Read The Stargate Conspiracy Online

Authors: Lynn Picknett

The Stargate Conspiracy (54 page)

Giza: The Truth
also adds to our understanding of the various activities at Giza, because the authors managed to get into two of the chambers where secret tunnelling is supposed to be taking place, or at least the scene of some sort of clandestine to-ings and fro-ings. They investigated the tunnel that is allegedly being dug in the Great Pyramid from Davison’s Chamber towards whatever is behind Gantenbrink’s door - but found no sign of it.
24
This is particularly important because this is the last allegation of clandestine tunnelling at Giza - and even that appears to have been discredited.
In Chapter 2 we left the question of covert tunnelling open: virtually all the rumours of recent years turned out to be without foundation, including the detection of nine chambers beneath the Sphinx (promoted by Hancock and Bauval), the accessing of a chamber under the Sphinx containing records and artefacts (which bizarrely seems to have originated within Egyptian government circles), the so-called ‘Hall of Osiris’ in the Great Pyramid (advocated by Larry Dean Hunter) and the mystification surrounding the Water Shaft Chamber (begun by Boris Said and now taken up by James Hurtak and Zahi Hawass). However, as there were still some claims where a definite conclusion was impossible, we considered the possibility that there
was
some kind of clandestine activity going on, for which the wilder rumours served as some kind of smokescreen - particularly the claim about tunnelling off Davison’s Chamber. But now that one also seems to have fallen by the wayside, and it clarifies the issue. Now we know that there is unlikely to be anything new and exciting at Giza, it seems that certain groups want us to believe there is.
Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald also managed to get into the Water Shaft Chamber, deep beneath the causeway at Giza. The lowest of the three chambers - which contains a huge, but empty, granite sarcophagus, surrounded by a watery moat - is now the focus for some highly inventive myth-making. Although of considerable archaeological interest, the key point as far as the myth-makers are concerned is whether, as some claim, it is linked with hypothetical chambers beneath the Sphinx. Could this really be the entrance to the subterranean network of tunnels and chambers spoken of by Cayce and which also appears in the works of AMORC and H. C. Randall-Stevens?
In the north-west corner there is a sort of low passage (which actually leads in the direction of the Great Pyramid, not the Sphinx). But is it really a man-made tunnel? Certainly, Bauval describes it as a tunnel,
25
as does Zahi Hawass. On 2 March 1999 the chamber was the centrepiece of a live television broadcast
(Opening the Lost Tombs - Live)
by Fox TV in the US, in which Hawass leads the presenter down the shaft, describing it as his ‘greatest adventure ever’. In the lowest chamber he draws attention to the ‘tunnel’ saying he had not excavated it yet, but ‘you never know what the sands and tunnels of Egypt may hide’.
26
However, according to Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald, and judging by their photographs, this is simply a natural fault in the rock that narrows to a dead end after a few feet.
27
By far the greatest and most dedicated myth-maker where this particular chamber is concerned is Dr James Hurtak. In lectures in Australia in 1999, he claimed that he was the one to have discovered it.
28
It emerges that when Boris Said and members of the Schor Foundation team explored the chamber in February 1997, Hurtak had accompanied them.
29
Perhaps this was remarkable enough, but in Hurtak’s lectures the chamber has been transformed into Wonderland - virtually an underground city, the entrance to a series of massive chambers and temples surrounded by rivers that could only be crossed by skilful rafting. Indeed, Hurtak shows slides of himself in a raft, giving the illusion of heroic exploits across large distances. In fact, although the chamber is surrounded by water, altogether it is only 30 foot square ... not quite Indiana Jones style. Of course Hurtak links this location with the historical scheme outlined in his
The Keys of Enoch
- and is reported to claim that he has evidence that this ‘underground city’ was constructed by the people from Atlantis.
30
It seems hard not to conclude that all these people are deliberately myth-making about rather unpromising discoveries, perhaps because there is nowhere left on the Giza plateau to spin such stories about.
