Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind

488 Pages·2007·19.34 MB·English

by  Graham Hancock

Supernatural
“The modern world was not alive to the tremendous Reality that
encompassed it. We were surrounded by an immeasurable abyss of
darkness and splendor. We built our empires on a pellet of dust
revolving round a ball of fire in unfathomable space. Life, that Sphinx,
with the human face and the body of a brute, asked us new riddles
every hour. Matter itself was dissolving under the scrutiny of Science;
and yet, in our daily lives, we were becoming a race of somnambu-
lists, whose very breathing, in train and bus and car, was timed to the
movement of the wheels; and the more perfectly, and even alertly, we
clicked through our automatic affairs on the surface of things, the
more complete was our insensibility to the utterly inscrutable mystery
that anything should be in existence at all.”
Alfred Noyes, The Unknown God, Sheed and Ward,
1934 176 177
London, , pp. -
7, 1924
For my father, Donald M. Hancock, December –
16, 2003
September .
Ride in green pastures.
ALSO BY GRAHAM HANCOCK:
The Sign And The Seal: A Quest For The Lost Ark Of The Covenant
Fingerprints Of The Gods: A Quest For The Beginning And The End
Keeper Of Genesis: A Quest For The Hidden Legacy of Mankind
(with Robert Bauval)
The Mars Mystery: A Tale Of The End Of Two Worlds
(with Robert Bauval and John Grigsby)
Heaven’s Mirror: Quest For The Lost Civilization (with Santha Faiia)
Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms Of The Ice Age
Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with Robert Bauval)
www.grahamhancock.com
Supernatural
Meetings with the
Ancient Teachers
of Mankind
Graham Hancock
© 2007 Graham Hancock
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ISBN-10: 1-932857-84-2
ISBN-13: 978-1932857-84-9
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contents
Acknowledgements vii
Author’s Note xi
Part I: The Visions and the Caves
1 3
The Plant that Enables Men to See the Dead
2 13
The Greatest Riddle of Archaeology
3 35
Vine of Souls
4 68
The Mind in the Cave
Part II: The Beings
5 101
Voyage into the Supernatural
6 120
Shamans in the Sky
7 150
Spirit Love
8 169
The Secret Commonwealth
9 182
Here is a Thing that Will Carry Me Away
10 204
Dancers between Worlds
Part III: The Codes
11 227
Tuning in to Channel DMT
12 240
Amongst the Machine Elves
13 269
Ancient Teachers in Our DNA?
14 286
The Hurricane in the Junkyard
Part IV: The Religions
15 307
The Hidden Shamans
16 343
Flesh of the Gods
Part V: The Mysteries
17 375
Doors Leading to Another World
Appendices
Psilocybe semilanceata – a hallucinogenic mushroom native to
403
Europe by Professor Roy Watling, OBE
407
Interview with Rick Strassman MD
419
References
463
Index
acknowledgements
My father Donald Hancock died when research on this book was in
its early stages. He influenced me, and the work I have done, more
than I think he ever realized. I miss his warmth, his wise advice, his
enduring love, and his celebration of the mysteries and spiritual truths
that lie at the heart of this life of ours. I retain the hope, and the
expectation, that our dialogue is not over and that death is not the
end of all things but simply a transition to another level of conscious-
ness. As ever my wife and partner Santha was with me, stood by me,
gave me love, gave me support, gave me understanding – every step
of the way. I can’t thank her enough. I am also grateful for the encour-
agement of our six children, Sean, Shanti, Ravi, Leila, Luke and
Gabrielle. Each one of them contributed an insight into what was
needed to get this book done. Thanks to my mother and to my uncle
James Macaulay for reading and commenting on the manuscript.
In South Africa special thanks go to Bokka du Toit for bringing
his unique skills and understanding to our research adventures in that
ancient land that he loves so much, and to Ann Steyn for her friend-
ship and help during our stay in Jeffries Bay. I am extremely grateful
to all the excellent staff at the superb Bushman’s Kloof in the Cedar-
berg for their hospitality and knowledge of the local rock art, and to
Judy Soul of the Monkey Valley Resort in Cape Town for her kind-
ness shown to us during our stay there. Thanks to Chris Henshilwood
and his team at Blombos cave for their hospitality and for a most
instructive day spent with them in the midst of an active, news-
breaking excavation. And thanks to David Lewis-Williams for
revolutionizing scientific understanding of the factors at work in the
