The Smithsonian Cover-up

John Wesley Powell (1834 - 1902, image above from Wikimedia commons) was made the first director of the Bureau of Ethnology in the United States in 1879, which was established that same year by an Act of Congress, a position he held until his death in 1902.  

That bureau, which changed its name to the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1897, was directly connected to the Smithsonian Institution, which had been established in 1846 through the will of the British chemist James Smithson (1765 - 1829) and funded by his bequest of 105 sacks of about 1,000 gold sovereigns each, and pursued the mission of organizing all the anthropological research in the nation.

In his first year as head of the Bureau of Ethnology, Powell submitted the first of his Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, dated July 1880 and covering the Bureau of Ethnology's efforts for 1879-1880.  The entire report can be seen online here among other places.  

Beginning on page 73 of that publication is a famous essay by Powell entitled "On Limitations to the Use of Some Anthropologic Data."  In it, Powell sets forth the doctrine which would become the guiding principle of his Bureau of American Ethnology and of the Smithsonian at large all the way through the present day, a strictly isolationist doctrine which flatly declares that it is "illegitimate" to entertain any line of analysis which attempts to connect any artifacts found in the New World with any "peoples or so-called races of antiquity in other portions of the world."  

A reproduction of the letter, with the passages emphasizing this isolationist doctrine highlighted in yellow, can be found online here as well.

The motivations behind this strict imposition of the isolationist paradigm and flat rejection of the examination of any possibility of diffusionist explanations (which propose the possibility that there was contact across the oceans prior to the arrival of Columbus) can and have been debated.  Many biographers and vignettes emphasize the "tremendous respect" Powell had for the native tribes of North America and some have suggested that his support for an isolationist doctrine was based upon that respect for the Native Americans and the view that any theory proposing ancient pre-Columbian contact with "peoples or so-called races of antiquity in other portions of the world" must automatically be disrespectful to the native peoples here, or even based upon some kind of racist animus.  

It is certainly likely from some of the episodes of Powell's life that he did in fact have tremendous respect for the Native Americans.  However, it is undeniable that Powell's own 1879 essay displays some extremely paternalistic and disrespectful generalizations, including his assertions in the second part of the essay (entitled "Picture Writing," beginning on page 75 of the above-linked version of the 1879 report) that the "pictographs" found in North America are "simply the beginning of pictorial art" and in almost all cases "simply mnemonic" -- possessed of no systematic or as Powell calls it, "conventional," structure by which ideas could be preserved using symbols that possessed a common meaning agreed upon by all who understood that system (i.e., whose meaning was agreed-upon by convention across a large number of people, thus constituting a writing-system).  

In this astonishing denial of the existence of writing systems, Powell explicitly includes even the obvious writing-systems of the Maya and the Inca and other cultures of Central and South America, whose artifacts were by no means unknown to him and to the other employees of the Bureau of Ethnology (in fact, the 1879 report contains long sections dealing with "Central American Picture Writing," and many of the other annual reports discuss the artifacts and culture of the Maya and Inca and other civilizations in detail).  Nevertheless, Powell asserts in his letter that:

To some slight extent pictographs are found with characters more or less conventional, and the number of such is quite large in Mexico and Central America.  Yet even these conventional characters are used with others less conventional in such a manner that perfect records were never made.

Such a statement is extremely paternalistic, and effectively denies the existence of any true systematic writing systems, even among the cultures of Mexico and Central America!  Based upon this false assertion, Powell then declares: "Hence it will be seen that it is illegitimate to use any pictographic matter of a date anterior to the discovery of the continent by Columbus for historic purposes."  By this declaration, Powell effectively discarded any and all artifacts containing writing from consideration of historic analysis, and in doing so protected his earlier declaration that any contact with peoples from "other portions of the world" is plainly "illegitimate."  

Thus, none of the numerous inscriptions and artifacts which clearly attest to the possibility of ancient contact -- many of which have been discussed in previous posts on this blog and many more of which have been detailed in numerous published books -- could be considered as evidence which might challenge the isolationist dogma.  Some of those artifacts containing evidence of writing which strongly supports the possibility of ancient contact are discussed in the following previous posts:

• "Have you heard of this artifact? The Grave Creek Stone"
• "Chief Joseph, 1840 - 1904"
• "Beltane and ancient inscriptions in the New World"
• "Ogham inscriptions in Colorado"
• "The staggering implications of the ancient inscriptions at Hidden Mountain near Los Lunas, New Mexico"
• "The case of the Micmac hieroglyphs: a powerful blow to isolationist theories"

And there are hundreds of other examples which could be discussed in addition to the evidence discussed in those posts.  To simply refuse to consider any such evidence at all is unscientific to the extreme, and yet it has been the implicit or explicit policy of the Smithsonian since the days of John Wesley Powell.

The fact that the Smithsonian has not changed their policy of refusing to consider any artifacts which might suggest the possibility of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the "New World" is evident from the controversy over the Bat Creek Stone found in 1889 in Tennessee, which the Smithsonian recently (early in 2014) called "an obvious fraud" in their response to Scott Wolter's discussion of the artifact on his America Unearthed program on the History Channel.  Scott Wolter's response to the Smithsonian's dismissive belittling of his examination of the Bat Creek Stone, and their ad hominem attacks on Wolter himself as lacking in "qualifications and reputation as a researcher," can be seen here.  His response also includes expressions of regret towards the Smithsonian's dismissal of the Bat Creek Stone from representatives of the Cherokee people, who did possess a system of writing and who told the Smithsonian that if they are so sure that the stone is a fraud, the Cherokee can take the stone back and rebury it where it was found out of respect to those who originally produced it.

Recently, a new aspect of the Smithsonian's policy of refusing to countenance any artifacts that might pose a challenge to Powell's "doctrine" of isolationism has received a lot of publicity in light of the publication of Richard Dewhurst's new book Ancient Giants Who Ruled North America: the Missing Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up (briefly discussed in this previous post).  Richard Dewhurst used the capabilities of modern search engines to examine the archives of US newspapers going back to the early 1800s and found hundreds of published descriptions of giant skeletons being unearthed across the North American continent, many of them containing photographs.  

He also found evidence that, while the Smithsonian in its early years was an enthusiastic documenter of such discoveries, the arrival of John Wesley Powell marked a dramatic change in the Smithsonian's attitude and policy towards such finds, to such an extent that Dewhurst was forced to conclude that: "What my research has revealed is that the Smithsonian has been at the center of a vast cover-up of America's true history since the 1880s" (3).  He documents numerous cases in which representatives from the Smithsonian arrived on the scene of any reported discoveries of giant skeletons with remarkable rapidity (sometimes within one or two days, even in the late 1800s and even when the archaeological find was in remote regions of the American west) and in which skeletons reported as being turned over to the Smithsonian were never seen again.  

Today, if one searches the internet for the terms "Smithsonian cover up," the predominant results will have to do with the cover-up of giant skeletons.   Richard Dewhurst believes that the motives for what he calls the "Powell doctrine" of suppressing and denying any archaeological evidence that could indicate the presence of other ancient peoples in the Americas or contact with ancient cultures from across the oceans may have sprang from the fact that John Wesley Powell's father was a Methodist preacher in Palmyra, New York (Powell himself was obviously named after John Wesley, 1703 - 1791, the founder of Methodism), where Joseph Smith first published the Book of Mormon in 1830 and where the early enthusiasm of the people of the area for the new revelations caused Powell's father to lose his congregation (as Richard Dewhurst explains in a footnote on page 6 as a likely motive for Powell's animus towards any diffusionist theories).

Richard Dewhurst also believes that the distasteful US policy of "Manifest Destiny" and the efforts of the federal government following the Civil War to seize the territory to the west of the Mississippi and to suppress the Native Americans who lived there played a role in the Smithsonian's (and Powell's) desire to characterize the native peoples of the continent as primitive barbarians, incapable of producing anything more than "the most rudimentary picture making," (Dewhurst, 6).  Dewhurst proposes that such a doctrine may have been deployed in order to help convince the population to support the aggressive plans to exploit the lands of the Native Americans.

