AMNESIA OF THE MASSES
Time has dealt the Watchers a cruel blow. From being seen as extraordinarily advanced teachers of humanity, like those encountered by Enoch on his visit to the seven heavens, they quickly degenerated from angels of light into loathsome devils and demons of the underworld.
Very few people ever realized how the roots of civilization had arisen from the ashes of angels, and only religious literature such as the Book of Enoch preserved a distorted memory of this race's former trafficking with mortal kind. Some enlightened individuals, however, did manage to realize the significance this ancient culture had played in the shaping of humanity's later destiny, even though they could view such information only through their own blinkered perceptions of world history.
Yet there were, even at this early stage in the development of religion, those who also realized just how dangerous such heretical knowledge could be if broadcast to a much wider audience. If people actually believed that civilization had arisen from the wisdom imparted to humanity, not by God, but by walking serpents and fallen angels, then it would undermine the very foundations of a stable society built on religious fear. As a consequence, those who taught such blasphemies were to be treated both as liars and as worshippers of the Evil One. Furthermore, in the cause of stamping out such beliefs, these heretics were to be publicly denounced before being put to death, in the hope this would deter others from accepting such unholy doctrines. The Zoroastrians were perhaps among the first of the religions to instigate this cruel regime. They were followed by the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. Not only did these religions condemn the 'heretics' for believing in the Lie, but they also made sure that any ancient work which alluded to such matters was promptly withdrawn from open circulation.
Quite naturally, such dogmatic views on forbidden knowledge simply draws it to the attention of the curious. Perhaps for this reason many of the gnostic cults of the early Christian era adopted the Serpent of Eden as their symbol of divinity, the Ophites being a particular example. Just how much these religious groups in fact knew about the fall of the Watchers is difficult to determine, although the Book of Enoch had certainly been in open circulation during this age. The gnostics practised different forms of dualism, which gave equal precedence to both the good and evil principles of religion, seen in terms of God and the demiurge, the great architect who created the physical world. Yet by far the best example of an individual who came very close to realizing the shocking truth about humanity's dark past was, of course, the prophet Mani. Having read and absorbed the Book of Enoch, he created his own rather pessimistic religious teachings on the basic tenet that humanity had been rotten to the core since the conception of Adam.
Mani realized that everything humanity stood for was as a direct result of the Powers of Darkness. God had nothing to do with it. The effect of the Watchers permeated everything we did, everything we thought, everything we made and everything we destroyed. Their evil ran through our veins, and in Mani's opinion the only way to escape their influence was in the release of the soul after death. The prophet's own horrific demise at the hands of fanatical Zoroastrians is a textbook example of how society has treated those who have dared to preach this dangerous view of humanity's past history.
Those dualists who followed in Mani's footsteps were treated in a similar vein. The Albigensians, or Cathars, who flourished in the south of France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, inherited many of Mani's religious ideals.1 They attempted to change the face of religion by explaining the correctness of dualism, and by pointing out that the true heretics were those who now propagated the corruption of Rex Mundi, the King of the Earth, the greatest worshipper of this demon being in their minds the Church of Rome.2 The hideous fate that befell the Cathars during the so-called Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century provides another perfect example of how Christian totalitarianism has attempted to obliterate any idea that the world as we know it is the work not of God but the gift of Satan or 'the Devil'.
Rosslyn's Fallen Angel
There were, however, those who appear to have understood the true role that the fallen angels played in providing humanity with its earthly knowledge and wisdom. One such person was William de St Clair, the architect of Rosslyn Chapel, a late fifteenth-century unfinished Scottish collegiate church, situated close to Edinburgh. Its interior and exterior are filled with mystifying imagery in sculpted stone and carved relief. Among the more obvious religious themes portrayed in this house of God are an assortment of plants, flowers and fruits, all interconnected with vines that either issue from or are gobbled up by the mouths of so-called Green Man heads. The whole place has been described as a herbal or physic garden in stone3 – an imitation of that first paradisical garden planted eastwards, in Eden, by God himself. This idea is strengthened by the knowledge that the St Clair (modern Sinclair) family's heraldic device is the engrailed cross, which, while primarily an emblem of the True and Living Cross of Christ, also signifies the four rivers of paradise.
Rosslyn Chapel has many other fascinating themes running through its abundance of carvings. There are, for instance, a large number of statues that depict heavenly angels. Those with a cross above their heads appear to represent archangels, while among the parade of angelic carvings supporting the now empty stone plinths in the chapel's retro-choir are an altogether different collective of winged angels. These are covered either in body hair or feathers and each makes a different sign with its hands. Their individual poses bear a striking resemblance to the secret signs of Freemasonry, suggesting that the figures may therefore be interpreted as the rebel angels revealing the heavenly secrets to humanity.
