9 19 9 8 + = 45 4+5 = 9 6 I S A I A H 9 19 1 9 1 8 + = 47 4+7 = 11 1+1 = 2 1+9 10 1+0 1 9 1 9 1 8 + = 28 2+8 = 10 1+0 = 1 9 1 1 9 1 8 + = 29 2+9 = 11 1+1 = 2 TWO 2 6 I S A I A H 9 19 1 9 1 8 + = 47 4+7 = 11 1+1 = 2 9 1 1 9 1 8 + = 29 2+9 = 11 1+1 = 2 TWO 2 And time passed so quickly it seemed to all intents and purposes as if time was, as it were, one elongated moment of forever. Fingerprints Of The Gods Graham Hancock Galilei Galileo 1564-1642 7 + 7 Page 286 Quote " What sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of men." Unless an integral part of the quoted work All arithmetical subterfuge, Comment, emphasis, insertions and insinuations, are the work of Zed AlizZed, as recorded by the far yonder scribe. The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann. 1875 - 1955 Quote "I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh." HOLY BIBLE Scofield References Page 1342 Chapter 13 A.D. 96 Verse 18  Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the num-ber of the beast: for it is the num-ber of a man; and his number is Six hundred three score and six  CITY OF REVELATION John Michell 1972 Page 137 Chapter Thirteen "666 has been the subject of more comment and speculation than any other cabalistic number, principally on account of the last verse in revelation 13: Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the num-ber of a man;and his number is six hundred threescore and six.' In the Greek text the number is spelt in letters, " " or 600, 60, 6, . ." HOLY BIBLE Scofield References Page 401 Kings Chapter 10 B.C. 992. Verse14 "Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents" Herein for good measure Alizzed introduceD a multiple retake. THE LURE AND ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY C. J. S. Thompson 1990 Page 26 " There is further evidence given in the Bible of the richness of the country in the precious metal, for it is recorded that the Queen of Sheba brought much gold and precious stones and / Page 27 / gave to King Solomon 120 talents, a sum equivalent to £240,000. The navy of Hiram also brought gold from Ophir, and the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents," "Page 26 Note È 1 Kings x, 10, 14." FLYING TO 3000 B.C. Pierre Jeannerat 1957 Page 124 " Enters the Queen of Sheba. "And she gave the king an hun-dred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones. . . .Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and three score and six talents of gold; " HOLY BIBLE Scofield References Page 380 Chapter 21 B.C. 1021 Verse 20 "And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant." FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock.1995 Page 189 "Pyramid of the Sun Teotihuacan "Having climbed more than 200 feet up a series of flights of stone stairs I reached the summit and looked towards the Zenith. It was midday 19 May, and the sun was directly overhead, as it would again on 25 / Page 190 July. On these two dates, and not by accident, the west face of the pyramid was oriented precisely to the position of the setting sun 6 A more curious but equally deliberate effect could be observed on the equinoxes. 20 March and 22 September. Then the passage of the sun's rays from south to north resulted at noon in the progressive obliteration of a perfectly straight shadow that ran along one of the lower stages of the western facade. The whole process, from complete shadow to complete illumination, took exactly 66.6 seconds. It had done so without fail, year - in year - out, ever since the pyramid had been built and would continue to do so until the giant edifice crumbled into dust." "...The whole process, from complete shadow to complete illumination, took exactly 66.6 seconds." CITY OF REVELATION John Michell 1972 Page 36 "Speed of earth round sun = 66,600 miles per hour" Distance between earth and moon = 6 x 60 x 660 miles = 237600 " LOST CITIES OF ANCIENT LEMURIA AND THE PACIFIC David Hatcher Childress 1988 Page 193 "What was most interesting to von Daniken, and to me, were the giant footprints of Tarawa. A book has even been written about them, entitled The Footprints of Tarawa (it is extracted from the Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol 58, No 4, December 1949, Wellington, New Zealand, and written by I.G. Turbot). This book mentions a number of places where these footprints can be found in the Kiribatis, but the main spot is the village of Banreaba at a spot called Te Aba-n-Anti, the "Place of the Spirits," or Te Kananrabo, "the Holy place." Here various footprints can clearly be seen in the volcanic stone, some of them so huge as to seem impossible. Most have six toes on each foot. The largest are about three feet long, easily twice as large as the foot of an especially tall person (though even short people can have big feet). The footprints are reported to be very clear, with the toes, heels and outline distinct: naturally rounded and curved like a normal footprint. They are certainly not natural rock formations coincidently formed into footprints. The only other explanation other than that they are the actual footprints of giants is that they were chiseled into the rock by the islanders themselves for some unknown purpose. Reverend Scarborough points out in his letter to von Daniken, "If you have some idea that perhaps the islanders themselves have carefully carved these prints in the rocks . . . then you must ask yourself. Why? For what purpose should the islanders on sixteen islands undertake to manufacture marks in the hard rock? Bearing in mind that they have little or no tools, that would be nonesense. The local verbal customs say that they are footprints of the gods who came from heaven." 85 If we discard the theory of the footprints being carved, we must now examine the possibility of the footprints having been created by actual men (?) walking on still-elastic lava just prior to cooling. These men aparently had six toes and were probably ten to twelve feet tall. When did this hypothetical walk take place? According to uni- / Page 194 / formitarian geology, millions of years ago. Such a fantastic date is usually applied to other anomalistic footprints such as those of men and dinosaurs walking together in river beds in Texas and other places. After all, since it is a "scientific fact" that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, then the tracks of a man with those of a dinosaur must be at least 65 million years old. "In light of cataclysmic geology, the footprints of a man with those of a dinosaur could be measured in thousands of years, rather than millions. In those terms, the giant footprints of Kiribati might be as young as 24,000 years old..." "...It is interesting to note that "lava walking" is still practised on Hawaii to this day. As to giants with six toes who are twelve feet tall, Frank Edwards reports in his book, Stranger Than Science,.." that in 1833 soldiers digging a pit for apowder magazine at Lompock Rancho, California (near San Luis Obispo)... ""...found the skeleton of a man about twelve feet tall..." Edwards goes on to sayin his book:..." Near Crittenden, Arizona, in 1891, workmen excavating for a commercial building came upon a huge stone sarcophagus eight feet below the surface.The contractors called in expert help, and the sarcophagus was opened to reveal a granite mummy case which had once held the body of a human being more than twelve feet tall-a human with six toes, according to the carving of the case. But the body has been buried so many thousands of yers that it has long since turned to dust. " 86 So we suddenly see a correlation with six-toed giants on the west coast of North America with six toed giants leaving footprints in ancient stata in the Kiribati Islands." Good God writ the far yonder scribe ALL SCRIPTURE IS INSPIRED Of GOD AND BENEFICIAL Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society Of Pennsylvania Page 11 " 24 In what order did the sixty-six Bible books come to us? What part of the endless stream of time do they cover? " " 29 In the following pages the sixty-six books of the Sacred Scriptures are examined in turn. " Alizzed strikes a double wammy HOLY BIBLE Scofield References Page v "...The Bible is a book of books. Sixty-six books make up the one Book. Considered with reference to the unity of the one book the separate books may be regarded as chapters. But that is but one side of the truth, for each of the sixty-six books is complete in itself, and has its own theme and analysis." CASSELL'S English dictionary 1974 Edition. Page 213 "cluster (klus ter) [A.-S. clyster (prob. From the same root as CLOT)], n A number of things of the same kind growing or joined together; a bunch; a number of persons or things gathered into or situated in a close body; a group, a crowd. v.i.To come or to grow into clusters. v.t. To bring or cause to come into a cluster or clusters..." THE FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock 1995 Page 273 "...The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are 360, 72, 30 and 12." "...These he joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted [emphasis added]." "...Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360 - day year consists of "12 months of 30 days each". 6 And in general,as Sellers observes , "phrases are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an attention to numbers ". 7 "Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360-day year consists of '12 months of 30 days each'. Thus far we have been provided with three of Seller's precessional: 360, 12 and 30. The fourth number,which occurs later in the text, is by far the most important. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil deity known as Set led a group of conspirators in a plot to kill OSIRIS. The number of these conspirators was 72." JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS Thomas Mann 1875 - 1975 Page 890 8 x 9 x 0 72 "In all there were two-and-seventy conspirators privy to the plot. It was a proper and a pregnant number, for there had been just sev-enty-two when red Set lured Usir into the chest. And these seventy- two in their turn had had good cosmic ground to be no more and no less than that number. For it is just that number of groups of five weeks which make up the three hundred and sixty days of the year, not counting the odd days; and there are just seventy-two days in the dry fifth of the year, when the gauge shows that the Nourisher has reached his lowest ebb, and the god sinks into his grave. So where there is conspiracy anywhere in the world it is requisite and custom-ary for the number of conspirators to be seventy-two. And if the plot fail, the failure shows that if this number had not been adhered to it would have failed even worse. THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYTH AND LEGEND Thomas Bulfinch 1796 - 1867 THE AGE OF FABLE page 360 Myth of Osiris and Isis "Osiris and Isis were at one time induced to descend to the earth to bestow gifts and blessings on its inhabitants. Isis showed them first the use of wheat and barley) and Osiris made the instruments of agri-culture and taught men the use of them, as well as how to harness the ox to the plough. He then gave men laws) the institution of marriage, a civil organiza-tion, and taught them how to worship the gods. After he had thus made the valley of the Nile a happy country) he assembled a host with which he went to bestow his blessings upon the rest of the world. He conquered the nations everywhere) but not with weapons) only with music and eloquence. His brother Typhon