From Atlantis to the sphinx - recovering the lost wisdom of the ancient world

310 Pages·1996·5.001 MB·English

by  Wilson, Colin

From Atlantis
to the Sphinx
Colin Wilson
To
John West,
Graham Hancock
and
Robert Bauval –
friends without whose
help this book could
not have been written.
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
Virgin Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
LONDON W10 5AH
Reprinted 1996
Copyright © Colin Wilson 1996
The right of Colin Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
upon the subsequent purchaser.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1 85227 526 X
Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent
Analytical Table of Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Schwaller de Lubicz and the age of the Sphinx – was it built by
‘Atlanteans’? Hapgood’s ancient maps. The Atlantis film script.
Schoch’s conference at San Diego. Scepticism of ‘the experts’.
Robert Graves and Mr Gunn. Mathematical prodigies. I meet
John West. Graham Hancock and Rand Flem-ath. Bauval’s
Orion Mystery. Andre VandenBroeck’s Al-Kemi. Publication of
Fingerprints of the Gods. What does it all mean? The search for
‘the intensity experience’. What can ‘the ancients’ teach us?
1 Egyptian Mysteries 11
The Hancocks scale the Great Pyramid at dawn. How was it
built? The Sign and the Seal. Was the Sphinx eroded by water?
Serpent in the Sky. Schwaller de Lubicz and alchemy. Death of
Fulcanelli. Schwaller in Luxor. André and Goldian Vanden-
Broeck visit Schwaller. A different kind of knowledge. Gurdjieff
on the Sphinx. Pythagoras and music. Schwaller on ancient
Egypt
2 The New Race 31
Robert Schoch agrees to look at the Sphinx. Who carved the
Sphinx? Schoch agrees the Sphinx is weathered by water. How
did the Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Flinders Petrie discovers
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
‘the New Race’ then changes his mind. Unknown techniques of
carving. Christopher Dunn on the granite sarcophagus. A drill
that works 500 times faster than a modern drill. Schoch
announces his results at San Diego. The BBC proves Schoch cor-
rect about rock layers at Giza. The Sphinx Temple and the
Oseirion. The ‘Cyclopeans’. The Inventory Stela. Frank
Domingo declares the Sphinx is not Chefren
3 Inside the Pyramid 49
Al-Mamun breaks into the Great Pyramid. The missing mummy.
The ‘other entrance’. Davison’s Chamber. Howard-Vyse ‘proves’
that Cheops built the Great Pyramid. Sitchin throws doubt on
Howard-Vyse. Did the Egyptians know the size of the earth?
Was the Great Pyramid an observatory? Robert Bauval reads
The Sirius Mystery. How did the Dogon know Sirius was a
double star? The Pyramid Texts. The pyramids and the belt of
Orion. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. Were there pyramids planned
in 10,500 bc? Mendelssohn on the pyramids. Boats. Thor Hey-
erdahl on Egyptian shipbuilding
4 The Forbidden Word 81
Hapgood’s Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. The great Ice Ages.
The Piri Re’is map. The significance of Syene. How Eratosthenes
worked out the size of the earth. Earth’s Shifting Crust.
A worldwide maritime civilisation in 7000 bc? Plato and Atlan-
tis. Ignatius Donnelly. The Bimini Road. Randy Flemming beg-
ins a novel on Atlantis. When the Sky Fell. Is Atlantis in
Antarctica?
5 The Realm of the White Gods 99
Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Careri and the Aztecs.
Stephens discovers a jungle city. Why did the Mayas disappear?.
Brasseur de Bourbourg on the ‘great cataclysm’. Charnay in
Mexico. Palenque, ‘City of the Serpents’. Augustus le Plongeon
learns the Mayan language. Evidence for Atlantis. Queen Moo.
James Churchward and Mu. Thompson and Chichén Itzá. He
dives in the sacrificial well. Hoerbiger and the World-Ice theory.
Velikovsky and catastrophes. The mystery of Tiahuanaco. The
Analytical Table of Contents
Hancocks in Tiahuanaco. Posnansky on the place of the Stand-
ing Stones. Was Tiahuanaco built in 15,000 bc? The fish gods.
Teotihuacan. Cortes fights his way out of Tenochtitlan. Batres
excavates the Pyramid of the Sun. Gerald Hawkins on Teotihua-
can. The Nazca lines. Did they expect Viracocha to return by
air? The move towards caution. Why did the Egyptians and the
Mayans both regard Sirius as sacred?
6 The Antiquity of Man 135
Scheuchzer’s ‘Old Sinner’. The beginning of palaeontology.
Maillet’s theory of evolution. Cuvier on catastrophes. Lyell’s
