The Master Game

by Graham Hancock

  The sun's position changes throughout the year not only at noon (the astronomical ‘meridian’ or mid-line of the sky) but also at all other points along its arc – including, of course, at its rising and setting points on the horizon. At the latitude of Paris (48°, 51’ north), an observer looking west (the general direction of Notre Dame's alignment) will note that the Sun sets at about 38° north-of-west at mid-summer and at about 38° south-of-west at mid-winter. On other days of the year the Sun sets at points in between these two extremes moving from north to south for six months and then travelling back from south to north again in the next six months. Obviously, with this pendulum-like swing, the Sun will set at any selected point within the range twice in the year (once on its journey from north to south and a second time on its journey from south back to north).

  According to researcher and author Jean Phaure the second angle incorporated into the axis of Notre Dame Cathedral – i.e. the angle of 26° north-of-west – is to be explained by this pendulum swing of the Sun along the horizon. It turns out that the two days of the year when an observer at Notre Dame would see the Sun setting at 26° north-of-west are 8 May and 6 August – both dates of important Roman Catholic religious festivals.

  The first, 8 May, marks Saint-Michel de printemps, a very popular feast in medieval times commemorating the miraculous apparition in the fourth and fifth centuries AD of the Archangel Michael on various mounts in Europe – for example on Mont Saint-Michel on the Brittany coast of France and on St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, Britain. Michael the Archangel is the guardian prince of God's people, revealed in the Bible to be the ‘captain’ of God's army (Daniel 12:1, Joshua 5:14) – a role which many European monarchs were keen to project upon themselves.

  The second date, 6 August, marks the Transfiguration of Christ, which remains an important feast in all of Christendom to this day. It commemorates the occasion, described in the New Testament, when Jesus was accompanied by his disciples Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain; there Moses and Elijah appeared and transfigured Jesus, making his face and clothes become white and shining as light (Mark 9:2 – 13; Matthew 17:1 – 13; Luke 9:28 – 36). We can understand, then, why Roman Catholicism has frequently associated ‘shining’ solar symbolism with the figure of Christ (for example his iconographical representations as a Sol Invictus in the early Roman Church).18 It's obvious, too, that many Christian festivals track the solar cycle – such as Christmas (winter solstice), the Feast of St. John (summer solstice), Easter (the spring equinox), and so forth.19

  Now in the Bible Elijah is prophesied to appear before the coming of the Jewish messiah, but Jesus maintains that this prophecy had already been fulfilled when Elijah appeared as John the Baptist (Matthew 17:9 – 13). Another biblical prophecy states that at the time when the messiah is about to appear: ‘Michael will stand up, the great prince who mounts guard over your people.’ (Daniel 12:1). Many Christians took this second prophecy as an indication that Michael the Archangel was to be the harbinger of Christ's Second Coming. For just as God sent Elijah in the form of John the Baptist to herald the first coming of the Christ on earth, so too will He send Michael at the end to proclaim Christ's Second Coming. And this appearance, the traditions leave no doubt, is to take place on a ‘mount’. The Jews are clear that the setting is to be Mount Zion where Solomon's Temple stood. But for Christians the location of the Second Coming was for grabs – hence the many claims of St. Michael's appearance on mounts all over Europe in medieval times.

  Flashback (2) 1665: the mystery of the deviated axis (2)

  It seems obvious that complex interconnecting solar symbolism was at work in the choice of the angle of 26° north-of-west for the final axis of the medieval Cathedral of Notre Dame and thus in its linkage to the Feasts of Saint-Michel de printemps (8 May) and the Transfiguration (6 August). But let's not forget that this same axial alignment of 26° north-of-west was also much later adopted by Le Nôtre for the Tuilleries Garden and the Champs-Élysées (along what was to become the ‘historical’ axis of Paris). So it is interesting that in Le Nôtre's epoch – the epoch of the Sun King Louis XIV – the date of 6 August which commemorates the Transfiguration could boast not one but two significant sky events linked to the angle of 26°.

