Grid of the Gods (15 page)

A. Anomalies at the Temples of Angkor

We need only consider the famous site of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia

Well-known alternative researchers Graham Hancock and his wife Santha Faiia point out some very odd connections of Angor Wat to another well-known culture harboring many sites on the world grid, Egypt:

The name ‘Angkor’, although supposedly a corruption of the Sanscrit word
nagara
, ‘town’, has a very precise meaning in the ancient Egyptian language — ‘the god Horus lives’. Other
acceptable translations of ‘Ankh-Hor’ or ‘Ankhor’ are ‘May Horus Live’, ‘Horus Lives’ and ‘Life to Horus’.
²

Of course, such etymological coincidences are just that, coincidences. Or are they?

1. The Ancient Prime Meridian: Giza

Hancock and Faiia observe a very peculiar thing about the
placement
of the Angkor temples, a placement that ties them to Egypt in a very direct and unavoidable way, nor are they by any means alone in their observation, for it has been repeatedly observed by other grid researchers. It is apparent, they maintain, that when one studies the placement of various sites and monuments around the world — Angkor Wat, Teotihuacan, Tikal, Stonehenge, Avebury, and a host of others too lengthy to mention — that they are placed with Giza as the prime meridian, with that meridian in fact running through the apex of the Great Pyramid itself.
³
When this is done, Angkor Wat lies at almost exactly 72 degrees east longitude from Giza.
⁴

That number, 72, requires some special commentary of its own. It is, of course, the exact measure of the spacing between points of a pentagon and pentagram if circumscribed by a circle. The years allotted to the various Hindu yugas — the four great world ages — are all divisible by 72:

1,728,000 years, the Satya yuga

1,296,000 years, the Treta yuga

    864,000 years, the Dvapara yuga

    432,000 years, the Kali yuga
⁵

Dividing by 72 gives some very interesting results:

 
24,000

  18,000

  12,000

  6,000

The yugas, in other words, are all harmonics, or multiples, of 72, in the orderly progression of 24, 18, 12, and 6. Interestingly enough, if one deals only with the coefficients of the Hindu yugas — the numbers themselves — by dropping three orders of magnitude, then one ends up with 1728, 1296, 864, and 432, all numbers which are encoded in the dimension of the temple at Angkor Wat!
⁶
Nor are these the only things encoded there.

2. As Above, So Below: The Astronomical Correlation and the 10,500 BC Mystery

In 1996, Hancock’s and Faiia’s research associate, John Grigsby, discovered that the layout of the temples of Angkor Wat corresponded with the northern constellation of Draco. Thus, there was another odd correlation to Egypt, for “just as the three Great Pyramids Giza in Egypt model the belt stars of the southern constellation of Orion, so too do the principal monuments of Angkor model the sinuous coils of the northern constellation of Draco.”
⁷
By running astronomical programs, Hancock and Faiia determined that at sunrise of the spring equinox in 10,500 BC the constellation Draco was due north of the Angkor complex.
⁸
This corresponded exactly to the date of the three major Giza pyramids’ alignment to the three stars of the belt of the constellation Orion: 10,500 BC.

However, there was a problem. If one accepted the conventional dating of the Giza compound to ca. 2500 BC,
⁹
how would one account for such a similar memorialization of a very ancient date —
10,500 BC, thousands of miles away, and nearly three millennia
later
, in Cambodia?

Indisputable archaeological and inscription evidence proves that the temples of Angkor were built by named and known Khmer monarchs, almost all of whom reigned during the four centuries between AD 802 and AS 1200.
¹⁰

Why were massive monuments being built in Cambodia to memorialize a date almost eleven millennia previous to the time of their construction? And why were such memorializations present in both Egypt and Cambodia?

The pattern of this Egypt-Cambodia link only deepened the closer Hancock and Faiia looked. For example:

1) Both in Cambodia and in Egypt, there was a tradition of an “architect of the gods” who was responsible for the building of such monuments and who taught architecture to men. In Egypt’s case, this was Imhotep; in Cambodia’s it was Visvakarma;

2) Both Egypt and Cambodia venerated the serpent as a sacred figure
¹¹
(and, as we shall see, Meso-America as well!), and “in both cases it was the hooded cobra that was selected as the archetype, in both cases it could be depicted in art as a half-human, half-serpent figure.”
¹²
Again, the same, as we shall discover, holds true for Meso-America as well;

3) Both in Egypt and in Cambodia this “serpent god” could also symbolize either the sky or the ground; and finally,

4) Both in Cambodia and in Egypt the serpent could symbolize immortality and the cycles of the universe;

5) Both in Cambodia and in Egypt, it was believed that when the king died, his soul would ascend to the heavens.
¹³

All this raises the problem of explaining why such odd correspondences should be found in two such disparate cultures, and why that one date in particular — 10,500 BC — should be embodied in both:

So the real questions at Angkor are not so much a matter of the absolute dates of the construction of the various temples, or even of the many substructures that are known to lie beneath them, but rather:

1.
Why
does the overall site-plan focus so insistently and specifically on the pattern of stars in the sky region surrounding the constellation of Draco as it looked at dawn on the spring equinox in 10,500 BC?

