Blog Archives
Gateway to Atlantis: The Search for the Source of a Lost Civilization
Gateway to Atlantis
by Andrew Collins
(Carroll & Graf)
Was there truly an ancient continent somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean that succumbed to cataclysmic floods sometime around the end of the last Ice Age (circa 10,000 to 8,000 BC) and then all but disappeared to history? If so, is there any genuine hard evidence to show that the legend of Atlantis is founded in truth?
Andrew Collins, author of Gateway to Atlantis, says yes. And over the course of this book, he weaves together various clues across multiple scholarly disciplines to demonstrate that indeed there is ample reason to conclude that the legend of Atlantis is actually a significant part of human history, one that may even tie together the ancient histories of Mesoamerican, European and Near East cultures.
Gateway to Atlantis does not promote a New Age image of Atlantean pyramids and crystal mindlight generators — regardless of whether such ideas are true or not. Rather, Mr. Collins is an astute historical detective who bases his arguments on ancient source material and a broad base of knowledge regarding ancient cultures, peoples and geographies. He may very well have pieced together just about all of the necessary clues to pinpoint exactly where the ancient seat of Atlantis existed. Only time — and archaeological dedication — will tell if Mr. Collins is right.
* * * * *
“Very possibly, these are the same islands that Plato informs us were used by ancient voyagers to reach ‘the opposite continent’, i.e. the American mainland. What is more, the suggestion that Atlantis also gained control of lands within the Pillars of Hercules clearly implies that the empire established itself in both Europe and Libya. All this would indicate some kind of connection between the supposed Atlanteans of the Western Ocean and the ‘voyagers’ from within the Mediterranean, whom Plato tells us were able to reach ‘the opposite continent’ via a series of ‘other islands’, before the final destruction of Atlantis.” (p. 57)
Plato
Plato is the main and primary source of the Atlantean legend, and his fictional accounts of this mythic land, as told in the Timaeus and the Critias, are where Mr. Collins begins. And one of the most intriguing clues Plato gives us is the idea that ancient voyagers, prior to the destruction of Atlantis, used the Atlantean islands as stopovers to reach an “opposite continent” that Mr. Collins identifies as the American mainland.
Plato is the starting place for Mr. Collins’ Atlantean detective story and he distills some important clues from Plato’s fictional account. Plato makes it clear that mariners from some past age were able to cross the Atlantic Ocean and reach the Atlantean mainland — as well as the “opposite” continent beyond the Atlantean islands. A natural cataclysm involving earthquakes and floods destroyed the Atlantean islands and left, in the wake of the destruction, “an ‘impassable sea’ of mud and shoals (which Mr. Collins identifies as either the Sargasso Sea or the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or both) [that] occupies the former position of the sunken island preventing any further navigation to ‘the opposite continent’.” (p. 72)
If this is indeed true, how did the memory of this prehistoric age survive some 8,000 years and make its way across the Atlantic to reach Plato?
* * * * *
” …I now feel we can safely conclude that the Hesperides were indeed the West Indies, and that a sketchy knowledge of this island group’s existence persisted into Roman times. It was information such as this that writers including Pliny, Sebosus and Solinus would seem to have picked up on and used as geographical anecdotes in their respective works. In turn, much later writers such as Isidore of Seville, Dicuil and Honorius of Autun included this information in their own works, which were much later consulted by medieval cartographers prior to the age of discovery. In this way ancient maritime lore, perhaps thousands of years old, came into the possession of European explorers and chroniclers in the wake of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World.” (p. 98)
Transatlantic Voyages
In order to determine whether or not ancient mariners had crossed the Atlantic, Mr. Collins scours the ancient works. But the old texts abound with islands whose ancient names often don’t have clearly identified modern counterparts. Islands such as the Gorgades, the Blessed Isles, the Fortunate Isles and the Hesperides are often referenced — however, the modern islands to which those names refer are, apparently, still debated.
After some heavy detective work, Mr. Collins seems to make sense of all the various ancient island names and concludes that the Hesperides refers to the islands of the West Indies, in the Caribbean. This is an extremely important deduction because it means that all ancient references to voyages to the Hesperides refer to Atlantic crossings to the Caribbean — in other words, transatlantic voyages.
“…if I am correct in my identification of the geographical locations to which he alludes, then we have a very rare discovery indeed. I say this because the words of Sebosus, as Oviedo obviously realised in the sixteenth century, appear to confirm that transatlantic journeys had taken place between Cape Verde on the African coast and the West Indies in ancient times. Evidence that this is indeed the case comes from the 40 days’ sailing time Sebosus gives for the voyage between the Gorgades and the Hesperides.” (p. 95)
Apparently, 40 days sailing time is an accurate duration between the Cape Verde Isles (which Mr. Collins identifies with the ancient Gorgades islands, off the west coast of Africa) and the islands of the West Indies (which Mr. Collins identifies with the Hesperides). If Mr. Collins is correct — and he pores through a vast amount of research to support the identification of these islands — then we have some substantial evidence to support the idea of ancient transatlantic voyages. This alone is enough to upset the modern notion of our ancient history.