By their side is an angel hanging upside down, its body tied and bound with rope. A round, pudding-basin haircut confirms the heavenly being's male gender and, like the other angels in the same group, he possesses wings. Both his hands are bound before him by a thick rope that winds twice around the body and trails away as raised relief to form the letter Z (like an S transposed) on each wing. The figure wears a long flowing garment and, unlike the other angels, there is what seems to be a beaded necklace or chain horizontally fastened above his inverted body.
The specific symbolism displayed in this figure leaves no doubt as to its identity. It is not Lucifer, Satan or the Devil, but the fallen angel Shemyaza, who was tied and bound before being made to hang perpetually upside down in the constellation of Orion as punishment for allowing the 'fall' of the angels to take place.4 As in the story of Shemyaza (in his guise as Azza), the statue has one eye shut and the other eye open so that he may 'see his plight and suffer the more'.5 The beaded necklace signifies the pearls of wisdom given up to humanity by the fallen angels.
This is perhaps the only remaining statue of Shemyaza in Europe. Its presence here, amid a veritable Garden of Eden carved in stone, points to the fact that the St Clair family (whose Latin name sancto claro means 'holy light') clearly understood the true significance of the fallen angels.6 Yet it is also clear from the presence of this inverted figure that the St Clairs were only too aware of the consequences of being caught, either adhering to or passing on the forbidden knowledge about our lost heritage.
The St Clairs were the hereditary guardians of Scottish Freemasonry, from its earliest beginnings during the reign of Robert the Bruce in the fourteenth century, through till the first free election of a Grand Master in the eighteenth century. It was into this environment that James Bruce of Kinnaird became a prominent Freemason before embarking in 1768 on his famous travels to Ethiopia in search of the Book of Enoch (see Chapter Two). Was this Scotsman therefore influenced by the St Clairs' knowledge of the fallen angels and the role both Enoch and Noah played in the preservation of this heavenly wisdom? I feel the answer must be yes, and in my opinion it is highly likely that, had it not been for the St Clairs' intuitive understanding of this delicate matter, the world would have been deprived of the Book of Enoch for a great many years.
It was the publication in 1667 of John Milton's Paradise Lost that changed the way in which the world perceived fallen angels. He saw them as very human individuals with similar virtues and failings – a revolutionary approach that hit a nerve with many of the book's early readers. During the Victorian era the French artist Gustave Doré was asked to prepare illustrations for a new edition of Milton's classic. The result was a series of compelling images that, for the first time, showed Satan and his legions as beautiful male individuals. Each bore wings and shining armour like that displayed by the archangel Michael and his angelic host, leaving the reader with a much more romantic vision of heaven's fallen inhabitants.
When the Book of Enoch was finally published in 1821, the world was at last able to read for itself the transgressions of the fallen angels. It provided the motivation for romantics such as Lord Byron and Thomas Moore to write passionate stories about the forbidden loves of the angels,7 while also inspiring artists, like the Pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon, to depict the 'Sons of God' on canvas.8
In other areas of society the release of the Book of Enoch seemed to have more disturbing effects. The Methodist Church, for instance – which held many liberal views on matters relating to spiritualism, witchcraft and the existence of supernatural beings9 unofficially saw Enoch as its new guardian light in the eternal struggle against Satan and his fallen angels. An example of the noncomformists' almost unhealthy interest in the Book of Enoch can be detected on the Lizard peninsular in the county of Cornwall, which has remained a stronghold of Methodism ever since John Wesley preached locally during the eighteenth century. Here, among the crashing waves and lingering sea-mists, we find placenames such as Enoch's Rock, Mount Hermon and Paradise Farm, reflecting the powerful local belief in Cornish 'giants', who were undoubtedly seen in terms of the Anakim, the offspring of the Nephilim.
Hand in hand with the increased popularity in fallen angels during the nineteenth century was the interest shown in the myths and legends surrounding the fabled islands of Atlantis, as presented by Plato in his works Critias and Timaeus. The idea of an advanced civilization having once existed in what seemed to have been the Atlantic Ocean appealed to many, especially since the old priest of Sais had informed Solon that Atlantis was lost during violent cataclysms 9,000 years before their own day.