If so, then the "Powell doctrine" probably did not originate with Powell himself, but would have likely been the determined policy of a number of other government officials.  At the front of Powell's first annual report (containing his essay declaring as "illegitimate" any attempts to connect any artifacts found in the New World with cultures from anywhere else) is an introductory letter from Powell to Spencer F. Baird, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, in which Powell says the following: 

Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith the first annual report of the operations of the Bureau of Ethnology. 

By act of Congress, an appropriation was made to continue researches in North American anthropology, the general direction of which was confided to yourself.  As chief executive officer of the Smithsonian Institution, you entrusted to me the immediate control of the affairs of the Bureau.  This report, with its appended papers, is designed to exhibit the methods and results of my administration of this trust. 

If any measure of success has been attained, it is largely due to general instructions received from yourself and the advice you have ever patiently given me on all matters of importance.

I am indebted to my assistants, whose labors are delineated in the report, for their industry, hearty co-operation, and enthusiastic love of the science.  Only through their zeal have your plans been executed.

Much assistance has been rendered the Bureau by a large body of scientific men engaged in the study of anthropology, some of whose names have been mentioned in the report and accompanying papers, and others will be put on record when the subject-matter of their writings is fully published.

I am, with respect, your obedient servant,

J.W. POWELL

While this introductory and dedicatory letter may simply be an example of "polite formalities" or conventional platitudes within a government bureaucracy, in keeping with the style and traditions of the period, it is also possible in light of the topic being discussed that it contains evidence that Powell's doctrine did not originate with Powell himself, but was part of a policy transmitted by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution whose office was in Washington, DC, and of other men in Washington as well.  The highlighted areas (all highlighting is my own and is not found in the original document) seem to support such a possibility, with Powell referencing a "general direction" which "was confided" to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Spencer Baird by some unnamed parties (presumably parties connected with Congress, whose authorizing act for the creation of the Bureau of Ethnology was mentioned immediately prior to this mysterious assertion), and "the advice you have ever patiently given me on all matters of importance," and his declaration that "your plans [have] been executed."

The likelihood that what Dewhurst calls "the Powell doctrine" has roots far deeper than Powell himself (or even Powell's animus towards diffusionist theories due to the loss of his father's congregation) is evident from the fact that the Smithsonian's policy of refusing to entertain any possibility of ancient contact across the oceans and its haste to declare any artifacts containing inscriptions which might employ the known writing systems of ancient Mediterranean cultures as frauds or hoaxes has continued long after the death of John Wesley Powell, and continues to this day.  

This continuing refusal to examine artifacts containing inscriptions such as those mentioned in the list of previous posts above and reflexive labeling of such artifacts as either fraudulent or the products of post-Columbian contact cannot be explained by the Powell family's personal experiences in Palmyra, New York.  Nor, it seems, can the benighted and repulsive nineteenth-century belief in "Manifest Destiny" be the reason that the Smithsonian continued to enforce the "Powell doctrine" throughout the twentieth century, long after the United States had seized all of the lands of the Native Americans between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, and most of the citizens of the country had forgotten that their land had once belonged to someone else.  Is it possible that there is some other motive which lies behind the Smithsonian's ongoing policy of anti-diffusionism?

Personally, I am not an expert on the "giant skeletons" controversy.  While it certainly seems, based upon the prodigious volume of reports and descriptions and even photographs (see, for instance, the photograph below from 1940 published in the San Antonio Express), that such skeletons have been found throughout the Americas in some numbers, and that the absence of any such skeletons on display at the Smithsonian National Museum is suspicious, I also believe it is a mistake to focus entirely on giant skeletons when talking about a "Smithsonian cover-up."  

The easiest way for defenders of the Powell doctrine to deflect such cover-up arguments is to argue that such "giant skeletons" were simply the remains of some isolated individuals exhibiting traits of giantism, to point out that enthusiasm over giants and the possibility of ancient trans-oceanic contact was rife in the nineteenth century (much of it fueled, it must be noted, by religious agendas and a desire to support literalist interpretations of the Bible or by the newly published Book of Mormon), and to argue that whatever skeletons may have been uncovered in those early decades were lost or crumbled to dust and were not maliciously squirreled-away in the bowels of the Smithsonian's warehouses.  

I certainly do not agree that these counter-arguments settle the case, and believe that Richard Dewhurst's analysis of the evidence of giant remains (and other such analysis by other researchers, such as the analysis in this essay found in several places on the web) is extremely valuable and worthy of careful consideration.  I also believe that all dogmatic declarations that the facts of the matter are settled and that no further analysis is legitimate (whatever the subject) should be treated with great suspicion (see discussions to that effect in previous posts such as this one, this one, this one and this one, for example).  Nevertheless, I also believe that the "giant skeleton" aspect of the "Smithsonian cover-up" question could become a huge red herring which falsely divides the debate in the eyes of the general public into two camps, those who believe America was once home to a race of giants, and those who generally side with the Powell doctrine.  

The Powell doctrine excludes a whole lot more evidence than giant skeletons, as the recent Bat Creek Stone controversy demonstrates.  There is abundant evidence that there was ancient contact across the oceans, most of it involving human beings of what we might call "normal" (or at least non-gigantic) stature.  As far as I know, no one is maintaining that the giants whose skeletons have been found throughout the Americas were the authors of inscriptions using known "Old World" writing systems including Hebrew, Egyptian (both hieroglyphic and hieratic), Phoenician/Punic, Ogham, cuneiform, runic, Iberian, Libyan, and Roman, but many of these have been found in the Americas and conventional scholars either ignore them, declare them to be frauds or hoaxes, or explain them away as artifacts which were brought to the Americas by Europeans after Columbus and either lost or given to Native Americans (this is the explanation for the small cuneiform tablet which Chief Joseph had in his possession when he surrendered to the US Army, described in this previous post linked above).  Many other forms of evidence for ancient trans-oceanic contact have been found, such as the amphorae at the bottom of Guanabara Bay in Brazil, and the mummies and other evidence listed in this previous post describing the "Calixtlahuaca head" (which is itself another artifact attesting to ancient trans-oceanic contact).

To the extent that the Powell doctrine and the ongoing policy of the Smithsonian and the rest of conventional academia ignores or devalues these artifacts, and discourages their honest appraisal by professional scholars, the search for the truth is greatly inhibited.  What professional scholar wants to risk ridicule and marginalization by publishing an examination of any of these pieces of evidence, at least one that reaches conclusions which contradict the oppressive official policy of the Powell doctrine?

Clearly, the so-called Powell doctrine did not originate with John Wesley Powell alone, and its ongoing enforcement throughout academia (and at the Smithsonian) is evidence that its roots go far deeper than John Wesley Powell himself.  Its continuing effect of suppressing open-minded examination of the evidence cannot simply be explained by Powell's personal views of the Native American peoples, or the personal impact his family may have experienced due to the "lost tribes" enthusiasms of the nineteenth century in general and the beginnings of the Mormon religion in particular.  Nor can its continuing impact be attributable to the nineteenth-century doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" (although perhaps related to the latest incarnation of that vicious doctrine).   

I believe that there is a bigger reason why powerful forces believe that evidence of ancient trans-oceanic contact must be suppressed, one that involves the spreading of illusions about history which powerful interests find extremely valuable for the public to accept.  The control of history can certainly be a form of very powerful mind control -- and the single-mindedness evident in the efforts of John Wesley Powell (and of the Smithsonian Institute since 1879) demonstrates just how important this control of history must be to someone's agenda.

U-shaped chemtrail photographed over California

Anyone who still believes that the "persistent contrails" which can be seen criss-crossing the sky above populated areas are simply the product of normal jetliners making their way to commercial destinations and leaving harmless lines of vapor should take a look at the above photograph, snapped near the California coast this morning, 04/23/2014.

