The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  Bauval’s own version of events at Giza, Secret Chamber: The Quest for the Hall of Records, came out in November 1999, which - as might be expected - is well worth reading. It pours scorn on the conspiracies outlined in The Stargate Conspiracy - which we admit we find somewhat puzzling because Secret Chamber not only covers much of the same ground but actually backs it up, reaching very similar conclusions about the way events at Giza have been manipulated by those with secret, esoteric agendas.

  After making much of the entente cordiale and denying the existence of any conspiracies or covert agendas, Bauval has now returned to his original position, arguing that there are hidden undercurrents and subtexts, particularly those of Zahi Hawass and the Schor Foundation/ARE. And not surprisingly - at least as far as we are concerned - the agendas he cites tally almost exactly with the ones that feature so prominently in this book.

  The overall thesis of Secret Chamber is that ancient Egyptian legends - or perhaps memories - of the existence of a hidden repository of the wisdom of the Pyramid Age entered into Hermetic lore, and from there found their way into the beliefs of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. After Napoleon’s expedition of 1798 effectively opened Egypt up to European exploitation, Freemasons and other esotericists were able to search for the fabled repository.

  On this we are largely agreed. However, there is one major point on which we fail to see eye to eye. While presenting - in our view - a convincing case for those groups’ covert manipulation of the potent symbolism of Giza, Bauval still insists that the Pyramids and Sphinx will - quite literally and in the very near future - somehow trigger a spiritual transformation of the world. He says regarding this:

  I truly believe that the Great Pyramid and the Giza necropolis as a whole have the innate energy to cause a powerful transcendental shift in thinking on a massive, even global scale provided that the right buttons are pushed at the right time. There is not much doubt that we are headed for a radical reformation in the way we perceive ourselves on this planet...

  I am convinced that the Giza necropolis has been designed for precisely such a purpose. I am convinced, too, that the time has come for that purpose to re-activate itself. I am also convinced that some sort of bizarre plan is being implemented at Giza to ‘hijack’ this all-powerful device in order to promote something else, something that the instruments of Giza were never intended to do.8

  Apart from his belief in the transcendental triggering of Giza — on which we remain unconvinced - this seems to us to reinforce our conclusions!

  For Bauval, the focus of this ‘hijacking’ was to be the Millennium night ceremony in which a helicopter was to lower a gilded capstone onto the top of the Great Pyramid, which - as we saw in Chapter 7 - would have been replete with very specific Masonic symbolism. Together with the eye of Horus projected onto the side of the pyramid this would have completed the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, allegedly ushering in a new era when American Freemasonry would become the dominant force in the world.

  Significantly, Edgar Cayce also predicted the advent of such an American Masonic Golden Age. Some have associated this with another of his ‘readings’ describing a gold capstone on the Great Pyramid, which he linked with the discovery of the fabled Hall of Records.9 It is not too hard to see where the mooted Millennium night ceremony had its origins.

  Robert Bauval writes,

  There is little question that the events planned for the new millennium at Giza are highly charged with powerful ideologies. There is little question, too, that these ideologies ... invoke the ‘Second Coming’ of some Messianic figure as well as that of a Masonic ‘New World Order’. It should be evident, therefore, that the placing of a gilded capstone on the Great Pyramid at the stroke of midnight on the eve of the new age is not merely a ‘millennium celebration’ for Egypt, but could be the result of a carefully planned, carefully manipulated long-term strategy.10

  In his view, the potency of the ceremony would be increased by the fact that, as seen from Giza, Sirius would be culminating at midnight. 11

  However, this carefully laid plan failed utterly. Although there were throngs of merry-makers on the Giza plateau at midnight, the capstone ceremony did not happen, having been called off just a matter of days before the celebrations. Cinderella did not go to the ball - ironically, as things turned out, partly because of Bauval’s book. The Egyptian press had picked up the allegations of Masonic involvement, which led to an outcry that in turn put pressure on the Egyptian government to cancel the ceremony.12 Freemasonry has been banned in Egypt since 1964 because of a perceived link between the Brotherhood and Zionism - and the very idea of a Masonic ritual taking place in the heart of Egypt is highly inflammatory, to say the least. (The real irony is that the ceremony would never have happened anyway: at midnight the Giza plateau was shrouded in thick fog - perhaps the guardians of the ancient Egyptian mysteries were determined not to be mocked ... )