saw this) and filled with envy and malice sought during his absence to usurp his throne. But Isis) who held the reins of government) frustrated his plans. Still more embittered) he now resolved to kill his brother. This he did in the following manner: Having organized a conspiracy of seventy - two members) he went with them to the feast which was celebrated in honour of the king's return. He then caused a box or chest to be brought in) which had been made to fit exactly the size of Osiris) and declared.that he would give that chest of precious wood to whoso-ever could get into it. The rest tried in vain) but no sooner was Osiris in it than Typhon and his com-panions closed the lid and flung the chest into the Nile. When Isis heard of the cruel murder she wept and mourned, and then with her hair shorn) clothed in black and beating her breast, she sought diligently for the body of her husband. In this search she was materially assisted by Anubis) the son of Osiris and Nephthys. They sought in vain for some time; for / Page 361 / when the chest, carried by the waves to the shores of Byblos, had become entangled in the reeds that grew at the edge of the water, the divine power that dwelt in the body of Osiris imparted such strength to the shrub that it grew into a mighty tree, enclosing in its trunk the coffin of the god. This tree with its sacred deposit was shortly after felled, and erected as a column in the palace of the king of Phoenicia. But at length, by the aid of Anubis and the sacred birds, Isis ascer-tained these facts, and then went to the royal city. There she offered herself at the palace as a servant, and, being admitted, threw off her disguise and appeared as the goddess, surrounded with thunder and lightning. Striking the column with her wand, she caused it to split open and give up the sacred coffin. This she seized and returned with it, and concealed it .in the depth of a forest, but Typhon discovered it, and cutting the body into fourteen pieces scattered them hither and thither. After a tedious search Isis found thirteen pieces, the fishes of the Nile having eaten the other. This she replaced by an imitation of sycamore wood, and buried the body at Philoe, which became ever after the great burying-place of the nation, and the spot to which pilgrimages were made from all parts of the country. A temple of surpassing magnificence was also erected there in honour of the god, and at every place where one of his limbs had been found minor temples and tombs were built to commemorate the event. Osiris became after that the tutelar deity of the Egyptians. His soul was supposed always to inhabit the body of the bull Apis, and at his death to transfer itself to his successor 19 15 + = 34 3+4 = 7 8 S Y C A M O R E 19 25 3 1 13 15 18 5 + = 99 9+9 = 18 1+8 = 9 1+9 2+5 1+3 1+5 1+8 10 7 4 6 9 1+0 1 3 1 5 + = 9 1 7 3 1 4 6 9 5 + = 36 3+6 = 9 NINE 9 8 S Y C A M O R E 19 25 3 1 13 15 18 5 + = 99 9+9 = 18 1+8 = 9 1 7 3 1 4 6 9 5 + = 36 3+6 = 9 NINE 9 5 P E N I S 16 5 14 9 19 + = 63 6+3 = 9 7 5 5 9 1 + = 27 2+7 = 9 NINE 9 14 9 19 + = 42 4+2 = 6 5 P E N I S 16 5 14 9 19 + = 63 6+3 = 9 1+6 1+4 1+9 7 5 10 1+0 1 5 9 + = 14 1+4 = 5 7 5 5 9 1 + = 27 2+7 = 9 NINE 9 THE GOLDEN BOUGH J.G.Frazer 1922 Page 362 Chapter XXXVIII THE MYTH OF OSIRIS "IN ancient Egypt the god whose death and resurrection were annually celebrated with alternate sorrow and joy was Osiris, the most popular of all Egyptian deities; and there are good grounds for classing him in one of his aspects with Adonis and Attis as a personification of the great yearly vicissitudes of nature, especially of the corn. But the immense vogue which he enjoyed for many ages induced his devoted worshippers to heap upon him the attributes and powers of many other gods; so that it is not always easy to strip him, so to say, of his borrowed plumes and to restore them to their proper owners. The story of Osiris is told in a connected form only by Plutarch, whose narrative has been confirmed and to some extent amplified in modern times by the evidence of the monuments. Osiris was the offspring of an intrigue between the earth-god Seb (Keb or Geb, as the name is sometimes transliterated) and the sky- goddess Nut. The Greeks identified his parents with their own deities Cronus and Rhea. When the sun-god Ra perceived that his wife Nut had been unfaithful to him, he declared with a curse that she should be delivered of the child in no month and no year. But the goddess had another lover, the god Thoth or Hermes, as the Greeks called him, and he playing at draughts with the moon won from her a seventy-second part of every day, and having compounded five whole days out of these parts he added them to the Egyptian year / Page 363 / of three hundred and sixty days. This was the mythical origin of the five supplementary days which the Egyptians annually inserted at the end of every year in order to establish a harmony between lunar and solar time. On these five days, regarded as outside the year of twelve months, the curse of the sun-god did not rest, and accordingly Osiris was born on the first of them. At his nativity a voice rang out proclaiming that the Lord of All had come into the world. Some say that a certain Pamyles heard a voice from the temple at Thebes bidding him announce with a shout that a great king, the beneficent Osiris, was born. But Osiris was not the only child of his mother. On the second of the supplementary days she gave birth to the elder Horus, on the third to the god Set, whom the Greeks called Typhon, on the fourth to the goddess Isis, and on the fifth -to the goddess Nephthys. Afterwards Set married his sister Nephthys, and Osiris married his sister Isis. Reigning as a king on earth, Osiris reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws, and taught them to worship the gods. Before his time the Egyptians had been cannibals. But Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, discovered wheat and barley growing wild, and Osiris introduced the cultivation of these grains amongst his people, who forthwith abandoned cannibalism and took kindly to a corn diet. Moreover, Osiris is said to have been the first to gather fruit from trees, to train the vine to poles, and to tread the grapes. Eager to communicate these beneficent discoveries to all mankind, he committed the whole government of Egypt to his wife Isis, and travelled over the world, diffusing the blessings of civilisation and agriculture wherever he went. In countries where a harsh climate or niggardly soil forbade the cultivation of the vine, he taught the inhabitants to console themselves for the want of wine by brewing beer from barley. Loaded with the wealth that had been showered upon him by grateful nations, he returned to Egypt, and on account of the benefits he had conferred on mankind he was unanimously hailed and worshipped as a deity. But his brother Set (whom the Greeks called Typhon) with seventy-two others plotted against him. Having taken the measure of his good brother's body by stealth, the bad brother Typhon fashioned and highly decorated a coffer of the same size, and once when they were all drinking and making merry he brought in the coffer and jestingly promised to give it to the one whom it should fit exactly. Well, they all tried one after the other, but it fitted none of them. Last of all Osiris stepped into it-and lay down. On that the conspirators ran and slammed the lid down on him, nailed it fast, soldered it with molten lead, and flung the coffer into the Nile. This happened on the seventeenth day of the month Athyr, when the sun is in the sign of the Scorpion, and in the eight- and-twentieth year of the reign or the life of Osiris. When Isis heard of it she sheared off a lock of her hair, put on mourning attire, and wandered disconsolately up and down, seeking the body By the advice of the god of wisdom she took refuge in the papyrus / Page 364 / swamps of the Delta. Seven scorpions accompanied her itl her flight. One evening when she was weary she came to the house of a woman, who, alarmed at the sight of the scorpions, shut the door in her face. Then one of the scorpions crept under the door and stung the child of the woman that he died. But when Isis heard the mother's lamentation, her heart was touched, and she laid her hands on the child and uttered her powerful spells; so the poison was driven out of the child and he lived. Afterwards Isis herself gave birth to a son in the swamps. She had conceived him while she fluttered in the form of a hawk over the corpse of her dead husband. The infant was the younger Horus, who in his youth bore the name of Harpocrates, that is, the child Horus. Him Buto, the goddess of the north, hid from the wrath of his wicked uncle Set. Yet she could not guard him from all mishap; for one day when Isis came to her little son's hiding-place she found him stretched lifeless and rigid on the ground: a scorpion had stung him. Then Isis prayed to the sun-god Ra for help. The god hearkened to her and staid his bark in the sky, and sent down Thoth to teach her the spell by which she might restore her son to life. She uttered the words of power, and straightway the poison flowed from the body of Horus, air passed into him, and he lived. Then Thoth ascended up into the sky and took his place once more in the bark of the sun, and the bright pomp passed onward jubilant. Meantime the coffer containing the body of Osiris had floated down the river and away out to sea, till at last it drifted ashore at Byblus, on the coast of Syria. Here a fine erica-tree shot up suddenly and enclosed the chest in its trunk. The king of the country, admiring the growth of the tree, had it cut down and made into a pillar of his house; but he did not know that the coffer with the dead Osiris was in it. Word of this came to Isis and she journeyed to Byblus, and sat down by the well, in humble guise, her face wet with tears. To none would she speak till the king's handmaidens came, and them she greeted kindly, and braided their hair, and breathed on them from her own divine body a wondrous perfume. But when the queen beheld the braids of her handmaidens' hair and smelt the sweet smell that emanated from them, she sent for the stranger woman and took her into her house and made her the nurse of her child. But Isis gave the babe her finger instead of her breast to suck, and at night she began to burn all that was mortal of him away, while she herself in the likeness of a swallow fluttered round the pillar that contained her dead brother, twittering mournfully. But the queen spied what she was doing and shrieked out when she saw her child in flames, and thereby she hindered him from becoming immortal. Then the goddess revealed herself and begged for the pillar of the roof, and they gave it her, and she cut the coffer out of it, and fell upon it and embraced it and lamented so loud that the younger of the king's children died of fright on the spot. But the trunk of the tree she wrapped in fine linen, and poured ointment on it, and gave it to the king and queen, and the wood stands in a. temple of Isis and is / Page 365 / worshipped by the people of Byblus to this day. And Isis put the coffer in a boat and took the eldest of the king's children \vith her and sailed away. As soon as they were alone, she opened the chest, and laying her face on the face of her brother she kissed him and wept. But the child came behind her softly and saw what she was about, and she turned and looked at him in anger, and the child could not bear her look and died; but some say that it was