The New Age movement is not so much a ‘subculture’ as a rapidly growing alternative society that, despite its size, remains virtually invisible. Nobody knows how many people make up this global community, stretching from California to Glastonbury to the ashrams of India, but it must run into hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Few outside the community itself realise what a vast and thriving economy it has. New Age publishing is big business, as are the workshops that go on tour, attracting large audiences who pay stiff prices for the privilege of sitting at the feet of a big-name guru. However, this happy world of workshops, consultancies and specialist holidays is strangely fragmented, as each healing, meditation or channelling group operates very largely on its own, and often in intense rivalry. However, the economic and political potential of such a vast, untapped community — if it could be brought together and directed — is enormous.
The New Age has already fallen in love with the Nine, largely thanks to their hugely successful
The Only Planet of Choice,
which has sold at least 50,000 copies in Britain alone, and which continues to sell steadily. Our friend Theo Paijmans, who hosts a three-hour weekly radio show from Amsterdam on the subject of UFOs and the unexplained, tells us that every week without fail callers ask questions based on
The Only Planet of Choice.
And in the United States, Carla Rueckert’s
The Ra Material,
based on her channelling of the Nine, is extremely influential. According to Palden Jenkins, who edited the first edition of
The Only Planet of Choice,
more and more channelling, meditation and healing groups are beginning to ‘realise’ that the source of their inspiration is none other than the Nine.
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There seems to be a covert campaign — on a massive scale — of spiritual takeover and unification.
The Keys of Enoch
has been a very influential book for over twenty years, and Hurtak himself tours the world giving courses and workshops on its teachings to eager audiences. Yet once again, amazingly, he cleverly manages to keep this side of his life completely separate from his more academic activities. His latest venture, as scientific consultant to Boris Said’s Magical Eye film production company, is to work on a ‘monumental series of upcoming documentaries’
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based on his work.
Hurtak has referred to the opening of a ‘gateway’ between the world of the gods - or rather, the Nine Principles of God - and this world. Clearly the thousands who follow the Nine believe that this ‘stargate’ has been open for some time, and that we have been prepared for the return of the old Egyptian gods. This is a truly momentous scenario, and the implications are profoundly disturbing. But the question is: are the Nine who they claim to be?
The cracks appear
Undoubtedly, the Nine have already failed on several major counts. For a start, what happened to the promised ‘mass landings’ of the late 1970s? As with many other channelling cults, major events failed to materialise as prophesied, but the Nine’s glib excuses, hastily given to paper over the cracks, were lapped up by devotees who simply could not bear their belief to be undermined by anything, especially the truth. This is a well-known psychological syndrome among cult followers, whether in the shape of the imminent return of a god or the coming of the Space Brothers. Time and time again the cultists have taken up their required positions, often after having sold all their belongings, and waited for the great event. And waited, and waited and waited ... And, when nothing happens, tired, cold and virtually destitute, they piece their lives back together by accepting the flimsiest excuse. Although the followers of the Nine were not required to sell up, they did have to chase around the world, and Whitmore was persuaded to part with a large proportion of his wealth. Tom announced that the landings are no longer necessary and that conditions have changed. But why? What, exactly, has changed?
The Nine are also, as we have seen, exceptionally poor at forward planning, having failed with both Uri Geller and Bobby Home. Why didn’t they simply appoint Phyllis Schlemmer as ‘transceiver’ in the first place? And they enticed Lyall Watson, and others, into the circle, only to see them either flee or ask, unacceptably, too many awkward questions.
The Nine’s message of ‘peace and love’ often seems contradicted by the way in which they treat their human followers, and by the sheer unpleasantness that seems to have surrounded, in particular, the Schlemmer circle. Bobby Horne was pushed to the brink of suicide by the endless pressure to channel the Nine, and Don Elkins, the leader of L/L Research, did commit suicide, while the balance of his mind was disturbed, in 1984. This is nothing, of course, compared to the other great unpleasantness in the Nine’s alleged history: their destruction of Atlantis because they were ‘angry.