Previous posts discussing this subject have included screen shots from the Wikipedia entries which continue to insist that "Scientists and engineers around the world have repeatedly needed to confirm that supposed chemtrails are in fact nothing but normal contrails" -- see screenshots in this previous post and this previous post, as well as the condescending and one-sided Wikipedia entry here.  

The denials that these long-lasting lines of cloud could be the result of deliberate spraying have not changed even after the publication in major mainstream California newspapers of stories describing government-funded weather-modification programs involving the spraying of silver iodide and other compounds from aircraft: see for example this article from the Sacramento Bee dated 11/11/2013. 

The contrail / chemtrail in the image above takes a huge U-shaped meander across the sky -- hardly the path that a commercial airliner carrying passengers between destinations would be likely to take.  See the image below which points out the path of the chemtrail using red arrows, in case it is difficult to see:

Below is another image of the same U-shaped chemtrail, taken from a slightly different vantage point just a few minutes earlier:

Again, it is difficult to come up with a hypothesis to explain the strange path of this aircraft and its persistent trail, other than the obvious explanation that this trail is the product of an aircraft deliberately dispersing particulates into the atmosphere over a target area.

Just in case someone wants to argue that there could be some kind of strong "wind shear" or atmospheric disturbance which took an originally straight trail and blew one section of it into the dramatic U-shaped bend seen in the photographs, take a look at the photograph below, taken only a few seconds after the top image and from the same location, of a number of other chemtrails being laid down in the sky just a single camera-lens away from the U-shaped trail:

These trails are perfectly straight, and they are going in the same general direction that the U-shaped trail aircraft took (before and after its dramatic meander).  They show no evidence of being blown by any wind-shear or atmospheric disturbance.  In other words, the U-shaped meander was created by an aircraft taking a big U-shaped detour, and is not the product of some kind of unusual wind-effect.

It may be difficult for some people to accept the possibility that the government of the United States (or other countries where such chemtrails are also seen regularly) would authorize the ongoing, deliberate spraying of unknown chemical particulates in massive quantities over the skies of populated areas and over the skies of croplands where food for human consumption is grown.

After all, doesn't California  law (and the laws of other states in the US) forbid citizens smoking cigarettes inside restaurants and bars and office buildings, in order to protect non-smoking citizens from the potential effects of second-hand smoke?  Doesn't California law (and the laws of other states in the US) mandate that gasoline stations affix labels to the pumps to warn citizens that pumping gasoline could expose them to gasoline vapors, which they might accidentally breathe while fueling up their vehicles?  Doesn't California law (and the laws of other states in the US, as well as federal legislation) mandate ever-more-restrictive limits on vehicle emissions, due to concerns over the health and environmental dangers such emissions might pose?

If so, how could aircraft spraying out trails of chemicals be allowed to ply the skyways over the heads of those exact same citizens for hours on end, day after day (and even through the nighttime on some selected evenings)?  We might ask the same questions about the intrusive and illegal surveillance of innocent free men and women who have not been accused of any crimes (another example of illegal activity which might have once been difficult for people to believe their governments would ever conduct on such a massive scale). 

Did citizens authorize such spraying over their heads?  Was their some legislation passed by elected representatives by which the people said their representative government could dump chemicals out of aircraft over the playgrounds of their childrens' schools?  

Obviously not, since mouthpieces of the conventional status quo such as Wikipedia can confidently declare that these chemtrails are nothing but "normal contrails."  If there had been some legislation  authorizing such spraying passed by some elected officials, chemtrail deniers would have a hard time maintaining that the spraying is not taking place (it is important to point out that, even if legislative bodies had in fact passed legislation authorizing massive spraying of chemicals over the heads of citizens, such legislation would be illegal and hence legally void, as natural-law pioneer and abolitionist Lysander Spooner argued clearly and cogently, in particular in a pamphlet published in Boston in 1850 arguing against the legality of slavery and against the legality of the Fugitive Slave Act, especially in his arguments beginning on page 27 of that pamphlet and continuing to the end of it).

But the spraying is clearly taking place (there are even a few isolated articles which admit to it, and which quote government workers whose entire careers apparently involve the coordination of such spraying campaigns).  

Apparently, then, this spraying is taking place unknown to the people who are being sprayed, and without their consent.  This is a violation of natural universal law.  It is illegal.  It is unethical.  

Such illegal activity can go on only as long as the people remain oblivious to it.  It can go on only as long as the people see it but remain in a hypnotic state in which the wrongness of the situation and the violation of their natural rights does not register in their conscious mind.  

This situation is exactly analogous to the situation in which people saw orcas being kept in captivity for decades, and in which people went to shows watching those orcas performing tricks, and saw the small tanks in which those orcas were confined and the unnatural situation in which those intelligent beings were forced to live, and yet those people remained in a hypnotic state in which the wrongness of the situation never registered in their conscious mind.  That hypnotic trance was suddenly and sharply broken for many people by the movie Blackfish, and suddenly millions of people are demanding that the mistreatment of those magnificent and intelligent whales must stop immediately.

The exact same thing can happen with the unauthorized spraying of chemicals over the heads of human beings, in clear violation of their natural-law rights.   The exact same thing can happen with any of the violations of natural universal law which are perpetrated by those who rely on the masses of people remaining in a hypnotic trance -- they can be stopped when people wake up to the wrongness of the situation and demand that the violation of natural universal law cease immediately.  This includes the illegal use of surveillance by the state over individuals who are accused of no crimes, in violation of natural universal law -- surveillance which (like the spraying of chemtrails) many people originally would never have believed their governments would conduct or permit but which has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be taking place on a massive scale.

At this time, there are only theories as to why so many resources are being used to deliberately spray chemicals high into the atmosphere over populated areas and over agricultural areas, using numerous jet aircraft, tons of chemicals, and probably huge sums of money.  There are only theories (rather than definitive answers) because these spraying campaigns remain largely secret, unauthorized by any public referendums or legislation, and un-debated by elected officials.  

However, some of the theories are quite disturbing, such as the theory discussed by Dane Wigington in the videos embedded and linked in this previous post.  Even more disturbing possibilities are suggested by the evidence discussed in this Red Ice Radio interview with molecular biologist Vincent Freeman.

While members of the general public cannot identify for certain the real reason behind such deliberate and widespread and long-running campaigns of high-altitude spraying, it is almost impossible to continue to deny that it is taking place, or to say that the trails covering the sky are the product of simple vapor trails or condensation trails left by regular commercial airliners taking travelers from one airport to another.  

To continue to maintain that chemtrail spraying is not taking place is irresponsible, and it empowers those who are violating natural law and potentially putting people at risk.  

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, 1937 - 2014

Yesterday, on April 20, John Artis confirmed that former boxer and outspoken advocate for the wrongly imprisoned Rubin Carter had died.  Artis had been taking care of Carter, who had announced  in 2012 that he had cancer.  Both Artis and Carter had been convicted of murder in 1966 and sentenced to life in prison.  Artis was paroled in 1981 after 14 years in prison, and Carter's sentence was overturned in 1985 by a federal judge, whereupon Rubin Carter was released after nearly twenty years in prison.

In the federal judge's decision to overturn the conviction, which can be read online here, the judge cited conflicting evidence in the original trials, changes in important testimony (particularly that of the principal witness for the prosecution, a petty criminal himself, who had identified Carter in the murder trials but later recanted his statements while in prison), records showing that the full results of lie detector tests administered to that principal witness were requested by defense but illegally not given to the defense, evidence that the unfired pistol round introduced as evidence and purportedly found in Carter's car had not been properly logged by investigators and that it in fact had a brass casing unlike the copper casings found at the scene of the murders, and finally the transcripts from the original trials showing that the prosecutor had clearly implied to the jury, over the objections of the defense, that racial animus had motivated the killings when in fact there was no evidence to back up these implications.