  It seems strange to us that in spite of warning the world about the hijacking of the symbolism of Giza - specifically the capstone ceremony - Bauval himself issued statements on the Internet urging the Egyptian Government to reconsider. He wanted the ceremony to go ahead, warning the Egyptians that ‘the eyes of the world are watching’. 13

  Also according to Secret Chamber, at the stroke of midnight Gantenbrink’s chamber was to be opened amid great fanfare and ceremony before the world’s media.14 This, too, failed to materialise, although the authorities still promise to open the chamber sometime in the year 2000. We can only wait and see, although we may well have a long wait.

  We note with disappointment that the much-hyped ‘Message to the Planet’, due to be relayed to the world by the Magic 12 - Bauval, Graham Hancock, Robert Temple and others - from in front of the Sphinx also never happened, like the ‘Hermetic Journey’ that was to occur at places of power throughout 1999. Why these events, so emphatically built up in the preceding months, never materialised, is unknown. Moreover, the famous entente cordiale - brokered by Bauval himself - is now in tatters, thanks to the criticisms in Secret Chamber.15

  Both Bauval’s book and Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald’s Giza: The Truth (published in August 1999) add considerably to the detail of the strange goings-on at Giza. Most of their discoveries reinforce what we outlined in Chapter 2 of this book.

  Bauval presents evidence to show that the SRI International team led by Dr Lambert Dolphin that carried out explorations at Giza in the 1970s was specifically looking for the Hall of Records - something that has always been downplayed. Bauval also demonstrates that the links between the SRI team and the ARE were far stronger than either party has subsequently admitted.16 Bauval has also confirmed the long-standing association between Dolphin and Dr James Hurtak, citing a 1992 letter in which the former describes Hurtak as ‘my friend and colleague of many years’.17

  New information arising from Secret Chamber and Giza: The Truth has highlighted other aspects of the many disputes connected with modern Giza. Dr Zahi Hawass has denied ARE’s claims that they were responsible for his Egyptological education18 - although it hardly matters because his continuing close ties with that organisation are not exactly secret.

  In Giza: The Truth Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald add more detail on the dispute between film-maker Boris Said and Dr Joseph Schor, from testimony supplied by Schor himself and his long-term partner in ventures at Giza, Dr Joseph Jahoda, effectively calling some of Said’s claims into question and making certain allegations about his conduct. In particular, Schor claims that Said leaked material covered by confidentiality agreements (the test footage showing Zahi Hawass in the tunnel in the Sphinx’s rump) to, among others, Robert Bauval.19

  Another point of contention concerns the cancellation of the Schor Foundation/Florida State University’s licence to work at Giza in 1996. We have seen that Hancock and Bauval claim the credit for that, and according to Boris Said, Schor had withheld this information from him and continued the search for the Hall of Records using his commercia
l filming permit. Schor and Jahoda hotly dispute both claims - in fact, they say that they never received any official notification from Zahi Hawass or the Egyptian authorities cancelling the original licence. 20 In view of the acrimonious nature of the dispute between Said and Schor, the former’s allegations that we quote in Chapter 2 should be set against Schor’s version as given in Giza: The Truth. If nothing else, the whole business demonstrates how difficult it is to get to the bottom of what is actually going on at Giza.

  Another surprise development, in August 1999, was Dr Hawass’s formal approval of a new licence for the Schor Foundation/FSU team to work at Giza - which specifically stated that permission was given for them to search for the Hall of Records.21 This is the first time that such an astonishing objective has been cited on an official permit.