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They also claim that certain people have been ‘implanted’ at birth in order to carry out missions on their behalf, which, if nothing else, goes against their fine words about free will. Tom was challenged on this point by Whitmore, but answered that these people had chosen to be implanted before they were born, so they had no memory of doing such a deal.
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The Nine’s version of Earth’s (and galactic) history, is simply unprovable. Much rests on the credence given to such matters as Atlantis, the monuments of Mars and the vast antiquity of the Sphinx, all of which are arguable, but none of which are facts. The Nine often rely on the notorious, and convenient, impossibility of proving a negative, such as the non-existence of Atlantis. Where they do venture into recorded history - or even the myths and traditions of religion — the Nine often make demonstrable blunders. For example, Tom said that Hoova had descended to Earth and was encountered by Abraham, giving rise to the Biblical tale of the ladder joining Heaven and Earth. In fact this vision was seen by Jacob, not Abraham.
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Another term used by the Nine is, commonly - and erroneously — used by millions: ‘Jesus the Nazarene’, meaning Jesus who came from the town of Nazareth. Unfortunately, this comes from the Bible’s mistranslation of the source: the word should be Nasorean, meaning a member of a particular sect.
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While it is understandable that ordinary people might get such facts wrong - after all, the mistake occurs in the Bible - it is surely less likely that gods would err similarly.
Furthermore, when Puharich seized on the name ‘Harmarchis’ as one of those used by Tom-Atum, Tom delightedly treated this as a breakthrough, saying: ‘You have found the secret.’ It may be a historical fact that Harmarchis was one of the names of the Sphinx, and that it was a representation of Atum (although Egyptologists had known this for years), but Tom then goes on to elaborate: ‘I will say briefly to you concerning the Sphinx: I am the beginning. I am the end.’
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This appears to be related to that by now familiar mistake - the idea that one of the ancient Egyptian names for the Sphinx was
arq ur.
This has become a favourite line among the followers of the Nine, who always quote it as if it were a fact. For example, Richard Hoagland, in his 1992 ‘briefing’ of the United Nations, gave this definition:
In the ... Egyptian language it [the Sphinx] was called the
arq ur,
and that is really interesting because as we’ve probed into the etymology,
arq ur
meant: ‘the end of the beginning connected to the beginning of the end’. Almost like a cycle, like an end-point, like a constant process, as if it represents the end of something and the beginning of something else.
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In fact,
arq
means ‘end’ or ‘completion’ and
ur
means ‘great’. There is nothing in either
arq
or
ur
to signify ‘beginning’, though the Nine claim that there is, which is good enough for their followers, including Hoagland. But David Myers, in
Two-Thirds,
goes further and traces the name back to the ancient Altean language : ‘Ark Hur’, which, according to his information, means ‘shining beginning-ending’ - again, echoing Tom’s words to the Schlemmer group.
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A major obstacle lies in the way of these interpretations — of course,
arq ur
does not mean ‘Sphinx’ at all. As we saw earlier, this error was made by Robert Temple in
The Sirius Mystery,
resulting from a simple misreading of Sir E.A. Wallis Budge’s An
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary.
As we have seen, it is true that the word ‘Sphinx’ does appear against the definition of
arq ur,
though not as the name of the monument, but as the abbreviation of the title of Budge’s
source,
the French journal
Sphinx.
There, in volume 2, on page 8 (as clearly indicated in Budge’s book), in an article by Professor Karl Piehl, is Budge’s source for the
arq ur
hieroglyphs, which, taken together, in fact mean ‘silver’. The word is not even ancient Egyptian, since it was borrowed from the Greeks in a later period; it is an Egyptian phonetic rendering of
argyros
(a fact that renders any attempt to analyse the meaning of the Egyptian syllables completely futile). Temple’s mistake had no bearing on his own work, as he mentioned the ‘Sphinx’ definition only in passing and drew no conclusions from it, but the same error has appeared in communications from the Nine, leading us to speculate about whether or not they have been reading Temple’s book. Interestingly, Hoagland claims that Temple is the source for his
arq ur
definition, so it is possible that he was simply passing on the error through sloppy research, though his particular interpretation of
arq ur
— ‘beginning and ending’ - is not Temple’s, but comes directly from the Nine.