Among those who became convinced that Atlantis really had existed was an American named Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901), author of a bestselling book entitled Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, first published in 1882. In spite of its popularity, Donnelly went beyond simply trying to answer the question of whether or not Atlantis was fact or fantasy, reviewing – in addition to the evidence concerning this lost continent – literally hundreds of unexplained mysteries from both sides of the Atlantic. These included everything from a comparison of different flood myths to the study of elongated skulls, the discovery of anomalous artefacts and the mysteries of the Great Pyramid.
The following year, Donnelly's next book appeared. Entitled Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, it was not such a hit with the public and quickly faded into obscurity. Yet its extraordinary contents, inspired by the extensive archive research Donnelly had already completed in connection with the myths of Atlantis, were explosive in their implications and testified to the fact that a series of truly terrifying cataclysms had shattered the relative calm of the last glacial age, a subject eventually taken up and explained by Professor Charles Hapgood in the 1950s.
The Hidden Masters
At the same time as Ignatius Donnelly was pushing the mysteries of Atlantis into the popular consciousness, the influence of Eastern mysticism from India and Nepal was also beginning to introduce the idea that previously unknown human races had once existed. One person deeply influenced by such thoughts was the Russian medium, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She returned from the East claiming to be in psychic communication with what she described as the Mahatmas, or Hidden Masters, who allegedly provided her with written accounts of primordial 'root' races that existed on earth long before the rise of modern civilization. On the basis of this information, she went on to found the Theosophical Society in 1875. This organization was welcomed in many countries, including Britain, India and the United States, and within a very short time its membership list ran to many thousands.
Madame Blavatsky's critics said the Mahatmas existed in her mind alone and that she had written the books alone. Despite these claims, which were never substantiated, her controversial views inspired many more individuals to investigate not only the mysteries of Atlantis, but also other lost civilizations, such as Mu and Lemuria, which had supposedly existed in the southern hemisphere during antediluvian times.
The Sleeping Prophet
With the popularity of Atlantis riding at an all-time high during the 1930s, an influential figure emerged on to the scene who was to ultimately inspire a whole new generation of academic research into lost civilizations. His name was Edgar Cayce, the so-called 'sleeping prophet' – an American psychic of some repute born on 18 March 1877 at a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky. From an early age he had been gifted with the power of second sight – a talent that apparently proliferated after a psychosomatic illness during his youth. In his early years, Cayce had apparently been able to self-induce a form of hypnotic trance which he then used to absorb great volumes of school-work. He went on to use this same form of altered state to 'diagnose' the illnesses of patients, during which time he would speak openly about the alleged previous lives of those patients. Cayce died on 3 January 1945, leaving behind no less than 14,000 documented 'psychic readings' given to over 8,000 people during a period of forty-three years.
A great many of these 'readings' included past-life material on supposed lives in Atlantis, and many of them painted a colourful and extremely vivid picture of the peoples, cities and environment of this lost continent before it apparently became submerged beneath the waves. Evidence of those who survived this massive natural cataclysm would be found, Cayce stated, as far apart as British Honduras, Morocco, the Pyrenees, the Yucatan, the Pacific coast of South America and the Mississippi basin.
More importantly, Cayce tied in the Atlantis myth with his supposedly unconscious belief that Egypt had once been a fertile region and that survivors of the Atlantean race established a community there after the continent's final submergence in 10,450 BC.10 Survivors of this dying race are alleged to have built the Pyramids of Giza between 10,490 and 10,390 BC.11 Many of Cayce's prophecies regarding Atlantis and Egypt are believed to have come to pass in recent years, prompting a lot of front-line researchers to assume that much more of his revealed information may eventually also prove accurate.
Ancient Astronauts
The study of lost civilizations took an unexpected turn in 1947, with the advent of the flying-saucer craze which swept across the United States in June that year. A commercial pilot named Kenneth Arnold saw nine 'wingless aircraft' flying over the Cascade Mountains of Washington State – the movement of which he later described as 'like a saucer if you skip it across water'.12 His words were misunderstood, and in a subsequent news story it was reported that Arnold had described the objects, not their movement, as 'saucer-like',13 so beginning the popular misconception that he was the first person to see a 'flying saucer'. Almost immediately after Arnold's 'sighting', many more reports of what later became known as UFOs (unidentified flying objects) began occurring all over the world. The frequency of these sightings increased dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s, with some people even claiming to have encountered the alleged occupants of the strange aerial craft.
Books began to appear on the subject of UFOs, and many pertinent questions were inevitably asked by their puzzled authors. Where did flying saucers come from? Who piloted them? Why were they appearing in our skies? Just how long had they been around? More importantly, people began to ask whether their existence might hold important clues regarding the mysteries of the past, such as the various obscure passages in the Bible which seemed to refer to unidentified aerial phenomena of some sort. From these well-meaning, though mostly fruitless, inquiries emerged a body of literature that eventually became known as the 'ancient astronaut' hypothesis.
