The Stargate Conspiracy (3 page)

Before Atum’s act of creation, the universe was a formless, watery void, called Nun. Out of this void emerged a phallic-shaped hill, the sacred Hill of Atum. Although a metaphor, it was also believed that this landmark was a physical place, the real site of the beginning of all things. Atum’s temple in Heliopolis was probably built on this hill, although some Egyptologists have recently argued it was actually the rising ground of the Giza plateau. Others suggest that the pyramids themselves were intended to represent the Primeval Mound.
¹⁴

The writings of Victorian — and even more recent — Egyptologists have been notably coy or tight-lipped about the story of Atum’s act of creation. In fact, he ejaculated the universe as a result of masturbating himself to an explosive orgasm. Though this inevitably invites jokes about the ‘Big Bang’, it is actually rather an accurate image. Atum’s life-giving burst of energy seeded the void of Nun, pushing back its boundaries to give way to the expansion of material creation. In the original story, Atum was considered to be androgynous: his phallus represented the male principle, while his hand represented the female principle. This defines one of the fundamental tenets of the Heliopolitan system and all Egyptian thinking, namely that of the eternal and quintessential balance of male and female, the yin-yang polarity without which, they believed, chaos would rule.

From Atum’s arching semen the universe proceeded to unfold, gradually becoming manifest in the physical, material world that we inhabit, but only after passing through several other stages. From the creative act, two beings, Shu and Tefnut, emerged in the dividing of the first principle. Shu is male, representing the creative power, and Tefnut is female, representing a principle of order that limits, controls and shapes Shu’s power. Tefnut is also represented as the goddess Ma’at, ruler of eternal justice.
¹⁵
Together, Shu and Tefnut are sometimes jointly called the Ruti, represented in physical form as two lions (or rather, a lion and a lioness).

From the union of Shu and Tefnut were born Geb (the earth god) and Nut (the sky goddess), representing the elements of the visible cosmos, more manifest forms of their ‘parents’. Geb and Nut, in turn, gave birth to two pairs of brother-sister twins: the famous quartet of Isis and Osiris and Nepthys and her brother-consort, Set. They express the principle of duality in two ways: male and female, and positive-negative/light-dark. Nepthys is the ‘dark sister’ of the beneficent Isis, while Set is the destructive, obstructive force opposing Osiris’s civilising and creative character. These four deities were considered to be closer to us and the material world, than their forebears, although still inhabiting the world of spirit beings ‘behind the veil’. Luckert says that they ‘exist low enough to participate more intimately in the human experience of life and death’ and that they operate ‘on a smaller and more visible scale than their parent(s)’.
¹⁶

Collectively, these nine gods make up the Great Ennead, but they remain only expressions of Atum, reaching through the levels of creation from the first emergence from the void to the world of matter we inhabit. In a sense, Osiris is Geb and Shu and Atum, just as Isis is Nut and Tefnut/Ma’at and Atum. Even Set was perceived as more complex than a simple embodied, archetypal evil, such as the Devil of Christianity.

The system continues. The Great Ennead itself leads on to another series of gods, the Lesser Ennead. The link - or ‘go-between’ — is Horus, the magical child of Isis and Osiris. He is regarded as the god of the material world, his role here echoing that of Atum in the universe. The foremost of the Lesser Ennead, who are believed to exert a direct influence over humankind, are the wisdom god Thoth — scribe to the Great Ennead - and Anubis, the jackal-headed god who guards the gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead.

This level is the province of many other deities, each dealing with a specific aspect of human life. It is probable that it incorporated local gods and goddesses worshipped in Egypt before the Heliopolitan religion was established. Luckert calls this the ‘Turnaround Realm’, the meeting point of the world of matter and the ‘other dimensions’ of the gods, where the reverse process can be experienced by an individual — either at death, or by mystical experiences in life — as an ‘inner journey’, back to union with the creator. This is the process that is the main theme of the Pyramid Texts, which - far from being ‘primitive’ — exceeds newer religions in both authority and sublimity, besides being strikingly similar to the traditions of shamanism.