not so, but that he fell into the sea and was drowned. It is he whom the Egyptians sing of at their banquets under the name of Maneros. But Isis put the coffer by and went to see her son Horus at the city of Buto, and Typhon found the coffer as he was hunting a boar one night by the light of a full moon. And he knew the body, and rent it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad. But Isis sailed up and down the marshes in a shallop made of papyrus, looking for the pieces; and that is why when people sail in shallops made of papyrus, the crocodiles do not hurt them, for they fear or respect the goddess. And that is the reason, too, why there are many graves of Osiris in Egypt, for she buried each limb as she found it. But others will have it that she buried an image of him in every city, pretending it was his body, in order that Osiris might be worshipped in many places, and that if Typhon searched for the real grave he might not be able to find it. However, the genital member of Osiris had been eaten by the fishes, .so Isis made an image of it instead, and the image is used by the Egyptians at their festivals to this day. .. Isis," writes the historian Diodorus Siculus, .. .recovered all the parts of the body except the genitals; and because she wished that her husband's grave should be unknown and honoured by all who dwell in the land of Egypt, she resorted to the following device. She moulded human images out of wax and spices, corresponding to the stature of Osiris, round each one of the parts of his body. Then she called in the priests according to their families and took an oath of them all that they would reveal to no man the trust she was about to repose in them. So to each of them privately she said that to them alone she entrusted the burial of the body, and reminding them of the benefits they had received she exhorted them to bury the body in their own land and to honour Osiris as a god. She also besought them to dedicate one of the animals of their country, whichever they chose, and to honour it in life as they had formerly honoured Osiris, and when it died to grant it obsequies like his. And because she \vould encourage the priests in their own interest to besto\v the aforesaid honours, she gave them a third part of the land to be used by them in the service and worship of the gods. Accordingly it is said that the priests, mindful of the benefits of Osiris, desirous of gratifying the queen, and moved by the prospect of gain, carried out all the injunctions of Isis. Wherefore to this day each of the priests imagines that Osiris is buried in his country, and they honour the beasts that were consecrated in the beginning, and when the animals die the priests renew at their burial the mourning for Osiris. But the sacred bulls, the one called Apis and the other / Page 366 / Mnevis, were dedicated to Osiris, and it. was ordained that they should be worshipped as gods in common by all the Egyptians, since these animals above all others had helped the discoverers of corn in sowing the seed and procuring the universal benefits of agriculture." Such is the myth or legend of Osiris, as told by Greek writers and eked out by more or less fragmentary notices or allusions in native Egyptian literature. A long inscription in the temple at Denderah has preserved a list of the god's graves, and other texts mention the parts of his body which were treasured as holy relics in each of the sanctuaries. Thus his heart was at Athribis, his backbone at Busiris, his neck at Letopolis, and his head at Memphis. As often happens in such cases, some of his divine limbs were miraculously multiplied. His head, for example, was at Abydos as. well as at Memphis, and his legs, which were remarkably numerous, would have sufficed for several ordinary mortals. In this respect, however, Osiris was nothing to St.. Denys, of whom no less than seven heads, all equally genuine, are extant. According to native Egyptian accounts, which supplement that of Plutarch, when Isis had found the corpse of her husband Osiris, she and her sister Nephthys sat down beside it and uttered a lament which in after ages became the type of all Egyptian lamentations for the dead "Come to thy house," they wailed, " Come to thy house. O god On ! come to thy house, thou who hast no foes. O fair youth, come to thy house, that thou mayest see me. I am thy sister, whom thou lovest; thou shalt not part from me. O fair boy, come to thy house. . . . I see thee not, yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes desire thee. Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee, Unnefer, thou blessed one ! Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife, thou whose heart stands still. Come to thy housewife. I am thy sister by the same mother, thou shalt not be far from me. Gods and men have turned their faces towards thee and weep for thee together. . . . I call after thee and weep, so that my cry is heard to heaven, but thou hearest not my voice; yet am I thy sister, whom thou didst love on earth; thou didst. love none but me, my brother ! my brother !" This lament for the fair youth cut off in his prime reminds us of the laments for Adonis. The title of Unnefer or " the Good Being" bestowed on him marks the beneficence which tradition universally acribed to Osiris; it was at once his commonest title and one of his names as king. The lamentations of the two sad sisters were not in vain. In pity for her sorrow the sun-god Ra sent down from heaven the jackal- headed god Anubis, who, with the aid of Isis and Nephthys, of Thoth and Horus, pieced together the broken body of the murdered god, swathed it in linen bandages, and observed all the other rites which the Egyptians were wont to perform over the bodies of the departed. Then Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings: Osiris revived, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world. There he bore the titles of Lord of the Underworld, Lord of Eternity, Ruler / Page 367 / of the Dead. There, too, in the great Hall of the Two Truths, assisted by forty-two assessors, one from each of the principal districts of Egypt, he presided as judge at the trial of the souls of the departed, who made their solemn confession before him, and, their heart having been weighed in the balance of justice, received the reward of virtue in a life eternal or the appropriate punishment of their sins. In the resurrection of Osiris the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave. They believed that every man would live eternally in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris. Hence the ceremonies observed by the Egyptians over the human dead were an exact copy of those which Anubis, Horus, and the rest had performed over the dead god."At every burial there was enacted a representation of the divine mystery which had been per-formed of old over Osiris, when his son, his sisters, his friends were gathered round his mangled remains and succeeded by their spells and manipulations in converting his broken body into the first mummy, which they afterwards reanimated and furnished with the means of entering on a new individual life beyond the grave. The mummy of the deceased was Osiris; the professional female mourners were his two sisters Isis and Nephthys; Anubis, Horus, all the gods of the Osirian legend gathered about the corpse." In this way every dead Egyptian was identified with Osiris and bore his name. . From the Middle Kingdom onwards it was the regular practice to address the deceased as "Osiris So-and-So," as if he were the god himself, and to add the standing epithet"true of speech," because true speech was characteristic of Osiris. The thousands of inscribed and pictured tombs that have been opened in the valley of the Nile prove that the mystery of the resurrection was performed for the benefit of every dead Egyptian; as Osiris died and rose again from the dead, so all men hoped to arise like him from death to life eternal. Thus according to what seems to have been the general native tradition Osiris was a good and beloved king of Egypt, who suffered a violent death but rose from the dead and was henceforth worshipped as a deity. In harmony with this tradition he was regularly repre-sented by sculptors and painters in human and regal form as a dead king, swathed in the wrappings of a mummy, but wearing on his head a kingly crown and grasping in one of his hands, which were left free from the bandages, a kingly sceptre. Two cities above all others were associated with his myth or memory. One of them was Busiris in Lower Egypt, which claimed to possess his backbone; the other was Abydos in Upper Egypt, which gloried in the possession of his head. Encircled by the nimbus of the dead yet living god, Abydos, originally an obscure place, became from the end of the Old Kingdom the holiest spot in Egypt; his tomb there would seem to have been to the Egyptians what the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is to Christians. It was the wish of every pious man that his dead body should rest in hallowed earth near the grave of the glorified Osiris Page 368 Few indeed were rich enough to enjoy this inestimable privilege; for, apart from the cost of a tomb in the sacred city, the mere transport of mummies from great distances was both difficult and expensive. Yet so eager were many to absorb in death the blessed influence which radiated from the holy sepulchre that they caused their surviving friends to convey their mortal remains to Abydos, there to tarry for a short time, and then to be brought back by river and interred in the tombs which had been made ready for them in their native land. Others had cenotaphs built or memorial tablets erected for themselves near the tomb of their dead and risen Lord, that they might share with him the bliss of a joyful resurrection." Page 367 "Encircled by the nimbus of the dead yet living god," 4 H A L O 8 1 3 6 + = 18 1+8 = 9 NINE 9 4 H A L O 8 1 12 15 + = 36 3+6 = 9 8 1 3 6 + = 18 1+8 = 9 NINE 9 8 15 + = 23 2+3 = 5 4 H A L O 8 1 12 15 + = 36 3+6 = 9 1+2 1+5 3 6 8 1 + = 9 8 1 3 6 + = 18 1+8 = 9 NINE 9 THE GARDEN OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER Longfield Beatty Page207 / 208 "And the next quotation is "relayed" from Budge (op. Cit., p. 521), having come from Papyrus No. 10188 (Brit. Mus.) There have been some omissions in order to reinforce as much as possible the particular aspect of it which is our immediate concern." " from Papyrus No. 10188" 1 + 1 + 8 + 8 = 18 1 + 8 = 9 2 + 7 = 9 and 2 + 8 = 10 " THE LAMENT OF THE SISTERS " ( Isis and Nepthys over the dead Osiris) "Beautiful Youth, come to thy exalted house at once: we see thee not. "Hail, beautiful boy, come to thy house, draw nigh after thy separation from us "Hail Beautiful Youth, Pilot of Time, who groweth except at this hour. "Holy image of his Father, mysterious essence proceeding from Tem. "The Lord! How much more wonderful is he than his Father, the first-born son of the womb of his mother. "Come back to us in thy actual form; we will embrace thee. Depart not from us, thou Beautiful Face, dearly beloved one, the image of Tem, Master of Love. "Come thou in peace, our Lord, we would see thee. "Great Mighty One among the Gods, the road that thou travellest cannot be described. "The Babe, the Child at morn and at eve, except when thou encirclest the heavens and the earth with thy bodily form. "Come, thou Babe, growing young when setting, our Lord, we would see thee. "Come in peace, Great Babe of His Father, thou art established in thy house. "Whilst thou