Christopher Dunn had visited Coral Castle for the first time in 1982; now, following my letter, he was kind enough to pay a second visit, which convinced him that Leedskalnin was merely telling the truth when he declared: ‘I know the secret of how the pyramids of Egypt were built.’ But he refused to divulge it, even to US Government officials, who paid him a visit and were shown around the castle. The only hint he would drop was to the effect that ‘all matter consists of individual magnets, and it is the movement of those magnets within material through space that produces measurable phenomena, i.e. magnetism and electricity.’
Christopher Dunn’s discussions with a colleague, Steven Defenbaugh, led them to conclude that Leedskalnin had invented some kind of antigravity device. Then it struck him that merely getting out of bed in the morning is an anti-gravity device, and that this concept brings the solution no nearer.
On the other hand, there are even now magnetic levitation trains that are basically anti-gravity devices. If one magnet is suspended over another, there is a natural tendency for their opposite poles to align themselves, so they attract one another. If their poles can be prevented from aligning, they repel one another. Could Leedskalnin have used this principle in raising his vast blocks? One photograph of Ed Leedskalnin’s backyard shows a device like three telephone poles leaning together to form a tripod, with a square box on top. Wires descend from this box and hang between the poles. No such box was found in Leedskalnin’s workshop after his death, so presumably he disassembled it to prevent it from being examined.
What Christopher Dunn was able to find in the workshop was a large flywheel, which Leedskalnin is supposed to have used to create electricity. The bar magnets on it were set in concrete. Dunn went off and purchased a bar magnet at a local hardware store. Then he returned to the workshop and spun the flywheel, holding the bar magnet towards it. Sure enough, the magnet pushed and pulled in his grasp like a shunting train. This was enough to suggest that Leedskalnin’s secret involved magnetism.
Dunn points out that the earth itself is a giant magnet—although we still have no idea of what causes the magnetism. And of course, matter itself is electrical in nature. Had Leedskalnin discovered some new principle that utilised earth magnetism? Or, if that sounds too absurd to take seriously, could he have somehow turned his whole block of coral into a giant magnet by wrapping it in steel sheets and using an electric current? And then used his push-pull device to force it to move? Could he even have suspended his iron-clad block like a magnetic levitation train?
The obvious objection to all this—as a solution to how the pyramids were built—is that the Egyptians knew nothing of electricity, and possessed no iron. In fact, there are those who doubt both propositions. When Howard-Vyse was exploring the Great Pyramid in June 1837, he told one of his assistants, J. R. Hill, to use gunpowder to clear the far end of the southern ‘air shaft’ in the King’s Chamber (the one that Bauval discovered to have been pointing at Orion’s Belt in 2500 BC). Hill blasted away at the southern face of the Pyramid, and after clearing away much debris, found a flat iron plate near the mouth of the air shaft. It was a foot long, four inches wide, and an eighth of an inch thick, and did not look like meteoric iron; in fact, since it looked like ordinary wrought iron, the ‘experts’ were inclined to doubt its genuineness. But when Flinders Petrie examined it in 1881, he found fossilised protozoa in the rust, revealing that it had been buried for a long time next to a block of limestone with fossils in it. In 1989, it was re-examined by Dr M. P. Jones of the Mineral Resources Department at Imperial College, London, and he and a fellow metallurgist, Dr Sayed El Gayer, established that it was not meteoric iron, since its nickel content was too low. Their tests showed that it had been smelted at a temperature of over 1000 degrees centigrade, and that there were traces of gold on one side of the plate, suggesting that it had once been gold-plated. The conclusion would seem to be that the Egyptians knew how to smelt iron ore—approximately two thousand years before the Iron Age.