2. How can we explain the fact that this same precise date is signaled by the three great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza — monuments that are not thought to be linked in any way to the temples of Angkor?

3. Is it not amazing that all three groups of monuments use the same architectural technique to draw attention to that date, i.e. by modeling a prominent constellation that was present at one of the cardinal points of the sky on the spring equinox in 10,500 BC (Draco to the north, in the case of Angkor; Leo, to the east, in the case of the Great Sphinx; Orion to the south, in the case of the Pyramids)?

4.
Could there be some sort of hidden connection?
¹⁴

Hancock and Faiia have noticed the central mystery of the grid: why do so many disparate cultures appear to be building massive monuments, at different times and places, and yet, seem to be doing so as if following some sort of plan?

One answer immediately comes to mind: the grid-building activity was the program and product of a hidden elite:

Another explanation… (there) could be an undetected ‘third party’ influence, very discreet, very secretive and of very great antiquity. Such an influence — perhaps the long-lived and highly motivated society that referred to its initiates in ancient Egypt as the ‘Followers of Horus’ — does seem immensely improbable. Nevertheless, as Sherlock Holmes famously reminded Watson in
The Sign of Four
, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
¹⁵

Yet there is another clue as to the nature of this elite and its activities in a symbolism more universal than that of the “Followers of Horus.”

3. Enter the Serpent

The symbol of the wise serpent in this case turns out to hold an answer — or at least,
part
of an answer — to the 10,500 BC mystery and to the possibility of a connection via a hidden elite.

Angkor Wat’s western entrance is a place of shadows before dawn when the sun lies invisible in the east beneath the vast mass of the temple. Even in low light it is impossible to ignore the dominant presence of the Naga serpents which, with their stone bodies, and rearing, hooded heads, form sinuous balustrades lining the causeway. The same cobra motif in numerous different forms is frequently, almost incessantly, repeated — leading one authority to conclude that Angkor Wat ‘was wholly dedicated to serpent worship. Every angle of every roof is adorned with a seven-headed serpent.’
¹⁶

As we shall see elsewhere in this book, this is not the only time we will encounter a serpent motif in conjunction with the monuments of the world grid. We have already noted, however, the serpent motif is present in Egypt, in the hooded headdress of the pharaohs, representing the extended hood of a cobra. The pharaohs, in other
words, were not only kings claiming descent from the gods, they were not only “Followers of Horus” but they were also in a certain sense “serpent-kings.”

This chimerical human-serpent motif is found, curiously enough, in the Hindu conceptions underlying the symbolism of Angkor Wat, for these multi-headed serpents, the Nagas, represent a kind of trans- dimensional creature, “crossing the realms of sky and ground, time and space, this world and the next and although they intermingle — and sometimes intermarry — in the material realm of earth and men there is never any doubt that their true identity is as celestial and cosmic forces.”
¹⁷
This Egyptian-Hindu link is further compounded beyond the point of coincidence when one examines closely the respective cosmologies of the two cultures.

Within Hinduism, Vishnu, the primordial “all-god” creates the universe through the sheer strength and force of his will. But this is accompanied by an explicit sexual metaphor, as Vishnu ejaculates into the primordial cosmic waters. This is paralleled in the Egyptian cosmology by Atum, who, coming forth from the primeval waters of the Nun, ejaculates into the cosmic waters.
¹⁸

It is important to pause and consider the full implications of this cosmology and its explicit sexual metaphor. In both cases, the primordial condition, with the “Self-existent” Vishnu or Atum, is one where there is absolutely nothing else in existence. Thus, even the “primordial waters” are, to some extent, “part of” this self-existent “god” or “state” or “condition.” The ejaculation of semen by this god into this ocean, from which He is not distinct, is, in effect, the injection of “seed” or
differentiating information
into himself.

The parallels do not end there however.

4. The Topological Metaphor

As we shall see subsequently, within the Egyptian cosmology, the self-differentiation of Atum gives rise to the first three
neters
, a “triad” or “primordial trinitarian differentiation.” It is the same within the Hindu cosmogony, for in the
Padama Purana
we read:

In the beginning of creation the Great Vishnu, desirous of creating the whole world, became threefold: Creator, Preserver, Destroyer. In order to create this world, the Supreme Spirit produced from the right side of his body himself as Brahma then, in order to preserve the world, he produced from his left side Vishnu; and in order to destroy the world he produced from the middle of his body the eternal Shiva. Some worship Brahma, others Vishnu, others Shiva; but Vishnu, one yet threefold, creates, preserves, and destroys: therefore let the pious make no difference between the three.
¹⁹

Note that neither in the Egyptian nor in the Hindu versions of this “primordial trinitarian homosexual ecstasy” are we dealing with any notion of a theological
revelation
.