travellest thou art hymned by us, and life springeth up for us out of thy nothingness. O our Lord, come in peace, let us see thee. "Hail Beautiful Boy, come to thy exalted house.; let thy back be to thy house. The Gods are upon their thrones. Hail ! come in peace, King. "Babe! How lovely it is to see thee! Come, come to us, O Great One, glorify our love. "O ye gods who are in Heaven. O ye gods who are in the Tuat. O ye gods who are in the Abyss. O ye gods who are in the service of the Deep. We follow the Lord, the Lord, of Love!" BRAHMA "If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain They know not well the subtle ways I keep and pass and turn again." R.W. Emerson THE TRUE AND INVISIBLE ROSICRUCIAN ORDER Paul Foster Case 1981 Page 108 9th and 10th line up 36 th and 37 th line down 45 lines in page " Concerning the Invisible, Magical Mountain and the Treasure therein Contained." THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Thomas Mann 1875-1955 Page 466 "Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use of it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atonement." ATONEMENTATONEMENT JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS Thomas Mann 1875 - 1955 JOSEPH THE PROVIDER Page 955 "But let your majesty be / Page 956 / ware of laying hands on the people's belief in Usir, King of the lower regions, to which it clings more obstinately than to any other deity, because all are equal before hIm, and each one hopes to go unto him with his name. Bear in mind the prejudice of the many, for what you give to Aton by diminishing Amun, you take away again t offending Usir." "Ah, I assure you, Mama, the people only imagine that they cling so to Usir," cried Amenhotep. "How could it really cling to a belief that the soul which goes up to the judge's seat must pass through seven times seven regions of terror, inhabited by demons who cross-examine it as it passes in some three hundred and sixty several magiic formulas, each harder to remember than the last, yet the poor soul must have them all by heart and be able to repeat each one in th right place, otherwise it does not pass and will be devoured befor ever it reaches the judgment seat. And if it does get there, it ha every prospect of being devoured if its heart weighs too light in the scale; for then it is delivered over to the monstrous dog of Amente I ask you, where is there anything in all that to cling to? - it is agains all the love and goodness of my Father above. Before Usir of the lower regions all are equal - yes, equal in terror. Whereas before my Father all shall be equal in joy. With Amun and Aton it is the same Amun too, with the help of Re, will be universal and will unite the world in worship of him. There they are of one mind. But Amun would make the world one in the rigid service of fear, a false and sinister unity, which my Father would not, for he would unite his children in joy and tenderness." "Meni," said the mother again, in her low voice, "it would be better for you to spare yourself and not speak so much of joy and tenderness. You know from experience that the words are dangerous to you and put you beside yourself." "I am speaking, Mama, of belief and unbelief," answered Amen-hotep; once more he worked himself out of the cushions and stood on his feet. "Of these I speak, and my own good mind tells me that disbelief is almost more important than belief. In belief there must be a sizable element of disbelief; for how can a man believe what is true so long as he also believes what is false? If I want to teach the people what is true, I must first take from them certaIn beliefs to which they cling. perhaps that. is cruel, but it is the. cruelty of love and my Father In the sky will forgive me. Yes, which is more glorIous, belief or disbelief, and which should come before the other? Believing is a great rapture for the soul. But not believing is almost more joyous than belief - I have found it so, My Majesty has experienced it, and I do not believe in the realms of fear and the demons and Usiri with his frightfully named ones and the devourer down there below." JOSEPH THE PROVIDER Page 964 "But / Page 965 /now," he added, "let us speak seriously of serious matters. Your God, who and what is He? You have neglected or avoided giving me a clear understanding. The forefather of your father, you say, discov-ered Him? That sounds as though he had found the true and only God. Is it possible that so remote from me in space and time a man divined that the true and only God is the sun's disk, the creator of sight and seen, my eternal Father above?" "No, Pharaoh," Joseph answered smiling. "He did not stop at the sun disk. He was a wanderer, and even the sun was but a way-station on his painful wandering. Restless was he and unsatisfied - call it pride if you will; for thereby you seal your censure with the sign of honour and necessity. For it was the pride of the man, that the hu-man being should serve only the Highest. Therefore his thoughts went out beyond the sun." Amenhotep had flushed. He sat bent forward, his head in the blue wig stretched out on its neck; with the tips of his fingers he squeezed and kneaded his chin. "Mama, pay attention! By all you hold dear, pay strict attention," he breathed, without turning the fixed gaze of his grey eyes away from Joseph. His suspense was so great that it seemed he would tear away the veil which dimmed them. "Go on, you!" said he. "Wait! Stop, 'no, go on! He did not stop? He went out beyond the sun? Speak! Or I will speak myself, though I know not what I should say." "He made things hard for himself, in his unavoidable pride," Jo-seph said. "For this he was anointed. He overcame many temptations to worship and adore, for he longed to do so, but to worship the Highest one alone, for only this seemed right to him. Earth, the mother, tempted 'him; she who preserves life and brings forth fruit. But he saw her neediness, which only heaven can supply, and so he turned his face upwards. Him tempted the turmoil of the clouds, the uproar of the storm, the pelting rain, the blue lightning-flash driving down, the thunder's rattling roar. But he shook his head at their claims, for his soul instructed him they were all of the second rank. They were no better, so his soul spake to him, than he himself- perhaps lesser indeed, although so mighty; and though they were above him it was simply in space, but not in spirit. To pray to them, so he felt, was to pray too near and too low; and better not at all, he said to himself, than too near or low, for that was an abomination." "Good," said Amenhotep, almost soundlessly, and kneaded his chin. "Good! Wait! No, go on! Mama, pay attention!" "Yes, how many great manifestations did not tempt my forefather!" Joseph went on. "The whole host of the stars was among them, the shepherd and his sheep. They were indeed far and high, and very great in their courses. But he saw them scattered before the beams / Page 966 / of the morning star - and she indeed was surpassing lovely, of two- fold nature and rich in tales, yet weak, too weak for that which she heralded; she paled before it and vanished away poor morning star!" "Spare your regrets!" ordered the King. "Here is matter for tri- umph. For tell me what it was she paled before, and who appeared, whom she had heralded?" he asked, making his voice sound as proud and threatening as it could. "Of course, the sun," Joseph replied. "What a temptation for him who so longed to worship! Before its cruelty and its benignity all peoples of the earth bowed down. But my ancestor's caution was un-limited, his reservations endless. Peace and satisfaction, he said, are not the point. The all-important thing is to avoid the great peril to the honour of humanity, that man should bow down before a lower than the highest. 'Mighty art thou,' he said to Shamash-Marduk;'Bel, 'and mighty is thy power of blessing and cursing. But something there is above thee, in me a worm, and it warns me not to take the witness for that which it witnesses. The greater the witness, the greater the fault in me if I let myself be misled to worship it instead of that to which it bears witness. Godlike is the witness, but yet not God. I too am a witness arid a testimony: I and my doing and dreaming, which mount up above the sun towards that to which it more mightily bears witness than even itself, and whose heat is greater than the heat of the sun.' " "Mother," Amenhotep whispered, without turning his eyes from Joseph, "what did I say? No, no, I did not say it, I only knew it, it was said to me. When of late I had my seizure, and revelation was vouchsafed me for the improvement of the teaching - for it is not complete, never have I asserted that it was complete - then I heard my Father's voice and it spoke to me saying: 'I am the heat of the Aton, which is in Him. But millions of suns could I feed from my fires. Callest thou me Aton, then know that the name itself stands in need of improvement. When you call me so, you are not calling me by my last and final name. For my last name is: the Lord of the Aton." Thus Pharaoh heard it, the Father's beloved child, and brought It back with him out of his attack. But he kept silent, and even the silence made him forget. Pharaoh has set truth in his heart, for the Father is the truth. But he is responsible for the triumph of the teaching, that all men may receive It; and he is concerned lest the improvement and purification, until at last it consist only of the pure truth, might mean to make it unteachable. This is a sore concern which no one can understand save one on whom as much responsi- ility rests as on Pharaoh. For others it is easy to say: 'You have not set truth in your heart, but rather the teaching.' Yet the teaching is the sole means of bringing men nearer the truth. It should be im- / Page 967 / proved; but if one improve it to the extent that it becomes unavail-able as a medium of truth - I ask the Father and you: will not only then the reproach be justified that I have shut up the teaching in my heart to the disadvantage of the truth? Pharaoh shows mankind the image of the revered Father, made by his artists: the golden disk from which rays go down upon his creatures, ending in tender hands, which caress all creation. 'Adore!' he commands. 