But if the islands of the Caribbean, also known today as the Antilles (note the consonants “A-T-L” inherent in both Antilles and Atlantis) are the source of the Atlantean legend which was then brought east to Europe via ancient transatlantic voyagers, then who were these ancient mariners? Is there any evidentiary support of a seagoing people with transatlantic capabilities?
* * * * *
“…if the Phoenicians and Carthaginians really were responsible for introducing Caribbean catastrophe myths to the Mediterranean world prior to the age of Plato, could these nations be linked directly to the Atlantis legend? Incredibly the answer is yes.” (p. 161-162)
The Phoenicians
In addition to ancient tales alluding to transatlantic voyages, it seems that Egyptian mummies hold some tantalizing clues that suggest transatlantic voyages must have occurred during Pharaonic times. Numerous mummies have been found to contain residue of tobacco and coca leaves. While it’s possible that tobacco leaves could have reached Egypt from more fertile parts of Africa during ancient times, Mr. Collins notes that the only source of the coca leaves could have been from the Americas.
“As fantastic as this proposal might seem, the only realistic solution to explain the discovery of cocaine in Egyptian mummies is to suggest trading contact between the two continents. Furthermore, if the coca leaf was really being exported in this manner, there has to be a possibility that tobacco from Central America was also being shipped to the ancient world. The presence of tobacco and cocaine in the same Egyptian individuals would tend to support this supposition. Moreover, the strange relationship between the names used for tobacco smoking on both sides of the Atlantic implies a cross-fertilisation of terminology, techniques, and quite possibly even plants and produce centuries before the age of Columbus. Only by establishing this ancient trade route can we go on to propose a means by which knowledge of the Caribbean islands, and the cataclysms they would seem to have suffered in some past age, can have reached the Mediterranean world prior to the age of Plato.” (p. 124)
The Phoenicians were, apparently, accomplished mariners, setting up trade routes from islands off the west coast of Africa all the way up to the British Isles. And while Mr. Collins cites circumstantial evidence from ancient texts to support the idea that the ancient Phoenicians made it to the American shores, multiple discoveries in New England of ancient Carthaginian coins (ancient Carthage having originated as a Phoenician colony) gives hard credence to the idea that Phoenician mariners must have reached America in ancient times.
* * * * *
“What all this suggests is that memories were preserved among the tribes of Mesoamerica regarding a single island landmass from which came a displaced peoples who formed the ruling dynasties of the earliest races to inhabit the region.” (p. 223)
Conquest & Cataclysm
Via the conquest of the New World, Mr. Collins takes the reader on a journey into indigenous Mesoamerican myth — myth that over and over again, across multiple cultures throughout the Americas, talks about an ancient Caribbean cataclysm that tore apart a single landmass via earthquakes and floods, leaving behind the scattered islands that we know today.
Mr. Collins provides clues to ancient civilizations that existed in the Caribbean prior to the indigenous populations that were found when the Portuguese and Spanish arrived in the New World. From Olmec, Toltec, Aztec, Maya, Taino, Carib and other indigenous sources, Mr. Collins presents a convincing case that the native Mesoamerican tradition is consistent: They all speak of the origins of their civilization having emerged from the ruins from some great ancient cataclysm.
But what was this cataclysm?
Amazingly, Mr. Collins presents astounding geological evidence across the southeastern part of North America — a scarred, lunar-type landscape of impact craters known as the Carolina Bays. Mr. Collins suggests that the Carolina Bays is the geological scarring that resulted from a comet, breaking up in mid-flight, as it headed just beyond what is now the Caribbean, and what was once known as the continent of Atlantis. Mr. Collins cites two deep sea impact sites just to the east of the Caribbean as the comet’s ground zero.
The tsunamis that resulted devastated the Atlantean islands and affected the Earth’s climate such that the last Ice Age ended, the ice melted, the water levels rose — and the waters that covered that Atlantean landmass never receded.
* * * * *
“All the evidence presented by the mythological traditions of the early cultures of Mesoamerica points toward the islands of the Greater Antilles being the original homeland of their earliest ancestors and wisdom-bringers, described repeatedly as ‘serpents’ or ‘feathered serpents’.” (p. 237)
The Nephilim
Mr. Collins wraps up Gateway to Atlantis with some fascinating deductions, comparing the Mesoamerican legends of the serpent people with the Hebrew tradition of the Nephilim, the race of titans (perhaps serpent-like) who helped humanity re-establish civilization following the aftermath of the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age.
As this burgeoning paradigm unfolds before us in this age of information and awakening, it seems perfectly logical that if there truly was a race of advanced beings on planet Earth who helped jump start human civilization during pre-historic times, then the myths of these beings should be consistent across the planet. Mr. Collins demonstrates that there is good evidence to support this consistency.
Conclusion
At the outset of this review, I noted that Mr. Collins had identified the ancient seat of the Atlantean empire — and I have purposefully left out that important tidbit of information. I don’t want to give away everything.