The trace of gold raises another possibility—gold plating by electrical means. In June 1936, the German archaeologist Wilhelm König, of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, came upon a clay vase containing a copper cylinder, inside which—held in by asphalt and molten lead—was an iron rod. He recognised it as a primitive battery. Other archaeologists dismissed this conclusion on the grounds that the Parthian grave in which the battery was found dated back to about 250 BC. But another German Egyptologist, Dr Arne Eggebrecht, agreed with König, and constructed a duplicate which, when filled with fruit juice, produced half a volt of electricity for eighteen days. He was able to use this to coat a silver figurine in gold in half an hour. Eggebrecht had noticed gold-covered Egyptian statues in which the gold coating seemed to be too thin and fine to have been applied by gluing or beating, and concluded that it was highly likely that the Egyptians knew about electroplating. It seems certain that the Parthians did—for it is hard to think what else the battery was intended for.
Others have suggested an even more intriguing possibility. One puzzle about painted Egyptian tombs is what the artists used to light the tomb as they worked on the painting—they show no sign of lampblack on the ceilings. But on the walls of the temple at Dendera, there are engravings that might be electric lights and insulators. Admittedly, this would also have involved inventing a light bulb containing a vacuum, which sounds too far-fetched—it seems far more likely that the artists used oil lamps with well-trimmed wicks, or that they carefully cleaned all lampblack off the ceiling. But these suggestions serve to remind us that we still have no idea of how the Egyptians drilled out the sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber, or the inside of vases whose neck is too thin to admit a child’s finger. All that is certain is that they knew far more than we give them credit for.
The basic problem may be the one that these last few chapters have tried to pinpoint: that as products of a technological culture, we find it virtually impossible to place ourselves inside the minds of a far simpler, more primitive culture. Schwaller de Lubicz never tires of emphasising that when the ancient Egyptians expressed themselves in symbols, this was not because their drawing ‘symbolised’ something, in the way that Freud claims an obelisk symbolises a phallus. The symbol was the only way to express what they meant. To look for hidden meaning is rather as if someone stood in front of a Constable painting and said: ‘I wonder, what he meant by it?’
We have to try to understand what it means to be a civilisation that is totally unified by its religion. As Schwaller says: ‘Ancient Egypt did not have a “religion” as such; it was religion in its entirety, in the broadest and purest acceptation of the term.’
We can perhaps begin to grasp this if we think in terms of one of those modern messianic sects who believe that their leader is God, or a reincarnation of Christ, and who would be glad to die for him. Their total belief in their messiah makes life marvellously simple; they feel absolutely secure from the problems and contingencies that torment the rest of us. They have made the discovery that total, unquestioning belief creates a kind of heaven on earth, and even in the face of the most conclusive evidence that their messiah is not what he claims to be, they refuse to be swayed. They are, in fact, refusing to exchange their state of inner peace and certainty for the usual miseries and hazards of human existence.
In one of the Hermetic Texts, the god Thoth says: ‘Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven? Or, to speak more precisely, that in Egypt, all the operations of powers which rule and operate in heaven have been transferred down to earth below.’
A million or so ancient Egyptians believed this without question. They were illiterate peasants, but they believed that their priests knew all the secrets of the universe, and that their pharaoh was a god. Ancient Egypt was a collective civilisation: not merely in the sense that Soviet Russia and Communist China were collectives, but in an even deeper sense of being united by a ‘collective unconscious’. They were as united under their pharaoh-god as the Amahuaca I
ndians under their shaman chieftain. It is even likely that, in their religious mysteries, they experienced collective ‘visions’ as the Amahuaca Indians experienced them when everyone in the tribe was able to see the same procession of phantom animals.
The notion that thousands of slaves were driven to build the Great Pyramid by a cruel pharaoh belongs to a later age that had left behind the sheer simplicity of the Old Kingdom Egyptians. Kurt Mendelssohn is closer to the truth when he supposes that the pharaoh devised the task of pyramid-building to unite his people. But he is failing to grasp the fact that they were united—far more united than a modern man can understand.
