The Stargate Conspiracy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - Egypt: New Myths For Old

  Chapter 2 - High Strangeness at Giza

  Chapter 3 - Beyond the Mars Mission

  Chapter 4 - Contact?

  Chapter 5 - Behind the Mask

  Chapter 6 - The Secret Masters

  Chapter 7 - Endtimes: The Warning

  Epilogue:

  Afterword

  Notes and References

  Bibliography

  Also by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince

  TURIN SHROUD — IN WHOSE IMAGE?

  THE TEMPLAR REVELATION: SECRET GUARDIANS OF

  THE TRUE IDENTITY OF CHRIST

  Also by Lynn Pickinett

  FLIGHTS OF FANCY? 100 YEARS OF PARANORMAL EXPERIENCES

  THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PARANORMAL (ED.)

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  A Berkley Book

  Published by the Berkley Publishing Group

  A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 1999 by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Picknett, Lynn.

  The Stargate conspiracy : the truth about extraterrestrial life and the mysteries of ancient Egypt / Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: London : Little, Brown and Co.. 1999.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-12773-5

  1. Human-alien encounters. 2. Egypt — Antiquities — Miscellanea. 3. Military intelligence — Miscellanea. I. Prince, Clive. II. Title.

  BF2050 .P53 2001

  001.9 — dc21

  2001037454

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To our friend and colleague Philip Coppens, without whose untiring enthusiasm, support and generosity this book might never have seen the light of day.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would never have been possible without the contributions - in one form or another - of a great many people. We are indebted to all of them for sharing their expertise and research with us, and in some cases simply for taking the time to talk our ideas through. However, we are entirely responsible for the end result: we must stress that the conclusions of this book are not necessarily shared by the people named here.

  We are especially grateful to Philip Coppens, Editor of Frontier magazine, for the extraordinary degree of support he has given us. Not only did he undertake research on our behalf, but he also put us in touch with some of the - often very elusive - key players in this story, and shared with us his own incisive and brilliant connections, which we would otherwise have missed.

  Keith Prince, as usual, helped us enormously with his research, insights and unique view of life.

  Craig Oakley was his customary supportive and intuitive self: thanks to him for many in-depth discussions and for help with the diagrams.

  Simon Cox was generous in sharing his expertise on Egypt, especially in supplying us with invaluable research material on this and other subjects. He was also a delightful travelling companion who kept us out of trouble in Cairo.

  We are, as always, grateful to our agent, Lavinia Trevor, for all her hard work on this project and for unflaggingly pursuing our best interests.

  Thanks to Alan Samson at Little, Brown, and his colleagues Caroline North, Andrew Wille, Linda Silverman and Becky Shaw for their enthusiastic support of, and belief in, this book.

  We are indebted to the following people for helping us with the material about Egypt in Chapters 1 and 2: Chris Ogilvie-Herald, whose knowledge of current events in Egypt and whose Egyptnews Internet list helped guide us through this often bewildering subject; Jacqueline Pegg of Quest Research, for providing us with invaluable material; Niklas Rasche, for many long discussions about the complex issues in this book; Andrew Collins, especially for the information about Edgar Cayce and Bimini; Rudolf Gantenbrink for his revelations; Ralph Elllis; David Elkington; Ian Lawton: Thomas Danley; Yuri Stoyanov and David Ritchie.

  For the material on the Mars enigma in Chapter 3, we are grateful to Ananda Sirisena, Mark J. Carlotto and Stanley V. McDaniel for answering our queries. And thanks also to Nick Pope for supplying us with material on Mars and the extraterrestrial question in general, besides keeping an eye open for unusual titbits of useful information.

  For helping to settle questions about astronomy, we are grateful to: Dr Martin Barstow, reader in Astrophysics at Leicester University; Dr Michael Perryman, of the European Space Agency; Dr Malcolm J. Coe of Southampton University. Thanks also to the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society.

  For assistance with our research into the Council of Nine in Chapters 4 and 5 we would like to thank Dick Farley, for generously sharing his thoughts and experiences with us; Terry L. Milner, for allowing us to use his research into the strange career of Andrija Puharich; Ira Einhorn, for his insights into the key events of the 1970s; and Jack Sarfatti, for his very useful information. Also Palden Jenkins, David S. Percy and Kim Farmer of the Academy For Future Sciences for taking the time to answer our queries.

  We would like to thank Rob Irving for his information about the Barbary Castle crop circle.

  Georgina Bruni has given us much useful information in discussions stretching long into the night, and is unfailingly a delightful hostess.

  For the material on the esoteric connections we are indebted to: Theo Paijmans, for the astonishing breadth of his knowledge and for being such charming company; Steve Wilson and Caroline Wise, for their knowledge, insight, wisdom and support — not to mention their friendship and much revelry; Mark Bennett, for varied information, particularly in directing us to Christina Stoddard’s work; Dawn Zeffert; Gareth Medway.

  We would like to thank Uri Geller for sparing the time to tell us about his work with SRI. Thanks too to Shipi Shtrang.