Gateway to Atlantis may very well be the definitive scholarly work on raising Atlantis from its watery tomb. At the very least, Mr. Collins has demonstrated with an abundant amount of direct evidence that there is a fascinating narrative to explain how the story of Atlantis passed from history to legend to myth — from destruction to indigenous lore; from the tales of ancient transatlantic mariners to Egypt; and from Egypt to Plato.
It is entirely within the realm of possibility that with Gateway to Atlantis Mr. Collins has hit ground zero. And perhaps with further investigation into the area identified by Mr. Collins, we may eventually be able to flesh out the part of this narrative that precedes the destruction of Atlantean continent.
The Lost Continent of Mu
The Lost Continent of Mu
by James Churchward
(Adventures Unlimited Press)
Putting together the prehistoric story of ancient humankind is a daunting task and in The Lost Continent of Mu, James Churchward may very well have a number of pieces of this garbled puzzle. Although this 1926 book is perhaps not quite flawless, the story of James Churchward and how he came to believe he possessed the lost narrative of humankind is a fascinating tale in and of itself. Mr. Churchward was a world traveler, explorer and researcher. While stationed in India, he claims to have been taught to read humankind’s first and original language — symbol-based texts from prehistoric tablets that today are either lost or remain hidden.
After reading The Lost Continent of Mu, it seems that the spirit of Mr. Churchward’s investigation is certainly true and the overarching scope of humankind’s ancient tale weaved by Mr. Churchward does make perfect sense in today’s burgeoning paradigm. Mr. Churchward gives additional good reason to seriously consider that an ancient continent once existed in the Pacific Ocean (the remnants of which are the dotted islands currently scattered across the waters) and that humankind — or at least one branch of humankind — can trace its origins to this fabled land.
James Churchward
Author and prehistory expert David Hatcher Childress penned the introduction to The Lost Continent of Mu, and his telling of the Churchward story is equally as intriguing as the contents of the book itself. Mr. Churchward’s life path was quite a journey.
In 1868, at the age of 18, Mr. Churchward was sent to India as part of the British military where he eventually rose to the rank of Colonel — and during which time he befriended a Hindu rishi. Over the course of a 12-year friendship, this Hindu priest…
“…gave Churchward access to some very rare and mystical ancient tablets which had purportedly been hidden in the temple vaults for thousands of years. The tablets were carved with arcane symbols, and the rishi began teaching Churchward how to interpret some of the simpler signs. Churchward proved an avid student, and the lessons continued until eventually Churchward had mastered the language — supposed to be the original language of Mankind!” (p. ii)
This language was the language of the continent of Mu, the fabled motherland of humanity. It was a language of symbols that, as Mr. Churchward contends, went on to influence the hieroglyphic scripts of the Pacific Island cultures, the Maya, the ancient Egyptians as well as the cultures of Central Asia and India, among others. After retiring from the military in 1880, Churchward spent the next 8 years, traveling around the Pacific, Asia and Australia interpreting ancient documents in light of his knowledge of the lost language of Mu and looking for evidence of ancient cataclysms that would lend credence to his belief that a continent once existed in the Pacific.
In 1888, Mr. Churchward settled in New York and, armed with his documents, photographs and personal paintings collected during his world travels, he eventually put to paper what he had learned. The result, in 1926, was The Lost Continent of Mu, a classic work that has never been out of print.
The Old Master
The linchpin to Mr. Churchward’s work is the initial relationship he forged with the Indian rishi, a man who Mr. Churchward refers to as “Master.” During a lecture given before the American Society for Psychical Research on April 20, 1931, Mr. Churchward referred to the Indian rishi thusly:
“This priest was a great Master, the most proficient Master that has lived since the time of Jesus…
“…Many do not know the actual meaning of Master. In olden times this title was bestowed on those who had Mastered the Cosmic Sciences and Learnt how to control the Cosmic Forces, and had brought his material body under the absolute control of his inner self.
“This old Master and his two cousins…were the sole survivors of the Naacal Brotherhood which had existed for 70,000 years. This Brotherhood had been formed in the Motherland, when experts of religion and the Cosmic Sciences were being sent from Mu to her various colonies.” (p. xi-xii)
If Mr. Churchward indeed had direct interaction with a Master, as described above, during his eight years stationed in India, then that alone is an amazing story — one that I hope to find written about in more detail elsewhere.
Nevertheless, it is no doubt that when Mr. Churchward left India in 1880, he did so with a mission — to find real world evidence to substantiate what he learned from the Indian Master.
Mu
According to Mr. Churchward, Mu was the biblical Garden of Eden. It was the advent of humanity on planet Earth, the continent where humanity was born and the root from which humanity spread across the globe. Mr. Churchward interprets ancient documents in light of this perspective — documents like the Mayan Troano Codex, the Tibetan Lhasa Codex, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as well as the Naacal Tablets (the secret tablets shown to him by the rishi during his time in India).
According to Mr. Churchward, ancient documents and inscriptions of Central and South America talk about a “Land to the West” that was swallowed by the waters. He finds consistency in the ancient symbology of lands on both sides of the Pacific, suggesting a pre-historic link that connected Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas. This consistency among symbols found in ancient sites and texts from around the globe suggests a singular source, and Mr. Churchward provides abundant evidence in support.