Hurtak is the link between the Egyptian side of
The Stargate Conspiracy
and the New Age. Recently, British author and researcher Kevin McClure drew our attention to another aspect of Hurtak’s complex and multifaceted career: in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he was best known as a UFO researcher, Hurtak was one of the foremost promoters of a link between the UFO phenomenon and the secrets of Nazi Germany. He claimed that the extraterrestrials that brought civilisation to the Middle East many thousands of years ago chose to re-establish contact with the human race in modern times with the Germany of the 1930s - on the grounds that it was the most scientifically advanced nation of the time. The extraterrestrials gave Nazi scientists the secret of how to construct disc-shaped flying craft; this new technology was captured by the Americans at the end of the Second World War, which is why the first wave of UFO reports in the US began in 1947.
31
Although this is an extremely unlikely scenario (one wonders why Hitler lost the war if he had access to such advanced technology), the significant point is that Hurtak finds nothing odd in the supposed fact that his advanced extraterrestrials should select Nazi Germany as their Chosen Ones.
The monster under the mask
Another major link between the Egyptian mysteries and the New Age is, of course, Edgar Cayce. Both
Secret Chamber
and
Giza: The Truth
present further evidence of the true origins of the ‘Sleeping Prophet’s’ psychic information: Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald point out that, far from being as ignorant of esoteric matters as his supporters claim, Cayce was in fact well versed in Theosophical and other similar beliefs before he began to produce the psychic material relating to Atlantis, ancient Egypt and the Hall of Records. In particular, Cayce lectured to the Theosophical Society of Alabama in 1922, staying for several weeks with a student of such esoteric doctrines, Arthur Lammers, the following year.
32
Bauval also accepts that Cayce was well versed in Theosophical and other lore - and even traces his belief in the significance of 10,500 BCE back to the works of the poet and mystical philosopher Gerald Massey (1828-1907).
33
This makes an important connection between Cayce’s psychic readings and the esoteric groups that came to influence the stargate conspiracy, revealing why Cayce’s work is so significant.
Since the publication of this book we have become even more disturbed by the extreme right-wing politics that lurks under the ‘love and light’ of the New Age movement. We now realise that we are by no means alone in our anxiety about the potential for control of all those largely white, middle-class happy huggers, who may be genuine seekers after enlightenment and awareness. Shortly after this book came out, a friend, the actress and screenwriter Christy Fearn, sent us a copy of
New Age Channelings - Who or What Is Being Channeled?
by the Swedish-born artist and writer Monica Sjöö, which provided more pieces for this particular bit of the jigsaw puzzle. Although Sjöö unashamedly comes from an alternative, radically feminist position, she is concerned about the philosophy and politics that underpin the New Age - especially the subtext of many of the channelled messages. Sjöö, like us, discerned worrying undercurrents in the progenitors of today’s New Age, primarily Madame Blavatsky and Alice A. Bailey. And like us, she sees the Council of Nine - and in particular their book,
The Only Planet of Choice -
as being insidiously sinister and dangerous.
34
Interestingly, Sjöö notes that the channelling cults, particularly the Nine, are not actually very radical. If anything, they uphold the American Dream, reinforcing white, Christian middle-class values and the concept of a ruling elite. Perhaps, she muses, such teachings emanate from intelligence agencies such as the CIA?
35
(We recall the findings of the SRI report entitled ‘Changing Images of Man’ - see Chapter 7.)
Monica Sjöö particularly picks up on the anti-Semitic, racist and stridently patriarchal tone of the great New Age godmothers, Blavatsky and Bailey - especially the latter. She notes that Bailey’s spirit guide, the Tibetan (or ‘the Master DK’), proclaimed on the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki that it was ushering in a new age by releasing cosmic energy, linking the nuclear flash with the Light of the initiate. Surely even more disgusting is the Tibetan’s view of the effect of using the atomic firestorm on thousands of living Japanese. As Sjöö says: ‘Bailey and DK go on to say that the Japanese, whose nervous system is of the 4th root race, were due to be destroyed “... and the consequent release of their imprisoned souls is a necessary happening; it is the justification of the use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese population.’ ”
36
Alice Bailey’s teachings are still the fundamental philosophy of the New Age. Not only does ‘Tom’ of the Council of Nine recommend her books, but the underlying philosophy of Dr James Hurtak is, as we have shown, quite clearly derived from them. Given their popularity among hundreds of thousands - probably millions - of New Agers, surely this is profoundly worrying.
