The Stargate Conspiracy (2 page)

This is the well-worn tactic of ‘divide and rule’, and has worrying, quasireligious overtones. And it is no obscure and tiny cult, but a massive phenomenon that, in one shape or form, has infiltrated much of the West’s cultural and spiritual life. But who lies behind it? And what on earth would anyone hope to gain by it?

We certainly considered the idea that we may have developed into sad cases of paranoia - the thought was to recur several times as we plunged deeper into this investigation — but the evidence remains, staring us all in the face, and there is no doubt in our minds that a huge conspiracy is trying to make us think in certain ways. And for such a global plot to work, it requires teams of fellow conspirators, whose participation may be unwitting or otherwise. These groups, we were to find, not only included, rather predictably perhaps, intelligence agencies such as the CIA and MI5, but also less obvious candidates, from New Age gurus to cutting-edge physicists, top-level scientists and multimillionaires.

Cynically exploiting our
fin
de
siècle
hunger for signs and wonders, and our ongoing love affair with the mysteries of ancient Egypt, the conspirators are in the process of creating a massive, insidious belief system that feeds on millennium fever, though perhaps not blossoming properly until the first years of the twenty-first century.

The fact that modem man’s craving for contact with the numinous and the ineffable is being cynically exploited on a vast scale does not mean that there are never genuine paranormal phenomena or mystical experiences. Nor do we suggest that there are no mysteries about man’s ancient past or his place in the universe. While we are critical of certain beliefs and claims to have solved some of those mysteries, it is because we find fault with them, not because we have a ‘skeptical’ bias. What disturbs us greatly is the use to which many otherwise innocent or uplifting beliefs and concepts are being put.

Even the lives of those with no interest in such subjects will inevitably be touched by this campaign to have us believe and be persuaded to think in a certain way. We came to realise, with heavy hearts, that part of this plot is to prepare us to accept certain ideas that we would normally find unacceptable, perhaps even repugnant. Make no mistake, this amounts to cultural and spiritual brainwashing on a lavish scale.

This story is so challenging that we can only ask for a willing suspension of disbelief, and for our readers to follow our detective work step by step, abandoning preconceptions and personal biases along the way. At the end, perhaps the thought might be allowed: what
if
this book is right? What
if
there really is a ‘stargate conspiracy’ eating away at the heart of democracy, human autonomy and decency itself? What
if
we are being prepared for the acceptance of something that we would normally find, to say the least, disturbing?

This book is not an attempt to rally the masses or create some kind of political backlash against the conspiracy. Perhaps, in any case, those with the vested interests would ensure that such an attempt would be doomed to ignominious - and immediate — failure. Yet we believe that successful opposition is possible, beginning with the realisation that, perhaps like the stargate itself, true resistance is in the mind.

 

London, June 1999

In the beginning were the Nine gods of ancient Egypt, the Great Ennead, in whom all beauty, magic and power were personified. But although many, they were only ever truly One - each an aspect of the great creator god, Atum. The Pyramid Texts, hieroglyphic inscriptions found on the inside walls of seven pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, implore them both as Nine and as One:

The mysteries of the Great Ennead were celebrated by generations of initiate priests at Heliopolis. Their worship was a central part of the lives of thousands of ordinary men and women, to whom their discrete identities made them as accessible as the saints are to modem Catholics, while their mysterious Oneness kept in place the divine veil of ineffability.

The Nine - in one form or another - reigned for many centuries, until the Egyptian world changed forever with the influx of conquering races including the Greeks and, later, the Romans. The change seemed complete with the coming of the new religion of the sacrificial man-god, Yeshua (Jesus). But even then it was believed that the Nine merely withdrew to a heavenly realm — or, as many would have it today, to another dimension. The Ennead had departed, perhaps one day to return in glory.