So is Mr. Churchward correct?
Conclusion
I am certainly not qualified enough in the study of ancient symbology to make a judgment on Mr. Churchward’s conclusions. Nevertheless, his approach to the subject is irreproachable. Symbology is the road to take. If indeed there is a singular seed to humanity’s tree, then it probably begins at the point where all of the ancient symbols meet.
Forgotten Civilization
Forgotten Civilization
The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future
by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.
(Inner Traditions)
Robert M. Schoch is a geologist who, in the 1990’s (at the behest of renegade Egyptologist John Anthony West), threw mainstream Egyptology into turmoil when he noted that the enclosure which surrounds the Sphinx exhibits weathering characteristics consistent with heavy rainfall — a climatic condition that the Giza plateau hadn’t witnessed since at least 5000 BCE. By making this claim, Mr. Schoch upturned the apple cart. The Sphinx could not have been constructed in 2500 BCE, the date mainstream Egyptology ascribes to it. Even to this day, Egyptologists have a hard time giving up on 2500 BCE, despite the inconvenient evidence brought forth by Mr. Schoch and confirmed by other geologists.
One of the biggest problems with re-dating the megalithic structures of ancient Egypt is that we do not have archaeological evidence of a society that existed prior to the time of the pharaohs and which demonstrated having the tools and the organization to complete such a monumental project. Despite the geological evidence, Mr. Schoch didn’t have any “pottery shards” (p37). But all this hubbub occurred during the ’90s — before the archaeologists had unearthed definitive proof of a culture that both lived around 10,000 BCE and had the means to construct a megalithic city known today as Göbekli Tepe.
* * * * *
“Looking only at style and quality of workmanship, one might easily suggest that Göbekli Tepe dates to between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE. How wrong one would be. Based on radiocarbon analyses, the site goes back to the period of 10,000 BCE to 9000 BCE and was intentionally buried circa 8000 BCE.” (p41)
10,000 BCE
Those who are unearthing and studying Göbekli Tepe may very well be looking at the remains of a culture that co-existed during the same time period as the mythical Atlantis…and was subject to the very same global cataclysm that submerged that civilization beneath the waters of the Earth and the legends of our collective memory.
“Picture Stonehenge, multiply it by twenty, [and] carve the pillars more ornately…Immense, finely carved, and decorated T-shaped limestone pillars, many in the range of two to five and one-half maters tall and weighing up to an estimated ten to fifteen tons, form circles…and based on geophysical surveys, the entire site may cover three dozen hectares (about ninety acres) and contain another sixteen to twenty stone circles…This is an immense complex!” (p40)
With Göbekli Tepe, Mr. Schoch has confirmation that a sophisticated human culture existed during the period of time in which he dates the Sphinx. But what happened to it?
Scientists agree that sometime around 10,000 BCE, the last ice age ended. The ice melted. The sea levels rose. The face of the planet changed. Mr. Schoch contends that the trigger for this planet-changing event was a massive solar outburst.
* * * * *
“The solar activity data, the climatic data, the petroglyphs, the rongorongo texts, and the demise of the early civilizations at the end of the last ice age indicate that something mighty — something catastrophic — was happening. All of the evidence points to some sort of solar outburst or cosmic event wreaking terror on the surface of the Earth. Today the Sun is starting to exhibit the same behavior as seen over ten thousand years ago when catastrophe hit. Will we heed the warning signs? Will we take the lessons of the past seriously and prepare for the future?” (p108)
The Glyphs
Sunspots and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are both well-known characteristics of the sun — and it’s also well-known that particularly strong CMEs have the potential to wreak havoc on our planet, affecting our magnetosphere, our ozone layer and the entire technological network that spans the globe. According to Mr. Schoch, we may very well be due for a big one — one that may rival the solar outburst that ended the last ice age.
Mr. Schoch supports this claim with solar activity data and climatic data that suggest these massive solar outbursts occur in measurable cycles; and the cycle seems to imply that we are due — sometime within this century, or perhaps even tomorrow.
If this solar event occurs, we would see massive auroral displays in the skies around the globe. And based on experiments conducted by plasma physicist Anthony L. Peratt, Mr. Schoch suggests that many of the ancient petroglyphs found around the planet are, in fact, representations of the images the ancients saw in the skies when the massive plasma discharges collided with our magnetosphere.
“Powerful plasma discharges, much more powerful than the auroras observed in the present day, form structures known as plasma columns that can expand in some places and constrict or narrow in other places…In profile these plasma columns can form donut shapes and may look like intertwining snakes, a stack of circles, or even resemble human stick figures…”(p92)
Peratt’s experiments demonstrated the variety of figures and shapes that intense plasma discharges can create — and when Mr. Schoch compared those images to Easter Island glyphs (known as the rongorongo script), the similarities were striking. Additionally, when Mr. Schoch compared the rongorongo script to the geoglyphs known as the Nazca lines, he found striking similarities as well.
Could it be that the ancients were recording on land what they were witnessing in the skies?