As the quotations from Rubin Carter played in this radio report which aired today illustrate, Rubin Carter refused to accept the designation of "prisoner," or wear prison stripes or work a prison job.  He stated:

I would not help my keepers to keep me kept.  I had only myself to work for; work for my freedom to keep my innocence alive.

And later in the same radio broadcast there is another quotation from Rubin Carter in which he states:

It would be very easy to be bitter.  I have never done things the easy way.  But if I never learned anything in my life, I learned that bitterness only consumes the vessel that contains it.  If I was bitter then the prison would have won.  And that's the thing that I cannot let happen.  I cannot give the prison a victory.

In the above video, Rubin Carter can be seen delivering a speech in 1995 arguing that the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of any human being is wrong and that we should resist the voices of those who try to declare that it is just a small problem.

These are statements which are fully in accord with natural universal law.  The stealing of the freedom of another human being is a grave violation of natural universal law, and the fact that so many of us go through our lives without even giving it much thought -- in spite of the evidence that it is taking place all around us -- is evidence that we there are powerful forces of hypnosis, misdirection, and mind control which keep us from becoming outraged about these violations, and often from even perceiving that these violations are taking place (I would say that they keep us from "seeing" that these violations are taking place, but in fact we often "see" with our eyes or other senses, without our minds even registering or perceiving what our eyes or other senses are telling us: this is why the term "mind control" is so appropriate).

For more on the connection between natural universal law and mind control, see previous posts such as:

• "Lysander Spooner, natural law, and human consciousness"
• "How to tell if you're under mind control"
• "Blackfish and mind control"

and

• "Martin Luther King and the war against consciousness" 

Rest in Peace, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, May 06, 1937 - April 20, 2014.

A Hymn to the Setting Sun, and the ultimate mystery of life

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (or the Book of Going Forth by Day, as it is often called today) refers to the texts found on numerous scrolls stretching across a period of over a thousand years, with contents that have connections to the earlier Coffin Texts painted on the sarcophagi and even earlier Pyramid Texts carved into the walls of certain surviving ancient pyramids. 

The texts found on these scrolls are not always the same "chapters" of the Book of the Dead -- there is no single "Book of the Dead," but rather many variants found on many different scrolls, each containing a selection of textual chapters (sometimes called "spells") and pictoral "vignettes."  Some of the chapters are more commonly used than others, and all of them are usually referred to by chapter numbers first established by Karl Richard Lepsius (1810 - 1884) in 1842.  You can find a listing of the chapters here.

One feature found in multiple scrolls are various Hymns to the Sun, which Lepsius generally categorized as Chapter 15 of the Book of the Dead.  There are Hymns to Rising Sun and Hymns to the Setting Sun.  A discussion of the Sun Hymns and an example of a Hymn to Ra in his Rising can be found here.  In Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures (1940), discussed in this previous post among others, and available here for reading in its entirety online, Alvin Boyd Kuhn focuses on some lines from a version of "a Hymn to the Setting Sun" found in the Book of the Dead papyrus of the Eighteenth Dynasty scribe Nekhtu-Amen.

The entire text of this version of "a Hymn to the Setting Sun," translated into English by E. A. Wallis Budge (1857 - 1934), can be found beginning at the bottom of page 11 and continuing through the first part of page 13 in this 1901 collection of texts from the Book of the Dead, all translated by Budge and prefaced by an introduction from Epiphanius Wilson (1845 - 1916).  It reads, in part:

The Osiris of the gods goeth as a leader through the That (underworld), he crasheth through mountains, he bursteth through rocks, he maketh glad (?) the heart of every Khu.  This composition shall be recited by the deceased when he cometh forth and when he goeth in with the gods, among whom he findeth no opposition; then shall he come forth by day in all the manifold and exceedingly numerous forms which he may be pleased to take. [The Osiris . . . saith:] "A hymn of praise to Ra at eventide [when] he setteth as a living being in Baakha.  The great god who dwelleth in his Disk riseth in his two eyes and all the Khus of the underworld receive him in his horizon of Amentet; they shout praises unto Heru-khuti (Harmachis) in his form of Tem, and they sing hymns of joy to Ra when they have received him at the head of his beautiful path of Amentet."  He (i.e., the deceased) saith: "Praise be unto thee, O Ra, praise be unto thee, O Tem, in thy splendid progress.  Thou hast risen and thou hast put on strength, and thou settest like a living being amid thy glories in the horizon of Amentet, in thy domain which is in Manu.  Thy uraeus-goddess is behind thee; thy uraeus-goddess is behind thee.  Hail to thee, in peace; hail to thee, in peace.  Thou joinest thyself unto the Eye of Horus, and thou hidest thyself within its secret place; it destroyeth for thee all the convulsions of thy face, it maketh thee strong with life, and thou livest.  It bindeth its protecting amulets behind thy members.  Thous sailest forth over heaven, and thou makest the earth to be stablished; thou joinest thyself unto the upper heaven, O Luminary.  The two regions of the East and West make adoration unto thee, bowing low and paying homage unto thee, and they praise thee day by day; the gods of Amentet rejoice in thy splendid beauties.  The hidden places adore thee, the aged ones make offerings unto thee, and they create for thee protecting powers.  The divine beings who dwell in the eastern and western horizons transport thee, and those who are in the Sektet boat convey thee round and about.  The Souls of Amentet cry out unto thee and say unto thee when they meet thy majesty (Life, Health, Strength!), 'All hail, all hail!'  When thou comest forth in peace there arise shouts of delight to thee, O thou lord of heaven, thou Prince of Amentet.  Thy mother Isis embraceth thee, and in thee she recognizeth her son, the lord of fear, the mighty one of terror.  Thou settest as a living being within the dark portal.  Thy father Tatunen lifteth thee up and he stretcheth out his two hands behind thee; thou becomest a divine being in the earth.  Thou wakest as thou settest, and thy habitation is in Manu.  Grant thou that I may be venerated before Osiris, and come thou [to me], O Ra-Tem.  Since thou has been adored [by me] that which I wish thou shalt do for me day by day.  Grant thou victory [unto me] before the great company of the gods, O Ra who art doubly beautiful in thy horizon of Amentet, thou lord of Maat who dwellest in the horizon.  The fear of thee is great, thy forms are majestic, and the love of thee is great among those who dwell in the underworld."

All parentheticals, ellipses, and bracketed interpolations in the above quotation are found in the original passage as published by Budge in 1901.

The modern reader may find the above Hymn to the Setting Sun to be extremely obscure and difficult to interpret, and may wonder what on earth this text found in a tomb and written down over 3,200 years ago (probably from material that is even older) has to do with his or her life today!

If the modern reader has been exposed to conventional education at any level, he or she will probably also have been told numerous times and with a great degree of certainty and finality that the Book of the Dead described the journey of the soul in the afterlife, and contained spells to help the soul navigate the mysterious realms it would encounter after death.  Such opinions will only add to the opinion of most readers that the chapters of the Book of the Dead may have some cultural interest to those studying the strange beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, but nothing of practical value to anyone who does not believe that the afterlife looks anything like the one Egyptians imagined and described in their texts and their art.

Alvin Boyd Kuhn argues, however, that these modern teachings fall into the trap of literalism, and that the ancient Egyptian texts were not primarily concerned with an imagined afterlife at all: they were intended to convey profound truths about this life, and they used exquisite and carefully-conceived metaphorical and allegorical vignettes in order to do so.  In his radical interpretation, the texts in the Book of the Dead, like all other ancient sacred scriptures and all the other sacred traditions preserved around the globe, were designed to restore sleepy or amnesiac human beings to full consciousness, urgently and brilliantly presenting a vision of the human condition and the meaning of this life which the ancients believed we forget to some degree in each of our successive incarnations in the material world.

Thus, to the degree that one is interested in the question of human consciousness and what we are doing here in this life, these texts from so many hundreds of centuries ago are as pertinent today as they were when they were sealed in a tomb and slowly covered over the ages by the blowing sands of Egypt.  