In fact, modern computer science can provide an insight into this paradoxical notion of a collective unconscious. In Out of Control (1994), Kevin Kelly describes a conference in Las Vegas, in which five thousand computer enthusiasts came together in one hall. On the stage facing the audience is a kind of vast television screen in which the audience can see itself. Every member of the audience holds a cardboard wand, red on one side and green on the other. As the audience waves the wands, the screen dances with colours. Individual members of the audience can locate themselves by changing the colour of their wands from red to green and back.
Now the Master of Ceremonies flashes on to the screen a video game called Pong—a kind of ping-pong, with a white dot bouncing inside a square, while two movable rectangles on either side act as ping-pong bats. The MC announces: ‘The left side of the auditorium controls the left bat, and the right side controls the right bat.’
The whole audience then proceeds to play electronic ping-pong. Each bat is controlled simultaneously by 2500 people. The collective unconscious is playing the game. Moreover, it plays an excellent game, as if there were only one player on each side. As the ball is made to bounce faster, the whole audience adjusts, and increases its pace.
Next, the MC causes a white circle to appear in the middle of the screen, and asks those who think they are sitting inside it to try to create a green figure 5. Slowly, a blurred 5 materialises on the screen, then sharpens until it is quite distinct. When the MC asks for a 4, then a 3, a 2, a 1, a 0, the figures emerge almost instantly.
Now the MC places a flight simulator on the screen, so the whole audience is looking through the pilot’s eyes at a tiny runway in the midst of a pink valley. This time the left side controls the plane’s roll, and the right side the pitch. But as 5000 minds bring the aircraft in for landing, it is obvious that it is going to land on its wing. So the whole audience aborts the landing and makes the plane raise its nose and try again.
As Kelly comments: ‘Nobody decided whether to turn left or right... Nobody was in charge. But as if of one mind, the plane banks and turns wide.’
A second landing makes the wrong approach and is again aborted. ‘The mob decides, without lateral communication, like a flock of birds taking off...’ And simultaneously, everyone in the audience decides to see if they can make the plane loop the loop. The horizon veers dizzily, but they succeed, and give themselves a standing ovation.
So modern man can achieve group-consciousness, and moreover, achieve it almost instantaneously. It is obvious that we have not lost, the trick. In effect—as Kelly observes—the audience turns into flocking birds. Presumably this could be explained in terms of individual feedback, but for all practical purposes, it is group telepathy.
Now consider an equally curious phenomenon. It is 1979, and Dr Larissa Vilenskaya, an experimental psychologist, is in the Moscow apartment of Dr Veniamin Pushkin, where the Soviet film maker Boris Yermolayev intends to demonstrate his peculiar powers in front of a small audience of scientific observers. Yermolayev drinks some vodka to relax, then, by way of a warm-up, proceeds to a card-guessing experiment, which proceeds so fast that Dr Vilenskaya cannot follow it. Then Yermolayev asks one of the observers to give him some light object; he is given a cigarette packet. He holds his hands in front of him and stares at his spread fingers with such tension that perspiration appears on his forehead. Then he takes the cigarette packet between the fingers of both hands and stares at it. He opens his hands, and the packet falls to the ground. He picks it up and holds it again, talking to it in an inaudible whisper. Then he opens his hands, and the cigarette packet remains suspended in the air for between 30 and 40 seconds, before it falls to the ground.
Yermolayev explains that he tries to establish a rapport with the object. He ‘persuades’ it, and tries to project a part of himself into it.
In the same paper,2 Dr Vilenskaya describes how Elvira Shevchuk, a 40-year-old woman from Kalinin, is able to suspend various objects in the air in the same way—including a beaker of liquid. In one case she took a stick provided by Dr Pushkin, rested it at an angle of 45 degrees on the floor, then slowly removed her hands. The stick remained at 45 degrees for over a minute.
The evidence for such feats, performed under experimental conditions, is overwhelming. An Amahuaca or Hopi Indian would not express surprise—he would shrug and comment that Yermolayev and Madame Shevchuk are merely natural shamans, and are performing feats that shamans have performed since time began.