  The first event, we already know, was sunset at 26° north-of-west, in line with the axis of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Historical Axis of Paris. The second event was the so-called cosmic rising of Sirius (i.e. the rising of the star at the same time as the sun).20 This also occurred on 6 August, but, impressively, in the exact opposite direction – i.e. at 26° south-of-east, in direct line with the reverse view along the axis – and, of course, not at sunset but at sunrise.

  Another matter also beckoned for attention. With the benefit of hindsight, we knew that along the Historical Axis of Paris would one day be raised a huge solar talisman: an obelisk from ancient Egypt. The reader will recall from Chapter One that this obelisk came from Luxor, the ‘Heliopolis of the South’ and a ‘City of the Sun’ par excellence of the ancient world. One of a pair that had stood outside the Luxor temple (the other still remains there in situ), the ‘Paris’ obelisk belonged to Pharaoh Ramses II, ancient Egypt's most powerful sun-king whose very name means ‘son of the Sun’.21 This obelisk thus creates an obvious symbolic link across the ages between two powerful solar kings – i.e. Ramses II and Louis XIV.

  Furthermore, as we've seen in Chapter Ten, Luxor was an integral part of the much larger sun temple complex of Amun-Ra at Karnak. And here we find something very interesting indeed – for it turns out that just like the Historical Axis of Paris, the axis of the Temple of Karnak was set out by its architects along an alignment 26° south-of-east in one direction and 26° north-of-west in the other …

  Flashback (2) 1665: the mystery of the deviated axis (3)

  No adjective in the English language can adequately describe the great sun temple complex of Amun-Ra at Karnak. But ‘grandiose’, ‘breathtaking’ and ‘awe-inspiring’ all apply. Known in ancient times as Ipet-isut, the ‘most splendid of places’, the central axis of this outstanding temple is over half a kilometer long, targeting the Theban hills and the Valley of the Kings in the west across the Nile where Egypt's mighty sun-kings were buried. The approach to the temple is also from the west along an impressive monumental avenue flanked by ram-headed sphinxes. As you pass the so-called First Pylon – massive inclined walls that serve to frame the gateway – and into a spacious open court, there looms ahead of you a huge statue of Ramses II. You then enter the Great Hypostyle Hall with its 134 massive rounded columns and cross beams that once supported a roof 25 meters above the floor. A series of other pylons finally takes you to the inner sanctuary of the sun-god Amun-Ra. When the distinguished British astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer visited Karnak in 1891 in order to measure the alignment of its axis, he was bedazzled by what he saw: This Temple of Amun-Ra is beyond all question the most majestic ruin in the world. There is a stone avenue in the centre, giving view towards the northwest, and this axis is something like 500 yards in length. The whole object of the builder of the great Temple of Karnak – one of the most soulstirring temples which have ever been conceived or built by man – was to preserve that axis absolutely open; and all the wonderful halls of columns and the like, as seen on one side or other of the axis, are merely details; the point being that the axis should be absolutely open, straight and true. The axis was directed towards the west hills on the west side of the Nile, in which are the tombs of the kings … There were really two temples [dedicated to the sun-god in his forms as Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhti] in the same line back to back, the chief one facing sunset at the summer solstice, the other probably the sunrise at the winter solstice … it is easy to recognise that these arrangements bear out the idea of an astronomical use of the temple …22

  Lockyer, who described this temple as a giant ‘horizontal telescope’ permanently aimed at the western horizon, calculated that its axis was aligned about 26° north-of-west, t
he place of setting sun at the summer solstice at the latitude of Luxor.23 But, as he points out, the axis not only points towards the summer solstice sunset at its western end, but also towards the winter solstice sunrise at its eastern end. For it is an astronomical peculiarity that if an axis is aligned to the summer solstice sunset (looking westwards) this same axis will by necessity also be aligned in the opposite direction towards the winter solstice sunrise (looking eastwards).

  So had the ancient builders wanted to aim the temple's axis at the summer solstice sunset or, the other way, at the winter solstice sunrise? The answer, as odd as it may first seem, is probably at both.

