Pyramid Quest (50 page)

Based on the Great Pyramid, D. H. Lewis (1980, p. 33) predicted that Armageddon would occur in the year 2000, and our current civilization would end approximately three-quarters into the year 2001 (on September 17, 2001, exactly; D. H. Lewis, 1980, p. 34).

Kingsland (1935) includes a chapter on the “Biblical Theory” of the Great Pyramid and its attendant prophecies, pointing out the numerous times that members of this school have failed in their predictions of future events. Many members of the school of biblical prophecy from the Great Pyramid have interpreted the events presumably recorded in the chronologies of the passages of the Great Pyramid not just in terms of world events but more specifically in terms of events in Great Britain and America (giving rise to what is sometimes known as the British Israelite movement or Anglo-American Israelite moment, or by similar terms). Why? As Kingsland (1935, pp. 58-59) says: “The reason that is given to-day by the modern Biblical theorists for selecting events connected with Great Britain—even to the significance of our unemployment figures!—is, that we are the ‘lost tribes of Israel.’ ” As an example of just this school of thought, we may cite Ferris (1939, p. 12) who says: “The purpose of the following pages is to demonstrate the manner in which the Pyramid is such a ‘
sign and witness,
’ i.e., HOW ITS MESSAGE IDENTIFIES THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE AS ISRAEL” (italics and capitalization in the original). Another example of such thinking is Foster (1979/1988), who also confirms that Britain and America are part of Israel, having descended from the lost tribes.

Egyptian initiatory rites and secret mysteries are discussed and hypothetically reconstructed by such authors as Anonymous (1785), Brunton (1936), Hall (1922, 1937, 1945), Kingsland (1935), Pochan (1978), and Spence (1915, [1933]). In their best developed, or most popular, form (especially during the late period and Greco-Roman times), the Egyptian Mysteries consisted of two phases: the Lesser Mysteries (associated with the cult of Isis) and the Greater Mysteries (associated with the cult of Osiris). The mystic drama enacted the life and death of Osiris and the history of Isis, in some ways equivalent to the mystery plays of Christian medieval times; it was not simply theatre or drama. The Osirian Cycle can be viewed as the Passion Play of ancient Egypt. Variations and portions were performed for the public; other portions were performed solely for neophytes, postulants, and initiates; and the true Egyptian Mysteries, restricted to elite priests and spectators, were performed in isolated buildings, secret chambers, and crypts away from the public view. The Mysteries used not only words but gestures, symbolic acts, symbols, and allegorical representations to convey the divine (Spence, [1933]). The
CRATA REPOA, or Initiations to the Ancient Mysteries of the Priests of Egypt
(
CRATA REPOA. Oder Einweihungen in der alten geheimen Gesellschaft der Egyptischen Priester
[Anonymous, 1785; see Hall, 1937]) was composed and compiled from fragments of ancient authors, attempting to restore the ancient initiatory rites used for the Egyptian Mysteries. “No one is so strong on the mysteries of antiquity as a German,” commented Gerard de Nerval (in
The Women of Cairo: Scenes of Life in the Orient
(2 vols. [London: Routledge, 1929]); de Nerval describes a Prussian officer’s description of how he imagined ancient initiation rites taking place in the Great Pyramid (quoted by Pochan, 1978, p. 104). According to the
CRATA REPOA,
the initiate could pass through up to seven grades or levels (not all persons could achieve the highest grades). At each grade, the initiate would both receive instruction and undergo physical and mental/spiritual tests. The fundamental idea underlying initiatory rites was a new birth or re-birth into a higher phase of life. To regain knowledge of our own spiritual nature and powers, the resurrection from the spiritually dead condition of the common or ordinary person, this was (and is) the objective of genuine initiation, be it in the Egyptian Mysteries or any of various other mysteries (Kingsland, 1935, p. 118).

Adams (1895, 1898, 1933) is probably the author who has most explicitly depicted the Great Pyramid as a place in which initiatory rites were actively carried out, according to formulas recorded in the so-called
Book of the Dead.
Other authors have adopted Marsham Adams’s ideas more or less wholesale (for instance, Capt, 1986, pp. 239-245; Churchward, 1898; DeSalvo, 2003, chap. 8; Holbrook, n.d.; Purucker, 2003; Van Auken, 1999, chap. 6; see also Doreal, 1938, although I am not certain that Doreal’s ideas along these lines came from Marsham Adams’s work directly; and Chaney, 1987, who, in what I consider to be a fictional piece, was clearly influenced, either directly or indirectly, by Marsham Adams’s work) and in some cases elaborated upon his work (for instance, Davidson and Aldersmith, 1924; Palmer, 1924; Stewart, 1929). Kingsland (1935), while open and favorable to the idea that the Great Pyramid may have played a role, albeit this is not known for certain, in the enactment and propagation of the Egyptian mysteries, he is not convinced by the arguments of Marsham Adams making a direct connection between the Great Pyramid and the
Book of the Dead.
Kingsland wrote (1935, p. 131): “It is highly probable . . . that we must look to these ancient
Mysteries
for the key to the
symbolism
of the [Great] Pyramid in its various structural features, if not to its actual use for initiation ceremonies” (italics in the original).