With the publication in 1968 of Erich von Däniken's classic Chariots of the Gods, the banner headline 'Was God an astronaut?' began appearing in newspapers throughout the world. The book outlined the author's belief, already voiced by UFO authors such as Desmond Leslie, Paul Thomas and Brinsley Ie Poer Trench, that extraterrestrial beings from another world had supplied our most distant ancestors with the knowledge and technology to initiate the birth of civilization.
Von Däniken, and the many other ancient astronaut theorists who followed in his footsteps, would recite mysteries of our past that had no logical solution, planting seeds of doubt in the minds of many open-minded people. It was perhaps inevitable that a number of these authors should start to question the nature of angels against a backdrop of the UFO phenomenon. Some had ventured to examine Hebraic material concerning the fall of the angels, and this, of course, led them to the Book of Enoch. Reading this unique religious work gave many a field-day, as they dissected its contents and concluded that the Watchers had undoubtedly been a physical race of extraterrestrial origin who had divulged their universal knowledge to human kind. Best among the attempts to make a serious study of the extraordinary material of the Book of Enoch were those of the French author, Robert Charroux, in his 1964 book, Legacy of the Gods, and the American author, W. Raymond Drake, in his 1976 work, Gods and Spacemen in Ancient Israel.
The significance of these books lay in the fact that they brought together fallen angels and ancient civilizations for the very first time. Unfortunately, however, these authors invariably reached the conclusion that the Watchers could only have been extraterrestrial beings. Only Christian O'Brien, in his 1985 milestone work, The Genius of the Few, thankfully held back from exactly this conclusion.
Colony Earth
By the late 1970s, Erich von Däniken's ancient-astronaut crown had been forcibly removed in the wake of allegations that he had falsified the evidence featured in some of his half-dozen or so bestselling books. In the United States this crown passed to an author named Zecharia Sitchin, who, in a complex book entitled The 12th Planet, first published in 1976, put forward the theory that the 'Nefilim' of the Book of Enoch were extraterrestrials who arrived on earth from a distant '12th' planet, which, he said, orbits the sun. Using genetic technology, these tall aliens had created a creature called 'man' to perform mining operations deep below the earth's surface. Humanity eventually rebelled and broke free of its masters, who finally returned to their home planet, named Marduk or 'Nibiru', sometime during ancient times.
Clearly Sitchin had simply created another unprovable and highly unlikely extraterrestrial hypothesis; however, the difference between this ancient-astronaut theorist and previous authors was that Sitchin understood Near Eastern mythology better than most. Indeed, he is one of only a few hundred people in the world today who can read and translate the Sumerian written language.
In The 12th Planet, as well as in the subsequent volumes of his 'Earth Chronicles' series, Sitchin introduced the reader to extraordinary evidence that pointed towards the conclusion that the 'Nefilim' had been a race of physical beings who once had open contact with the earliest Old World civilizations, such as Egypt and Sumeria. After that, however, his books rather frustratingly revert back to the von Däniken-style school of thinking by all too often suggesting, for instance, that many representations of conical pillars and pyramidions in ancient art actually depict rockets in silos. Maybe he is right, but, in my opinion, such presumptions have been made purely on a basis of our own modern-day, mechanistic view of the world, and cannot be cited as evidence of alien technology in prehistoric times.
The Watchers' Return
Zecharia Sitchin's wild theories about fallen angels inadvertently influenced a whole generation of youth culture during the 1980s. Popular music is probably one of the quickest ways to influence a sympathetic audience, especially if a particular subject is promoted by individual singers or groups of musicians. The growth of interest in Eastern mysticism among the hippy generation following George Harrison's much-publicized visits to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or even the extraordinary increase in Mormon convertees among teenage girls following the international success of the Osmond brothers during the early 1970s, are both prime examples of this diffusion at work.
In a similar way, the sudden rise, initially in Britain, of all things black and gothic during the mid 1980s, brought with it a whole new interest in the reality of fallen angels and the affiliated subjects of vampires and the occult. Spearheading the more serious side of the 'gothic' movement was an influential rock group called Fields of the Nephilim, who first achieved international success with their extraordinary single 'Moonchild' in 1988. A succession of hit singles and hit albums through till 1991 made them the new gods of the gothic scene across the world.