  In ancient Egyptian texts we are told of a very important feast called Mesora, literally the ‘birth of Ra’ (the Sun). This feast took place on the New Year's Day of the civil (solar) calendar, the 1st day of the month known as Thoth. When the civil calendar was introduced in circa 2800 BC, the ‘birth of Ra’ festival was not far adrift from the summer solstice. But by the time the temple complex of Karnak-Luxor was begun in c. 2000 BC, the birth of Ra had ‘moved’ six months ahead to the winter solstice. This was because the Egyptian civil calendar was based around a ‘idealised’ year of 365 days that did not take into account the extra ¼ day in the true solar year, causing it to drift away from its original starting point at the summer solstice at the rate one day every four years. It can thus be seen that the great solar temple complex of Karnak-Luxor, which was begun in c. 2000 BC, was not merely dedicated to the Ra (the Sun) in general but, more specifically, to the ‘birth of Ra’ which fell on the 1st of Thoth. As provocative and controversial at it may be, this question must nonetheless be asked: Could André Le Nôtre, aided perhaps by the astronomers from the Académie des Sciences – who had been housed in the Louvre since 1663 – have consciously set out to create the same solar alignment for the Sun King of France as that of his ancient Egyptian counterparts?

  Flashback (2) 1665: the mystery of the deviated axis (4)

  There is a further curious astronomical fact to add to this already very intriguing collection of ‘coincidences’. We have seen in Chapter Ten how a powerful celestial marker – the heliacal (dawn) rising of Sirius (represented by the goddess Isis in Egyptian and Hermetic mythology) was used by the ancient Egyptians to symbolise and sanctify the birth of their solar pharaoh-kings. The American astronomer Ronald Wells, a recognised authority on ancient Egyptian astronomical lore, has this to add: The goddess Isis, a daughter of Ra (the sun-god), was also identified with Sirius. The relationship came about astronomically not only because Sirius is the brightest body of the night (apart from the moon) like the sun is the brightest body of the day, but more particularly because the place of its heliacal rising on the horizon is very close to the same point where Ra rises on the morning of his winter solstice birth. Its yearly appearance at nearly the same spot coupled with the fact that the river began to rise about the same time made the combined event sacrosanct.24 [Emphases added]

  The angle that Sirius makes with due east at rising is not the same when seen from different places on the planet. The further north one travels, the larger will be the angle. For example, from Paris, which stands very close to latitude 49° north, the angle today is 27.5°, whereas from Cairo (at latitude of 30° north) it is only 20°. A second factor also affects the angle at rising over very long periods of time. This is the phenomenon of precession – a very slow ‘wobble’ of the Earth's axis with a cycle of about 26,000 years. Calculations taking both these factors into account show that in 1637, the year Louis XIV was born, Sirius rose at 26° south-of-east, and thus in direct alignment with Le Nôtre's axis!

  We know that since time immemorial the heliacal rising of Sirius, the star of Isis, was the cosmic sign that sanctified the supernatural ‘birth’ of the sun-kings of Egypt. We've seen how the cult of Isis was brought to Paris by the Romans. Indeed it may well be relevant that the Cathedral of Notre Dame itself stands over a very ancient sacred site which, according to some historians, was a shrine dedicated in Roman-times to Isis-Ceres.25 We've also seen in Chapter Twelve how Louis XIV was supposedly conceived in Anne of Austria's private apartments at the Louvre on a stormy December night in 1637 – the so-called Capetian miracle. Putting all this together, how likely is it to be a coincidence that when the Le Nôtre's ‘Sirius’ axis of 26° is extended eastwards into the Louvre it passes right through the apartments of Anne of Austria where the ‘Capetian miracle’ took place in 1637? And is it also a coincidence that three centuries later, in 1989, an equestrian statue sculptured by Bernini for the Sun King Louis XIV depicting him as Alexander the Great (the quintessential classical solar king of antiquity), was brought from its former home at Versailles and carefully positioned in the open court of the Louvre in the direct path of this axis? …

  The reader will recall that the birth of Louis XIV on 5 September 1638 had been prophesied more than a year earlier by the Hermetic philosopher Tommaso Campanella in 1637. Campanella had also predicted that the future king would transform Paris into the ‘Egyptian’ City of the Sun. Intriguingly, Jean Phaure reports that when André Le Nôtre extended the 26° angle of the axis of the Tuilleries Garden further to the west to form the Champs-Élysées in 1665 – 67 he seems to have anticipated in his overall scheme the inclusion at a later date of certain other elements: Le Nôtre ébauche en plan une croix, prévoit une étoile et projette soit un obélisque, soit une porte solaire analogue au portes Saint-Martin et Saint-Denis élevées sous Louis XIV. (‘Le Nôtre placed in his plan a cross, foresees a star and projects either an obelisk or a solar gate. Similar to those of St. Martin and St. Denis built at the time of Louis XIV.’)26

