The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind (36 page)

Appendix 3

Harnessing Time with the Stars:

The Hermetic Axiom ‘As Above So Below’

and the Horizon of Giza

An observer at Giza, as anywhere else on the globe where the horizontal view is not obstructed, will perceive the landscape as a huge circle whose edge is the horizon with himself at the centre—hence the term ‘Horizon’ used by the ancients when referring to the Giza necropolis. Making apparent contact with the horizon is the
celestial landscape,
the latter perceived as a huge circular dome or hemisphere.

The ‘below’, earth-landscape, is steadfast. The ‘above’, sky-landscape, however, appears to rotate in perpetual motion around an imaginary axis which passes through the two poles of the earth and extends to the ‘celestial poles’ in the sky. The apparent rotation of the sky makes the celestial orbs—the stars, the sun, the moon and the planets—rise in the east, culminate at the meridian (an imaginary loop running due north-south directly over the observer’s head) and set in the west.

Observations of sunrise through the year will fix four distinct points, sometimes called the colures, on the ecliptic path of the sun around the twelve zodiacal constellations. These are the two equinoxes (spring and autumn), and the two solstices (summer and winter). Today these take place in the following zodiacal signs:

1.
       
Spring equinox (21 March) with the sun in Pisces.

2.
       
Summer solstice (21 June) with the sun in Taurus.

3.
       
Autumn equinox (22 September) with the sun in Virgo.

4.
       
Winter solstice (21 December) with the sun in Sagittarius.

The table below shows in which zodiacal signs the four ‘colures’ fell for a variety of different epochs:

Strictly speaking, the term ‘colures’ denotes the two great circles of the celestial sphere which are at right angles to each other, pass through the poles and intersect the two equinox points and the two solstice points respectively.

The diurnal or daily apparent motion of the sun is from east to west. The annual or yearly apparent motion is much slower from west to east against the background of the starry landscape through a path known as the ecliptic, or zodiacal circle (containing the twelve zodiacal signs). Also because of the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the four points on the colures (the two equinoxes and the two solstices) will appear to drift westwards at the very slow rate of 50.3 arc-seconds per year (a full circuit in approximately 25, 920 years).

These apparent cyclical motions of the sky are, of course, caused not by the sky itself moving but by the earth’s own spin on its axis in one day, its orbital revolution around the sun in one year, and its slow wobble-like motion in one Great Year (of 25,920 ‘solar’ years). As we have already said, the most noticeable effect of the latter is that the four points on the colures which mark the two equinoxes and the two solstices on the ecliptic, will drift in clockwise direction along the great ecliptic or ‘zodiacal’ circle.

Every day there is a moment when these four points on the colures find themselves in precise alignment with the four cardinal points of the terrestrial globe defined by the directions due east, due south, due west and due north on the circle of the horizon. This is when it can be said that the sky and earth are a ‘reflection’ of each other. In archaic terminology, this is when the ‘Hermetic’ axiom of ‘as above so below’ can be most faithfully expressed.

At this exact moment the colure containing the two solstice points will be looping above the head of the observer from north to south, and thus becomes the prime meridian of the observer. The colure which contains the two equinox points will loop from east to west and will intersect the horizon at due east to due west, and thus define the parallel of the observer. Again, using archaic terminology, this is when the observer is at the ‘centre of the visible universe’.

A simple yet quite precise way of knowing when this idealistic ‘as above so below’ conjunction takes place is to make use of a bright star that sits on the colure containing the two solstice points. The choice of a bright star on the colure as near to the winter solstice point as possible, will permit the observer to lock the sky in the most favourable condition possible: the precise moment of the rising of the vernal (spring) point in the east. This is simply achieved by waiting for the star in question to transit the south meridian. When this happens, the winter solstice point is due south, and all the other colures lock to the remaining cardinal directions.

The effect of the precession of the vernal point, however, will cause the chosen star to change position with time. After a century or so the star can no longer be used.

The Great Pyramid is often said to be perfectly set to the four cardinal points. What seems more likely, as we shall see, is that it is set perfectly to the four colure points when they transit the cardinal directions. The setting-out of the Pyramid, therefore, is not merely directional but also, and perhaps more especially, dependent on ‘time’.

In 1934 the French astronomer E.M. Antoniadi correctly noted that the ‘astronomical character of the pyramids (of Giza) is established by the following facts:

1.
       
They are almost exactly, and intentionally, on the thirtieth parallel of the latitude North.

2.
       
They are marvellously orientated on the cardinal points.

3.
       
Their inclined passageways were, with their closing, colossal meridian instruments, by far the largest ever constructed.’
[703]

These confirmed facts, and also the fact that the Great Pyramid is a near-perfect mathematical model of the celestial dome or hemisphere, make this monument a material and earthly representation of the sky-landscape. When linked to a specific star, however, the element of ‘time’ is introduced into the equation.

We recall that the ancient builders fixed the main north-south axis of the Great Pyramid to the south meridian transit of the bright star Alnitak, the lowest of the three stars in Orion’s belt. We also recall that the general layout of the three Pyramids of Giza is at 45 degrees to the meridian axis and that this peculiarity, in turn, is reflected in the sky-image of the three stars in Orion’s belt as they appeared in
c.
10,500 BC. This was no arbitrary date, however, because it denoted the lowest point or ‘First Time’ in the precessional cycle of Orion. To the ancients, Orion was ‘Osiris’, and the latter, too, had a ‘First Time’ or genesis.