Principles of Geology. A brief history of the earth. How man
developed from a tree shrew. Darwin sails on the Beagle. The
survival of the fittest. The Missing Link. Piltdown Man. The dis-
covery of Neanderthal Man. Cro-Magnon Man. Don Marcelino
and the Altamira cave. Did man exist five million years ago?
Dubois and Java Man. The Olduvai Gorge and Reck’s skeleton.
Peking Man. Leakey and the Kanjera skulls. Dart and the Taung
baby. The killer ape. Leakey and Homo habilis. Johanson and
Lucy
7 Forbidden Archaeology 163
How old is man? Michael Cremo studies palaeontology. Von
Ducker and the Pikermi bones. Pliocene sharks’ teeth with holes
bored in them. Ribeiro and the River Tagus beds. Bourgeois’
flints – artefacts or naturefacts? Ragazzoni and Pliocene man.
‘Conventional history’ – a summary. The wheel. The impli-
cations of ‘alternative history’. What caused the brain explosion?
Language? Maerth’s cannibalism theory. The Romantic theory
of evolution
8 More Forbidden Archaeology 183
Why is man a religious animal? Cave art and ritual magic.
Shamans and ‘miracles’. The Wizard of the Upper Amazon.
Manuel Cordova is kidnapped. The ‘collective mind’ of the
Amahuaca Indians. Grimble and the ‘calling of the porpoises’.
‘Mental radio’. Mavromatis and hypnagogia. Why has man
evolved so quickly? Neanderthal man. Julian Jaynes and the
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
‘bicameral mind’. The right and left brain. Did man become a
‘left brainer’ in 1250 bc? Schwaller on hieroglyphics. The
Egyptian mentality. Harvalik and dowsing. Alternative history
of man. Pygmy hunting ritual
9 Of Stars and Gods 211
Alexander Thom and the Callanish stone circle. Megaliths as
observatories. Anne Macaulay on the ancient ‘code’ of Apollo.
Cro-Magnon man as a star-gazer. Marshack’s Roots of Civilis-
ation. Robert Graves and The White Goddess. Maurice Cotterell
and The Mayan Prophecies. Is the Mayan calendar based on
sunspot activity? Santillana and Hamlet’s Mill. The precession
of the equinoxes. The mill of the sky. Ancient civilisation in
India. The date of the Rig-Veda. A new theory of human evolu-
tion. Hunting magic. Bauval and Hancock reconstruct the sky
in 10,500 bc. Why did the Sphinx builders wait eight thousand
years to build the pyramids of Giza? Osiris’ voyage up the
Milky Way. The journey to Rostau. Osiris returns to Orion. The
‘Followers of Horus’. Does the secret lie below the rear paws
of the Sphinx?
10 The Third Force 239
Edward T. Hall and the Hopi Indians. Monochronic time and
polychronic time. ‘A different kind of perception’. The Hopi
and Mother Earth. Quiche time. Zen and archery. Children in
a school playground – the dance of life. Basic rhythms. Mike
Hayes and DNA. The mysterious 64. The I-Ching and its 64
hexagrams. Pythagorianism. The third force. The number π.
The tetrad. The Luxor temple. Synchronicity. The Chinese rain
maker. Jacques Vallée and Melchizedek. Ross Salmon and the
condor. Egyptian magic. Ancient Egypt and the Nile. How man
evolved. How did Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Ed Leedskal-
nin and Coral Castle. The sheet of iron found in the Great
Pyramid. How did Egyptian artists light the tombs? Egypt as a
‘collective’ civilisation. Electronic ping pong in Las Vegas. Boris
Yermolayev suspends a cigarette packet in the air. Lifting a man
with four index fingers. The drawbacks of group consciousness.
The Chalice and the Blade – a matriarchal civilisation? Wells’
Experiment in Autobiography. Are we human? The need for a
‘third force’ to achieve the next step in evolution. Maslow and
Analytical Table of Contents
peak experiences. The importance of insights into past civilis-
ations. The ‘next step’ has already happened
Notes 283
Bibliography 285
Index 287
Illustrations
All pictures from The Art and Architecture Collection except where
credited otherwise
Map of Atlantis from Mundus Subterraneus by Athansius Kircher (The
Charles Walker Collection)
Neanderthal Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
Java Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
The pyramids at Giza
The sarcophagus of Cheops in the King’s Chamber, the Great Pyramid
The Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid
The Sphinx and the Pyramid of Chefren at Giza
The Sphinx
The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico
View of the ruins at Teotihuacan
Cave painting, Lascaux, France
Cave painting of urus, Lascaux
viii