* * * * *
“Based on the similarity of the rongorongo glyphs to the images seen in the skies during super auroral events and, as modeled by Peratt (2003), powerful solar outbursts and the resulting plasma configurations that would have been observed, I believe that the rongorongo glyphs were initially inspired by those events in the skies. The rongorongo was a record of what was seen — literally — and it was recorded in a way that made sense to the scribes and copyists of the time.” (p164-165)
Conclusion
I’m certain that Mr. Schoch will always be remembered as the geologist who challenged mainstream Egyptologists, archaeologists, anthropologists and historians — and won. As time marches on, the validity of Mr. Schoch’s evidence becomes clearer to a wider audience.
His newest claim — that many of Earth’s ancient glyphs are representations of what our ancestors witnessed during an ice age-ending, cataclysmic solar outburst that may repeat itself — certainly has legs on which to walk. Time will tell. And if he’s right, many of us will be around to witness it.
Moses and Akhenaten: The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus
Moses and Akhenaten
by Ahmen Osman
(Bear & Company)
Sometime in the middle of the 14th century BCE, a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty named Amenhotep IV abolished the centuries-old pantheon of Egyptian gods and instead instituted a monotheistic religion based on the worship of the Aten, a single god without image or form. In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV moved his dynasty to Amarna, a newly completed city named in honor of this monotheistic god, and changed his own name to Akhenaten, translated as “living spirit of Aten.”
Understandably, Akhenaten was not a popular figure among the majority of Egyptians, in particular the temple priests whose millennia-old spiritual heritage was brushed aside and replaced by a new deity. When Akhenaten’s reign over Egypt ended, his son, the famous boy king, Pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut), re-instated the Egyptian pantheon. And by the time the 18th dynasty had ended, all records of the reign of Akhenaten were removed from official records. Akhenaten was all but erased from history until the city of Akhetaten was unearthed by archeologists in the 19th century.
Akhenaten’s mummy was never found.
The similarities between the monotheism of Akhenaten and the religion of the ancient Hebrews is too striking to ignore, especially since the story of the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt is dated sometime between mid-15th century and mid-13th century BCE. That puts the reign of Akhenaten arguably right in the middle of this monotheistic turmoil. The link was enough for Sigmund Freud to suggest, in his book Moses and Monotheism, that Moses was a follower of Akhenaten and brought Egyptian monotheism to the Hebrews.
But Egyptian scholar Ahmed Osman takes the relation one step further, putting forth the theory that Akhenaten and Moses were, in fact, the same person. The result is a compelling revision.
Joseph And The Arrival Of The Hebrews
Mr. Osman’s theory begins with the story of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph, who, as a child, was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Joseph ended up in Egypt where he correctly interpreted the pharaoh’s dream, predicting seven good years of harvest followed by seven lean years. This interpretation likely saved the Egyptian populace from starving during the lean years and won Joseph an appointment in Pharaoh’s court as minister.
The lean years, however, were hard on the nomads of Canaan. Among those nomads were the ancient Hebrews, and ironically, according to the biblical account, it was Joseph’s brothers who traveled to Egypt to ask the Pharaoh if a small band of Hebrews could settle in Egypt.
“Joseph revealed his identity to them, but told them reassuringly that they should not blame themselves for having sold him into slavery because it was not they who had sent him ‘hither, but God; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh.’
“A father to Pharaoh! I thought at once … of Yuya, a minister to two rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Although Yuya was not apparently of royal blood, his tomb had been found in the Valley of the Kings in 1905. Little attention was devoted to him because he was considered comparatively unimportant. Yet Yuya is the only person in whose tomb the title … holy father of The Lord of the Two Lands, Pharaoh’s formal title — has been found.” (p. 2)
Mr. Osman claims that Joseph was the grandfather of Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh who would later change his name to Akhenaten. According to Mr. Osman, Joseph’s daughter was named Tiye, the woman who would grow up to be one of the wives of Amenhotep III and the mother of Amenhotep IV … known later as Akhenaten.
If the preceding is true, it would mean that Pharaoh Akhenaten is one-quarter Hebrew.
Akhenaten’s Early Years
It’s accepted that the threat of a Hyksos invasion into the eastern Nile delta is what caused the Egyptian pharaoh to worry about a growing Hebrew population in that area — for if the Hyksos were to invade, the pharaoh feared, the Hebrews might side with Egypt’s enemy. However, Mr. Osman puts forth another theory behind the pharaoh’s desire to kill all of the Hebrew’s first born sons — the order which led to the famous story of Moses being placed in the river Nile.
Mr. Osman claims that Pharaoh Amenhotep III worried that if his part-Hebrew son, Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), the son of Tiye (daughter of Joseph/Yuya) …
“… acceded to the throne, this would be regarded as forming a new dynasty of non-Egyptian, non-Amunite [Amun, being the prevailing name in ancient Egypt for the primal creative consciousness of the universe], part-Israelite kings over Egypt. This is exactly the light in which the Amunite priests and nobles of Egypt, the watchdogs of old traditions, regarded Akhenaten … Consequently, the king, motivated by the possible threat to the dynasty and confrontation with the priesthood, instructed the midwives to kill Tiye’s child in secrecy if it proved to be a boy.” (p. 61)
Tiye, however, sent Amenhotep IV to her relatives in Goshen, to the settlement of the Hebrews in the eastern Nile delta, where he grew up with Hebraic monotheism.