'This is the Aton, my Father, whose blood runs in me, who revealed himself to me, but will be Father to you all, that you may become good and lovely in him.' And he adds: 'Pardon, dear human beings, that I am so strict with your thoughts. Gladly would I spare your simplicity. But it must be: Therefore I say to you: Not the image shall you worship when you worship, not to it sing your hymns when you sing; but rather to him whose image it is, you understand, the true disk of the sun, my Father in the sky, who is the Aton, for the image is not yet he.' That is hard enough; it is a challenge to men; out of a hundred, twelve understand it. But if now the teacher says: 'Still another and further effort must I urge upon you for the sake of truth, however much it pains me for your simplicity. For the image is but the image of the image and witness to a witness. Not the actual round sun up there in the sky are you to think of when you burn incense to his image and sing his praise - not this, but the Lord of Aton, who is the heat in it and who guides its course.' That goes too far, it is too much teaching, and not twelve, not even one understands. Only Pharaoh himself understands, who is outside of all count, and yet he is supposed to teach the many. Your forefather, soothsayer, had an easy task, although he made it hard for himself. He might make it as hard as he liked, striving after truth for his own sake and the sake of his pride, for he was only a wanderer. But I am King, and teacher; I may not think what I cannot teach. Whereas such a one very soon learns not even to think the unteachable. / Page 968 / eternal ages be held in honour. put we are speaking of two different things. My Majesty speaks of the fetters which the teaching puts upon the thoughts of God; yours refers to priestly statecraft, which divides teaching and knowledge. But Pharaoh would not be arro- gant, and there is no greater arrogance than such a division. No, there is no arrogance in the world greater than that of dividing the chil- dren of our Father into initiate and uninitiate and teaching double words: all-knowingly for the masses, knowingly in the inner circle. No, we must speak what we know, and witness what we have seen. Pharaoh wants to do nothing but improve the teaching, even though it be made hard for him by the teaching. And still it has been said to me: 'Call me not Aton, for that is in need of improvement. Call me the Lord of the Aton!' But I, through keeping silent, forgot. See now what the Father does for his beloved son! He sends him a mes- senger and dream-interpreter, who shows him his dreams, dreams from below and dreams from above, dreams important for the realm and for heaven; that he should awake in him what he already knows, and interpret what was already said to him. Yes, how loveth the Father his child the King who came forth out of him, that he sends down a soothsayer to him, to whom from long ages has been handed down the teaching that it profits man to press on towards the last and highest! " "To my knowledge," Tiy coldly remarked, "your soothsayer came up from below, out of a dungeon, and not from above." "Ah, in my opinion that is sheer mischief, that he came from be-low," cried Amenhotep. "And besides, above and below mean not much to the Father, who when he goes down makes the lower the upper, for where he shines, there is the upper world. From which it comes that his messengers interpret dreams from above and below with equal skill. Go on, soothsayer! Did I say stop? If I did, I meant go on! That wanderer out of the East, from whom you spring, did not stop at the sun, but pressed on above it?" "Yes, in spirit," answered Joseph smiling. "For in the flesh he was but a worm on this earth, weaker than most of those above and below him. And still he refused to bow and to worship, even before one of these phenomena, for they were but witness and work, as he himself was. All being, he said, is a work of the highest, and before the being is the spirit of whom it bears witness. How could I commit so great a folly and bum incense to a witness, be it never so weighty - I, who am consciously a witness, whereas the others simply are and know it not? Is there not something in me of Him, for which all being is but evidence of the being of the Being which is greater than His works and is outside them? It is outside the world, and though it is the compass of the world, yet is the world not its compass. Far is the sun, surely three hundred and sixty thousand miles away, and yet / Page969 / his rays are here. But He who shows the sun the way hither is further than far, yet near in the same measure, nearer than near. Near or far is all the same to Him, for He has no space nor any time; and though the world is in Him, He is not in the world at all, but in heaven." "Did you hear that, Mama?" asked Amenhotep in a small voice, tears in his eyes. "Did you hear the message which my heavenly Father sends me through this young man, in whom I straightway saw something, as he came in, and who interprets to me my dreams? I will only say that I have not said all that was said to me in my seizure, and, keeping silent, forgot it. But when I heard: 'Call me not Aton, but rather the Lord of the Aton,' then I heard also this: 'Call on me not as "my Father above," for that is of the sun in the sky; it must needs be changed, to say: "My Father who art in heaven" !' So heard I and shut it up within me, uecause I was anxious over the truth for the sake of the teaching. But he whom I took out of the prison, he opens the prison of truth that she may come forth in beauty and light; and teaching and truth shall embrace each other, even as I embrace him." And with wet eyelashes he worked himself up out of his sunken seat, embraced Joseph, and kissed him. "Yes, yes!" he cried: He began to hurry once more up and down the Cretan loggia, to the bee-portieres, to the windows and back, his hands pressed to his heart. "Yes, yes, who art in heaven, fur-ther than far and nearer than near, the Being of beings, that looks not into death, that does not become and die but is, the abiding light, that neither rises nor sets, the unchanging source, out of which stream all life, light, beauty, and truth-that is the Father, so reveals He Himself to Pharaoh His son, who lies in His bosom and to whom He shows all that He has made. For He has made all, and His love is in the world, and the world knows Him not. But Pharaoh is His witness and bears witness to His light and His love, that through Him all men may become blessed and may believe, even though now they still love the darkness more than the light that shines in it. For they under- stand it not, therefore are their deeds evil. But the son, who came from the Father, will teach it to them. Golden spirit is the light, father-spirit; out of the mother-depths below power strives upward to it, to be purified in its flame and become spirit in the Father. Im-material is God, like His sunshine, spirit is He, and Pharaoh teaches you to worship Him in spirit and in truth. For the son knoweth the Father as the Father knoweth him, and will royally reward all those who love Him and keep His commandments - he will make them great and gilded at court because they love the Father in the son who came out of Him. For my words are not mine, but the words of my Father who s~nt me, that all might become one in light and love, even as I and the Father are one. . . . " " THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT "Translated By Mardrus and Mathers" 1000 + 1 1000 minos1 999 NINE words in this title 37 letters At this point the ZedAlizZed, laughing cried,"tha's gorra laugh scribe" the very far yonder scribe getting the point didn't. And the Zed AlizZed died a death. ACCORDING TO THE EVIDENCE Erich Von Daniken Page 28 "In 1960, Hans Freudenthal, a mathematician at the Uni-versity of Utrecht, Holland, presented a mathematical lan-guage worked out to the last detail. (4) It is transmitted on radio impulses, but unlike many previous brainwaves coud not possibly be misunderstood by any technically informed living being Freudenthal's starting point is quite simple. Whatever the aliens may look like as highly advanced intelligences they will be able to build radio-telescopes, because they, like ourselves, want interstellar communication. Anyone who has know-ledge necessary to build a radio-telescope, will be familiar with electronics and that is not conceivable without a mastery of the rules and formulae of mathematics. In other words mathematics is the multiplication table of an intercosmic language. We use the decimal system. It is not unreasonable to assume that our ten fingers supplied a natural calculating machine / Page 29 / machine for it. We imported this system about 600 B.C. from India where it had developed from the Brahman method of writing numerals. Egyptian hieroglyphs stood for 1, 10, 100, 1000 etc." " So we can guarantee that the binary system is practicable. It works with the basic figure 2. The advantage of the binary system is that every number can be formed from the product of the numbers 0 and 1: 1 for one 10 for two 11 for three 1111110111111 100 for four 1111101011111 101 for five 1111011101111 110 for six 1111101011111 111 for seven 1111110111111 1000 for eight 1111110111111 1001 for nine 1111000011111 1010 for ten 1110000000111 1011 for eleven 1101000001011 1100 for twelve 1011000001101 1101 for thirteen 1111000001111 1110 for fourteen 1110011100111 1111 for fifteen 1110011100111 10000 for sixteen 1110011100111 10001 for seventeen 1110011100111 1110011100111 and so on. The binary system became the language for all computers, which can claim to be faultless because there are never more than two possibilities: 1 or 0, good or not good, right or not right, yes or no." "In other words mathematics is the multiplication table of an intercosmic language." 15 14 + = 29 2+9 = 11 1+1 = 2 3 O N E 15 14 5 + = 34 3+4 = 7 1+5 1+4 6 5 5 + = 5 6 5 5 + = 16 1+6 = 7 SEVEN 7 3 O N E 15 14 5 + = 34 3+4 = 7 6 5 5 + = 16 1+6 = 7 SEVEN 7 THE STONE OF THE PLOUGH The Search For The Secret of Giza Ann Walker 1997 Page 250 '1. 4 . 94 written between 3.50 pm and 4.40 pm' " A number of ONE HUNDRED and ONE and that symbolises the character that plays the CREED, the COLOUR,and all pointing to the WHITE ARROW,and if we decrease the First Word and the Last Word so that it comes to NINETY NINE, and this is a number that can easily be divided by THREE, and that is the Pyramid form, and the Triads of the Ancient: PTAH, SEKHEM and NEFERTUM ISIS, OSIRIS, HORUS AMUN, UTKHUNS The FATHER and SON and HOLY GHOST Translated into English by Abbel Hakim Awayan " Figure 26.5 omitted ' The 99 titles of God' " OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke,1972 'The Nine Billion Names of God' 'The Nine Billion Names of God' both involve computers Page 20 " Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them - Page15 'This is a slightly unusual request,'said Dr Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraints.' As far as I know,it's the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I don't wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your - ah - establishment had much use for such a ma-chine.Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?' 'Gladly,' replied the lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. 'Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits,the machine will be printing words not columns of figures.' 'I dont quite understand ' This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries - since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it 'Naturally.' 'It is really quite simple.We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God' 'I beg your pardon?' / 'We have reason to believe' continued the lama imper-turbably, ' that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised,' Page16 / 'We have reason to believe' continued the lama imper-turbably, ' that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised,' 'And you have been doing this for three centuries? 'Yes: we expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task.' 'Oh, Dr Wagner looked a little dazed. 'Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But what exactly is the purpose of this project ? 'The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so there was no trace of annoyance in the reply. 'Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being - God , Jehova , Allah , and so on - they are only man made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters that can occur are what one may calL the real names of God. By systematic per-mutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all' 'I see. You've been starting at AAAAAAA and work-ing up to ZZZZZZZZ ' 'Exactly - though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is of course trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous com-binations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in sucession.' 