Another much-vaunted prediction concerns the re-emergence of the sunken Atlantis. On 28 June 1940, Cayce made one of his most famous pronouncements: ‘Poseidia [one of his terms for Atlantis] to rise again. Expect it in ’68 or ‘69. Not so far away!’89 This prediction, it was claimed, was fulfilled when an enigmatic roadlike stone feature, which could have been manmade, was discovered under the water off the coast of Bimini Island in the Bahamas in 1969. Had the discovery of the ‘Bimini Road’ made Cayce’s prediction come true? Perhaps. But according to Andrew Collins and Simon Cox, several of the key figures who discovered the Bimini Road were hardly disinterested, as they were members of ARE, specifically looking for some form of confirmation of Cayce’s readings about Atlantis and the Bahamas.90 Moreover, the Bimini Islanders had known about the road for years and had actually offered to show it to the ‘discoverers’. In any case, the discovery of some — admittedly tantalising — anomalous features off the Bimini coast hardly constitutes the ‘rising’ of Atlantis.
Cayce also predicted that the secret of how the Great Pyramid was built would be revealed - in 1958.91 If it was disclosed, it must be the best-kept secret of all time. Most of us are still waiting.
Over the centuries many prophecies from people of all beliefs and walks of life have come true. To receive due honour and recognition prophets need evidence of some accuracy. Where Cayce was concerned, apart from some impressive medical ‘readings’, this evidence is sadly lacking. The fact that someone is highly successful with one psychic skill does not automatically mean that they have an equal talent in other psychic areas.
In 1931 Edgar Cayce founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) to promote his life’s work, with its headquarters at Virginia Beach, Virginia. This remained a fairly small and underfunded organisation until well after his death in 1945. In the early 1970s there seems to have been a sudden influx of wealthy members. ARE is now a rich and powerful body, which has funded archaeological work in Egypt and elsewhere to try to substantiate Cayce’s claims. In fact, ARE has had a major role in shaping modern Egyptology of both mainstream and new varieties. We have seen how Cayce’s insistence on the significance of 10,500 BCE has crept into major works of the New Orthodoxy camp, and their highly flawed evidence for this is now trotted out as fact by most other writers of the genre. But Cayce and ARE also stand behind at least two major figures from the — apparently - opposite camp.
Mark Lehner - who built the mini pyramid for Secrets of Lost Empires — is the most prominent American Egyptologist stationed in Egypt today. He is highly respected internationally. His 1997 book The Complete Pyramids was hailed as a masterly overview of an only too often thorny subject, and was promoted by many major museums, including the British Museum. It is less well known that in 1974 he wrote a book for ARE entitled The Egyptian Heritage, based on the Edgar Cayce Readings, which attempted to reconcile Cayce’s pronouncements with the findings of modern Egyptology. According to Lehner in his early days, the Great Pyramid was built as a repository of knowledge, and a ‘Temple of Initiation for the White Brotherhood’.92
In 1973 Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, selected the promising young student Lehner to be ARE’s ‘insider’ within the ranks of academic Egyptology, and it was ARE that paid for his training.93 They also funded his recent carbon-dating tests of material taken from the Great Pyramid94 (which seems to indicate that it is about 300 or 400 years older than was thought - but not the 8,000 hoped for by ARE). Today he no longer advocates Cayceism, and appears not to espouse any ‘alternative’ views, now being very much a mainstream Egyptologist. Perhaps it was as a sly dig at his own past associations with ARE that he recently criticised what he calls ‘New Age archaeology, inspired by revealed information’.95
But Mark Lehner is not the only person on the Giza Plateau to have reason to be grateful to ARE. Amazingly, that arch-enemy of all pyramidiots, Dr Zahi Hawass — who since 1987 has been in the powerful position of Director of the Giza Plateau and who was recently promoted to Undersecretary of State for the Giza Monuments - was also put through his training as an Egyptologist by ARE. Through fellow ARE members, Hugh Lynn Cayce arranged a scholarship for Hawass at the University of Pennsylvania between 1980 and 1987, where he gained his Ph.D. in Egyptology.96 Hawass has maintained his association with ARE ever since, and is a regular lecturer at their conferences at their Virginia Beach headquarters.
