Another intriguing aspect to this story is the way that the rumour surfaced, passed on to columnist Georgina Bruni by an Egyptian political journalist at a reception in London. Although she has never been a part of the Nine circle, Georgina has known Sir John Whitmore since the early 1990s, having contacted him after reading
Briefings for the Landing on Planet Earth
and becoming fascinated with the story of the Nine. The story, with its Atum and Altea references, would have a special significance for her - which makes us wonder if something more than simple coincidence made her the recipient of the Egyptian story. Was she specially targeted?
An ancient Egyptian priest speaks
The first communications through Dr Vinod were not the only extraordinary events in which Puharich was a major player. In his 1959 book
The Sacred Mushroom
he describes a series of communications through another remarkable psychic, which took place between summer 1954 and February 1956, beginning less than a year after the Vinod sessions ended. The most intriguing thing, however, is that nowhere in his writings does Puharich connect these communications with the Vinod sessions — although it would have been obvious to do so.
In 1954 Puharich, with the rank of Captain, was based at the US Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland, having been redrafted. During this time, the work of the Round Table Foundation was being continued by Arthur Young and the other trustees, including Alice Bouverie who was working with a young Dutch psychic called Harry Stone. On 16 June 1954, to test his psychometric (object-reading) powers, she gave him a gold pendant that had belonged to Queen Tiye (mother of Akhenaten). After apparently having a fit, Stone went into a deep trance and began to utter words in a strange language, then drew a series of hieroglyphs before talking in English about a drug that would stimulate psychic abilities. He spoke, among other things, about entering an underground hall where a statue of a dog-headed man came to life.
Not surprisingly, Bouverie was very excited by this material. She immediately contacted Puharich at the Army base for advice about what to do next, sending him the drawings and a copy of Stone’s strange utterances. Puharich took them to another Army doctor on the site - who just happened to be an expert in extremely rare and archaic forms of hieroglyphs - and, to his surprise, verified that Stone’s writings were indeed ancient Egyptian. The communicator had identified himself as Rahotep (which Puharich rendered as Ra Ho Tep), naming his wife as Nefert. He also claimed to be speaking with the voice of Tehuti (the wisdom god Thoth), and mentioned the name Khufu.
Puharich was astounded to learn that a man named Rahotep was known from ancient Egyptian history, and that he had been married to a woman called Nefert. Their tomb at Meidum was excavated by Auguste Mariette in the nineteenth century, and a statue he found of the couple is now in the Cairo Museum. They had indeed lived in the Fourth Dynasty, possibly in the reign of Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid. (Egyptologists place Rahotep either in Sneferu’s or Khufu’s reign.) Moreover - very significantly - the historical Rahotep had been the high priest of Heliopolis!
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In addition, Puharich’s anonymous Army colleague also imparted an astounding piece of information:
There is a shaft on the south side of the Great Pyramid which is so arranged that on a certain day of each year, which is the beginning of the Egyptian year, the star Sinus — deified as the god Sept - on rising would shine into the eye of the dead Pharaoh down this long passageway which ended in the interior of the King’s Chamber.
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This is an amazing - and very precise — piece of information, especially coming from an Army doctor, even if his hobby was Egyptology. Of course, however, it is completely wrong. According to all known ancient Egyptian sources, Sirius was deified as the goddess Sothis (or Isis), and its light could never shine directly into the King’s Chamber, since there is a kink in the shaft. But how did he believe that any of the southern shafts are aligned with Sirius? This idea was not prevalent at the time, although it seemed to foreshadow the much later theories of Robert Bauval and James Hurtak. (It was found in Masonic writings, though, which may have been the inspiration of them all.)
During Puharich’s leaves of absence, and after the end of his tour of duty in April 1955, he and Alice Bouverie continued to work with Harry Stone, who had several more sessions in which he was ‘possessed’ by Rahotep, producing more fascinating information. From September 1955 Stone’s abilities to contact Rahotep declined, the messages gradually becoming incoherent until they stopped completely in February 1956.