But, to understand what they are trying to tell us, we must understand the language of the metaphor which the ancients were using.  One of the keys to doing so is to understand the central metaphor of descent into this life in the world of matter on the part of our spiritual nature as a kind of a "death."  This argument, which Alvin Boyd Kuhn discusses throughout the six hundred-plus pages of Lost Light and supports with overwhelming amounts of evidence, is discussed in part in the previous post entitled "The horizon and the scales of judgement," and we can immediately see that the important concept of the horizon is found in the above quoted Hymn to the Setting Sun as well.  

One of the metaphors which the ancients used in order to convey this vision of human existence as a cycle of incarnation in matter followed by re-ascent into the spiritual realm was the cycle of the heavenly bodies, including that of the sun, which plunges nightly beneath the horizon (matter) only to rise again each morning clothed in fire into the upper realm of the heavens. 

In the above hymn from the Book of the Dead, Alvin Boyd Kuhn zeroes in on just a few of the lines, found towards the end of the quoted passage, specifically: "Thou settest as a living being within the dark portal; . . . thou becomest a divine being in the earth.  Thou wakest as thou settest . . ." (Kuhn, 512).  These assertions Kuhn describes as "wisdom of transcendent importance."  He goes on to explain why:

The declarations of ancient wisdom that we are divinized on earth and that the soul awakes as it sets, or incarnates, are mighty items of knowledge for benighted morals.  But it has been set forth that the descent is a swoon and a going into oblivion, the very sleep of "death."  Now it is pictured as an awakening.  Here again is exemplified the doubleness of esoteric methodology in picturing the two aspects and movements of being.  But the paradox in all these reversals of imagery is readily solvable.  The soul does fall under a spell of Lethe when enshrouded in dense body; nevertheless it finds in that very state the beginning of its true awakening to a higher sense of reality than ever before.  This world is "the place of establishing forever," of bringing purely latent capacity to dynamic realization.  There is involved here the ultimate mystery of life, which is the necessity of the soul's "death" in matter to gain a new birth.  512-513.

The ultimate mystery of life!  That sounds like something that might be pertinent even to modern readers!  

What Kuhn is describing as this "ultimate mystery" is the question of why a soul would incarnate in this physical material world at all, and the answer expressed in this hymn from the Book of the Dead is that the soul awakens when it "sets" (enters the material world), it becomes a living being in the dark portal of the underworld (this incarnate life), it becomes "a divine being in the earth."  Somehow, the ancients taught that there are lessons and experiences which the soul can only profit from when enfleshed in physical matter, subjected to the pesky laws of physics, and placed on this earth to interact with other beings in the material realm.

Elsewhere in Lost Light, Kuhn elaborates further on this teaching, citing other ancient sources to back up his assertions, including the ancient philosopher Plotinus (AD 205 - AD 270), whose teachings have been discussed in previous posts (well worth revisiting) such as this one, this one, and this one.  Kuhn explains the importance of soul's coming into this material world on page 190 of Lost Light, saying:

The world took form upon the model of divine ideas, Plato affirms.  In us men a god is striving to stamp his lines of beauty and grace upon the features of an animal!  The God-word was fleshed so that it could preserve and finally transfigure the mummy with its splendor.  But -- and let ultra-idealists be advised! -- spirit had to have plastic matter upon which to imprint its form and comeliness, else it would have remained forever unknown.  The visible manifestation of latent wisdom, power and love could be achieved only by the spirit's encasement in a body.  Matter, so derided by extreme "spiritual" theory, is the womb in which alone divine conceptions can be brought to birth.  So that the fleshing of soul works  the miracle of its own anointing.  Flesh is the way and the means by which man, the divine thought, is christened with an ever fuller measure of the oil of beatification.

Note that Kuhn was writing in 1940 and the convention then was to say "man" or "men" to include all men and women, as in "mankind" or "humanity," and he specifically states in other passages that his assertions apply to all men and women, and that in fact bifurcation into the two different sexes is only a temporary condition that is part of this physical incarnation -- the soul in its disincarnate form is androgynous (see for instance the discussion on 229 and on pages 498-512).  He refers to the soul as "she" in the following passage, which also asserts the importance of incarnation for the soul to discover truths which could never be learned without taking on a form of matter:

The earth is thus the place of critical interest in the whole cycle.  The life wave is sent forth to return with a harvest of more abundant life.  Now it is only as spirit contacts and overcomes the inertia of matter that it brings its own potentialities to birth.  Abiding eternally on its own plane, as Platonic philosophy says, it remains non-productive.  It must go forth, seek adventure, meet with opposition, wrestle with the powers that would choke it, and achieve its new cyclical victory in a world of adversity.  As Plotinus writes, "It is not enough for the soul merely to exist; she must show what she is capable of begetting."  Here is the model and the genius of all romance, all drama.  And the earth is the scene of this conflict between the embryonic immortal and the titanic mortal forces.  And where the earth stands in the chain of planetary bodies, the physical body of man stands in the chain of vehicles or vestures which compose each individual.  The human body is the seat and arena of the great conflict of personal destiny.  Without dwelling in and mastering the body of flesh, the individual soul, as says Plotinus, would never know her powers.  She would be spiritual, as she was from the start; but she would dream her existence away without ever becoming consciously aware of her latent creative capabilities, if she did not incarnate.  Incarnation is evolution's method of setting the seal of reality upon conscious life.  This is the office of earth-life in the cycle and of incarnation for the individual soul.  And it is the crucial point in all philosophy, as it is the critical point in individual destiny.  As for the soul her pathway to heaven runs through earth, and on it she goes to her "death" to be born anew.  284.

Thus the Hymn to the Setting Sun, seemingly so obscure and so specialized to the belief-system of such a distant and mysterious civilization as that of ancient Egypt, becomes immediate and of tremendous importance to every individual inhabiting a body on this earth today!  It, along with the other ancient teachings found in every part of the globe, concerns our true nature (which we are constantly in danger of forgetting or never even learning), and our purpose for coming here in the first place.  "There is involved here the ultimate mystery of life."

Titanic conspiracy, due diligence, natural law and mind control

The night of April 14 through April 15 marks the anniversary of the catastrophic sinking of the famous RMS Titanic, along with the appalling loss of over 1,500 lives in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.  

After leaving the US Army and reading more about the details of the Titanic catastrophe, and in particular the contrasting actions of Captains E.J. Smith of the Titanic, Stanley Lord of the Californian, and Arthur H. Rostron of the Carpathia, I often wondered why the actions of these three captains were not used as a valuable leadership study for officers.  Later, after encountering some of the analysis which challenges the official story (that is to say, the "conspiracy theory" which examines evidence that the Titanic disaster was actually deliberate, at least in the sinking of the ship itself if not the horrendous loss of so many lives), the fact that such an obvious potential study in action and inaction in the face of disaster was never actually mentioned in all the days I spent at West Point or in the Regular Army as an officer on active duty becomes (perhaps, if any of those theories are correct) more understandable.  

For the record, such leadership studies and discussions were a nearly constant feature of life both as a cadet at West Point and an officer in the 82nd Airborne and 4th Infantry Divisions.  We studied and discussed (over and over, on not just one but on multiple occasions) the actions of the officers involved in the Breaker Morant incident during the Boer War (for example), or of the officers involved in the airborne invasion of Holland (which were dramatized in the movie A Bridge Too Far).  But the actions of the officers involved in the Titanic disaster were never even mentioned.  Perhaps this is because those actions took place on ships at sea (perhaps officers in the Navy discuss them all the time -- I don't know).  However, it is also possible that they are not discussed because there appears to be strong evidence suggesting the possibility that something more was at work than an accident at sea, and that too much examination of the facts of the case would suggest this possibility even to young officers or cadets without much -- or any -- knowledge of the sea.