“…once he knew that Moses had been born and survived, his attempt to kill all the male Israelite children at birth was abandoned.” (p. 62)
And according to Mr. Osman, Tiye didn’t simply intend to save Amenhotep IV, she intended for him to succeed his father on the throne.
“In order to ensure her son’s ultimate inheritance of the throne, she therefore arranged for him to marry his half-sister Nefertiti — the daughter of Amenhotep III by his sister, Sitamun, the legitimate heiress — and to be appointed his father’s co-regent [co-Pharaoh], with special emphasis on Nefertiti’s role in order to placate the priests and nobles.” (p. 62)
Akhenaten Takes The Throne
According to Mr. Osman, it was the declining health of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that afforded his wife, Tiye, the influence to see to it that her son Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) became the next in line. Mr. Osman claims that a co-regency began in which both Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV shared the role of pharaoh.
“[Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten], whose religious ideas were already well developed, offended the Amunite priesthood from the start of the co-regency by building temples to his monotheistic god, the Aten, at Karnak and Luxor.” (p. 62) And by the 12th year of Akhenaten’s reign, “he shut down the temples of the ancient gods of Egypt, cut off all financial support for them and sent the priests home.” (p. 63)
Three years later, according to Mr. Osman, Akhenaten was forced to flee Egypt. Akhenaten’s brother, Semenkhkare, was installed on the throne, but didn’t last, perhaps, more than a few days. Akhenaten’s son, Tutankhamun, then took the throne and he began to restore the old gods. Nine or ten years later, while Akhenaten was still in exile, Tutankhamun died (or, as has been suggested, was murdered) and the leader of the Egyptian army, Horemheb took the throne to finish off the Eighteenth Dynasty.
“The bitterness which divided the country at the time is indicated by the actions of Horemheb and the Ramesside kings who followed him. The names of the Amarna kings [Akhenaten, etc.] were excised from king lists and monuments in a studied campaign to try to remove all trace of them from Egypt’s memory, and it was forbidden even to mention in conversation the name of Akhenaten. In addition, the Israelites were put to the harsh work of building the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses.” (p. 63-64)
Let My People Go
Upon the death of Horemheb, his vizier and leader of the Egyptian army, Ramses, took the throne and began the Nineteenth Dynasty. That is when, Mr. Osman claims, Akhenaten returned from exile to challenge Ramses’ right to the throne. Akhenaten failed but “eventually persuaded Ramses I to allow him and the Israelites to leave the country.” (p. 64)
And thus began the Exodus.
Mos
Mr. Osman brings up another interesting point worth mentioning. The name Moses clearly seems like an Egyptian name. We see it in pharaonic names like Tuthmosis and Ahmosis. But Mr. Osman points out that the name Moses is more likely a Greek pronunciation of the Hebrew name Moshe. (There is no “sh” pronunciation in Greek, and it was typical for Greek names to end in “s” — Hermes, Orestes, Pythagoras, Sophocles, Socrates, etc.) And Moshe, according to Mr. Osman, is an unusual conjunction of letters for a Hebrew name (“m” and “sh”). He suggests, rather, that Moshe is a Hebrew pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian word mos — which, he notes, means son.
“After Akhenaten fell from power, the Egyptian authorities forbade any mention of his name. Consequently, it seems to me that an alternative had to be found in order that his followers could refer to him … he was referred to officially in latter days as ‘The Fallen One of Akhetaten [today, known as Amarna]’ and ‘The Rebel of Akhetaten’. Faced with the accusation that Akhenaten was not the real heir to the throne, I believe the Israelites called him mos, the son, to indicate that he was the legitimate son of Amenhotep III and the rightful heir to his father’s throne.” (p. 67)
Conclusion
Such is Mr. Osman’s theory, and I personally find it a compelling historical challenge to the myth given in the bible. Moses and Akhenaten is deeply researched, with a great deal of source material used to back up these claims. Nevertheless, to make all of the dates line up, placing Akhenaten and the Exodus of the Hebrews in exactly the same time frame, it requires some archaeological juggling that deviates from the accepted timelines.
Radical ideas, however, by nature, are going to rock the boat. This one does exactly that.
Right or wrong, two things remain clear: 1) An Egyptian pharaoh brought monotheism to Egypt for a period of time; and 2) monotheistic Hebrews lived in the eastern Nile delta region within a period near or at that exact time. While we may or may not currently know the precise connection between these two facts, it seems they are linked in a substantial way.
Babylon’s Banksters
Babylon’s Banksters
by Joseph Farrell
Joseph Farrell spans the ages in Babylon’s Banksters, tying together an ancient international class of what he terms “bullion brokers,” their involvement with humanity’s ancient temples (along with the predictive capabilities of the temples’ astrological functions), the control and suppression of technologies and ultimately the total usurpation of the money-issuing power of states and nations around the globe.