As with the Nine’s communications, strange phenomena accompanied the Rahotep channellings. Occasionally Alice Bouverie herself went into trance and, via automatic writing, produced messages that corresponded with those of Harry Stone. But the most important aspect of these communications was that Rahotep’s main concern was to impart information about a drug used by the priests of Heliopolis to ‘open the door’ to the gods: a mushroom that induced hallucinatory experiences, a sort of chemical stargate. From Stone’s drawings, Puharich was able to identify the mushroom as
amanita muscaria,
or fly agaric. Bouverie’s automatic writing predicted that a specimen would shortly be found near the Round Table Foundation’s building in Maine. Shortly afterwards one was indeed found in the nearby woods, a rare, though not unique, occurrence in that area. They used the mushroom with Stone, and later with Peter Hurkos, who reported that the mushroom had no effect on his psychic abilities, except perhaps in the area of precognition.
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Coincidentally, this dovetailed amazingly neatly with Puharich’s major preoccupation of the time, which was the search for a drug that would stimulate or enhance psychic abilities. Puharich had settled on the psychoactive drugs used by shamans as the main focus of his research, and in 1953 had contacted R. Gordon Wasson, the first researcher to study the shamanic mushroom cult of Mexico. The two set up an experiment to see if the Mexican shamans, or curanderos, could, under the influence of the mushroom, ‘visit’ the Round Table Foundation’s laboratory in Maine. The long-distance experiment never happened, but it is interesting that Puharich was already thinking in terms of remote viewing (although he did not use that term then).
Certain themes already familiar from the Nine’s communications were also central to those of Rahotep. For example, they both stress the importance of the Sphinx. On one occasion Harry Stone uttered the phrase ‘Na na ne Hupe’, which, Puharich tells us, was ancient Egyptian for ‘We are under the care of Hupe’, adding for our benefit, that ‘Hupe is one of the names of the great sphinx at Giza near the Great Pyramid’.
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(We have not been able to verify this fact.)
Sirius is also prevalent, although obliquely. Harry Stone talks about the god Sept, whom Puharich identifies with Sirius. Most significant of all is the fact that the historical Rahotep was high priest of Heliopolis, with its Great Ennead of Nine gods. Stone’s communications led Puharich to do further research about the Heliopolitan religion, and he wrote:
Heliopolis was the center of a religion which had for its pantheon nine great gods called the Ennead, which means the Nine. The Nine of Heliopolis are Atum, Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, Osiris and Isis, and Set and Nepthys.
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Puharich referred to the high priest of Heliopolis as the ‘chief spokesman’ of the Ennead. He was using the term ‘the Nine’ way back in 1959: the communications themselves took place between his first contact with the ‘Nine Principles’ in 1952-3 and his renewed acquaintance with them through his meeting with the Laugheads in Mexico in 1956. Surely Puharich must have made the connection, realising that these were not separate stories, but one, centring on contact with the Nine entities who claimed to be nothing less than the ancient gods of Heliopolis?
Although Puharich’s methodology can be criticised, his sincerity is rarely open to doubt. At the end of
The Sacred Mushroom
he wrote: ‘I do not doubt that discarnate intelligences exist, any more than I doubt that finite carnate intelligences exist.’
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It is also relevant that all of this channelled information hinged on the shamanic use of certain psychoactive substances, which Puharich was researching at the time on behalf of the US Army. The Rahotep communications make explicit the use of such practices as part of the Heliopolitan religion.
There seem to have been several instances of the Nine — or, at least, sources associated with ancient Egypt — communicating with different groups and individuals of the late twentieth century, including Harry Stone, Phyllis Schlemmer, Uri Geller and many others. They seem to be repeating essentially the same story, stressing the same points, such as the importance of the Sphinx, and by implication if nothing else, signifying the imminence of some momentous event that will somehow involve ancient Egyptian secrets. James Hurtak, arguably their greatest prophet, says in
The Keys of Enoch:
‘Giza was the region of the Council of Nine, represented by nine pyramids keyed into the “Pyramid of Cheops [Khufu]”.’