So could the Nine be readers of Robert Temple - or, more charitably — could Phyllis Schlemmer or one of the sitters have read it and unconsciously contaminated the incoming communications from the Nine? Tom could then have picked their brains; after all, he claims he is limited to the words and concepts already in place in his transceiver’s mind. Unfortunately, the relevant exchange between Tom and Puharich took place two years before Temple’s book came out (although it did exist in manuscript at the time,
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so it is possible that a copy could have been circulating among those connected with Lab Nine - although if Temple did show his manuscript to anybody it was most likely to be his mentor Arthur M. Young). Perhaps Tom, like Temple in his later book, simply misread Budge’s dictionary.
So what do we make of the bizarre story of the Nine? Is it some kind of elaborate hoax, or a collective delusion on the part of Puharich, Whitmore, Schlemmer, Hurtak and their associates?
Outside commentators, such as Stuart Holroyd and Colin Wilson, who have observed many of the key events at close hand, agree that this is not a hoax nor a delusion, and that something genuinely paranormal was going on. At the same time these evaluators have expressed serious reservations about whether the source of the communications really was what it claimed to be — the Nine gods of the ancient Egyptian Ennead. Even Holroyd, who Whitmore recruited specifically to write the ‘official history’ of the Nine, came to this conclusion.
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A number of inexplicable phenomena took place around the Nine’s group, particularly when Uri Geller was involved. Even Holroyd became convinced that the story was worth pursuing, and after initial reservations accepted Whitmore’s offer to write the book when poltergeist-type disturbances took place in his house as he listened to sample tapes of Schlemmer’s channelling.
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Colin Wilson, in his seminal 1978 book
Mysteries
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and even in the foreword he wrote for
Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth
has categorised the Nine along with many similar mediumistic or channelled communications in which it is hard to doubt that the medium is honest, though the source of the messages remains another matter. Wilson speculates that it is some kind of dramatisation by the medium’s subconscious mind using their innate psychic powers, or that some mischievous spirit entities - whom he calls ‘the crooks and conmen of the spirit world’
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— have attached themselves to the medium. (Or perhaps it is a combination of the two, where a spirit plays up to the wishes or expectations of the medium and the group surrounding them.)
Certainly, unexplained phenomena are often what finally persuade a ditherer to accept a particular belief system as the only ‘true’ path or religion. Whether it is the apparently miraculous Shroud of Turin, statues that bleed and weep or visions and a host of ‘meaningful coincidences’ — synchronicities - the excitement of the paranormal is usually what clinches a conversion. After all, few laymen realise what parapsychologists have known for years — that, strangely enough, belief and expectancy themselves actually create phenomena, rather than the other way around. It is the human mind that almost always creates the miracles, not as hoaxes or figments of the imagination, but actually ‘out there’ in the real world through the mysterious ability of psychokinesis. This can take many forms, from metalbending to healing the sick, even endowing inanimate objects with a temporary ‘consciousness’. The point is that weird phenomena can surround any belief system - Hindu statues ooze milk, while Catholic statues weep or bleed — but they are all taken as ‘signs’ of contact with a particular deity or saint and as proof that the religion they represent is the true one. The overwhelming evidence is that all this comes from our own, largely unknown abilities, that are normally kept under wraps by sociological, psychological and, paradoxically, religious conditioning. Society as a whole tends only to humour the paranormal as a novelty, and only too often sets out to destroy those who base their lives on it. Except, that is, for magi, shamans and courageous researchers who have long known about the secret ‘rules’ of paranormal phenomena.