreover, in the standard accounts, The Kali Yuga (or Dark Age) is followed immediately by a new Golden Age. This does not make sense; the end of winter is not followed immediately by summer.

Now in Hindu Mythology, Kali, the Destroyer is equivalent to the Egyptian Sekhmet, and it may be that the Sekhmet myth has a legitimate astronomical/astrological significance.

An aging or dying ‘god’ is a feature of many ancient myths and legends and it is the mythic way of signaling the end of an astronomical cycle of some sort (cf. Hamlet’s Mill). Unfortunately, our standard view of history is not only very wrong, it is also very short. We have a good idea of the Piscean Age of the last 2000 years, a much less comprehensive picture of the Arian Age preceding it (beginning ca. 2000 BC) but in the Taurean Age (4000-2000 BC) except for Egypt, we enter a realm of myth and legend with relatively little factual material to base sound interpretations upon. The further back we go, the mistier it gets.

The English writer Samuel Butler (the Erewhon Butler, not the Hudibras Butler) once remarked that ‘Analogy may be misleading but it is the least misleading thing we have.’

So, to appreciate our own position within the grand Yuga cycle, analogy may help.

We are familiar with the cycle of night and day. But imagine a sentient creature that lives for just a minute. If that minute falls at a rainy midnight, then our Minute Man can have absolutely no idea of what that minute of life might be like at a sunny high noon,.

Now move up a step in the cyclical hierarchy to the seasons of the year. Imagine a sentient creature that lives for just a day. If that day falls in February and it’s still raining (both Minute Man and Day Man live in Wales) then he can have no idea of what a day would be like in mid-June. – unless of course legends and myths have somehow survived the course of the year, in which case they would be so inconsistent with their own life experience that they might well dismiss them as falsehoods. i.e. myths.

Now move up to ourselves within the precessional cycle. Allowing an ideal 100 year life span, if that 100 years corresponds to a rainy midnight minute or equally rainy February day in Wales then we can have no experiential possibility of understanding what a sunny 100 years in June in Cosmic California might be like, (much less that life might actually be much prolonged under such circumstances – as so many myths and legends assert.) There can be no doubt that the ancients understood precession, and equally no doubt that they considered it of paramount importance. And maybe that is why. Because it enabled them (at least in principle) to live in harmony with the dictates of their era, or so the legends tell. Here is provocative evidence available to support this claim, but no room to detail it here.

So if there is validity to the concept of the Yuga Cycle just where would we stand? Not in June in Cosmic California, that is for sure! Scan the front page of any daily newspaper in the world and it looks like mid-January: war, terrorism, murder, rape, robbery, scams, famine, disease… chaos everywhere. The greatest military and economic power in recorded history has as its leader an inarticulate, illiterate dunce, himself under the control of a tribe of corporate cannibals. The entire planet is threatened by a gamut of potentially terminal environmental, ecological, medical and military disasters. The institutionalized religions of both East and West (at their ancient best but stunted, pale offshoots of much more robust, earlier root stocks) are barren, distorted, degenerate. Education everywhere is controlled by the priesthood of the Church of Progress forcibly proselytizing its psychotic and spurious doctrine of rationalism/materialism/ secularism (with their largely unmentioned but necessary corollaries of meaninglessness, accident and despair) … even as The Four Cowboys of Apocalypse 2.0 (Capitalism, Patriotism, Democracy and Technology) ride out over the land on their white geldings, waving white Stetsons and bringing tidings of comfort and joy. (Sing along, please, you know the tune: Ti-hidings of co-humfort and joy, comfort and joy!)

A good case could be made that it’s mid-Kali Yuga, Sekhmet has again been summoned and is already exercising her quondam bloody trade.

Yet despite the self-evident panorama, this could be a misperception. Certainly a cosmic blizzard is blowing, of that there can be no doubt, yet maybe it’s March in the cycle and even though it doesn’t look that way, spring is on the way; a cycle within a greater cycle, a precessional mini-Ice Age. And deep under the snow the seeds of spring are germinating. The substantial minority of us who aren’t trapped in hopeless Third World conditions know that, at the very least, we’re not back in the post-Roman Dark Ages – which were pretty dark everywhere around the planet as far as we can determine.

Opposition to the Church of Progress mounts; a positive sign.

And there is one major potentially positive sign that goes generally unrecognized, or rather, gets recognized all tight, but is misnamed and grievously mis-represented.

The past three centuries have seen a prodigious flowering of creative energy. Most of most of it of course undeniably dedicated to mass destruction (H-bombs, bacteriological/chemical weapons, Star Wars) and mass frivolity (Disneyland, bobblehead dolls, television/Hollywood.) Yet if you stop to think of it, you will acknowledge that even the most nauseating game show or TV commercial requires a huge expenditure of creative energy and technical expertise, ditto for your H-bomb.