It is, to say the least, interesting that the two most prominent and influential representatives of Egyptological orthodoxy at Giza are linked to Edgar Cayce’s organisation.
First and last times
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock seem to be particularly keen for us to believe that there was something special about the year 10,500 BCE, perhaps because of the prophecies of Edgar Cayce. Cayce also predicted major events for the future, especially beginning in 1998. Bauval and Hancock also attach great importance to the year 2000 - although, once again, their reasons for doing so appear, on the evidence, to be distinctly questionable.
Like many others, those authors believe that the year 2000 will mark the end of the Age of Pisces and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, with corresponding influences over world events. The dominant religion of the current Age of Pisces - represented by two fish - has been Christianity, which has a fish as one of its symbols. Back in the Age of Taurus, we are told, bull cults - such as that of Apis in Egypt — were in the ascendant, as was the worship of ram gods during the Age of Aries.
This is a very Western-centred viewpoint. Christianity has dominated Europe for most of the Age of Pisces, but it can hardly be said to have ruled the world for much of that time. It did not reach the Americas, for instance, until the sixteenth century, nor did Christian missionaries start spreading the word in Asia until much before the seventeenth century, and its expansion in Africa came even later. On the other hand, although this period also saw the rise of another major religion — Islam - its emergence in the seventh century corresponded to no change in astrological Ages.
There is a great deal of debate among astrologers about exactly when one Age gives way to the next, because the constellations are of different sizes and the sun takes a varied number of years to pass through them. And when the sun is midway between two constellations, exactly when is it deemed to pass from one ‘house’ to the next? In fact, astrologers do not think at all in terms of an abrupt, immediate switch from one Age to another, but rather of periods of transition, or overlap, in which the influence of one Age gradually fades away while the new one gains in strength. It is therefore nonsensical to talk about any one year as the year of change: we will not emerge from our collective mother-of-all hangovers on 1 January 2000 and find ourselves abruptly plummeted into the Age of Aquarius. Few astrologers would even place its advent around the year 2000, although many have suggested that its influence is already beginning to be felt. Most estimate that we will be unequivocally in the Age of Aquarius about three centuries from now, around 2300. Some would even put it as far off as 2700.97
Bauval and Hancock seem particularly keen to convince us of the astrological significance of the year 2000, although their data produce some odd results when calculated back to previous Ages. The dates they provide in Keeper of Genesis98 are:
They arrived at this table by working 2,160 years back to the start of each previous Age, beginning with the year 2000, but this produces some very bizarre results. For example, in 8800 BCE — which they say is the end of the Age of Leo - the sun was resolutely rising within Leo at the spring equinox, and did not pass out of that constellation until 300 years later. This can easily be verified.
There is more. Extraordinarily, Bauval and Hancock seriously contradict themselves in the very same book. They argue that the correlations between pyramids, Sphinx and the heavens in 10,500 BCE, which they believe marks the date of the First Time, was also the beginning of the Age of Leo.99 If that is true, then — by their own reasoning - the Age of Aquarius will not begin until 2460! The
y seem so obsessed with attaching significance to both dates -10,500 BCE and the year 2000 - that, as far as any objective reader is concerned, they actually create a curiously irrational double-think. When they are arguing for the significance of 10,500 BCE they use one argument, but when they argue for 2000 CE they use quite another, without apparently realising that both arguments are mutually exclusive. But why bother? Why should they go to such lengths to argue for these particular dates? Could it have anything to do with the prophecies of Edgar Cayce, in which both dates are very significant?