'Three? Surely you mean two.' 'Three is correct; I am afraid it would take too long to explain why , even if you understood our language.'/ Page 17 'I'm sure it would,' said Wagner hastily. 'Go on.' 'Luckily, it will be a simple matter to adapt your Automatic Sequence Computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a hundred days.' 'Dr Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhatten streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made , mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limits to the follies of mankind ? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right 'There's no doubt,' replied the doctor, that we can modify the Mark V Im much more worried about the problem of installation and maintainance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy.' 'We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air - that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India we will provide transport from there.' 'And you want to hire two of our engineers ? 'Yes, for the three months that the project should occupy.' 'I've no doubt that personnel can manage that.' Dr Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. 'There are just two other points -' 'Before he could finish the sentence the lama had produced a small slip of paper. 'This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank.' / Page 18 / 'Thank you. It appears to be - ah - adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it - but it's surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?' 'A diesel generator providing fifty kilowatts at a hundred and ten vaults .It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It's made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels.' 'Of course,' echoed Dr Wagner. ' I should have thought of that.' The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months, George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover 'This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. Project Shangri-La, some wit back at the labs had christened it. For weeks now the Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books. In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what ob-scure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn't go on to words of ten, twenty or a hundred letters, / Page 19 / George didn't know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan, and that the high lama (whom they'd naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn't look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately A.D. 2060. They were quite capable of it. 'George heard the heavy door slam in the wind as Chuck came out on to the parapet beside him . As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks - who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life: That was one thing in their favour they weren't bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village for instance 'Listen George' said Chuck urgently.'I've learned some-thing that means trouble.' 'Whats's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving?' That was the worst contigency George could imagine. It might delay his return, and nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manner from heaven. At least it would be some link with home. 'No - it's nothing like that.' Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he was scared of the drop. 'I've just found out what all this is about.' 'What d'ya mean I thought we knew .' 'Sure - we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn't know why, It's the craziest thing -' 'Tell me something new,' growled George. '- but old Sam's just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. / Page 20 / Well, this time he seemed rather exited, or at least as near as he'll ever get to it. When I told him that we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I'd ever wondered what they were trying to do I said, "Sure" - and he told me.' 'Go on : I'll buy it'. 'Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them - Gods purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.' 'Then what do they expect us to do ? Commit suicide?' 'There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up bingo!' 'Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.' 'Chuck gave a nervous little laugh. 'That's just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd been stupid in class, and said, "It's nothing as trivial as that" ' George thought this over for a moment. 'That's what I call taking the Wide View,' he said pres-ently . 'But what do you suppose we should do about it? I don't see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all we already knew they were crazy.' 'Yes - but don't you see what may happen? When the list's complete and the Last Trump doesn't blow - or whatever it is they expect - we may get the blame. It's our machine they've been using. I dont like the situation one little bit.' 'I see, said George slowly. You've a point there. But this / Page 21 / sort of things happened before you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him - even sold their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty , as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do.' 'Well, this isn't Loisiana, in case you hadn't noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.' 'I've been wishing that for weeks . But there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and the transport arrives to fly us out.' 'Of course,' said Chuck thoughtfully, 'we could always try a bit of sabotage.' 'Like hell we could! That would make things worse.' 'Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K. - then all we need to do is to find something that needs replacing during one of the overhaul periods - something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We'll fix it of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register.They won't be able to catch us then.' 'I dont like it,' said George.' 'It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No I'll sit tight and takes what comes.' 'I still don't like it,'he said, seven days later, as the tough / Page 22 / little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. 'And don't you think I'm running away because Im afraid. I'm just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don't want to be around when they find what suckers they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it?' 'It's funny,' replied Chuck, 'but when I said good-bye I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him - and that he didn't care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished.After That ' George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset: here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again? 'He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. . No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the MarkV itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its tho-usands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall. / Page / 23 'There she is!' Called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. 'Aint she beautiful!' 'She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savouring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope. 'The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good, as roads went in that region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear, and ablaze with the familiar friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry 'He began to sing ,but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch. 'Should be there in an hour', he called back over his shoul-der to Chuck. Then he added in an afterthought: 'Wonder if the computer's finished its run. It was due about now.' 'Chuck didn't reply, so George swung around in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval turned towards the sky. 'Look,' whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything. ) Overhead without any fuss, the stars were going out. OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke,1972 Foreword "These stories were written during the quarter century that saw space flight be transformed from a fantastic dream to an almost humdrum reality. Already it is very hard for me to realize that when I wrote 'The Sentinel' in 1948 I never really believed that I would see a moon-landing in my own lifetime". " I seldom remember the exact time and place when I obtained the inspiration for a story, " " . The idea behind " " 'Into the Comet' and 'The Nine Billion Names of God' both involve computers and the troubles they may cause us. While writing this preface, I had occasion to call upon my own HP 9100 A computer, Hal Junior, to answer an interesting ques-tion.Looking at my records, I find that I have now written just about one hundred short stories. This volume contains eighteen of them: therefore, how many possible 18 storey collections will I be able to put together? The answer - as I am sure will be instantly obvious to you - is 100 x 99 x 84 x 83 divided by 18 x 17 x 16 x 2 x 1. This is an impressive number - Hal Junior tells me that it is approximately 20,772,733,124,605,000,000." OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke,1972 'The Nine Billion Names of God' 'The Nine Billion Names of God' both involve computers Page 20 " Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them - Gods purpose will be achieved" The Nine Billion names of God " 'Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being - God , Jehova , Allah , and so on - they are only man made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters that can occur are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic per-mutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all' 'I see. You've been starting at AAAAAAA and work-ing up to ZZZZZZZZ " GOD JEHOVA ALLAH 3 x 6 x 5 90 NINE 9 OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke,1972 Page 15 The Nine Billion names of God 'This is a slightly unusual request,'said Dr Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraints.' As far as I know,it's the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I don't wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your - ah - establishment had much use for such a ma-chine.Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?' 'Gladly,' replied the lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. 'Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits,the machine will be printing words not columns of figures.' 'I dont quite understand ' This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries - since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it 'Naturally.' 