birth of modern human behavior.
My research in the Amazon would not have been possible without
the fantastic back-up, local knowledge, and organizational skills of
vii
Francesco Sammarco and Ignazia Posadinu of El Mundo Magico
(www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk), who again and again put me on
the right track in the jungle and in contact with absolutely the right
people. Additional thanks go to the shamans who introduced me to
ayahuasca during my stay – notably Don Francisco Montes Shuna of
Sachamama, Don Leoncio García Sampaya, Don Alberto Torres
Davilla (in the Aucayacu), Dona Otilia Pashmino and Don Alberto
Alvarez Vela. I’m also grateful to Ruber del Castillo Ramirez and his
wonderful family for the hospitality and kindness that they extended
to us when we stayed with them on their homestead in the Aucayacu.
Additional thanks go to Clever Hoyos who worked with us as an
insightful and resourceful translator during our stay in the Peruvian
Amazon. Finally, thanks and deep appreciation to Pablo Amaringo
(www.pabloamaringo.com) for kind permission to reproduce some of
his luminous and inspiring paintings of his ayahuasca visions. In every
case, with these remarkable images, a picture says far more than a
thousand words. Thanks also to the anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna
(www.wasiwaska.org) who worked with Pablo on their wonderful book
Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman.
In Brazil special thanks go to the Uniao de Vegetal and in particu-
lar to Mestre Antonio Francisco Fleury. In France I would like to
thank the administration of la Grotte du Pech-Merle and in particular
M. Zimmermann who took the time to show me around on my private
visit to the cave and to share his insights with me.
I am most grateful to Dr. Rick Strassman for discussing with me
at such length his breakthrough research with DMT and human volun-
teers at the University of New Mexico. Thanks, too, to Professor Benny
Shanon of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for our discussions and
for his remarkable work which has advanced the scientific under-
standing of the phenomenology of ayahuasca experiences to a level
not hitherto reached by any other researcher. I am also most grateful
to the anthropologist Jeremy Narby for his hospitality in Switzerland
and for his remarkable book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins
of Knowledgewhich opened my eyes to many possibilities that I simply
had not seen before. Thanks to Professor Roy Watling for contributing
Appendix I of this book documenting the ancient Old World
viii
provenance of the hallucinogenic mushroom Psilocybe semilanceata.
Thanks to the late Professor John Mack for his pioneering work at the
borders of consensual reality and for his tremendous intellectual courage.
Thanks to Hattie Wells for seeing me safely through my first ibogaine
session. One of the great untold stories of this book is the remarkable
success that Hattie and other healers all around the world have achieved
administering ibogaine to drug addicts as a cure for heroin, cocaine and
alcohol addiction. In many cases two to three ibogaine sessions have
been sufficient to produce virtually symptom-free withdrawal, a strong
determination not to relapse, and a transformed outlook on life on the
part of the individuals concerned.
Thanks and appreciation to Simon Macara for his kind and sincere
help on several occasions in making difficult things easy, to Helen
Vinckier for looking after us in Belgium, to Zoe Kenway for her
excellent work under intense time-pressure on so many of the black-
and-white illustrations in this book. Thanks to Shanti Faiia for her
specialized research into the human-rights implications of current drug
laws, and to Damian Walter for his excellent and professional bibli-
ographic research. Thanks to my literary agents Bill Hamilton and
Sara Fisher for wise advice and good practical encouragement at all
times. Thanks to Tim Andrews at Century in London for working
so professionally with me on the final stages of the editing and produc-
tion of Supernatural. Last but not least, particular thanks and
appreciation to Mark Booth, my editor at Century. As well as having
had the guts to take on such a controversial subject in the first place,
he was a real friend who read the chapters and gave me his reactions
over the course of a year as the writing progressed.
Graham Hancock
2005
Bath, England, October
www.grahamhancock.com
ix