Further significance can be derived from this elegant system. In an association of imagery, the emergence of Atum’s Primeval Mound from Nun was equated with the rising of the sun, the source of all life in the material world. This is why Atum is associated with Ra, the sun god, sometimes referred to as Ra-Atum. This is also why Horus, as lord of this world, is also associated with, and sometimes personified as, the sun. The daily ‘birth’ of the sun is a ‘microcosm’ of the original creative explosion that gave birth to the universe, so it can be associated with both Atum and Horus. Like so much of the Pyramid Texts, the imagery works on several levels at once.

An objective reading of the Pyramid Texts involves much more than poetic symbolism. For example, its system of creation is a remarkable parallel to modern physicists’ conception of the creation and evolution of the Universe. It literally describes the ‘Big Bang’, in which all matter explodes from a point of singularity and then expands and unfolds, becoming more complex as fundamental forces come into being and interact, finally reaching the level of elemental matter. (Significantly, the leading American Egyptologist Mark Lehner, in his 1997 book
The Complete Pyramids,
uses the term ‘singularity’ when referring to Atum’s place in the myth.
¹⁷
) The system also includes the concept of a multidimensional universe, represented by the different levels of creation as embodied in the god forms. In the Pyramid Texts, the higher gods, such as Shu and Tefnut, still exist, but remain essentially unreachable by humankind without going through the intermediaries of the lower gods.

Yet another level of imagery lies within the creation story. While discussing the sophistication of the ideas in the Pyramid Texts with our friend, the Belgian writer-researcher Philip Coppens, he pointed out that certain very new discoveries of modern science are an implicit part of the story. As we have seen, Atum emerged from a formless void, imaged in the form of the primordial watery chaos called Nun. This is often regarded as being based on the way land emerges from the Nile flood as the annual inundation recedes, but this is not really the concept expressed in the Heliopolitan image. As Egyptologist R.T. Rundle Clark says:

This is an elegantly clever way of expressing the complex concept of a sea that represents, on the one hand, the void - nothing - yet at the same time stands for unlimited potential - infinity. There may be another reason for choosing this image, though. Scientists have only recently announced the discovery that water can be found in interstellar space in far greater quantities than has ever been expected. Atum represents not just the ‘Big Bang’ of creation, but also the sun: and scientists are only now realising that the enormous clouds of water throughout the universe play a vital role in the creation of stars such as our sun. In fact, they are now beginning to believe that stars are actually created from such clouds of water ...
¹⁹
It has also been pointed out that, on a terrestrial level, the myth expresses the idea that life originated in the seas.
²⁰
All this suggests the possession of exceptionally sophisticated knowledge by the Heliopolitans.

Significantly, on 12 September 1998, the leading British scientific magazine
New Scientist
published the ground-breaking research of a NASA team led by Lou Allamandola into the origins — and requirements — of life in the universe. Previously scientists had found it impossible to assemble the right ‘ingredients’ out of which to create even the most basic form of life, but this team had succeeded in creating some of the complex molecules necessary by recreating in the laboratory conditions similar to those found inside clouds of gas in interstellar space. They discovered that creating those complex molecules in those circumstances is extremely easy - in fact, virtually inevitable - whereas trying to do so in strictly terrestrial circumstances is impossible. The most striking example is that of molecules called lipids which make up the walls of individual cells, without which the cell, the basic building block of living things, could not exist. Now that scientists know that this can be done so easily in these conditions, the implications are enormous. It looks increasingly as if life originated in deep space and was then ‘seeded’ on to planets, probably by comets, and that, even in its most primitive form, it is probably found everywhere throughout the universe. As Lou Allamandola says, ‘I begin to really believe that life is a cosmic imperative.’