'It is really quite simple.We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God' "letters, not numbers" LETTERS AND NUMBERS A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke,1972 The Nine Billion names of God Page 17 " 'Luckily, it will be a simple matter to adapt your Automatic Sequence Computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result' " STARSEEKERS Colin Wilson 1980 THE AGE OF ABSTRACTION chapter 3 Page 63 "There is a simple trick involving numbers that can be guaran-teed to produce astonishment at any party. You ask someone to write down his telephone number, then to write it a second time with the figures jumbled up. Next, tell him to subtract the smaller from the larger number, and keep on adding up the figures in the answer until he has reduced it to one figure. (5019 becomes 10, which in turn becomes 1 plus 0 - that is, 1.) When he has finished, you may tell him authoritatively: 'The answer is nine.' You can afford to be dogmatic; for the answer is always nine. It works with any set of figures, no matter how small or how large. Jumble up the figures, subtract one from the other, and the answer always reduces to 9. I have no idea why this is so, and have never come across a mathematician who could explain it. It is just one of those peculiar properties of numbers. THE MAGIKALALPHABET A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 The far yonder scribe again watched in some amaze the Zed Ali Zed, in swift repeat scatter the nine numbers amongst the letters of their progress. At the throw of the ninth arm when in conjunction set, the far yonder scribe made record of the fall AXIS AXIS AXIS ASIX ASIX ASIX MEETINGSWITHREMARKABLEMEN G.I Gurdjieff 1877-1949 Page 210 " 'Did they not have map or compass?' every reader will doubt-less ask .How not? We had them and even more than necessary, but in fact, it would be fortunate for travellers if these so-called maps of uninhabited regions did not exist. A map,'as my friend Yelov used to say, is called in a certain language by the word khormanoupka, which means 'wisdom', and 'wisdom' in that language is characterized as follows: 'Mental proof that. twice two makes seven and a half, minus three and a little bit of something'. THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS 1964 Page 74 "16. On the Rampage. Pip. and off the Rampage. Pip; such is Life! [Joe Gargery.] Great Expectations, ch. 15" 27 " 'Yes, I have a pair of eyes,' replied Sam, 'and that's just it, If they wos a pair o' patent double million magni-fyin' gas microscopes of hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see through a flight o' stairs and a deal door; but bein' only eyes, you see my wision's limited,' " Charles Dickens 1812-1870 FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock.1995 A Computer for Calculating the End of the World Page number 169 number omitted Chapter 21 "The Maya knew where their advanced learning originated. It was handed down to them, they said, from the First Men, the creatures of Quetzalcoatl, whose names had been Balam-Quitze Oaguar with the Sweet Smile), Balam-Acab Oaguar of the Night), Mahucutah (The Distinguished Name) and Iqui-Balam Oaguar of the Moon).! According to the Popol Vuh, these forefathers: were endowed with intelligence; they saw and instantly they could see far; they succeeded in seeing; they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. The things hidden in the distance they saw without first having to move. . . Great was their wisdom; their sight reached to the forests, the rocks,. the lakes, the seas, the mountains, and the valleys. In truth, they were admirable men. . . They were able to know all, and they examined the four comers, the four points of the arch of the sky, and the round face of the earth. 2 The achievements of this race aroused the envy of several of the most powerful deities. 'It is not well that our creatures should know all,' opined these gods, 'Must they perchance be the equals of ourselves, their Makers, who can see afar, who know all and see all? . . . Must they also be gods?, 3 Obviously such a state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. After some deliberation an order was given and appropriate action taken: Page 170 Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth . . . Then the Heart of Heaven blew mist into their eyes which clouded their sight as when a mirror is breathed upon. Their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close, only that was clear to them. . . In this way the wisdom and all the knowledge of the First Men were destroyed: 4 Anyone familiar with the Old Testament will remember that the reason for the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden had to do with similar divine concerns. After the First Man had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ADAM AND EVEN 3 A D D 1 4 4 + = 9 A D D A DAD 3 D A D 4 1 4 + = 9 NINE 9 D A D A MAM 3 M A M 13 1 13 + = 27 2+7 9 9 4 1 4 + = 9 9 NINE 9 3 M A M 13 1 13 + = 27 2+7 9 9 1+3 1+3 4 4 + = 8 8 8 1 + = 1 1 1 4 1 4 + = 9 9 NINE 9 ADAM A DAD AM FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock.1995 A Computer for Calculating the End of the World Page 170 "The Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever, [let us] send him forth from the Garden of Eden . . .' 5 " LIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVE "The Popol Vuh is accepted by scholars as a great reservoir of uncontaminated, pre-Colombian tradition. 6 It is therefore puzzling to find such similarities between these traditions and those recorded in the Genesis story." GENISIS GENERALLYSOIS "Moreover, like so many of the other Old World" / "New World links we have identified, the character of the similarities is not suggestive of any kind of direct influence of one region on the other but of two different interpretations of the same set of events. Thus, for example: . The biblical Garden of Eden looks like a metaphor for the state of blissful, almost 'godlike', knowledge that the 'First Men' of the Popol Vuh enjoyed. . The essence of this knowledge was the ability to 'see all' and to 'know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'?" EVILLIVEEVILLIVEEVILLIVE "Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol V uh deprived of their ability to 'see far'. Thereafter 'their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close. . .' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge / Page 171 /in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it 'the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Papal Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see 'things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who 'examined the four comers, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring 'the round face of the earth'! GOODEVIL Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Papal Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Papal Vuh were remembered not only for studying 'the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of 'the arch of heaven'?8 And is it a coincidence that the outstanding achievement of Mayan society was its observa- tional astronomy, upon which, through the medium of advanced mathematical calculations, was based a clever, complex, sophisticated and very accurate calendar?" 4 M A Y A N ADD 13 1 25 1 14 + = 54 5+4 = 9 TO 4 1 7 1 5 + = 18 1+3 = 9 NINE 9 M A Y A N M A Y A N 4 = 4 4 1+3 13 = 13 1+3 = 4 4 M A Y A N ADD 13 1 25 1 14 + = 54 5+4 = 9 TO 1+3 2+5 1+4 REDUCE 4 7 5 + = 16 1+6 = 7 4 1 7 1 5 + = 18 1+3 = 9 NINE 9 4 M A Y A ADD 13 1 25 1 + = 40 4+0 = 4 TO 1+3 2+5 REDUCE 4 7 4 1 7 1 + = 13 1+3 = 4 FOUR 4 Knowledge out of place In 19541. Eric Thompson, a leading authority on the archaeology of Central America, confessed to a deep sense of puzzlement at a number of glaring disparities he had identified between the generally unremarkable achievements of the Mayas, as a whole and the advanced state of their astro-calendrical knowledge, 'What mental quirks,' he asked, 'led the Maya intelligentsia to chart the heavens, yet / Page 172 / fail to grasp the principle of the wheel; to visualize eternity, as no other semi-civilized people has ever done, yet ignore the short step from corbelled to true arch; to count in millions, yet never to learn to weigh a sack of corn?' 9 Perhaps the answer to these questions is much simpler than Thompson realized. Perhaps the astronomy, the deep understanding of time, and the long-tertn mathematical calculations, were not 'quirks' at all. Perhaps they were the constituent parts of a coherent but very specific body of knowledge that the Maya had inherited, more or less intact, from an older and wiser civilization. Such an inheritance would explain the contradictions observed by Thompson, and there is no need for any dispute on the point. We already know that the Maya received their calendar as a legacy from the 01mecs (a thousand years earlier, the Olmecs were using exactly the same system). The real question, should be, where did the Olmecs get it? What kind of level of technological and scientific development was required for a civilization to devise a calendar as good as this? Take the case of the solar year. In modem Western society we stilI make use of a solar calendar which was introduced in Europe in 1582 and is based on the best scientific knowledge then available: the famous Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar, which it replaced, computed the period of the earth's orbit around the sun at 365.25 days. Pope Gregory XIII's refortn substituted a finer and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advances since 1582 we now know that the exact length of the solar year is 365.2422 days. The Gregorian calendar therefore incorporates a very small plus error, just 0.0003 of a day - pretty impressive accuracy for the sixteenth century. Strangely enough, though its origins are wrapped in the mists of antiquity far deeper than the sixteenth century, the Mayan calendar achieved even greater accuracy. It calculated the solar year at 365.2420 days, a minus error of only 0.0002 of a day.IO Similarly, the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth. Their estimate of this period was 29.528395 days - extremely close to the true figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modem methods. II The Mayan priests also had in their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and / Page 173 / were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus eighteen days of tdays of the node (when the moon's path crosses the apparent path of the sun). 12 Finally, the Maya were remarkably accomplished mathe-maticians. They possessed an advanced technique of metrical calculation by means of a chequerboard device we ourselves have only discovered (or rediscovered?) in the last century. 13 They also understood perfectly and used the abstract concept of zero 14 and were acquainted with place numerations. These are esoteric fields. As Thompson observed, The cipher (nought) and place numerations are so much parts of our cultural heritage and seem such obvious conveniences that it is difficult to comprehend how their invention could have been long delayed. Yet neither ancient Greece with its great mathematicians,nor ancient Rome, had any inkling of either nought or place numeration. " Z E R O 26 5 9 6 + = 46 4+6 = 10 1+0 = 1 8 5 9 6 + = 28 2 +8 = 10 1+0 = 1 ONE 1 To write 1848 in Roman numerals requires eleven letters: MDCCCXLVIII. Yet the Maya had a system of place-value notation very much like our own at a time when the Romans were still using their clumsy method. 15 Isn't it a bit odd that this otherwise unremarkable Central American tribe should, at such an early date, have stumbled upon an innovation which Otto Neugebauer, the historian of science, has described as 'one of the most fertile inventions of humanity'. 16 Someone else's science? Let us now consider the question of Venus, a planet that was of immense symbolic importance to all the ancient peoples of Central America,. who identified it strongly with Quetzalcoatl (or Gucumatz or Kukulkan, as the Plumed Serpent was known in the Maya dialects). 