Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (3 page)

So, how did it all begin?

Let's turn the clock back around 65 years. We find ourselves in a primary school in the town of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. And there I am! I'm 10 years old and listening to my religious education teacher describe a battle that took place up in heaven. And here's how it went: One day, the archangel Lucifer and his heavenly host marched up to the throne of God and declared: "We will serve you no longer!" Thereupon the Almighty God ordered his archangel Michael to expel Lucifer and his entire gang of hangers on out of heaven forever. Since then-my teacher explained-Lucifer has been the Devil, and all of his followers have roasted in the infernal fires of hell.

Well, this certainly gave me something to ponder about, and that evening, perhaps for the first time in my life, I sat down and did some really serious thinking. Heaven, we had always been told, was a place of absolute bliss, a sanctuary where all good people would head off to after shuffling off this mortal coil. It was also the place where all souls would spend eternity in heavenly unity with God. So how could a quarrel like this come about in paradise, where all is bathed in divine happiness and where perfect unity with God abounds? Surely, discord would be completely impossible in a place like that, wouldn't it? Why should Lucifer and his angels suddenly take up arms against the almighty and benevolent God?

I went to my mother and asked her advice, but she couldn't come up with a satisfactory response either. In God's realm, she said, groping for some kind of answer, everything is possible. And that seems to be it: Everything is possible-even the impossible.

When I was 16, I was sent to a boarding school run by Jesuits. We learned Latin and Greek, and I realized that the word Lucifer derived from two words: lux (light) and ferre (bear, carry). So Lucifer actually means bringer or bearer of light. The Devil, of all people, the bringer of light? My new knowledge of Latin just made the matter all the more confusing.

Ten years later I had studied the Old Testament, as Christians call the ancient text, in great depth. This is what I read in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (from around 740 BC):

"0 how you have fallen from Heaven, 0 morning star, son of the dawn! How you have fallen to Earth, and laid the nations low! For you said in your heart, I will go up to heaven, will make my seat higher than the stars of God; I will take my place on the mountain of the meeting-place of the gods..." (Isaiah 14:12-13).

Most likely, the sayings of the Prophet Isaiah have changed somewhat over the millennia. So what was their original meaning? If you look a little further, you'll find another clear reference to war in paradise:

"And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels went out to the fight with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels made war. And they were overcome, and there was no more place for them in heaven." (Revelation 12:7).

Battles in heaven? In space perhaps? Were our unknowing forefathers simply trying to express the inner struggle between good and evil that takes place in all of us? Did they misinterpret the atmospheric battle that rages during a thunder storm as a war in the heavens? The dark clouds against the sun? Or was the root of their confusion a solar eclipse, where it seemed that something monstrous was devouring the sun? All of these naturalistic explanations, however, don't quite cut the mustard, as I later realized after comparing these writings with ancient texts from other cultures.

Greek mythology, for instance, also begins with a heavenly battle. According to the Greeks, the children of Ouranos rejected heavenly order and their creator. This led to terrible bloodshed-and Zeus, the father of the gods, was just one of the victors.

All the way over on the other side of the world-and a long way away from Greece!-lies New Zealand. Its original residents, the Maori, have legends that also begin with a heavenly war. Again, a group of the gods' children rebelled against their fathers. The leader of those heavenly warriors was called Rongamai, and after his victory he settled with his people on the Earth.

You can imagine how my sensitive young psyche was thrown into confusion as I was given the task of translating Chapter 19, Verse 12 ff. of Exodus from the Old Testament. I read how the "Lord" descended to a mountain in Exodus, Chapter 19, Verse 18 ff: "Mount Sinai was swathed in smoke, because the LORD had come down on it in fire. And the smoke ascended like the smoke from a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly."

Let me make one thing clear: I have always believed in God, and I still pray regularly. But my dear God has to have certain qualities. He is timeless-in other words, he doesn't need to do experiments and wait to see how they turn out. He knows already. He is almighty and omnipresent. He doesn't need any kind of vehicle to move from point A to B. Why should God need some kind of flaming carriage to descend onto a mountain and reduce everything to fire and smoke-so much so that the mountain shakes? The very mountain that Moses was required to fence off for safety reasons. What on earth is being described here?

Later I read the experiences of the Prophet Ezekiel in the Bible. He also described a vehicle with wings, wheels, and metal legs and that caused an awful noise and threw sand up into the air. The Lord's chariot-throne? My dear God doesn't ride around in that kind of vehicle! To be honest, I find it insulting to the omnipresent God to maintain that he would be so insignificant that he would need to use any kind of transport at all!