It is a fact that the US Congressional investigation, conducted by a Senator who was famously not personally familiar with the ocean or with maritime operations (and who was lambasted in the media for that fact, particularly by the media in Great Britain), uncovered the fact that Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian (the ship closest to the Titanic on the night that the Titanic sank) was told by his officers during the night of rockets being fired by a ship nearby, but that he neither came to the deck nor even ordered his wireless operator to be awakened to turn on the wireless set; had he done so, the wireless operator would have heard the multiple distress signals being broadcast by the wireless operators on Titanic. 

Further, the US Congressional inquiry, as well as the subsequent British inquiry, determined that there was a "suspicious lack of any entries about rockets in the Californian's log" and that the pages of the "scrap log" -- an informal log which the officers use to record entries prior to recording them in the official log for the record -- pertaining to the night of April 14 to 15 were missing, while the rest of the log was intact (the quotation is from page 194 of Daniel Allen Butler's book Unsinkable, which notes that the transcript and official findings of both the American and British formal inquiries into the disaster call attention to this same suspicious fact regarding the log of the Californian)*. The captain of the Californian's failure to get up from his nap on the settee in his chartroom, or even to order the wireless to be activated and the wireless operator to be roused upon multiple reports of white rockets being fired nearby, is well-nigh inexplicable, and it is clear that both inquiries found his actions inexcusable and culpable and said so.

It is also curious, as some of the documentaries examining the possibility of a conspiracy in the Titanic disaster have noted, that the passenger liner Californian was making its way from England to Boston without any passengers on board, and that it had stopped for the night quite close to the point where Titanic would eventually founder.  Some astute analysts of the disaster have wondered at the fact that Californian was sent on that mission despite the fact (well-known to Titanic historians) that there was a major coal strike going on throughout Great Britain, and that coal was difficult to come by at the time that Californian and Titanic left England.

Lord's inexcusable inaction could be contrasted with the commendable -- and, in fact, heroic -- action of Captain Arthur Rostron of Carpathia, who immediately ordered his ship to steam at full speed towards the reported location of Titanic the moment his wireless operator perceived that Titanic was in distress.  While Californian was probably eleven miles away, Carpathia was about fifty-eight miles away, and it took Rostron about four hours to arrive on scene -- the Titanic sank only two hours after Carpathia began steaming towards her.  Nevertheless, Rostron and his ship's crew were responsible for rescuing those in the lifeboats when they arrived, and the captain of the Carpathia made several correct decisions in order to get there as quickly as possible, including cutting off heat and hot water to the rest of the ship in order to maximize the steam available for locomotion, and doubling the lookouts both aloft and on deck in order to watch for ice as the steam plowed through the ice fields at night towards the site of Titanic's distress call.

Rostron's clear-headed and decisive action also contrasts sharply with the aimless inaction of the captain of Titanic, and with the haphazard and desultory loading of lifeboats on the stricken ship.  The videos included on this page, however, contain the analysis of those who suggest that there is evidence that the Titanic was deliberately sunk, possibly as an insurance scam -- a theory which would explain the lack of real concern among the captain and officers, if they had been told that Californian would be standing by in the vicinity in order to pick everyone up before the ship went down.  

Many of those who believe Titanic was sunk deliberately believe that it was actually Titanic's sister ship Olympic which was sunk -- that Olympic had been badly damaged by the same Captain Smith in an earlier event for which her captain was found culpable, and that because of this culpability, the insurance coverage would not pay for the repair of the fundamental structural damage on the Olympic.  Instead of just "eating the loss" (and probably going out of business), this theory proposes that the owners of Olympic and Titanic switched the ships, dressed the damaged Olympic up as Titanic, and then sank it on purpose on its maiden voyage.  Those holding this theory often posit that Californian was maneuvered into place to await the rescue of the crew and passengers, and that Lord either erroneously failed to realize that the signals being sent were from the ship he was supposed to rescue (perhaps because the pre-arranged signals were supposed to be colored rockets and all those reported by his officers were white rockets), or did not see the signals because one or both ships were in slightly the wrong place (this theory is harder to maintain, in light of the fact that an engineer of the Californian went and made a sworn affidavit that the officers on his ship had said they had seen rockets and had reported them multiple times to their captain, who remained on the settee in the chartroom the entire night, and in light of the missing pages in the Californian's scrap log, which probably mentioned the rockets).

A more sinister theory suggests that, although the captain and officers of the Titanic had been told a ship was coming to rescue them, Lord had been told not to do so in order to deliberately cause the loss of life of some of those aboard Titanic, in particular those with a powerful voice against the formation of a central bank in the United States (a central bank which was, in fact, created in the year following the disaster).

Thus, while the Titanic disaster was never used as a leadership laboratory for cadets or officers while I was at West Point or in the US Army, this horrendous tragedy should be carefully examined for the possibility that the "conventional narrative" may be very far from the truth of what actually took place.  The videos embedded on this page (links to those videos are here, here and here) present numerous pieces of evidence which suggest the strong possibility of conspiracy in the sinking of the ship.  Among the evidence which suggests this possibility are minute differences between the Olympic and Titanic which suggest that the ship which sailed on April 12 may have been the damaged Olympic and not Titanic, the fact that several notable passengers including J. P. Morgan (a strong advocate for the creation of a central bank in the US) booked passage on the ship and then made excuses to miss the voyage, the fact that Titanic had trouble finding enough men to shovel coal in the engine rooms despite the fact that work was scarce elsewhere and times were difficult with high unemployment, reports that Titanic listed suspiciously to one side just as the damaged Olympic was known to do, and many others, in addition to the very suspicious activities of Captain Smith, Captain Lord, and the desultory fashion in which the lifeboats were loaded (which directly contributed to the death toll being even larger than it might otherwise have been).

On the other hand, at least one of the videos (this one) presents some strong evidence which suggests that Olympic and Titanic were not in fact switched, and indeed concludes at the end that such a switch never did happen.  Even without a switch, it is still possible that Titanic (the real one, in this case) was sunk deliberately for other reasons, although without the insurance scam and switch excuse, getting the captain and crew to go along with a plan to deliberately sink the ship would seem to be much more difficult and perhaps impossible (if Smith was culpable for the damage to Olympic, and faced with intense pressure to go along with the insurance scam to prevent the business failure of the White Star Line due to his own error, his decision to go along with such a plan -- especially if he had been told that the Californian would be nearby to prevent loss of human life -- might be more easily understood).

Whatever the reader's actual conclusion about these momentous events, the importance of doing proper "due diligence" and not simply rejecting the possibility that history may be different than we have been led to believe should be overwhelmingly obvious from the foregoing discussion.  There is a regrettable tendency among some individuals to loudly denounce any investigation into the possibility that conspiracies of powerful men (or women) could arrange tragic catastrophes for their own nefarious purposes, and to say that such investigation is somehow unseemly, or even an insult to those who died or whose lives were horribly altered by such events.  However, this impulse is completely wrong-headed, and it is even possible that some of those protesting so loudly against such inquiry have their own reasons to try to steer others away from conducting such due diligence.  To the extent that these major events impact each of our lives, we have every right to do our own examination of the evidence and to refuse to simply take someone else's analysis of the situation as the "final word" simply because conventional opinion tells us to.  

Furthermore, trying to find out the true picture in no way does disrespect to those who did in fact lose their lives in those events (such as the over 1,500 souls who perished in the Titanic disaster), or to their family members.  In fact, if the events and motives behind such incidents were radically different than the world has been led to believe, then papering over the truth with a less-disturbing lie would be in no way more respectful to the memories of those who died, or to their grieving relatives and friends.  Those who lost loved ones would most likely want to know the truth, and those who perished deserve the truth and not a fabrication that serves the interests of those whose machinations may have been responsible for those deaths.

Further, if in fact powerful forces are at work behind such historical events as the Titanic disaster, then there are dire implications for everyone alive today, because it means that there are people who will not balk at the outright murder of over a thousand innocent men, women and children in order to achieve their selfish and illegal ends.  If this is in fact the case, then others are at risk if such hideous crimes are allowed to be whitewashed by history, and the villains left to continue to use similar tactics again.  If those crimes enable those murderers to gain even more power and control, it is even possible that failure to discover those crimes makes others even more vulnerable to the possibility of future actions by those who have already demonstrated their willingness to kill innocents in order to get their way.