Building on the work of Marsham Adams, Davidson and Aldersmith (1924, n.d., p. 88-90) have the following to say:

Supporting the contention that the ways and structures of the Old Kingdom were revered and revived during the Late Period (including the Twenty-sixth Dynasty) is the evidence of the Third (Menkaure) Pyramid on the Giza Plateau. Close to the entrance on the north face is a hieroglyphic inscription carved in the granite that dates from the Late Period (Verner, 2001, p. 243). In the upper antechamber of the Menkaure Pyramid, Howard Vyse found a wooden coffin, bearing Menkaure’s name and containing human bones (separate from the basalt sarcophagus he found in the room considered the main burial chamber, that sarcophagus having been lost at sea in 1838 when the ship carrying it back to England sank between Malta and Spain), that some have seen as a substitute or reconstruction from the Saite period (Twenty-sixth Dynasty) or later. According to radiocarbon dating, the bone fragments may be less than 2,000 years old (Verner, 2001, p. 245).

Manly Palmer Hall (2003, originally published in 1928) is very clear in his belief that the Great Pyramid was used for, among other things, ritual initiations and includes a chapter in his book titled “The Initiation of the Pyramid.” Hall (2003, p. 162) quotes a manuscript by Thomas Taylor that says Plato was initiated into the “Greater Mysteries” at the age of 49 in the “subterranean halls” of the Great Pyramid. Hall (2003, p. 108; see also Kingsland, 1935, p. 2) suggests that Herodotus “was an initiate of the Sacred Schools and consequently obligated to preserve inviolate the secrets of the ancient order” and therefore “concocted a fraudulent story to conceal the true origin and purpose of the Great Pyramid.”

Lehner (1974) encapsulated the views developed in the Edgar Cayce readings relative to the Great Pyramid: “Hermes, a cryptic figure in the [Edgar Cayce] readings, became the construction architect of the Great Pyramid. . . . The Pyramid was to be a monumental repository of knowledge and prophecy, and also serve as the Temple of Initiation for the White Brotherhood” (Lehner, 1974, p. 86). Also following the Cayce readings, Robinson (1958, p. 32) says: “The Great Pyramid was built as a hall of initiation, the ‘House Initiate’ for those dedicating themselves to special services in the secrets of the mystery religion of Egypt. Here the masters performed their vows, consecrating themselves to holy service. Its purpose, therefore, was far greater than that of a burial place.” Lewis (1936, 1939, 1945, 1994 ed., p. 181) speaks of “secret manuscripts possessed by archivists of the mystery schools of Egypt and the Orient . . . telling of the ancient forms of initiations held in the Sphinx [presumably under the Sphinx, where Lewis believes there is a chamber] and the Great Pyramid.” Melchizedek (2000, p. 250) and Doreal (1938/1992, pp. 2-3) also view the Great Pyramid as a place of initiation.

Summarizing his views of the religious and initiatory importance of the Great Pyramid, Pochan (1978, p. 287) wrote:

Farrell (2001, p. 16), quotes Hancock (1995, pp. 142-143) to the effect that the “opening of the mouth ceremony” performed on the deceased pharaoh in ancient times, and thought to be necessary to ensure resurrection in the heavens, may have been carried out in “one of the chambers” of the Great Pyramid.

At the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratories, electronic random event generators (REGs) were developed with the explicit purpose of identifying and detecting genuine pyschokinesis (also known as PK, telekinesis, or psychoenergetics; the influence of consciousness on physical and biological systems: see Jahn, 1982; Jahn and Dunne, 1987). Nelson (July 1997) took a portable FieldREG to a number of sacred sites in Egypt and obtained very interesting results. For instance, in the Holy of Holies (the inner sanctums) of most ancient temples he would detect major anomalous effects. It seemed that some kind of residual consciousness, an empirical measure of sacredness, could be detected in the temples. Nelson found one exception: the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Isis at Philae showed no anomalous results. However, the Temple of Isis at Philae is no longer in its original position. When the British built the first Aswan Dam at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth century (see Ward, 1900, for photographs and a description of the building of the first Aswan Dam), the temple was partially flooded, and with the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the temple was slated to be entirely covered by the waters of Lake Nasser. An international consortium raised the money to move the temple to the higher island of Algikia, orienting it exactly and even carving the island to look like the original home for the temple (West, 1985, p. 426). Still, on the basis of Nelson’s REG study, it seems the “sacredness” of the temple was lost in the move.

Nelson (February 1997; McTaggart, 2002, p. 207) also visited the Great Pyramid with his REG machine. Conventional wisdom would suggest that he should have picked up the strongest deviation, the most powerful anomaly, in the King’s Chamber, famous for its powerful effect on the famous (remember Napoleon) and anonymous alike. Science does not always give the expected result, however. Dr. Nelson found little, if any, REG activity in the King’s or Queen’s Chambers; but in the Subterranean Chamber the machine became very “excited.” The REG machine showed a strong anomalous deviation that Nelson interpreted as a strong objective indication that the Subterranean Chamber was an extraordinary site. The Subterranean Chamber also personally moved Nelson, and there he had a personal insight. Perhaps, he suggests (Nelson, February 1997), the strange architecture found in the Subterranean Chamber is actually a ritualistic map of the land of Egypt. A path down the middle of the room represents the Nile River, with the land and mountains to each side. In the area of Memphis on the “map” is a throne where the pharaoh might take his seat. And the lower part of the room, where the “Nile” empties, represents the delta and the Mediterranean Sea. A high priest, Dr. Nelson suggests, might enter the Subterranean Chamber in humility through the low passage entranceway on hands and knees, seeking help from the gods.