Computer reconstructions of the ancient skies of 10,500 BC show that the star Alnitak was located precisely on the colure containing the two solstice points, and nearer to the winter solstice. If an observer was there to ‘lock’ the perfect ‘as above so below’ condition in 10,500 BC, the image of the sky containing the star Alnitak would convert into a ‘hologram’ on the ground precisely in the manner we find at Giza today. That such a perfect sky-to-earth correlation cannot be the result of some incredible ‘coincidence’ is confirmed by the equinoctial rising of Leo, which took place in precisely the same epoch of 10,500 BC and precisely when the star Alnitak transited the south meridian. This brought the vernal (spring) equinox point in perfect alignment with the Great Sphinx, the terrestrial counterpart of the image of Leo. The conclusion thus seems inevitable: the ancients appear to have established a global prime-meridian at Giza locked into the time frame of 10,500 BC.

All this implies, however, that the ancients were somehow attempting to ‘navigate’ not only in distance (‘space’) but also in ‘time’. What did they have in mind? How can ‘time’ be navigated?

Hypothetically at least, a time-related apparatus locked into the colures of 10,500 BC would present the ‘reincarnated’ Horus-King with a subliminal landscape or ‘magical theatre’, at the height of his extensive initiation, to work out intuitively how far in time his ‘soul’ had travelled from its point of genesis. In Parts III and IV of this book we have shown how the Horus-King may have used the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes to perform such a task by inducing his mind to undertake a journey or quest to find his ‘ancestors’ using the subliminal architectural setting or ‘cosmic ambiance’ of Giza as some sort of ‘star-memory’ device. Today we use a computer to re-create the ancient skies on a television monitor. We are suggesting that the Horus-King initiate could perform this task intuitively with the ‘computer’ of his mind and the ‘monitor’ of his inner perception. This conclusion does not present a problem to us. We have found that by fully familiarizing ourselves with the apparent motions of the skies and by constantly reconstructing ancient skies with the aid of computers, images, coordinates and epochs subliminally enter the mind and become logged in the memory. We have discovered for ourselves that these ‘files’ are easily retrieved at will without the mechanistic aid of the computer. Hypothetically then, with such ‘star-memory’ logged in the mind, should we suddenly find ourselves flung into a future ‘time zone’, say AD 6000, we could relatively easily ‘work out’ how far ahead in time we had moved.

By extension of such rhetoric, therefore, it could be said that the function of the Giza blueprint is to provide a virtually indestructible ‘holographic’ apparatus for the use of ‘reincarnated’ or ‘reborn’ entities of the Horian lineage in order to induce ‘remembrance’ of a ‘divine’ genetic origin in Egypt in the time-frame of 10,500 BC. The ultimate function, however, appears to have been to perpetuate the ‘immortality’ of their souls into ‘time’—in short, the ultimate
gnostic
experience entailing the release of the spiritual part of the living entity from its material, inert, part. To put it in other terms, ‘living’ man is the result of a holographic union between matter and spirit. It would very much appear that the ‘Followers of Horus’ understood the cosmic mechanism to somehow re-separate the two.

Such questions, we are well aware, lead us into the misty realm of metaphysics, extrasensory perception and psychic thinking from which we have tried to steer clear. Nonetheless, we must respond to our intuitive feeling that a form of metaphysical thinking very much like this was used by those mysterious ‘Followers of Horus’ who set their initiatory and ‘astronomical’ academy at Heliopolis—and whose genius resulted in the construction of the amazing ‘holographic’ star/stone (spirit/matter) apparatus of Giza. All references in the ancient texts to this mysterious brotherhood suggest that we are dealing not with ‘priests’ but with high adepts who fully understood the working of the human psyche and the subliminal techniques needed to evoke ‘remote memory’ through deep-felt inner perceptions of ‘time’. The esoteric teachings and initiations into such cosmic mysteries using the skies are certainly not prosaic ones, as Egyptologists maintain, to develop and refine calendrical systems for ‘land irrigation’ and ‘religious ceremonies’, but far more subtle: somehow to reach and harness the extrasensory capabilities of the human mind in order to link up to the invisible and immaterial, yet very perceptible, ‘flux of time’.

The questions, for those looking for ‘scientific’ explanations, can be formulated in another way: Do we humans carry ‘remote memory files’ locked in our genes? And if so, can it not be possible that such ‘files’ could be retrieved by using the correct subliminal keys?

More provocative still: is our ‘consciousness’ umbilically linked to ‘time’ such that it merely passes through biological matter, ourselves, like a thread passing through pearls and stones?

It has long been appreciated by students of intellectual history that monumental architecture and archetypal images can serve as powerful subliminal devices to evoke dormant ‘memory’ in the minds of those who are made receptive through initiation. The murals and panels of gothic cathedrals or the painted ceilings such as those in the Sistine Chapel are but obvious examples of such powerful mind-games—aptly called ‘silent poetry’ by the fourth-century BC poet, Simonides of Ceos. These ancient memory-aids, and the techniques refined for using them, which are loosely termed ‘mnemotechnics’ today, were the subject of a major thesis by Dame Frances A. Yates in 1966 entitled
The Art of Memory.
In this book Yates shows that powerful cerebral techniques were taught in ancient Greece which were rooted in the so-called ‘Egyptian hermetic tradition’.
[704]
Recently, the author Murry Hope, in a thesis entitled
Time the Ultimate Energy,
tackled the complex subject of ‘time travel’ as a form of energy, and suggested that pre-dynastic Egyptian adepts may have understood and harnessed ‘time’ through a yet-to-be discovered ability to break away from the confines of biological ‘time’ and into another mental realm of time-perception. Murry Hope termed this realm ‘Outer Time’. Likewise, in another recent study,
From Atlantis to the Sphinx,
the author and philosopher Colin Wilson boldly proposes that the ancients may have cultivated powerful extrasensory capabilities through ‘a different knowledge system’ based on intuitive thinking (as opposed to rationalistic or ‘solar’ thinking) in order to enter higher states of consciousness. Such higher consciousness might have been the key into altered perceptions of ‘time’.