It is only by searching out the truth of history and making it known that such incidents can be stopped, by good men and women who believe that no one has the right to violate natural universal law by murdering others, and who refuse to tolerate or condone or overlook such heinous violations and crimes against nature and humanity.

This year, as the fateful anniversary of April 14-15 approaches, supporters of natural law everywhere should make the effort to examine the evidence surrounding the awful sinking of the Titanic in 1912, both for the sake of those who lost their lives that night and for the sake of those alive in the world today, a world that was profoundly changed by that disaster.

Furthermore, whatever their conclusion as to the evidence surrounding the Titanic, we should all commit to the same level of due diligence into other disasters which profoundly alter the course of human history and the world in which we live, and to rejecting those who tell us that the "official narrative" is the only possible account of these major events, and that anyone who dares to question the official narrative should be marginalized, discredited, and ashamed of themselves for even daring to look at the facts for himself or herself.  These are the witting or unwitting voices of mind control.  

Far from being a reason for shame or ridicule, such investigation is the only way to honor those whose lives have been harmed or ended as a result of such incidents, and the only way to seek justice if in fact there is enough evidence to determine that conspirators have been at work, and to prevent such conspirators or those who emulate them from doing even worse in the future. 

* Note that Daniel Allen Butler's Unsinkable does not put forward any actual conspiracy theories such as those discussed in this post nor condone them in any way; however, his description of the actions of the captain of the Californian, and the findings of the American and British inquiries, certainly describe  evidence which those investigating the possibility of conspiracy would find very pertinent to that investigation.

The horizon and the scales of judgement

In ancient Egyptian texts, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, there is much usage of the symbol of the horizon.  In the Book of the Dead, for example, the Sun-God Ra is often described as rising on the horizon, and sinking to rest on the horizon.  

In the "Hymn of Praise to Ra When He Riseth Upon the Horizon, and When He Setteth in the Land of Life" (which can be found in this online transcription of E. A. Wallis Budge's translation of various Book of the Dead texts contained in the British Museum, a bit more than half-way down the very long web page, in a section entitled "APPENDIX (from the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 21)" we read:

Those who have lain down in death rise up to see thee, they breathe the air, and they look upon thy face when the disk riseth on the horizon. 

Immediately before that, in "Another Chapter of the Coming Forth of a Man by Day Against His Enemies in Khert-Neter" which can be found on the same web page in the "APPENDIX (from the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 13)" we read:

I have divided the heavens.  I have cleft the horizon.  I have traversed the earth in his footsteps.  I have conquered the mighty Spirit-souls because I am equipped for millions of years with words of power.

These are obviously very important and moving passages, but what do they mean?  Conventional academia teaches that these passages, along with the rest of the Book of the Dead, express the Egyptian hope for the soul in the afterlife, that the souls of those who "have lain down in death" will somehow rise up to see the sun again and breathe the air again, and that this hope is somehow connected with the knowledge of "words of power."  

Alvin Boyd Kuhn, however, (whose work has been discussed in previous posts such as this one, this one, and this one) gives a very different interpretation, and one which he backs up with hundreds of pages of evidence from these and other ancient sacred texts.  He argues that the conventional reading just described falls into the trap of literalism -- of reading as literal a piece of literature which was never meant to be understood literally, but which instead attempts to convey profound and nearly-ungraspable truths in the form of symbols and metaphors through which those truths can in fact be apprehended.  The Book of the Dead, he argues, is not talking about those who are literally dead, but rather those on earth right now, who are metaphorically passing through the underworld, who can be described as "the dead" because they are in fact immortal spirits who have taken on the physical mortal flesh of material existence. 

Using this understanding, the metaphor of the horizon becomes, in Alvin Boyd Kuhn's reading, a wonderful symbol of human existence, because it depicts the union of the spiritual realm (the sky) and the material realm (the earth beneath).  It symbolizes the human condition, because in our incarnate state we are a union of soul and matter.  In Lost Light, Kuhn writes:

And the horizon is half way between heaven and earth, typing, as always, spirit and matter, the two ends of being.  The momentous information, then, which is vouchsafed to man in this recondite fashion is that he, as a creature in a stupendous cyclical evolution, stands at the point exactly midway between the beginning and end of the complete area to be traversed.  [. . .]

[. . .] this fateful line would at the same time mark the boundary between the two natures in man's constitution, the earthly and the heavenly.  449-450.

Kuhn goes on to explain that once this metaphor is understood, all the imagery in the ancient Egyptian texts referring to a great battle which is fought "on the horizon" can be understood to refer to the great metaphorical battle which each individual must wage during his or her time in this material realm in which the spirit is enmeshed in earthly matter.  This world in which we find ourselves, composed of "the earthly and the heavenly," is the place where we must learn to reconcile the two natures.  Kuhn declares:

Straight and clear is Egypt's proclamation of this sterling truth: "He cultivates the Two Lands; he pacifies the Two Lands; he unites the Two Lands."  Man is "the god of the two mysterious horizons," and the glowing pronouncement of his final evolutionary triumph is given in the words: "Thou illuminest the Two Lands like the Disk at daybreak."  451.

Closely related to the symbology of the horizon is the symbology of the Judgement Hall in the Egyptian scriptures.  Here again, the conventional interpretation of the famous Judgement Hall scenes in the Book of the Dead is that the text refers to a judgment which takes place over the soul in the afterlife, but Kuhn demonstrates that, like the metaphor of the horizon, the Hall of Judgement symbolizes the soul's journey in this life, during which our daily actions and experiences, our "living activity and expression," is measured and recorded as if in a book (451).  Below is an image from the famous Hall of Judgement vignette in the version of the Book of the Dead found in the Papyrus of Ani.

In fact, as Alvin Boyd Kuhn demonstrates in Lost Light, our judgement in the horizon of this life and in the scales of the Hall of Judgement are closely related.  For one thing, the Judgement Hall in the Book of the Dead is also referred to as the "Hall of Two Truths," and we have already seen that the symbology of the horizon depicts the "two truths" of mankind's human condition -- that we occupy the boundary between the realms of the earthly and the heavenly, and that we embody and encompass both aspects in our human nature (Lost Light, 483).  Also, the scales of judgement are often described as being located upon the horizon, or upon a hill or mount, which is a terrain feature which suggests the horizon.

Intriguingly as well, the zodiac sign of the Scales of Judgement -- Libra -- is located upon the "horizon" of the zodiac wheel, for Libra begins just at the border formed by the September equinox, where the ecliptic path of the sun crosses below the celestial equator again after the summer months in which the sun's daily ecliptic path has been above that line (see diagram below).  As Alvin Boyd Kuhn writes about this symbology:

And this at once opens the way for the introduction of the whole range of symbolic values connected with the sign of Libra, the Scales of the Balance, and the Scales of Judgment.  And precisely at the horizon's western terminus stands the Libra sign!  The Judgment is a corollary aspect of the horizon typism and will be treated in a following chapter.  451.

We can now see that there are plenty of cogent reasons for interpreting the passages in the Book of the Dead, including those cited at the beginning of this essay, as describing the condition of the individual soul in this life, and not in a life hereafter.  But what are the implications of the Book of the Dead's teachings which declare our earthly incarnation to be a "battle at the horizon," or a "weighing of the heart" in the scales of truth?  And what does the Book of the Dead mean to tell us when it depicts the triumphant soul declaring that it is "equipped for millions of years with words of power"?