  In Secret Chamber, Bauval disputes Gantenbrink’s claims (also published in Giza: The Truth) that he had released details of his discovery to the media against his wishes. If anything, Gantenbrink was even more strident on this subject to Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald 22

  However, in Secret Chamber, Bauval reproduces correspondence between himself and Gantenbrink showing that the latter had given him permission to publicise his discovery and that he was kept fully informed of Bauval’s negotiations with the British press, resulting in the front-page story in the Independent on 16 April 1993. Matters came to a head when Gantenbrink sued the BBC for using video footage of the ‘door’ in the documentary ‘The Great Pyramid: Gateway to the Stars’ (based on the work of Bauval and Adrian Gilbert). The matter was finally settled out of court after - according to Bauval - the BBC lawyers were able to show that, as Gantenbrink and his film team did not have a permit for commercial filming in the Great Pyramid, the copyright for the footage was actually held by the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities.23

  Giza: The Truth also adds to our understanding of the various activities at Giza, because the authors managed to get into two of the chambers where secret tunnelling is supposed to be taking place, or at least the scene of some sort of clandestine to-ings and fro-ings. They investigated the tunnel that is allegedly being dug in the Great Pyramid from Davison’s Chamber towards whatever is behind Gantenbrink’s door - but found no sign of it.24 This is particularly important because this is the last allegation of clandestine tunnelling at Giza - and even that appears to have been discredited.

  In Chapter 2 we left the question of covert tunnelling open: virtually all the rumours of recent years turned out to be without foundation, including the detection of nine chambers beneath the Sphinx (promoted by Hancock and Bauval), the accessing of a chamber under the Sphinx containing records and artefacts (which bizarrely seems to have originated within Egyptian government circles), the so-called ‘Hall of Osiris’ in the Great Pyramid (advocated by Larry Dean Hunter) and the mystification surrounding the Water Shaft Chamber (begun by Boris Said and now taken up by James Hurtak and Zahi Hawass). However, as there were still some claims where a definite conclusion was impossible, we considered the possibility that there was some kind of clandestine activity going on, for which the wilder rumours served as some kind of smokescreen - particularly the claim about tunnelling off Davison’s Chamber. But now that one also seems to have fallen by the wayside, and it clarifies the issue. Now we know that there is unlikely to be anything new and exciting at Giza, it seems that certain groups want us to believe there is.

  Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald also managed to get into the Water Shaft Chamber, deep beneath the causeway at Giza. The lowest of the three chambers - which contains a huge, but empty, granite sarcophagus, surrounded by a watery moat - is now the focus for some highly inventive myth-making. Although of considerable archaeological interest, the key point as far as the myth-makers are concerned is whether, as some claim, it is linked with hypothetical chambers beneath the Sphinx. Could this really be the entrance to the subterranean network of tunnels and chambers spoken of by Cayce and which also appears in the works of AMORC and H. C. Randall-Stevens?

  In the north-west corner there is a sort of low passage (which actually leads in the direction of the Great Pyramid, not the Sphinx). But is it really a man-made tunnel? Certainly, Bauval describes it as a tunnel,25 as does Zahi Hawass. On 2 March 1999 the chamber was the centrepiece of a live television broadcast (Opening the Lost Tombs - Live) by Fox TV in the US, in which Hawass leads the presenter down the shaft, describing it as his ‘greatest adventure ever’. In the lowest chamber he draws attention to the ‘tunnel’ saying he had not excavated it yet, but ‘you never know what the sands and tunnels of Egypt may hide’.26 However, according to Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald, and judging by their photographs, this is simply a natural fault in the rock that narrows to a dead end after a few feet.27

  By far the greatest and most dedicated myth-maker where this particular chamber is concerned is Dr James Hurtak. In lectures in Australia in 1999, he claimed that he was the one to have discovered it.28 It emerges that when Boris Said and members of the Schor Foundation team explored the chamber in February 1997, Hurtak had accompanied them.29 Perhaps this was remarkable enough, but in Hurtak’s lectures the chamber has been transformed into Wonderland - virtually an underground city, the entrance to a series of massive chambers and temples surrounded by rivers that could only be crossed by skilful rafting. Indeed, Hurtak shows slides of himself in a raft, giving the illusion of heroic exploits across large distances. In fact, although the chamber is surrounded by water, altogether it is only 30 foot square ... not quite Indiana Jones style. Of course Hurtak links this location with the historical scheme outlined in his The Keys of Enoch - and is reported to claim that he has evidence that this ‘underground city’ was constructed by the people from Atlantis.30

  It seems hard not to conclude that all these people are deliberately myth-making about rather unpromising discoveries, perhaps because there is nowhere left on the Giza plateau to spin such stories about.

