The Ancient Alien Question (38 page)

This was a major revelation for Puharich, and the experiments were detailed in his book,
The Sacred Mushroom
. But Puharich was not the only one to write about it. Aldous Huxley stated, “I spent some days, earlier this month, at Glen Cove, in the strange household assembled by Puharich.... Harry, the Dutch sculptor, who goes into trances in the Faraday Cage and produces automatic scripts in Egyptian hieroglyphics...whatever may be said against Puharich, he is certainly very intelligent, extremely well read and highly enterprising. His aim is to reproduce by modern pharmacological, electronic and physical methods the conditions used by the Shamans for getting into a state of traveling clairvoyance. At Glen Cove they now have found eight specimens of the amanita muscaria. This is very remarkable as the literature of the mycological society of New England records only one previous instance of the discovery of an amanita in Maine. The effects, when a piece as big as a pin’s head is rubbed for a few seconds into the skin of the scalp, are quite alarmingly powerful, and it will obviously take a lot of very cautious experimentation to determine the right psi-enhancing dose of the mushroom.”
⁴

In 1955, Puharich also heard from Gordon Wasson that a ritualistic mushroom cult wasn’t only a thing from ancient Egypt, but still existed in Mexico. It had existed there for hundreds of years, and was still practiced in some remote parts of the country. Wasson wrote his own book on mushrooms in 1957, which is considered to be a landmark publication. Two years later, Puharich’s own book on “magic mushrooms” was published. Shortly after its publication, in June 1960, Puharich set out for the village of Juquila in the state of Oaxaca, 200 miles south of Mexico City. Four weeks later, one team member returned saying all the others were ill, but Puharich was apparently crazy, as he had gone on alone. The escapade was not appreciated by Puharich’s second wife, as he was literally risking his life, at a time when he had a pregnant wife and four children at home. Upon his return, Puharich found a university and television company willing to sponsor a second expedition. In the end, ABC screened
One Step Beyond
, documenting the expedition locating the mushroom cult in Mexico, and the ESP tests before and after eating the mushroom, at Puharich’s home.

Of most importance to the Ancient Alien Question is that Puharich concluded that the intelligence he contacted was an extraterrestrial intelligence known as “The Nine.” He identified The Nine with the Nine Principles, which the ancient Egyptians saw as the ordering principles that controlled the universe. They were directly linked with their creator deity, Atum. In Ancient Egypt, control over these Nine Principles was deemed to be instrumental in the successful rule of a pharaoh: Proper control over them meant that balance (linked with the deity Ma’at) was maintained and all was well with Egypt, the world, and the universe. In Ancient Egypt, it was the pharaoh’s task to liaise with The Nine, meaning that—if Puharich was correct—contact with ancient aliens was the bailiwick of every pharaoh. As we shall see, it was part of his job description!

Puharich believed that The Nine were an alien intelligence: not necessarily physical, but definitely not terrestrial in the most literal sense. The nine participants in the ritual that summoned them each channeled one entity, which communicated through them as a collective. Puharich claimed that Geller was the exception to the rule and that he could channel all nine together.

As Geller’s fame rose, Puharich decided to write a biography of the exploits of this remarkable psychic. In the book, Puharich mentioned The Nine, but for reasons that will forever remain obscure, he largely ridiculed them, even though for several decades before and after he would remain obsessed with them. Geller himself has always remained silent on what transpired with The Nine, as he was unconscious throughout the channeling. To this day, in some of the private conversations I have had with Uri, it is clear that he has tremendous respect for Puharich, who at some point became something of a father figure to him, but that he himself is somewhat unclear as to what really happened in those days and what it all means.

We therefore only have Puharich’s word for it, and whereas that might not mean much to anyone who doesn’t know him, for the U.S. government, at one point, Puharich’s word meant an awful lot. According to Puharich, when in contact with The Nine, they summoned him to UFO fly-pasts and more. Puharich claimed that he made tape recordings of these sessions, but none have ever been made public, so it truly is a case of Puharich’s word against the world. Supposedly Puharich asked The Nine, “Are you behind the UFO sightings that started in the United States when Kenneth Arnold saw nine flying saucers on June 24, 1947?” They answered, “Yes.”