Mainstream delusionaries insist upon calling this madness ‘Progress’, but really, in its standard, ubiquitous manifestation it is little more than shiny barbarism.

Even so that standard manifestation is not necessarily a fait accompli, an unalterable condition. The outpouring of creative energy is a fact. In itself creative energy is neutral, at least in principle. Were creative energy directed consciously and constructively things could change Everywhere … And in a hurry.

Victor Hugo (‘notre meilleur poete, helas! – quipped Andre Gide) penned the much quoted phrase, ‘There is one thing stronger that all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.’

Good Victorian that he was, Hugo’s observation seems aimed only at good ideas, but bad ideas also have their appointed times. Fascism is quite definitely a bad idea, and Darwinian Evolution is another; no matter that this Cargo Cult of the West has hoodwinked most of the scientific community and therefore the rest of the Church of Progress along with it (much more on this anon).

But for better or for worse, when ideas change, everything changes. Of course, getting ideas to change, that is another matter altogether. The codicil to Hugo’s line might be, ‘And the second strongest thing in the world is an idea whose time has not yet gone.’

Nevertheless, change happens; change is possible. Even today. Even before it is unalterably and unequivocally too late. If only …

Maybe, just maybe, Sekhmet is just growling and flexing her claws and despite all appearances to the contrary, there is still some wiggle room.

It’s a thought.

About the Author

John Anthony West is a writer, scholar and Pythagorean, born in New York City. He is the author of The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt, and consulting editor for the Traveler's Key series. His previous book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt is an exhaustive study of the revolutionary Egyptological work of the French mathematician and Orientalist, the late R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz.

In The Case for Astrology, John Anthony West presents compelling new evidence that proves the astrological premise: that correlations exist between events in the sky and on earth, and that correspondences exist between the human personality and the positions of the planets at birth.

Mr. West has published a novel and many short stories; his plays have been produced on stage, television and radio, and he writes articles, essays and criticism for The New York Times Book Review, Conde Nast's Traveler and other general interest and specialized newspapers and magazines in America and abroad. He won an EMMY Award for his 1993 NBC Special Documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx, hosted by Charlton Heston.

The ancient Egyptians themselves attributed their wisdom to an earlier age going back 36,000 years. West set out to test the hypothesis that the Sphinx was much older than its conventional date of 2500 BC. His findings provide the first hard evidence that an earlier age of civilization preceded the known development of civilization in the Nile valley.

John Anthony West is today the leading authority and proponent of the 'Symbolist' school of Egyptology, an alternative interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture advanced by the French scholar and philosopher, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1891-1962). In the Symbolist view, Egyptian architecture and art disclose a richer and more universal wisdom than conventional Egyptology has assumed.

Mr. West lectures extensively on Egypt and personally leads several in-depth study tours to Egypt every year.

Books and Video

	Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt John Anthony West explains in this richly illustrated book the unity and purpose of ancient Egyptian culture. The Serpent symbolized choice: the lower or the higher path. West brings to life the world of a people for whom higher truth was a living reality and ultimate goal.
	The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt In the book, John Anthony West does more than provide a detailed description of the monuments and temples of ancient Egypt. He takes the reader into the soul and spirit of the ancient Egyptians who built them. The Traveler's Key is indispensable to the serious visitor and interested reader and includes up-to-date practical information on travel and accommodations.
	The Case for Astrology Astrology was an integral part of the Sacred Science of the ancient Egyptians and is today a vital legacy of our ancient origins and wisdom. In The Case for Astrology, John Anthony West presents compelling new evidence that proves the astrological premise: that correlations exist between events in the sky and on earth, and that correspondences exist between the human personality and the positions of the planets at birth. This of all the books by John Anthony West contains perhaps more of his own personal philosopy and world view. It is an essential book for all serious students of Astrology.
	The Mystery of the Sphinx (video) On November 10, 1993, the NBC television network broadcast "The Mystery of the Sphinx," introducing thirty million American viewers to the discovery by John Anthony West and Robert Schoch that the Great Sphinx of Giza might be thousands of years older than its assumed date of 2500 BC. Narrated by Charlton Heston, the documentary provides evidence that the ancient Egyptians possessed scientific knowledge unknown to us and carried on the wisdom tradition of an earlier lost civilization.

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Consider the Kali Yuga: Prelude to a new book

Of Myth and Meaning

Introducing Sekhmet

Consider the Kali Yuga

About the Author

Links

Books and Video

John Anthony West explains in this richly illustrated book the unity and purpose of ancient Egyptian culture. The Serpent symbolized choice: the lower or the higher path. West brings to life the world of a people for whom higher truth was a living reality and ultimate goal.