Another reason why Bauval and Hancock attach importance to 10,500 BCE is its astronomical associations. That date is roughly half a precessional cycle (a little under 13,000 years) away from our own era. This means that the constellations at the spring equinox are now the mirror image of what they were at ‘the First Time’, although this will not be completed for another four or five centuries. However, Bauval and Hancock take this as a sign that the world is moving into what they call ‘the Last Time’.100 Although we are unclear about the precise meaning of their term, the connotations appear to be obvious enough. But it should be said that this term was not used by the ancient Egyptians themselves, being an invention of Bauval and Hancock.
Many people are now obsessed with the year 2000, but it obviously has a greater import for Bauval and Hancock as the year, they believe, in which great changes are going to happen on Earth. In Keeper of Genesis, Bauval and Hancock actually suggest that, in some way, the Great Pyramid will ‘trigger’ the Age of Aquarius in the year 2000. (Of course, this prophecy may well be fulfilled, just as Cayce’s followers went looking for, and believed they found, Atlantis in 1968, to ensure the fulfilment of his prophecy.) They say:
We wonder whether it is possible that the sages of Heliopolis, working at the dawn of history, could somehow have created an archetypal ‘device’, a device designed to trigger off messianic events across the ‘Ages’ — the Pyramid Age when the vernal point was in Taurus, for example, the Christic Age in Pisces, and perhaps even a ‘New Age’ in Aquarius?101
Anything is possible. We are eclipsed by no one in our admiration for the ‘sages of Heliopolis’, but the phrasing of the above paragraph seems to suggest to us either prior knowledge of the existence of such a ‘device’ or that Bauval and Hancock see themselves as guardians of some secret knowledge, who deign to spoonfeed us information as they so desire and are determined to create an expectancy in our minds for some imminent revelations.
Chambers of the underworld
The by now fabled Hall of Records - whether or not it actually exists — is an intrinsic part of this plot to enliven the Millennium. If it does, then there is every reason to suspect that its existence is already being manipulated in the mass perception well before its grand opening to the world’s media by the select few with their own well-honed private agenda. Although it will undoubtedly be the biggest archaeological find in history, this will be merely a drop in the ocean of revelations planned for us.
Does the Hall of Records exist? Certainly, the idea of records from an earlier time can be found throughout Egypt’s history. Among the most important of the many such sources is the famous Westcar Papyrus, which contains a legend concerning the great Khufu himself.102 This tells how Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, wanted to gain access to certain secrets found within the sanctuary of Thoth in Heliopolis in order to use them in the building of his pyramid. Khufu’s son, Hardadaf, told him a story of a great magus named Ded‘e, who knew where ‘the secret things of the house of Thoth were hidden’. Khufu sent for Ded’e, who told him that the things he sought were hidden in Heliopolis. Some Egyptologists believe that this refers to records that were the originals from which the Pyramid Texts were derived.103 (Note that this original version of the Hall of Records is located at Heliopolis.)
In later times, particularly during the period of Arab rule, there were plentiful legends of hidden secret writings in Egypt,104 which is only to be expected, given the reverence in which that ancient civilisation was held by those who came later. Several similar legends also refer to inscriptions on pillars set up in Egypt. These have passed into Masonic lore.105
Herodotus, the Greek historian who visited Egypt in the fifth century BCE, wrote of ‘the subterranean apartments on the hill on which the pyramids stand, which he [Khufu] had made as a burial vault for himself, in an island, formed by draining a canal from the Nile.’106 This is often taken to mean that Herodotus was told that Khufu was buried beneath the Great Pyramid. A strict interpretation suggests that he is saying that a complex of vaults was built beneath the Giza plateau, though not necessarily directly under the Great Pyramid.
In Gods of Eden Andrew Collins develops the idea of a complex of tunnels and chambers within the plateau, pointing out that it is limestone, which is characteristically riddled with caves.