We have already seen in a previous meditation upon the Hall of Judgement scenes in the Book of the Dead that the texts surrounding the scene put a great emphasis upon the soul "telling the truth" or "not going about with deceitful speech while upon the Earth."  And, we have seen in our examination of the famous command inscribed in stone at the Oracle at Delphi that "Know thyself" appears to have been understood by Plato and by other philosophers including Plutarch as a command to realize that we are immortal souls enfleshed in a body during successive incarnations which each have an important purpose.  If this is the case, then the Book of the Dead's emphasis upon "declaring the truth" and on "not going about with deceitful speech" while we are here between or upon the horizons -- while we are being weighed and measured in the balance-scales of the Hall of Two Truths -- may also be telling us that an important part of our activity in this life includes first learning (or, more precisely, remembering) the truth of our true human condition, appreciating all the ramifications of this truth, and then speaking and acting in a way that acknowledges this truth about who we are.

Acting deceitfully (or "going about with deceitful speech") would then include efforts to deny or obscure the truth that, as Kuhn eloquently describes it:

this life is the period of its [the soul's] trial and testing.  The soul is drawn here to exercise her undeveloped powers, as Plotinus has so well told us.  Without such a testing she would remain forever ignorant of her own latent capacity, or would never bring it to expression.  Here is where she is thrown into the scales of balance, in Libra on the horizon, and here is where she is being weighed.  485-486.

One way this truth is obscured is by those who insist that ancient scriptures such as the Book of the Dead were anciently understood literally and woodenly, describing a fantastic judgement scene in an afterlife-world: an interpretation which obscures all the teachings we discover when we see that these texts employed exquisite metaphors to convey profound truths about our human condition in this life itself.  It is this knowledge, Alvin Boyd Kuhn tells us, that the ancient Egyptians believed to be the touchstone for the soul during the daunting passage through the material life in each successive incarnation.  He writes:

The Ritual [that is to say, the Book of the Dead] speaks of the secret knowledge of the periodicities and cycles of incarnation as requisite to render safe the passage through all the trial scenes in the Judgment Hall [that is to say, the trials of this life here on earth].  The salvation of the deceased depended on his having the facts treasured up in his memory.  As the soul walked through the valley of the shadow of death, his security depended upon his knowledge that he was a divinity threading his way through the dark underground labyrinth of matter.  His memory of his intrinsically deific nature would be his safeguard; and this memory was his book of life and character, for it was his own self, come hither to purify itself of dross.  489-490.

These, then, constitute the "words of power" which equip the soul "for millions of years."  That is to say, it is the soul's memory of its eternal, divine nature that equip it for the long journey through successive incarnations over vast stretches of time, and which safeguards the soul from being swallowed up in the animal nature of the physical body, forgetting where it came from.

We should all be grateful to Alvin Boyd Kuhn for illuminating the esoteric truths contained within the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and for demonstrating the importance of approaching those texts esoterically, rather than literally.  And, we should be grateful as well to the ancient sages who composed those incredible texts, and passed on their understanding of the human condition to generations who would live thousands of years after the kingdom of Egypt had been buried beneath the sands of time.

Did the ancients somehow know about DNA?

Conventional history tells us that the double-helix structure and base-pairing characteristic of the DNA molecule was not "discovered" until the twentieth century, based upon the work of scientists Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Erwin Chargaff, primarily in the 1950s and 1960s.

Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) in particular was responsible for the insight that DNA molecules contain roughly equal proportions of adenine and thymine (one of the "base pairs" in the DNA molecule) and of guanine and cytosine (the other "base pair").  Since that time, high school students everywhere have had to memorize the letters A-T and G-C in conjunction with their introduction to the molecular structure of DNA.

It is fascinating to note that the first four signs of the zodiac wheel after the ecliptic "crossing" of the celestial equator at the spring equinox (shown in the diagram above) are Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer (readers who astutely note that the motion of precession has long ago "delayed" the sky and moved the constellation Pisces into the heliacal rising position once occupied by the constellation Aries during the Age of Aries should note that in astrological terms, the "signs" are considered to remain in the positions shown above, for cogent reasons that are beyond the scope of this particular post).

Is it mere "coincidence" that the base pairs of the DNA molecule begin with the same four letters as the first four signs in the zodiac (A, T, G and C), and that they actually "pair" in a manner consistent with the order of the zodiac signs (A with T, and G with C, just as Aries is next to Taurus and Gemini next to Cancer)?

Of course, skeptical readers will note that the names for the DNA nucleobases were generally given by different researchers operating in different decades during the mid- to late-1800s, and that their names almost certainly were not chosen in order to relate in any way to the zodiac signs (adenine, for example, was named after the pancreas, from which the first samples in which adenine was isolated were taken and which organ in Greek is named aden, while guanine is apparently named after the word for bird droppings or guano).  And so it would seem on the surface that the connection between the zodiac and our modern understanding of the DNA molecule and its structure and base pairing is purely coincidental.  

Nevertheless, even if no plausible argument can be made for an actual connection between the letters A-T-G-C in the DNA molecule, and the letters A-T-G-C in the first four constellations of the zodiac cycle, it certainly seems to be a singular example of serendipity, synchronicity, or the collective unconscious working itself out over the course of thousands of years.

Further, while the letters A-T-G-C may not be among the evidence which argues for ancient understanding of the DNA molecule long before the work of Franklin and Gosling, Watson and Crick, and that of Erwin Chargaff, there is in fact other evidence which suggests that the ancients did in fact display flashes of insight which make us wonder whether they might somehow have had inexplicable knowledge of the importance of the DNA molecule, and even the structure of DNA.

One oft-cited example is the fact that the ancient symbol of the caduceus features two intertwined serpents very reminiscent of the double-helix structure of DNA.  Further, some ancient art including the images from ancient Sumer and Babylon depicted on this page (disregard the discussions of "Nibiru," "Planet X," and the "Annunaki" as outside the scope of this particular post as well) clearly seem to be very suggestive of modern understanding of the structure of DNA.

Jeremy Narby, author of Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge has an interview on the web located here in which he discusses a theory which attempts to explain how the mankind may have acquired knowledge of the importance of DNA and its helictical structure long before the advent of "modern science."  He believes that it is very possible -- and that in fact there is evidence to conclude -- that shamanic techniques can give human beings access to knowledge which modern scientific methods only confirmed much later, in recent decades.  In fact, he notes that shamans regularly describe visions involving intertwining serpents, and associate these serpents with something shared by all the multifarious life-forms in our world.  In the interview, he makes the assertion that:

Both shamans and molecular biologists agree that there is a hidden unity under the surface of life's diversity; both associate this unity with the double helix shape (or two entwined serpents, a twisted ladder, a spiral staircase, two vines wrapped around each other); both consider that one must deal with this level of reality in order to heal.  One can fill a book with correspondences between shamanism and molecular biology.

Note that in an image about four-fifths of the way down that long web page, Dr. Narby includes an image from the tradition of western alchemy which he believes has clear resemblance to chromosonal DNA, and which certainly predates the work of Franklin, Gosling, Watson and Crick by centuries.

There is other evidence, particularly from ancient sacred traditions and mythology, which strongly suggest that mankind somehow knew far more about the importance of DNA than we moderns have been led to believe.  This evidence will be addressed in my next book.

This evidence has nothing (directly) to do with the synchronicity involving the letters A-T-G-C and the first four signs of the zodiac, although the ancients clearly taught that mankind reflected the cosmos on a "microcosmic" level, a concept discussed in previous posts such as "The extra-zodiacal decans in macrocosm and microcosm," "More on macrocosm and microcosm," "Human internal organs connected to solar system planets?" "Okeanos," "The judgement of Paris," and "Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600."  

If each strand of our DNA is composed of base pairs whose initials reflect the initials of those first four zodiac signs (each of which is considered the "leader" of a grouping of three other signs, categorized as the Earth, Air, Fire, and Water signs of the zodiac), then we can truly say that -- however the serendipitous confluence came about, the naming of the DNA base pairs symbolizes on a profound level the fact that each of us embodies a tiny cosmos.

Much more could be said on this subject.  Even better than saying it, however, might be to contemplate it in respectful silence.