According to Puharich, The Nine stated they were from a world called Hoova, though on occasion, they called themselves Rhombus 4D. They contacted Puharich and Geller because they had been chosen to prevent war, as well as help steer the Earth’s
fate into a specific direction, which The Nine said was indeed to their benefit, though it was also for the benefit of humankind. The Nine also claimed that they were responsible for Geller’s powers, and that the way in which humankind used Geller would determine whether The Nine’s “program for Planet Earth” would continue or not. What is apparent from these communications is that The Nine, whoever they were, were clearly akin to the Nine Principles of ancient Egypt, in the sense that they were primarily all about directing the fate of humankind.

Other psychics, such as Phyllis Schlemmer, have since claimed to have contacted The Nine, too. Schlemmer claims to have spoken to “Tom”—a modern rendition of the name
Atum
—who claimed to be the spokesperson for The Nine. Her story made it into Stuart Holroyd’s
Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth
and the later
The Only Planet of Choice
. Other Nine contactees are Don Elkins and Carla Rueckert, who channeled “Ra,” a member of The Nine who declared that it was he who had built the Great Pyramid. In sessions with Puharich, “Tom” said the Sphinx was built and named after him.

I would not go as far as to argue that everyone who has channeled The Nine should be treated with the same respect as Puharich. I have done extensive research into The Nine for more than a decade, and they are, quite simply, a complex issue that defies easy categorization. But what can be definitively said about them is this: It is clear that each culture, whether Mayan, Egyptian, or 20th-century Western society, was and is in contact with an alien intelligence, which each time relates messages that are identical in context. And in the case of the Mayan civilization, there is even archaeological evidence that shows that the story of The Nine is directly relevant to the Ancient Alien Question: The Nine are mentioned in an inscription on Monument 6 of the Mayan site Tortuguero, in the Mexican state of Tabasco. The monument was erected in
AD
669 and is one of the very few pre-Conquest sources that mention the infamous
date of
AD
December 21, 2012. Various translations or partial translations of the Tortuguero inscription exist; this is the most common:

At the next creation [i.e. December 21, 2012], the
Bolon Yokte Ku, or Nine Support Gods, will return.

However, the actual word
return
, sometimes translated as
descent
, is not intact on the monument. Still, it is a safe conclusion to make that the missing word is
return
. Why? Because other Mayan sources reference the return of these deities at the ending of each baktun.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the returning deities are the Bolon Yokte Ku—The Nine. But who are they within a Mayan context? They have variously been translated as the God of Nine Strides, the Nine-Footed God, Jaguar-Foot-Tree and Nine-Dog-Tree. They were seen as living in the Underworld and were generally described as god(s) of conflict and warfare, and are thus linked with dangerous transition times, social unrest, eclipses, and natural disasters like earthquakes. It is said that at the end of a baktun, the end of a cycle, they would abandon their Underworld realm and rise to the Earth’s surface, where they would do battle with the 13 deities of Heaven.

To further identify what The Nine Support Gods are supposed to be, we need to consult other sources—in this case, anthropological ones. Such evidence makes it clear that The Nine Gods were said to have appeared during ceremonies that were held at the end of each baktun, the last of which occurred in
AD
1618, shortly after the Conquest of Mexico by Spanish troops.

The ceremony of the baktun is described in Chapter 29 of
The Book of Chilam Balam de Chumayel
, a Mayan chronicle composed after the Spanish Conquest and therefore sometimes treated as less interesting by archaeologists, who have little interest in anthropological material. The book nevertheless provides a detailed description of the ceremonies that were performed in Merida in
AD
1618, at the end of 12.0.0.0.0. In total, there are 20 acts, each representing one of the 20 katuns that make up a baktun cycle. After some initial preparations, in Act 2, the bee god ties the masks of the 13 gods of Heaven to those people who were going to perform in the ceremonies. The actual baktun cycle’s end was described in Act 3, whereby The Nine Gods fought, conquered, and sacrificed these 13 gods; night had conquered day.