Am I, then, suggesting that the ancient Egyptians ‘levitated’ 200-ton blocks of stone by exercising the ‘group mind’? Not quite. It is not as simple as that. It is probable that they were not even aware that they were doing anything unusual. They prepared to move some vast block, probably with levers, ropes and rollers, the priest uttered ‘words of power’, and then they all exerted themselves in concert, and the block moved smoothly, just as they all knew it would.
Let me be more explicit. I have often taken part in an experiment in which four people lift a fully grown man merely by placing one finger under his armpits and his knees. The ‘game’ usually proceeds like this. The subject sits down, and the four volunteers place one finger under each armpit and each knee—four fingers in all—and try to lift him. Naturally, they cannot. Then they all place their hands on his head in a kind of pile, first the right hand of each person, then the left. They concentrate hard and press down for perhaps half a minute. Then, acting simultaneously, they pull away their hands, place a single index finger under the subject’s armpits and knees, and lift. This time, the subject soars off the ground. ‘Professor’ Joad once described, on a BBC Brains Trust programme, how he had seen an enormously fat pub landlord raised off the ground by four people, one of whom was the landlord’s small daughter.
Those of a scientific turn of mind claim they can explain this quite simply. When four people are totally concentrated, and then exert their strength simultaneously, they can exert far more force than if they attempt the experiment without preparation—in which case, their self-doubt helps to ensure failure.
Now this explanation may well be correct. For practical purposes, it makes no difference whether the power they are exerting is normal or paranormal. In all probability, the half-minute of concentration creates the same kind of unity that the members of the computer conference experienced. It is their total unanimity that ‘increases their strength’.
I am suggesting that the workmen who built the Great Pyramid made use of some similar ‘trick’, and that relays of them probably lifted their 6-ton blocks from course to course by sudden concentrated effort, under the guidance of an overseer or priest. They probably believed that the gods were making the blocks lighter, and that no special effort—except obedience—was required. In building the Sphinx Temple, they probably used ramps and levers, and were quite unaware that there was anything unusual about moving a 200-ton block. In a civilisation where ‘flocking’ was part of the normal behaviour of men working together, they probably accepted it as a perfectly normal technique. A gang of modern workmen would be in danger of being crushed as a block slipped out of control and was allowed to fall backwards, but a totally unified group of workmen would act in concert, like the audience bringing the plane in to land.
The explanation of other mysteries—like the granite sarcophagus—may have to wait until we can l
earn whether the Egyptians possessed unsuspected technical resources, such as the ability to make practical use of musical vibrations. What is clear is that our ignorance will continue until we have a better understanding of the powers of the ‘group mind’. But if an audience at a computer conference can demonstrate these powers spontaneously, then there seems no reason why carefully designed experiments with groups should not begin to provide some of the answers.
All the evidence suggests that Old Kingdom Egypt was a unique experiment in human evolution, the most remarkable demonstration in human history of what could be achieved with a ‘group mind’.
It could not last, of course. According to Professor Wilson: The Old Kingdom of Egypt collapsed into turmoil heels over head. The old values... were swept away in an anarchy of force and seizure.’ Their immensely successful civilisation turned into a kind of rat race. Two centuries after Cheops, pyramid-building had already become painfully careless and incompetent—although the inscription of the ancient texts in the pyramid of Unas was still one of the great achievements of the Old Kingdom.
Wilson describes how Egyptian confidence gradually drained away. During the Old Kingdom, men saw themselves as very nearly the equal of the gods. Five hundred years later, they were feeling vulnerable and accident-prone. This produced a higher form of morality, in which man’s responsibility to his fellow man—and woman—was increasingly emphasised. But the old certainties had evaporated. The new deterministic philosophy,’ says Wilson, ‘was rather definitely stated in terms of the will of god, placed over against man’s helplessness.’
Then, around the time of the fall of Troy—about 1250 BC—new problems arose. The Mediterranean world seethed with violence—Hittites, the Sea Peoples, the Libyans, the Assyrians. Egypt survived, but was never the same again.