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Although these are separate and apparently independent contacts with living humans, their similarity suggests that they are part of a greater scheme, perhaps helping and guiding mankind through perilous times ahead.
These communicators are not just any ancient Egyptians. While Harry Stone’s guide announced himself as Rahotep, high priest of Heliopolis, those of the Puharich circles went much, much further, claiming to be the Ennead, the gods of ancient Egypt — the Nine. In independent channelling sessions they said much the same, and seemed to be the same. Their words have inspired hugely influential individuals, such as Richard Hoagland, to spread their message with true, even fanatical, missionary zeal. Indeed, the Nine’s influence extends well beyond the more predictable outlets of New Age circuits and the hothouse worlds of maverick researchers.
But are the Nine truly the gods of Heliopolis, the ancient Nine who were worshipped thousands of years ago in Egyptian mystery schools and temples?
5
Behind the Mask
The Nine have clearly impressed a huge number of people - through books such as
The Only Planet of Choice and The Keys of Enoch;
through lectures, personal contact and word of mouth, especially in New Age and alternative Egypt — Mars circles; and even, arguably, in subliminal form through the most popular television science fiction ever. Belief in the Nine is widespread and self-generating, for each new ‘convert’ passes on the message, as has always been the way with exciting, strongly held, quasireligious beliefs. The many devotees of the Nine include senior scientists, industrialists, associates of NASA and operatives for the CIA, as well as those whose media professionalism ensures that the Nine are given the best possible image.
The Nine eventually revealed themselves as the Great Ennead, or nine principal gods of ancient Heliopolis, and claim to be returning to Earth to help mankind at a critical stage in its evolution. Suspending disbelief for the moment, the disturbing possibility is that they are simply stating the truth, in which case perhaps we should all immediately become their devotees, awestruck, obsequious, hanging on their every word. After all, we are only flawed humans, and they are gods, our creators. Perhaps it is too easy to dismiss the concept of the Nine. Perhaps we owe it to ourselves and the whole human race to surrender gracefully, and admit that the gods have returned.
At this point, however, we should pause. Evolution has brought us a long way: mankind is not only self-aware but cerebral. We have learned to think, analyse and discern. Not only do we need to take the claims of the Nine seriously - for if they really are the gods their return is the single most significant event in history - but we also have to be aware of anything that may reveal cracks in the carefully constructed edifice with which they surround themselves. Are the Nine for real, or are they some kind of hoax or delusion? And if they are a fabrication, who created them — and why?
The hidden message
Unlikely though it may seem, the Nine have a strong hold on the hearts and minds of key players in this story, even to the extent that their teachings have helped to shape our cultural concepts of space, both through the phenomenally successful science fiction of
Star Trek
and those promoting the alleged science fact of the Mars Mission in more recent years.
The teachings of the Nine emphasise that there are many civilisations throughout the galaxy, some of whom are banded together in a
Star Trek-like
Federation, but all of whom are more or less aware of the existence of the Nine. Some operate closely with them, because the Nine need them to interact with the inhabitants of the physical universe, including Altea and Hoova, the two civilisations that have played a major part in human history. Spectra, the conscious computer with which Uri Geller was alleged to have been in contact, is one of the lower forms of computerised intelligence operated by the higher entities.
The Alteans, who arrived in the solar system some 1.6 million years ago, settled on Mars and were responsible for the building of the Cydonia complex. Earth was then off limits, as it had been earmarked for the development of a new sentient race, intended to be the Alteans’ ‘partner society’.
1
Later they were allowed to go to Earth to assist in the genetic development of the new Earth races under the guidance of the Nine.
Altea and Hoova helped in the genetic manipulation — or ‘seeding’ — of the human race. According to the Nine, as reported through their channellers, one indigenous race already existed on Earth - the blacks, the only one actually to evolve here.
2
This implicit racism caused hostility towards
The Only Planet of Choice,
but Tom has since stressed a belief in the equality of all races, and cautions against any racism based on a misunderstanding of their teachings. Some believe this sounds remarkably like damage limitation, and the suspicion of racism has remained in many critical minds.