17 Unlike the Ancient Greeks, but like the Ancient Egyptians, the Maya understood that Venus was both 'the morning star' and 'the evening star'.18 They understood other things about it as well. The 'synodical revolution' of a planet is the period of time it takes to return to any given point in the sky - as viewed from earth. Venus revolves around the sun every 224.7 days, while the earth follows its own slightly wider orbit. The composite result of these two motions is that / Page 174 / Venus rises in exactly the same place in the earth's sky approximately every 584 days. Whoever invented the sophisticated calendrical system inherited by the Maya had been aware of this and had found ingenious ways to integrate it with other interlocking cycles. Moreover, it is cleanrom the mathematics which brought these cycles together that the ancieat calendar masters had understood that 584 days was only an approximation and that the movements of Venus are by no means - regular. They had therefore worked out the exact figure established by today's science for the average synodical revolution of Venus over very long periods of time. 19 That figure is 583.92 days and it was knitted into the fabric of the Mayan calendar in numerous intricate and complex ways.20 For example, to reconcile it with the so-called 'sacred year' (the tzolkin of 260 days, which was divided into 13 months of 20 days each) the calendar called for a correction of four days to be made every 61 Venus years. In addition, during every fifth cycle, a correction of eight days was made at the end of the 57th revolution. Once these steps were taken, the tzolkin and the synodical revolution of Venus were intermeshed so tightly that the degree. of error to which the equation was subject was staggeringly small - one day in 6000 years 21 And what made this all the more remarkable .was that a further series of precisely calculated adjustments kept. the Venus cycle and the tzolkin not only in harmony with each other but in exact relationship with the solar year; Again this was achieved in a manner which ensured that the calendar was capable of doing its job, virtually error-free, over vast expanses of time. 22 Why did the 'semi-civilized' Maya need this kind of high-tech precision? Or did they inherit, in good working order, a calendar engineered to fit the needs of a much earlier and far more advanced civilization? Consider the crowning jewel of Maya calendrics, the so-called 'Long Count'. This system of calculating dates also expressed beliefs about the past.- notably, the widely held belief that time operated in Great Cycles which witnessed recurrent creations and destructions of the world. According to the Maya, the current Great Cycle be in darkness on 4 Ahau8 Cumku, a date corresponding to 13 August 3114 BC in our own calendar. 23 As we have seen, it was also believed that the / Page 175 / cycle will come to an end, amid global destruction, on 4 Ahau 3 Kankin: 23 December AD 2012 in our calendar. The function of the Long Count was to record the elapse of time since the beginning of the current Great Cycle, literally to count off, one by one, the 5125 years allotted to our present creation. 24 The Long Count is perhaps best envisaged as a sort of celestial adding machine, constantly calculating and recalculating the scale of our growing debt to the universe. Every last penny of that debt is going to be called in when the figure on the meter reads 5125 So at any rate thought the Maya "Calculations on the Long Count computer were not, of course, done in our numbers. The Maya used their own notation, which they had derived from the Olmecs, who had derived it from . . . nobody knows. This notation was a combination of dots (signifyingones or units or multiples of twenty), bars (signifying fives or multiples of five times twenty), and a shell glyph signifying zero. Spans of time were counted by days (kin), periods of twenty days (uinal), 'computing years' of 360 days (tun), periods of 20 tuns (known as katun), and periods of 20 katuns (known as bactun). There were also 8ooo-tun periods (pictun) and 160,000tun periods (c,alabtun) to mop up even larger calculations. 25 All this should make clear that although the Maya believed themselves to be living in one Great Cycle that would surely come to a violent end they also knew that time was infinite and that it proceeded with its mysterious revolutions regardless of individual lives or civilizations. As Thompson summed up in his great study on the subject: In. the Maya scheme the road over which time had marched stretched into a past so distant that the mind of man cannot comprehend its remoteness. Yet the Maya undauntedly retrod that road seeking its starting point. A fresh view, leading further backward, unfolded at every stage; the mellowed centuries blended into millennia, and they into tens of thousands of years, as those tireless inquirers explored deeper and still deeper into the eternity of the past. On a stela at Quiriga in Guatemala a date over 90 million years ago is computed; on another a date over 300 million years before that is given. These are actual computations, stating correctly day and month positions, and are comparable to calculations in our calendar giving the month / Page 176 / positions on which Easter would have fallen at equivalent distances in the past. The brain reels at such astronomical figures. . . 26 Isn't all this a bit avant-garde for a civilization that didn't otherwise distinguish itself in many ways? It's true that Mayan architecture was good within its limits. But there was precious little else that these jungle-dwelling Indians did which suggested they might have had the capacity (or the need) to conceive of really long periods of time. It's been a good deal less than two centuries since the majority of Western intellectuals abandoned Bishop Usher's opinion that the world was created in 4004 BC and accepted that it must be infinitely older that that 27 In plain English this means that the ancient Maya had a far more accurate understanding of the true immensity of geological time, and of the vast antiquity of our planet, than did anyone in Britain, Europe or North America until Darwin pro-pounded the theory of evolution. So how come the Maya got handy with big periods like hundreds of millions of years? Was it a freak of cultural development? Or did they inherit the calendrical and mathematical tools which facilitated, and enabled them to develop, this sophisticated understanding? If an inheritance was involved, it is legimate to ask what the original inventors of the Mayan calendar's computerlike circuitry had intended it to do. What had they designed it for? Had they simply conceived of all its complexities to concoct 'a challenge to the intellect, a sort of tremendous anagram', as one authority claimed? 28 Or could they have had a more pragmatic and important objective in mind? We have seen that the obsessive concern of Mayan society, and ndeed of all the ancient cultures of Centra! America, was with calculating - and if possible postponing - the end of the world. Could this be the purpose the mysterious calendar was designed to fulfil? Could it have been a mechanism for predicting some terrible cosmic or geological catastrophe?" Page 176 "Had they simply conceived of all its complexities to concoct 'a challenge to the intellect, a sort of tremendous anagram', as one authority claimed? 28 Or could they have had a more pragmatic and important objective in mind?" "This system of calculating dates also expressed the belief that time operated in Great Cycles which witnessed recurrent creations and destructions of the world" Page177 "Chapter 22 City of the Gods "The overwhelming message of a large number of Central American legends is that the Fourth Age of the world ended very badly. A catastrophic deluge was followed by a long period during which the light of the sun vanished from the sky and the air was filled with a tenebrous darkness. Then: The gods gathered together at Teotihuacan ['the place of the gods'] and wondered anxiously who was to be the next Sun. Only the sacred fire [the material representation of Huehueteotl, the god who gave life its beginning] could be seen in the darkness, still quaking following the recent chaos. 'Someone will have to sacrifice himself, throw himself into the fire,' they cried, 'only then will there be a Sun.' 1 A drama ensued in which two deities (Nanahuatzin and Tecciztecatl) immolated themselves for the common good. One burned quickly in the centre of the sacred fire; the other roasted slowly on the embers at its edge 'The gods waited for a long time until eventually the sky started to glow red as at dawn. In the east appeared the great sphere of the sun, life-giving and incandescent. . .' 2 It was at this moment of cosmic rebirth that Quetzalcoatl manifested himself. His mission was with humanity of the Fifth Age. He therefore took the form of a human being - a bearded white man, just like Viracocha. In the Andes, Viracocha's capital was Tiahuanaco. In Central / Page 178 / America, Quetzalcoatl's was the supposed birth-place of the Fifth Sun Teotihuacan.the city of the gods 3 " THE RAINBOW COVENANT A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 1+0 1+1 1+2 1+3 1+4 1+5 1+6 1+7 1+8 1+9 2+0 2+1 2+2 2+3 2+4 2+5 2+6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ADD TO RE - DUCE RE - DUCE TO DEDUCE ADDED TO ALL MULTIPLED IN ABUNDANCE SHARED BY THE BELOVED EVERYTHING OF IT ALL 3 S U N 19 21 14 + = 54 5+4 = 9 1+9 2+1 1+4 10 3 5 1+0 1 1 3 5 + = 9 NINE 9 3 S U N 19 21 14 + = 54 5+4 = 9 1 3 5 + = 9 NINE 9 8 + = 8 5 E A R T H 5 1 18 20 8 + = 52 5+2 = 7 1+8 2+0 9 2 5 1 8 + = 14 1+4 = 5 5 1 9 2 8 + = 25 2+5 = 7 SEVEN 7 5 E A R T H 5 1 18 20 8 + = 52 5+2 = 7 5 1 9 2 8 + = 25 2+5 = 7 SEVEN 7 15 15 14 + = 44 4+4 = 8 4 M O O N 13 15 15 14 + = 57 5+7 = 12 1+2 = 3 1+3 1+5 1+5 1+4 4 6 6 5 4 6 6 5 + = 21 2+1 = 3 THREE 3 4 M O O N 13 15 15 14 + = 57 5+7 = 12 1+2 = 3 4 6 6 5 + = 21 2+1 = 3 THREE 3 FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock.1995 Page 411 Chapter 44 Gods of the First Time According to Heliopolitan theology, the nine original gods who appeared in Egypt in the First Time were Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nepthys and Set. The offspring of these deities included well-known figures such as Horus and Anubis. In addition, other companies of gods were recognized, notably at Memphis and Hennopolis, where there were important and very ancient cults dedicated to Ptah and to Thoth. 1 These First Time deities were all in one sense or another gods of creation who had given shape to chaos through their divine will. Out of that chaos they formed and populated the sacred land of Egypt, 2 wherein, for many thousands of years, they ruled among men as divine pharaohs! What was 'chaos'? 8 15 19 + = 42 4+2 = 6 5 C H A O S 3 8 1 15 19 + = 46 4+6 = 10 1+0 = 1 1+5 1+9 6 10 1+0 1 3 8 1 + = 12 1+2 = 3 3 8 1 6 1 + = 19 1+9 = 10 1+0 = 1 ONE 1 5 C H A O S 3 8 1 15 19 + = 46 4+6 = 10 1+0 = 1 3 8 1 6 1 + = 19 1+9 = 10 1+0 = 1 ONE 1 The Heliopolitan priests who spoke to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in the first century DC put forward the thought-provoking suggestion that 'chaos' was a flood - identified by Diodorus with the earth-destroying flood of Deucalion, the Greek Noah figure:. In general, they say that if in the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion most living things were destroyed, it is probable that the inhabitants of southern Egypt survived rather than any others. . . Or if, as some maintain, the destruction of living things was complete and the earth then brought forth again new forms of animals, nevertheless, even on such a supposition, the first genesis of living things fittingl