The Background Story
Babylon’s Banksters begins with a theoretical scenario in which two ancient civilizations pre-dating our historical eras destroyed each other in a great and encompassing final war. The devastation was so complete as to wipe out both of the civilizations’ technological capabilities.
Humanity’s remains were left to pick up the pieces and begin again from square one — while a select class of survivors kept shreds of the ancient wisdom alive. Sacred geometry and its powerful secrets were guarded in the temples and secret societies. Mystery schools were established to maintain the wisdom among a small class of adepts.
The story continues to suggest that those who have controlled this wisdom from ancient times are the predecessors, if not ancestors of those at the top of the financial pyramid today. And those at the top continue to use predictive cyclical patterns to their own enriching and often nefarious ends. But their aims are not simply to control the money supply, but to control the physics of the technologies that could, on the one hand, free humanity from this monetary control, and on the other, destroy us once again.
Ultimately, the story of these ancient bullion brokers and their progeny is their search to re-establish the technology that was lost following the theoretical great and final battle of pre-history.
The Power of Money
The most important factor in Farrell’s equation of physics, religion and finance is the control of the money supply. And the banksters will go to any length to ensure that control rests with them.
Farrell cites evidence that strongly suggests Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and Kennedy were all assassinated for their attempts to take the money-issuing power away from the privately controlled central bank — with the intention of issuing debt-free government created money.
Farrell traces evidence that central bankers have historically flooded the market with counterfeit bills whenever the U.S. has intended to oversee the issuance of its own currency — intending to devalue the non-central bank currency. Once devalued, the banksters then offer the central bank as a stabilizing solution.
This scheme of inflating a nation’s currency to induce instability, then offer the central banking system to stabilize the system has been, according to Farrell’s evidence, the method used by the international class of bullion brokers throughout history.
Astrology & Cyclical Trends
Following the Great Depression, economic analyst Edward Dewey and his associate Edwin Dakin were commissioned by President Herbert Hoover to find the cause of the economic downturn via statistical analysis.
Dewey and Dakin found that it’s not just the economy that rises and falls according to waves that resonate in predictable patterns. Everything in nature follows these same wave patterns.
Farrell details the story of Dewey and Dakin’s research and notes that when these waves hit their lows during certain astrological conjunctions, that’s when all hell breaks loose. Our worst economic depressions have apparently occurred in line with noteworthy astrological alignments. Farrell suggests that banksters have used these predictive elements — tying in known economic cycles with certain astrological conjunctions — to exacerbate downturns and take advantage of the crisis.
A Global Story
But this is not just an American story. It is a multi-headed beast and the banksters are not the only ones playing.
Farrell suggests that the American economic collapse of 2008 was a sneak attack of sorts by the Chinese. Farrell also notes that the Nazi party, although financed by the banksters during their rise to power, ultimately turned the relationship sour by its move to create state-issued debt-free money.
Even as far back as the Peloponnesian War, Farrell claims that Sparta was the sole holdout among a republic of Greek states that had already fallen into the hands of the international bankers’ central banks — and its debt-creating policy of money issuance.
Fast forward to the annual ultra-secretive Bildergerg Group meetings. Farrell suggests that the first assembly of the Bilderberg Group was ultimately a meeting of detente between the banksters and the fabulously wealthy post-war Nazis that had escaped to South America to resume research on advanced physics technology — things like the legendary anti-gravity, hyper dimensional Nazi “bell” device.
Tying It All Together
Farrell covers a lot of ground in a short amount of space and he undoubtedly has a brilliant mind, along with a healthy background on a variety of esoteric subjects. That brilliance and his vast knowledge spurs him to launch into a number of disparate directions.
However, this book is not meant to be a chronological tale of the international banksters through history. Rather, it is a detailed essay on where physics, astrology, ancient religion and alchemical transmutation tie into the banksters ability to create something out of nothing — in other words, their ability to transmutate something valueless like our existing fiat currency into something that not simply has value, but it has ultimately become the purpose of most of our lives.
That process is, in a sense, alchemical magic.
Further Reading
For those, like myself, who are interested to read further into the chronological story of who these banksters are and how they’ve influenced the course of our history, Farrell’s sources for this book are a treasure chest of information:
The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, Daniel Estulin
The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Carroll Quigley
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time, Carroll Quigley
Bloodlines of the Illuminati, Fritz Springmeier
All of them future reads, for sure.
Tales of Ancient Egypt
Edgar Cayce’s Tales of Ancient Egypt
by John Van Auken
Students of esoterica know that the history of humanity stretches far beyond the 6,000 years of common knowledge. Beyond the dynastic period of ancient Egypt, beyond Babylon and Sumeria – most likely to the sunken continents of Atlantis and Lemuria. And it’s likely that the seeds of who we are that were sown so long ago originated from beyond this planet.
Edgar Cayce’s Tales of Ancient Egypt, as interpreted and related by Cayce scholar John Van Auken, takes us to the period of ancient Egypt’s birth and paints an in-depth portrait of the spiritual and political side of its origins.