This, however, is only part of the story, as Philip Coppens pointed out to us. It may be that Allamandola’s team are by no means the first to comprehend the requirements for the creation of life. He cites the ancient Egyptian myth of Atum’s explosive orgasm that created the universe: his ejaculation can be seen to symbolise, with astonishing accuracy, the idea that all the basic ingredients for life existed from the very first and that the universe, as it continues to expand, carries them within it. The imagery of the Atum myth also encompasses perfectly the concept of ‘seeding’ the universe with life. Did the Heliopolitan priests really know how life originates and spreads throughout the universe?
^20
21

This, then, was the ‘primitive’ religion of ancient Egypt, which was governed by the Great Ennead, the Nine who represented all life and all wisdom. The ancient Egyptian civilisation, so often underestimated even by our most learned scholars, continues to fascinate with mysteries that call to us from antiquity. But we were to discover that something new is afoot, a sudden, unexplained interest in the lost secrets of the Egyptians and a flurry of mysterious activity among their most venerable ruins. Something intriguing is going on at Giza, something that is intimately connected with the preparation for the Millennium and the start of the twenty-first century. People and organisations are searching for the lost knowledge of the worshippers of the Nine for their own purposes. They are about to undertake a momentous, perhaps even a catastrophic venture: to hijack the mysteries for their own ends, even daring to attempt the unthinkable — to exploit the ancient gods themselves.

 

 

Nothing succeeds like Egypt. Although its fabled magic and mystery have by now beeome something of a well worn eliehé, it is, largely, only academic historians who lament the fact. Something about the land of Tutankhamun, the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid instantly dwarfs all other cultures in our imaginations, although many of them — such as the pre-Columbian peoples of South America - also built pyramids that continue to perplex us with their mystery and sheer technical perfection.

A recent spate of highly successful books has not only asserted that ancient Egypt was considerably more sophisticated than academics will admit, but also promised that mind-bending revelations connected with that venerable civilisation will soon shake the world. These secrets will somehow emanate from ancient Egyptian sources and affect us all in one way or another. And, of course, they will be timed to coincide with the Millennium.

A mystery does surround the ancient Egyptians and their culture. Immensely impressive data does reveal that the ancient Egyptians were far more sophisticated than Egyptologists admit. Indeed, mainstream Egyptologists seem curiously blind to the achievements and beliefs of the very people they have chosen to study. However, there is a backlash against this academic arrogance - and like all extreme reactions, it presents problems of its own, not least because this particular backlash has been carefully orchestrated.

The last decade has seen the rapid rise of an Egyptological counterculture. It began as a challenge to the rigid views of the academics, but has now effectively become a new orthodoxy with an equally unyielding ‘doctrine’ of its own.

There is a strong case for challenging much of the standard Egyptological view. Many recent bestsellers - such as
Keeper of
Genesis by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock (1996),
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
(1996) by Colin Wilson and
Gods of Eden
(1998) by Andrew Collins — have daringly tackled the academics, rightly criticising their stubbornness and blindness and presenting an alternative view of the subject. In our view, much of this was long overdue. Historians and Egyptologists have had it all their own way for too long. Many of them have been far too ready to dismiss the ancient Egyptians as ‘primitive’, while the evidence of our own eyes, in the shape of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, tells us otherwise. And, of course, their incredible knowledge — teased out of the ancient Pyramid Texts - is also routinely ignored or even roundly rubbished.

However, many — but not all — exponents of the New Orthodoxy who dare to ‘publish and be damned’ appear to be motivated by something more than a sense of solidarity with a culture that is rarely given its due. This wave of new books is not just a timely recognition of ancient Egyptian genius (although of course there is an element of that, which must be applauded). As we discovered, something else is involved here, something deeply unsettling.

Among certain of the so-called ‘pyramidiots’ (the academics’ term for the alternative Egyptologists, which no doubt includes ourselves) we have discerned a very interesting but disturbing tendency. As we will see, some members of the New Orthodoxy — but by no means all - hide another agenda behind their apparently laudable and open-minded attack on the arrogance of academia. Through the mass media, these writer-researchers have promoted what is essentially a belief system that is not only just as rigidly dogmatic as the academics’, but which seems, worryingly, to have quite another agenda. The promotion of certain ideas and the fact that the same ideas occur in several of the most high-profile books about ‘alternative Egypt’ led us to believe that there was a pre-arranged, orchestrated move to create a new belief system.