  Dr Vanessa Hill helped us with some of the mathematical concepts, for which we are very grateful.

  Jane Lyle, as always, was a fountain of knowledge — especially about astrology - and a joy to be with. Thanks, Jane.

  For assistance with the breakthrough shamanic material in the Epilogue, we are indebted to: Jeremy Narby, for discussing his ground-breaking hypothesis with us; Michael Carmichael, for the discussion about shamanism and the acquisition of knowledge; Dr Benny Shanon of Jerusalem University.

  We would also like to thank the following people for their help in various ways, including support and encouragement, and just being there for us: Vida Adamoli; Marcus Allen; David Bell; Robert and Lindsey Brydon; Jim Cochrane; Susan Davies; Nic Davis; Christy Fearn; Geoff Gilbertson; Moira Hardcastle; Her-man Hegge; Robin Crookshank Hilton; Mick and Loraine Jones; Michèle Kaczynski; Gopi Krishnadas; Sarah Litvinoff; Karine Esparseil López and Samuel López; Kevin McClure; Loren McLaughlin; John and Joy Millar; Jack Miller; Hugh Montgomery; Francesca Norton; Catherine Ormston; Steve Pear; Trevor Poots; Lily and David Prince; Stephen Prior; Magdy Radwan; Mary Saxe-Falstein; Paul Sieveking and Bob
Rickard of Fortean Times; Gemma Smith; Nikki Stockley; Sheila and Eric Taylor; Salah El Din Mohamed Tawfik; Greg Taylor; Richard Taylor.

  Finally, thanks to the staff of the British Library, the Science Reference and Information Service and the Newspaper Library.

  Introduction

  Strange though it may seem, this is not the book we originally set out to write. In a sense, we are very surprised — and not a little shaken — to have found ourselves on the rock-strewn path that led, ultimately, to The Stargate Conspiracy.

  We had intended to write a follow-up to our 1997 book The Templar Revelation, which argued that Christianity was essentially an offshoot of the ancient Egyptian religion of Isis and Osiris — meaning that our culture is not Judaeo-Christian at all, but Egypto-Christian. The implications were astonishingly far-reaching, but we also disclosed the most carefully hidden of all the secrets of the heretical Knights Templar in the most controversial revelation of the book — namely, that they believed that John the Baptist was the true Messiah, and that Jesus was, to say the very least, his usurper.

  Wanting to learn more about our civilisation’s Egyptian roots, we researched further into the ancient religion, and found ourselves examining the Pyramid Texts and the origin of the Hermetic writings. The more we progressed, the more we realised the ancient Egyptians possessed astonishing knowledge, far beyond that generally accepted by modern academics. We discovered that those far-off people had an understanding of cosmology unequalled until our own century, and even now perhaps they still have something to teach us. But in the end even the largely unknown and unacknowledged genius of the ancient Egyptians was not to be the subject of this book.

  As non-academics researching ancient Egypt we could not remain unaware of the upsurge of interest in the ‘alternative Egypt’ of Andrew Collins, Colin Wilson and others, whose books challenge the often rather complacent ‘certainties’ of mainstream Egyptology. Above all three authors have become associated in the public mind with radical new ideas about ancient cultures, particularly Egypt: Robert Temple, author of the seminal The Sirius Mystery (1976); Robert Bauval, co-author with Adrian Gilbert of The Orion Mystery (1994); and Graham Hancock, whose runaway success was established with The Sign and the Seal (1992). Since then Hancock has gone on to entrance huge audiences worldwide with Fingerprints of the Gods (1995) and, with his wife Santha Faiia, Heaven’s Mirror (1998), and also collaborating with Robert Bauval to produce Keeper of Genesis (1996) and (together with John Grigsby) The Mars Mystery (1998). These books encompass a vast range of fascinating and radical new ideas, many of which have now become so entrenched among their readers as to be accepted as hard fact. And, like most of their readers, we, too, began as enthralled admirers.

  After many months of researching and writing this book, we still admired those authors’ energy and commitment, but as we stood back from their work, we have perceived a new and considerably larger pattern taking shape. Whether or not those authors are aware of it, their work forms an intrinsic part of what amounts to an orchestrated campaign.

  And the matter does not end there. The bitter controversy surrounding the idea of a long-dead civilisation on Mars has also been absorbed into this campaign and - like the mysteries of Egypt — has been pressed into service to present a carefully stage-managed message. Essentially, it proposes that the ancient gods were extraterrestrials - and they’re back. But the subtext is very clever: only certain, chosen people hear their words, and only certain, chosen people will be part of the revelations to come. We can hazard a guess at the identity of some of the chosen, but the others may be rather surprising.

  This is the well-worn tactic of ‘divide and rule’, and has worrying, quasireligious overtones. And it is no obscure and tiny cult, but a massive phenomenon that, in one shape or form, has infiltrated much of the West’s cultural and spiritual life. But who lies behind it? And what on earth would anyone hope to gain by it?