The subsequent acts involved rituals to do with the election of the new officials for the new period, and in Act 12, The Nine Gods sacrifice the Seven Pacers and count the mats, which is an initial lineup of the candidates for investiture for the coming era, as a new leader for the Mayan people had to be chosen; that ruler’s task was to rule and maintain an active “up and downlink” with the gods. Most importantly, in Act 15, The Nine Gods announce the fate of the new era. This fate was largely the will of the gods, which the community had to achieve during the new era, and it reflects what The Nine said in communications with Puharich.

In short, the baktun ceremony was a series of rituals, focusing on the Nine Gods and their emanation and rulings. For the Mayans, the ceremonies were extraordinarily elaborate and were performed within the sacred precincts of temple complexes, such as Chichen Itza and Teotihuacán. It was, after all, at Teotihuacán that the first council of these deities had occurred in 3114
BC
, and the temple complex was a three-dimensional rendering of the Creation Act, for—as in ancient Egypt—the deities that were contacted were linked with the creator deity. For Puharich, the rituals were performed in the privacy of a mundane living room, but the end result was nevertheless contact with nonhuman intelligences that claimed they were the gods that had brought us civilization—and were responsible for the pyramids.

The Pyramid Purpose

The idea that the pyramid was a place of initiation, rather than a gigantic mausoleum, was very much in vogue a century ago, mainly among people who adhered to a Masonic ideology. The “pyramid as temple of initiation” debate was revived in 1982 by the Egyptologist Edward Wente and has been principally discussed by British author Jeremy Naydler, most prominently in his book
Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts
. Naydler stated that “While scholars generally accept that this ‘voluntary death’ was one of the central aims of the Greek and Hellenistic mystery cults, Egyptology has resisted the idea that any such initiatory rites or experiences existed in Egypt.” This would make Egypt unique among all ancient civilizations—by the absence of such practices. It would mean that Egypt, of all ancient cultures, did not have a religion that allowed for the spiritual development of the soul—which would be extremely odd, because all accounts, including several from Ancient Greece, written down by men who went to Egypt and often were taught in the Egyptian temples, argue that Egypt was the world’s authority on such practices.

It is precisely this attitude from the Egyptologist—making Egypt into something that it was not—that has contributed to so many people asking the Ancient Alien Question. By making ancient Egypt into something that it never was, the Egyptologists created a fertile soil for outlandish theories, many of which do not involve extraterrestrial beings, but which are nevertheless extremely unlikely. To properly answer the Ancient Alien Question, we therefore need to render Egypt back to what it was.

The answer to the Ancient Alien Question can be found in the Book of the Dead and the earlier Pyramid Texts. These texts have been overlooked as the obvious solution because they became a victim of their own child, the Corpus Hermeticum, a concise and clear synopsis of the religious framework of ancient
Egypt, codified in the third century
BC
, following the Greek conquest of Egypt. The texts inspired the alchemists of the Middle Ages, lay at the foundation of the Italian Renaissance, may be a key to explaining the symbolism in paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, and even contain the earliest reference to the Grail. But above all, the Pyramid Texts were believed to contain the true—native—message of ancient Egypt, unlike the Corpus Hermeticum, which was written for a Greek audience.

At the time of their discovery, it was felt that the decipherment of the hieroglyphic language of the Pyramid Texts—which the ancient Egyptians used as a sacred language, as it was deemed to be the language of the gods themselves—would soon reveal ancient Egypt’s true doctrine. But when Gaston Maspero, the first to publish the Pyramid Texts in translation, summed up his effort to translate these texts, he confessed that despite trying, he was unable to discover any profound wisdom in ancient Egypt’s religious doctrine.