However, the Nine are no longer a mere curiosity of some long past religion, nor are the works of their priests as ephemeral as sand blowing across the face of time. Their sacred city of Heliopolis hid many jealously guarded secrets, incredible knowledge that is only now being rediscovered. From the wisdom of antiquity, these high initiates built the pyramids, feats of construction that are still unparalleled and whose mysteries continue to challenge and enthral. The Nine taught their priests well — and their strange and secret knowledge is coming back to haunt us.

 

Buried beneath a suburb of Cairo - the most populous city in Africa, with 16 million inhabitants and their mad cacophony of traffic - the wonders of ancient Heliopolis are now marked only by a single obelisk. Once it was one of the unofficial wonders of the ancient world, glorying in its name - derived from the Greek for ‘city of the sun god’ because it was the centre of worship of Ra, whose daily journey blazed across the heavens. Its Egyptian name of Ounu, which appears in the Old Testament as On, may mean ‘the pillared city’, although no one knows for certain. Sometimes it was known as the ‘House of Ra’, while the Arabs called it Ain-Shams, meaning ‘Sun eye’ or ‘Sun spring’.
²

It is unknown how long the centre at Heliopolis had been established before its first mention in the records, but it was certainly already the supreme religious centre of Egypt ‘when records begin’ - at least the beginning of the Old Kingdom (c. 2700 BCE).
³
Although several other rival cult centres later rose in power and political influence, Heliopolis always retained its status and due reverence was paid to its antiquity throughout the history of Egypt.

Heliopolis was the principal religious centre of the Pyramid Age, and its theology - the first organised system of religion and cosmology known in Egypt - inspired and motivated the building of the great monuments at Giza. To people of that time and place, theology represented the sum total of all knowledge. All that existed was God: everything was a manifestation of Him/Her, and everything was imbued with the divine spark. Therefore the study of anything was in itself a glorious religious act. To learn was to worship and at the same time to progress along one’s own path to godhood. Heliopolis is indelibly linked with Giza, which lies some 12 miles to its south-west. Indeed, the three pyramids are arranged so they point to Heliopolis.
⁴

As ‘the chosen seats of the gods’ and ‘the birthplace of the gods’, Heliopolis was the most sacred site of Egypt. It contained temples to the creator god Atum, to Ra - the sun god himself — and to Horus, as well as to Isis, Thoth and the Nile god Hapi. One of the city’s most renowned buildings was the
hwt-psdt,
the Mansion of the Great Ennead. Another structure was the House of the ,Phoenix, which may have contained the sacred ben-ben stone, Egypt’s most holy ‘relic’, which was possibly meteoritic in origin.

The priesthood of Heliopolis was famed for its learning and wisdom. Two of its greatest achievements were in the fields of medicine and astronomy — its high priests held the title ‘Greatest of Seers’, generally understood to mean ‘Chief Astronomer’.
⁵
Its priests were still regarded as the wisest and most learned in Egypt at the time of Herodotus (fifth century BCE) and even remembered in Strabo’s day, as late as the first century CE. The priesthood was even famed among the Greeks, and it is said that, among others, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus and Thales went to Heliopolis to study. And although we know few of the names of the great Egyptians who were its graduates, we do know that Imhotep, the genius who designed the first pyramid - the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara - and was venerated as a god for his medical knowledge, was a High Priest there.
⁶

Significantly, the priesthood probably included women. An inscription of the Fourth Dynasty, roughly contemporary with the Giza pyramids, refers to a woman in the Temple of Thoth holding the title ‘Mistress of the House of Books’.
⁷

It is possible to piece together the main elements of the Heliopolitan religious beliefs from the Pyramid Texts. The earliest text, in the pyramid of Unas, dates from around 2350 BCE, some 200 years after the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is believed to have been built. In fact most Egyptologists agree that the Pyramid Texts are much older than the earliest surviving inscriptions, and that they - and the religious and cosmological ideas — existed at the beginning of the First Dynasty, the ‘official’ birth of Egyptian civilisation, around 3100 BCE.
⁸
The Pyramid Texts are the oldest surviving religious writings in the world.
⁹

Customarily divided into short ‘chapters’ called ‘utterances’ by Egyptologists, these ancient texts form descriptions of the funeral rites and afterlife journey of the king (strictly speaking, ‘pharaoh’ is a much later term). There is every reason to believe that the Pyramid Texts are not, in fact, merely funeral texts, nor is the wisdom embedded in them relevant solely to the kings of a long-dead civilisation.