  This is most interesting, not least because it was not until more than a century later, that two prominent monuments, one representing a ‘star’ and the other the obelisk of Ramses II brought from Luxor, would, in fact, be raised right on the axis of the Champs-Élysées as set out by André Le Nôtre.

  Cagliostro and the affair of the queen's necklace

  In Chapter Eighteen we'll pursue these matters further. But first we'll finish the strange story of the self-styled ‘Count’ of Cagliostro and see how his dramatic rise to fame and fortune in Paris after his arrival there in 1785 would be rudely stunted by his own mentor, the Cardinal de Rohan. For the latter was about to make one of the greatest blunders in history – a small folly that would set in motion untold consequences for France and the world …

  It all had to do with an obsession that the Cardinal de Rohan had concerning the queen, Marie-Antoinette. The latter had rebuked him at court, and the cardinal was desperate to make amends in whatever way he could. In the summer of 1785 a certain Countess de la Motte, who claimed to be an intimate friend and close confident of the queen, approached the cardinal and offered to help him in this delicate matter.27

  The countess suggested that the cardinal should purchase on behalf of the queen an expensive diamond necklace, owned by the jewelers Boehmer & Bassenge. The queen dearly wanted this necklace, explained the countess. However, on account of the near bankruptcy of the country and the hostile attitude of the Parisian public towards the queen's extravagance, King Louis XVI had refused to buy it for her.

  The jewelers wanted a staggering price – 1,600,000 livres, enough to have fed all the hungry of Paris for several months – but the foolish cardinal refused to be deterred. He was shown a very convincing – but forged – letter allegedly written by the queen, and the countess even arranged a nocturnal meeting in the Gardens of Versailles between the cardinal and an imposter disguised as the queen. The ‘queen’ confirmed to the cardinal that she could pay for the necklace out of her own pocket money if only the cardinal could pay the first deposit. So the over-excited cardinal rushed to the jewelers and bought the necklace on credit on behalf of the queen. He then gave it to the Countess de la Motte who assured him that it would be handed immediately to Marie-Antoinette.

  The countess, of course, did nothing of the sort, but vanished with the necklac
e. When the jewelers presented the queen with the invoice for the next installment of the huge sum of money they thought she owed them an enormous scandal ensued. The queen, furious at how she had been so vilely implicated in this sordid affair, urged the king to press charges of fraud against the cardinal. The king reluctantly agreed.

  It was a grave mistake, for it was obvious to all that the naïve cardinal had been the victim of a very clever embezzler. Knowing how unpopular the queen already was among the people, he made emotional appeals in court and managed to cause a huge political fuss. Matters got worse when the king tried to put pressure on the judges to condemn the cardinal. The net effect was to elevate the Cardinal de Rohan into a symbol of the oppression, despotism and financial profligacy of the monarchy. According to Masonic author, Jean-André Faucher, there was a widespread conspiracy behind all this involving many prominent Freemasons who were determined to have the cardinal, also a Freemason, released.28 Among them was the Duke of Montmorency-Luxembourg together with other notables such as the Marquis de Lafayette and Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, better known as the Count of Mirabeau.29 As a result the most the king was able to extract from an unsympathetic court was an order suspending the cardinal from office and exiling him to an abbey in the Auvergne.

  Inevitably, Cagliostro, Rohan's colourful protégée, was dragged into the scandal and made its scapegoat. The king had him arrested, hastily tried and sentenced for fraud, and thrown into the Bastille in August 1785. There Cagliostro was to remain for nearly a year. Finally, in early June 1786, after much pressure from the Parisian public and behind-the-scenes manipulation by his Masonic friends, he was freed. It is reported that when Cagliostro walked out of the Bastille there was a huge Parisian crowd cheering him as a national hero.