There are many legends concerning a secret repository of ancient Egyptian knowledge. The Greeks, Arabs and, latterly, the Freemasons all have stories about coded inscriptions or caches of scrolls secreted somewhere in Egypt, so Edgar Cayce’s prophecies were nothing new. But he was not the only influential psychic to promote such an idea.
In the 1920s a British psychic, H.C. Randall-Stevens, came up with psychically derived information about the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. It very closely parallels Cayce’s. As with the Sleeping Prophet, this knowledge was alleged to be derived directly from the survivors from Atlantis who escaped to Egypt, this time led by an astronomer called Mizrahiml. Randall-Stevens said:
At the present time papyri and relics are still hidden below the Sphinx in numerous passages. These will shortly be found and given to the world in general to read.107
The Osiran Scripts tell me that this huge and imposing colossus is the ornament surmounting a hall, which communicates with the Pyramids by radiating underground passages.108
Opposite: Different views of what lies beneath the Sphinx. Above:
British psychic H.C. Randall-Stevens’s 1927 plan. Centre: The
Rosicrucian H. Spencer Lewis’s 1936 version. Except for the addition of
a chamber at the rear of the Sphinx, this is virtually identical to
Randall-Stevens’s. Below: Bauval and Hancock’s ‘Genesis Chamber’.
Eventually a temple will be discovered underground in the rear of the Sphinx, which connects with other chambers and a great temple or grand chamber under the Great Pyramid. There the divine cosmic mysteries will be revealed to those appointed.109
Randall-Stevens gives a diagram of the chambers and tunnels under the Sphinx and the Giza plateau, and also adds this telling paragraph:
The emigrants from Atlantis were people governed by the laws of Cosmic Masonry and those who landed in Egypt built centres of Masonic Initiation from which the country was administered.110
But did Randall-Stevens - like Edgar Cayce — really find his ideas in the spirit world, or did they have a more terrestrial source? Investigation reveals a very interesting tradition of which both men may have been aware — the Ancient and Mystic Order Rosae Crucis, the prominent American Rosicrucian society commonly known as AMORC.
AMORC, which has become well known for its extensive advertising and well-organised correspondence courses, was founded in the early 1920s by Harvey Spencer Lewis, who died in 1939. He had been initiated into the Rosicrucian Order in the great occult centre of Toulouse, in southern France, and founded AMORC in order to study (according to one of its brochures) ‘the mysteries of time and space; the human consciousness; the nature of matter; perfecting the physical body ... development of will; important discoveries in Rosicrucian chemistry and physics’. More significantly, the order claimed a pedigree that went directly back to the Mystery Schools of ancient Egypt.
Spencer Lewis claimed to have inside knowledge of the Giza Plateau: indeed, the idea of a complex of tunnels and chambers beneath Giza — linking the Sphinx to the three pyramids - is a major part of AMORC’s beliefs. Lewis said this information w
as taken from the ‘Rosicrucian archives’, although he offered no evidence to support this claim.111 Interestingly, the diagrams of these tunnels and chambers in AMORC documents are virtually identical to those of Randall-Stevens, and are too similar to be merely coincidental. And the latter’s account of the arrival of the Atlanteans in Egypt also resembles Cayce’s (although Cayce’s description of the Hall of Records is different from those of Randall-Stevens and Lewis).
Bauval and Hancock’s diagram showing the secret ‘Genesis Chamber’ locates it in more or less the same place as in the AMORC documents. On the face of it, this appears to be exciting confirmation that Bauval and Hancock have proved independently, using astronomical data, the claims of psychics and occult brotherhoods over the last eighty years. But have those two authors really presented a much wider public with great esoteric secrets for the first time, enabling us all to participate in the ancient mysteries? Unfortunately the answer must be probably not. In our opinion Bauval and Hancock want to give the impression of providing independent corroboration: after all, we have seen that their argument about the location of the Genesis Chamber was highly contrived.
The Stargate Conspiracy Page 8