The central theme of the texts is the afterlife, or astral, journey in which the king, identified with Osiris, ascends to the heavens where he is transformed into a star. He also encounters various gods and other entities, and is finally accepted into their ranks. He is then reincarnated as his own successor, in the form of Osiris’s son, Horus, thus ensuring the literal divinity of the royal line and maintaining the continuity of Egyptian culture.

The Pyramid Texts are undoubtedly the product of the Heliopolitan priesthood,
¹⁰
and represent the only surviving unadulterated expression of their religion, and probably the only writings of the religion ever inscribed outside of Heliopolis itself at that time. The same ideas underpin later funeral inscriptions, such as the Coffin Texts (written inside sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdom, 2055-1650 BCE) and the so-called
Book of the Dead,
though these were also influenced by other, rival religious systems. The Pyramid Texts hold the key to reconstructing the beliefs of ancient Heliopolis.

A further problem arises as the Pyramid Texts were intended for a specific purpose, not as a general dissertation on theology. One analogy is with a Christian funeral service today. Obviously it would feature references to Christian beliefs, such as Jesus dying on the cross to save us, which Christians understand, while anyone unfamiliar with the religion would feel completely lost. The Pyramid Texts, in much the same way, are not the equivalent of a Heliopolitan Bible, but more like a prayer book.

A study of the underlying beliefs of the Pyramid Texts reveals an extraordinarily sophisticated yet economical theology and cosmology that can be read on many levels. Several complex concepts are expressed simultaneously in its imagery. There are many academic reconstructions of Heliopolitan thought, but the one we believe to make most sense of the data is that of the American professor of religious history, Karl W. Luckert, as described in his seminal book
Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire
(1991). According to this, the system is one of deceptive simplicity, hiding a rich and awesome complexity. We came to realise that Heliopolitan beliefs concerning the nature of the universe, consciousness, life and what happens after death are both mystical and practical, yet also incorporate knowledge that rivals that of the most cutting-edge modem science.

It has long been recognised that the Pyramid Texts contain astronomical material. Recent books have argued that these ideas are neither primitive nor superstitious — as many academics still believe - but reveal a detailed and sophisticated understanding of the movement of heavenly bodies. They even take into account the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, a heavenly cycle of nearly 26,000 years that was deemed to have been discovered as late as the second century BCE by the Greeks (who even then got it wrong).
¹¹
This civilisation existed at least five millennia ago. On such a timeline our own superstitious Dark Ages, when the world was believed to be flat, seem like yesterday.

The most fundamental revelation of the Pyramid Texts is that, despite our preconceptions, the Heliopolitan religion was essentially monotheistic. Its many gods, often animal-headed, were understood to represent the manifold aspects of the one creator god, Atum.

The Heliopolitan religion incorporated the concept of a mystical union with the ‘higher’ god forms, and even with the source of all creation, Atum himself. This union was the true objective of the process described in the Pyramid Texts, the destination of the soul’s ultimate journey. According to the standard view, this was relevant only to the king in his afterlife state, but we believe it was not a journey reserved only for royalty — nor even for the dead. The Pyramid Texts in fact describe a secret technique for enabling a man or woman to encounter God and - dead or merely out of the body - to discover some of his knowledge for themselves.

Atum stood at the apex of the Great Ennead, or the nine primary gods of Egypt. However, exemplifying the concept of ‘one god, many god forms’, the nine themselves were considered as One, the other eight representing different aspects of Atum.
¹²
This is a similar idea to that of the Christian Trinity. As Professor Luckert says: ‘The entire theological system can be visualised as a flow of creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows further from its source.’
¹³