Suddenly, I was plagued with doubts about my own religion. As a young man, I wanted to know if other ancient peoples told the same kind of strange stories as the Israelites in the Bible. And that's where it all started. I got stuck in and began researching. Thus began a fascinating life that has been filled with ups and downs and has taken me halfway across the world. It has led me to visit the world's greatest libraries. It has caused me to seek out and talk to many highly educated and intelligent people. It has moved me to visit countless archaeological excavations. And, last but not least, it inspired me to start writing. I wrote my very first book, Chariots of the Gods, at the tender age of 33, while I was still working full time as the director of a top-class hotel.

Twilight of the Gods is my 25th nonfiction book! Add to that my collaborations on seven anthologies and just on the side-the six novels I've written, and you've got quite a collection. I've had a bit of fun recently counting up all the nonfiction pages I've published: 8,342 pages! Looks like a number you might see on a check.

Eight thousand, three hundred forty-two pages! Would you believe it? Doesn't the guy ever run out of things to say? Surely, he must repeat himself quite a lot!

To be honest, the reason that it never gets boring is because the material just keeps coming and coming! The field I work in never stops getting more exciting and more up-to-date. Increasing numbers of authors and scientists are becoming fascinated by the subject. And that's not really any great surprise. After all, the thought that extraterrestrials were here thousands of years ago is one that touches on a whole range of different scientific fields. So what are we talking about? Well, it involves prehistory, archeology, philology (especially linguistics), ethnology, evolution, genetics, philosophy, astronomy, astrophysics, exobiology, space travel, and, of course, one mustn't forget theology.

Repetitions? Well, they're impossible to avoid completely. For instance, I already dedicated 12 pages in my book The Stones of Kiribati to the enigmatic ruins in Puma Punku in the highlands of Bolivia, and now I've come back to the subject. Why, you ask?

Well, it's like this: In the past, I dealt with Puma Punku more like a journalist. I reported on it and presented a number of pictures without ever really going into any depth on the subject. But this time, I'd like to document what it was that left the very first visitors breathless and stammering as they stood before the mighty stone blocks of Puma Punku 400 years ago. I'd like to show you what archaeologists discovered hundreds of years ago and demonstrate how much has been destroyed throughout the centuries. Intentionally. But I will also prove that Puma Punku was not built by any Stone Age people.

And in December 2012, the gods will return from their long journey and appear again here on Earth. At least that is what the Mayan calendar, and Mayan written and oral lore, would have us believe. This time, I've gone into greater depth than ever before. The so-called gods-in other words, the extraterrestrials-will come again. We're in store for a "god shock" of major proportions.

Doesn't anyone with half a brain know that interstellar travel is simply impossible and is likely to remain so because of the huge distances between the stars? And that extraterrestrials would never look like us?

Well, my dear readers, I destroy these preconceptions. Systematically. One little piece at a time. I hope you enjoy reading about it!

Yours,

Erich von Daniken

September 2009

What would you say if I told you there is a place 13,000 feet high up in the Andes that, according to ancient Inca traditions, was built in a single night by the gods? A place where huge stone slabs lie strewn around like discarded playing cards on the floor? Stone slabs that have been carefully cut and transported and yet about which the Spanish chroniclers-writing 400 years ago-said that no man could have moved? A place where gigantic blocks of andesite were cut and worked with incredible precision and archeologists expect us to believe that it was Stone Age men that did it? A place in which a calendar was discovered that reaches back 15,000 years into the past? A calendar that even shows the phases of the moon for every day and every hour!

Let me tell you: This place really exists. It's called Tiwanaku, and it lies high in the Bolivian Andes. So why have we never heard of this place? Why hasn't National Geographic or the Discovery Channel produced groundbreaking documentaries about it? Is there some sort of conspiracy going on? Or has this sensational discovery simply gone up in a puff of smoke?

One of the reasons for this deafening silence is a friend of Adolf Hitler and well-known antisemite named Hans Horbiger, an eccentric of the kind that only recognizes one truth-his own. People like this are never written about-even when they occasionally come up with extremely valid points. So just who was this guy?

Hans Horbiger was born in 1860 to a well-to-do family in the Tyrol region. He studied engineering at the Technical University in Vienna and after graduating worked initially as a technical draftsman at a factory building steam engines. Eventually he transferred to the Land Company, where he worked as a compressor specialist. In 1894, he devised a new valve system for pumps and compressors. He patented his new invention and licensed it to a number of German and foreign firms. For a while it made him quite a rich man, but much of his fortune was wiped out-first by the hyperinflation of the Twenties and subsequently the Second World War.

As a young engineer, Horbiger one day observed molten steel flowing over a blanket of snow. It struck him how the snow and earth veritably exploded due to the heat of the steel. It gave him a quite interesting idea: What if the same process were taking place in a kind of eternal struggle throughout the entire universe? Ice and fire-life and death. Horbiger postulated that throughout the cosmos, huge heavenly bodies would be constantly colliding with mighty chunks of ice and consequently exploding. The resulting debris would form planets and moons. This was the basis of the "World Ice Theory" that Hans Horbiger published in 1913.