  We certainly considered the idea that we may have developed into sad cases of paranoia - the thought was to recur several times as we plunged deeper into this investigation — but the evidence remains, staring us all in the face, and there is no doubt in our minds that a huge conspiracy is trying to make us think in certain ways. And for such a global plot to work, it requires teams of fellow conspirators, whose participation may be unwitting or otherwise. These groups, we were to find, not only included, rather predictably perhaps, intelligence agencies such as the CIA and MI5, but also less obvious candidates, from New Age gurus to cutting-edge physicists, top-level scientists and multimillionaires.

  Cynically exploiting our fin de siècle hunger for signs and wonders, and our ongoing love affair with the mysteries of ancient Egypt, the conspirators are in the process of creating a massive, insidious belief system that feeds on millennium fever, though perhaps not blossoming properly until the first years of the twenty-first century.

  The fact that modem man’s craving for contact with the numinous and the ineffable is being cynically exploited on a vast scale does not mean that there are never genuine paranormal phenomena or mystical experiences. Nor do we suggest that there are no mysteries about man’s ancient past or his place in the universe. While we are critical of certain beliefs and claims to have solved some of those mysteries, it is because we find fault with them, not because we have a ‘skeptical’ bias. What disturbs us greatly is the use to which many otherwise innocent or uplifting beliefs and concepts are being put.

  Even the lives of those with no interest in such subjects will inevitably be touched by this campaign to have us believe and be persuaded to think in a certain way. We came to realise, with heavy hearts, that part of this plot is to prepare us to accept certain ideas that we would normally find unacceptable, perhaps even repugnant. Make no mistake, this amounts to cultural and spiritual brainwashing on a lavish scale.

  This story is so challenging that we can only ask for a willing suspension of disbelief, and for our readers to follow our detective work step by step, abandoning preconceptions and personal biases along the way. At the end, perhaps the thought might be allowed: what if this book is right? What if there really is a ‘stargate conspiracy’ eating away at the heart of democracy, human autonomy and decency itself? What if we are being prepared for the acceptance of something that we would normally find, to say the least, disturbing?

  This book is not an attempt to rally the masses or create some kind of political backlash against the conspiracy. Perhaps, in any case, those with the vested interests would ensure that such an attempt would be doomed to ignominious - and immediate — failure. Yet we believe that successful opposition is possible, beginning with the realisation that, perhaps like the stargate itself, true resistance is in the mind.

  Lynn Picknett

  Clive Prince

  London, June 1999

  Prologue:

  The Nine Gods

  In the beginning were the Nine gods of ancient Egypt, the Great Ennead, in whom all beauty, magic and power were personified. But although many, they were only ever truly One - each an aspect of the great creator god, Atum. The Pyramid Texts, hieroglyphic inscriptions found on the inside walls of seven pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, implore them both as Nine and as One:

  O you, Great Ennead which is at On [Heliopolis] (namely) Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nepthys; O you children of Atum extend his goodwill to his child ...1

  The mysteries of the Great Ennead were celebrated by generations of initiate priests at Heliopolis. Their worship was a central part of the lives of thousands of ordinary men and women, to whom their discrete identities made them as accessible as the saints are to modem Catholics, while their mysterious Oneness kept in place the divine veil of ineffability.

  The Nine - in one form or another - reigned for many centuries, until the Egyptian world changed forever with the influx of conquering races including the Greeks and, later, the Romans. The change seemed complete with the coming of the new religion of the sacr
ificial man-god, Yeshua (Jesus). But even then it was believed that the Nine merely withdrew to a heavenly realm — or, as many would have it today, to another dimension. The Ennead had departed, perhaps one day to return in glory.

  However, the Nine are no longer a mere curiosity of some long past religion, nor are the works of their priests as ephemeral as sand blowing across the face of time. Their sacred city of Heliopolis hid many jealously guarded secrets, incredible knowledge that is only now being rediscovered. From the wisdom of antiquity, these high initiates built the pyramids, feats of construction that are still unparalleled and whose mysteries continue to challenge and enthral. The Nine taught their priests well — and their strange and secret knowledge is coming back to haunt us.

  Buried beneath a suburb of Cairo - the most populous city in Africa, with 16 million inhabitants and their mad cacophony of traffic - the wonders of ancient Heliopolis are now marked only by a single obelisk. Once it was one of the unofficial wonders of the ancient world, glorying in its name - derived from the Greek for ‘city of the sun god’ because it was the centre of worship of Ra, whose daily journey blazed across the heavens. Its Egyptian name of Ounu, which appears in the Old Testament as On, may mean ‘the pillared city’, although no one knows for certain. Sometimes it was known as the ‘House of Ra’, while the Arabs called it Ain-Shams, meaning ‘Sun eye’ or ‘Sun spring’.2

  It is unknown how long the centre at Heliopolis had been established before its first mention in the records, but it was certainly already the supreme religious centre of Egypt ‘when records begin’ - at least the beginning of the Old Kingdom (c. 2700 BCE).3 Although several other rival cult centres later rose in power and political influence, Heliopolis always retained its status and due reverence was paid to its antiquity throughout the history of Egypt.