  Hurtak is the link between the Egyptian side of The Stargate Conspiracy and the New Age. Recently, British author and researcher Kevin McClure drew our attention to another aspect of Hurtak’s complex and multifaceted career: in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he was best known as a UFO researcher, Hurtak was one of the foremost promoters of a link between the UFO phenomenon and the secrets of Nazi Germany. He claimed that the extraterrestrials that brought civilisation to the Middle East many thousands of years ago chose to re-establish contact with the human race in modern times with the Germany of the 1930s - on the grounds that it was the most scientifically advanced nation of the time. The extraterrestrials gave Nazi scientists the secret of how to construct disc-shaped flying craft; this new technology was captured by the Americans at the end of the Second World War, which is why the first wave of UFO reports in the US began in 1947.31 Although this is an extremely unlikely scenario (one wonders why Hitler lost the war if he had access to such advanced technology), the significant point is that Hurtak finds nothing odd in the supposed fact that his advanced extraterrestrials should select Nazi Germany as their Chosen Ones.

  The monster under the mask

  Another major link between the Egyptian mysteries and the New Age is, of course, Edgar Cayce. Both Secret Chamber and Giza: The Truth present further evidence of the true origins of the ‘Sleeping Prophet’s’ psychic information: Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald point out that, far from being as ignorant of esoteric matters as his supporters claim, Cayce was in fact well versed in Theosophical and other similar beliefs before he began to produce the psychic material relating to Atlantis, ancient Egypt and the Hall of Records. In particular, Cayce lectured to the Theosophical Society of Alabama in 1922, staying for several weeks with a student of such esoteric doctrines, Arthur Lammers, the following year.32 Bauval also accepts that Cayce was well versed in Theosophical and other lore - and even traces his belief in the significance of 10,500 BCE back to the works of the poet and mystical philosopher Gerald Massey (1828-1907).33 This makes an important connection between Cayce’s psychic rea
dings and the esoteric groups that came to influence the stargate conspiracy, revealing why Cayce’s work is so significant.

  Since the publication of this book we have become even more disturbed by the extreme right-wing politics that lurks under the ‘love and light’ of the New Age movement. We now realise that we are by no means alone in our anxiety about the potential for control of all those largely white, middle-class happy huggers, who may be genuine seekers after enlightenment and awareness. Shortly after this book came out, a friend, the actress and screenwriter Christy Fearn, sent us a copy of New Age Channelings - Who or What Is Being Channeled? by the Swedish-born artist and writer Monica Sjöö, which provided more pieces for this particular bit of the jigsaw puzzle. Although Sjöö unashamedly comes from an alternative, radically feminist position, she is concerned about the philosophy and politics that underpin the New Age - especially the subtext of many of the channelled messages. Sjöö, like us, discerned worrying undercurrents in the progenitors of today’s New Age, primarily Madame Blavatsky and Alice A. Bailey. And like us, she sees the Council of Nine - and in particular their book, The Only Planet of Choice - as being insidiously sinister and dangerous.34

  Interestingly, Sjöö notes that the channelling cults, particularly the Nine, are not actually very radical. If anything, they uphold the American Dream, reinforcing white, Christian middle-class values and the concept of a ruling elite. Perhaps, she muses, such teachings emanate from intelligence agencies such as the CIA?35 (We recall the findings of the SRI report entitled ‘Changing Images of Man’ - see Chapter 7.)

  Monica Sjöö particularly picks up on the anti-Semitic, racist and stridently patriarchal tone of the great New Age godmothers, Blavatsky and Bailey - especially the latter. She notes that Bailey’s spirit guide, the Tibetan (or ‘the Master DK’), proclaimed on the day that the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki that it was ushering in a new age by releasing cosmic energy, linking the nuclear flash with the Light of the initiate. Surely even more disgusting is the Tibetan’s view of the effect of using the atomic firestorm on thousands of living Japanese. As Sjöö says: ‘Bailey and DK go on to say that the Japanese, whose nervous system is of the 4th root race, were due to be destroyed “... and the consequent release of their imprisoned souls is a necessary happening; it is the justification of the use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese population.’ ”36