The Men Behind the Book
John Van Auken has been studying Cayce’s voluminous readings for the past 40 years, specializing in the ancient mysteries and lost civilizations. Auken is also a director at Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.). Auken has also written From Karma to Grace (a book on spiritual living based on Cayce’s readings) and Edgar Cayce and the Kabbalah. Cayce’s readings, which were transcribed while Cayce was in a trance state accessing the Akashic Records, are often filled with archaic and confusing language. Cayce’s readings are usually not easily understood. Having a Cayce scholar like Auken who is not only well-versed in Cayce’s readings but also the ancient civilizations about which Cayce speaks makes Auken an invaluable resource in making sense of Cayce’s readings – which may very well be some of the most important, if not entirely prophetic, body of work of the last 100 years.
Edgar Cayce grew up a simple, rural man who lived in the late 19th and early 20th Century. He became well known as the “sleeping prophet” for his ability to fall into a trance state and access information from a higher dimensional state. During his trances, he gave medical information to those who were sick, giving them the information necessary to heal. He gave information to oil prospectors that helped them determine where to drill. Because his readings were so accurate and because he had such success, particularly in healing the sick, Cayce became one of the world’s most renowned psychics. During Cayce’s readings, his wife was the intermediary between the clients and Cayce. She asked the questions on the client’s behalf. Starting in 1923, Cayce hired a secretary who began transcribing his readings. Today, 14,000 of Cayce’s readings are stored and available at the A.R.E. in Virginia Beach (as well as online and on disc).
Among Cayce’s most interesting readings are those involving spirituality, Atlantis and ancient mysteries.
Tales of Ancient Egypt
The book begins with the story of how ancient Egypt was first populated by Nubians, then peacefully “invaded” by 900 survivors of the Atlantean destruction who descended from a mountainous region of Turkey and met with a population that was well taken care of by the river Nile and preferred to make a peaceful co-existence with the newcomers. The high priest of the Atlanteans was Ra-Ta, a previous incarnation of Cayce’s.
The destruction of Atlantis signaled the end of humanity’s First Creation and the beginning of the Second Creation. The planet was nearly wiped clean of humans and the mission in those days was to repopulate the planet. Many in these ancient times still retained the Law of One philosophy of our ancestors – the idea that we are a single consciousness having individual experiences as we evolve our way back to Source. But as is also foretold by the Hindu Yuga cycle, humanity was falling into a period of extreme duality. Good and evil. Our Law of One-ness would be replaced by division, separateness, other-ness, us-versus-them. (We are now coming out of this period as the veil over the truth of who we are is being lifted.)
Auken goes on to tell Cayce’s tales of the more important figures in Egypt’s pre-Dynastic era, often intertwining Egyptian gods into the story.
Hermes-Thoth
Auken mentions that the character of Hermes-Thoth is a difficult one to pinpoint in history – and he is right on. Thoth is an extremely confusing character – appearing in Egypt as Thoth, in Greece as Hermes and in Rome as Mercury. Auken notes that Thoth has been identified at times as Enoch. And apparently one Cayce reading identifies Thoth as a prior incarnation of Jesus. All very confusing indeed. But one consistency I’ve found is that Cayce identifies Thoth as the builder of the Great Pyramid. Drunvalo Melchizedek also claims this is so.
The Mysteries
The first half of Tales details the lives of a number of pre-Dynastic characters – like Ra-Ta and others who surrounded him (and who reincarnated with Edgar Cayce to be his close friends, family and wife). The second half of the book delves into Cayce’s readings that deal with some of the mysteries of ancient Egypt. These subjects deal with ancient flight and caches of prehistoric records buried near the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau as well as prophecies that were built into the physical character of the Great Pyramid. Equally as fascinating is Cayce’s tales of where Jesus spent his so-called missing years – studying in India and training for higher states of consciousness within the Great Pyramid.
The Three Chambers
Auken does a noble job of making sense of a period of human history that is shrouded in mystery. But perhaps one day will come when we will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what our true history and heritage is.
A most curious piece of information in the Cayce collection of psychic discourses is his claim that there are three hidden chambers on this planet containing stone tablets upon which Atlanteans wrote a prehistoric story of a time when human spirits began to enter material bodies. He said that the stone tablets document millions of years of semi-physical activity in the mythological lands of Mu, Lemuria, Atlantis, Og, Oz, Zu and others. The stones tell of a time when the life forces of the godlings of the Creator were attempting to manifest themselves in this three-dimensional world from multidimensional realms beyond our normal perception. These ancient beings retained their immortality and projected into matter from out of what we would consider to be pure energy or spirit. They were soul-minds and could push their consciousness into matter or withdraw into higher dimensions at will …
According to Cayce, the three record chambers containing these ancient stone recorders are located in three separate locations on the planet. One is under the waters near the Bahamian island of Bimini near the Gulf Stream in a sunken Atlantean temple. Another is underground near the Sphinx in Giza, Egypt. The third is beneath an over-hanging temple in the Mayan lands …
Cayce stated, “as time draws nigh when changes are to come about, there may be the opening of those three places where the records are one, to those that are the initiates in the knowledge of the One God …”
We are aspects of that One God.
esoteric reader 