Another disturbing influence is the American William Dudley Pelley, who we mentioned more or less in passing in Chapter 5, but have now come to realise is much more important where the genesis of the stargate conspiracy is concerned. We referred only briefly to his 1950
Star Guests
- now a very rare book - which was probably the first collection of channelled material from extraterrestrials ever published (he claimed it was based on material he had received in the late 1920s). Recently, however, we have managed to acquire a copy for ourselves, which certainly makes interesting reading. We were staggered to find that it brings the whole story round full circle, as it focuses not just on Sirius, but actually on Sirius B ...
37
According to Pelley, the human race is the product of the interbreeding between apemen and advanced extraterrestrial beings that migrated to Earth from the Sirius system. Linking this with ancient Egypt, he asserts that the union of ‘half-god, half-human progeny’ is symbolised by the Sphinx
38
and that the hawk-headed gods represent the Sirians
39
(shades of Puharich’s hawk-headed ‘Spectra’).
Pelley’s channelled sources told him that the human race is now composed of the descendants of the Sirian/Earth interbreeding (who he calls the ‘beast-progeny of the ape-mothers of long ago’
40
or the ‘indigenous biologic earth-forms’
41
) and the reincarnated spirits of the original Sirian migrants. But along the way something went wrong and the descendants of the hybrids became corrupt, so the intelligences that rule the universe sent messengers — of which Jesus was one - to ‘repair’ the damage.
42
This is strikingly similar to Hurtak’s concept of a failure in the genetic programme that needs to be repaired. In Pelley’s teaching everything is building up to the Second Coming with the advent of the Age of Aquarius.
43
All the major elements of the doctrine underlying the stargate conspiracy - elaborated in the later Council of Nine material - were present in Pelley’s seminal book. This is unlikely to be a coincidence. In fact, the circle of the ‘psychic contactees’ of the early 1950s was very closely knit: for example, the ubiquitous godfather of alleged extraterrestrial channelling, Dr Andrija Puharich, knew the alien contactee and UFO writer George Hunt Williamson (real name Michel d’Obrenovic). Williamson worked for Pelley’s white supremacist magazine
Valor
in the early 1950s, and continued to write favourably about Puharich’s work with the Nine until the late 1970s. Puharich must have been aware of Pelley’s book, especially as he was keenly interested in communication with non-human entities.
However, we believe that the most significant aspect of William Dudley Pelley’s influence was his politics. As we have seen, he founded a white supremacist magazine entitled
Valor,
and was an unrepentant admirer of Hitler and founder of the fascist Silver Shirts of America. He was actually interned as a security threat during the Second World War.
What are the implications of this for his alleged channelled communications? It could be that his ideology drove his unconscious mind to fabricate them, but on the other hand, if they are genuine, one has to ask why these entities chose to make contact with a Fascist...
Increasingly, we have become aware of the darkly disturbing elements of this story — the apparently racist undercurrents in some of the teachings of the Nine. We noted with some satisfaction that the first of the BBC
Horizon
programmes made the point that the Nazis’ belief system included a belief in Atlantis and lost superior races. While we agree, of course this is not to say that anyone with an interest in the idea of Atlantis or lost civilisations is a closet Nazi. The point is that such beliefs can be dangerous because - with all their talk of superior races - they inevitably smack of the Master Race, eugenics and all the dire logic that leads to the gas chambers and the death of the soul of mankind. It is no accident that the Nazis themselves used the myth of Atlantis to justify the racial doctrines that led to the Final Solution.
No doubt most of those whose work and ideas are pressed into the service of the stargate conspiracy - such as Alternative Egyptologists, promoters of the Face on Mars and Baileyites and Cayceites - are as repelled by these ideologies as we are. While it was never our intention to suggest that any of the these individuals hold racist or fascist views, our principal concern is that the often faceless behind-the-scenes manipulators have no compunction in seizing their ideas and twisting them for their own ends.

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