The front man of Fields of the Nephilim, now known just as The Nefilim (with an 'f' instead of a 'ph'), is 'goth' icon Carl McCoy, who holds a personal interest in fallen angels. During his childhood he was subjected to a strict religious upbringing, his parents and family being practising Jehovah's Witnesses. As in the case of early Methodism, this religion holds strong views on the corruption of humanity by the Watchers and Nephilim at the time of the fall of the angels. This connection had a deep and lasting impact on McCoy, who claims to have experienced dreams and visions concerning the Nephilim from an early age. Finding further inspiration on the subject of the 'Nefilim' in Zecharia Sitchin's The 12th Planet, McCoy introduced the concept of fallen angels into many of his songs, which bear titles such as 'Return to Gehenna', 'Sumerland' and 'The Wail of Sumer'. In these mostly long, moody pieces, powerful lyrics blend with deep evocative musical arrangements to conjure dark, foreboding visions of a cyclopean age when fallen angels walked freely among humanity.
As a direct result of McCoy's fundamental interest in the Watchers and Nephilim, black-dressed goths world-wide began buying books on angels, fallen angels and related topics, such as the works of infamous English occultist Aleister Crowley and the Enochian magic of the Elizabethan magus Dr John Dee. Most important was the effect this revitalization of interest in fallen angels has had on the literary world. Various young authors of fiction began swapping the more cliched anti-heroes, such as vampires, for fallen angels of the type portrayed in the Book of Enoch. By far the most historically accurate and conceptually original of this new breed of books have been those penned by the British novelist Storm Constantine. In works with titles such as Burying the Shadow, Stalking Tender Prey and Scenting Hallowed Blood, she has portrayed the Watchers as an ancient race whose descendants still live on among humanity today.
In the art world it has been the modern sculpture of Essex-born artist John Day that has captured the true spirit of the historical Watchers. Since 1979 he has created a series of evocative images that represent this ancient race, which Day firmly believes once inhabited the earth. The most extraordinary of these is a sculpture entitled 'Kether', a Hebrew word meaning 'crown', which shows a huge bird-man with enormous wooden fan-like wings. Day claims the piece was inspired by an out-of-the-body experience involving contact with Watcher-like beings.
And, indeed, the Watchers are fast becoming a religious cult in their own right. Inspired perhaps by the books that have linked them with extraterrestrial intelligences, various UFO groups now claim psychic communication with this ancient race. They include the so-called Raelian Movement, founded in France by a strange figure named Claude Vorilhon (who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to the 1960s cult leader Charles Manson), following an alleged UFO encounter in December 1973.14 Among the deepest beliefs of the Raelians is one that the Sons of God, seen by them as 'the Elohim', seeded this earth long ago, and that open communication should be gained in readiness for their planned 'return' to earth. During meetings held behind closed doors, they invite the Elohim into their presence through the use of psychics.
Fingerprints of the Gods
By far the most important and influential book on lost civilizations to have appeared in recent years is Fingerprints of the Gods by the investigative journalist and author Graham Hancock. Riding on the storm of controversy which followed the announcement that the Great Sphinx is almost certainly many thousands of years older than was previously imagined, the book pulled together in a no-nonsense, straightforward manner, evidence of an advanced civilization in primordial times. It also showed that Charles Hapgood's crustal displacement theory is the only workable solution for explaining the reported cataclysms that brought the last Ice Age to a dramatic close during the tenth millennium BC.
In 1995 Fingerprints of the Gods became a bestseller in many countries of the world, selling to date a staggering 3.5 million copies. Its sequel, Keeper of Genesis, co-written with Robert Bauval and first published in 1996, focuses on Egypt's Giza plateau. It demonstrates in a sober, academic manner, quite inconceivable just a few short years ago, that Giza's ancient monuments conform to an astronomical star-clock preserving the date 10,500 BC.
Yet, if we now accept the existence of such an advanced culture in our past history, we must also ask ourselves who exactly were these people? Did they simply develop in Egypt? Or had they themselves come from distant shores? Fingerprints of the Gods speaks of them only as tall, white and bearded. Hancock does, however, lend open support to a revolutionary new theory put forward in 1995 by a Canadian couple, Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, in an essential book entitled When the Sky Fell – In Search of Atlantis. After many years of examining the available evidence on the Atlantis myth, the authors came to the unique conclusion that this lost continent could be identified with Antarctica. It may not seem the most obvious answer to an age-old enigma that has so long baffled the world; however, as the Flem-Aths point out, large parts of this continent were completely free from ice in the eleventh and tenth millennia BC, when the global cataclysms that accompanied the cessation of the last Ice Age appear to have taken place.
Like Hancock in Fingerprints of the Gods, the Flem-Aths also reconfirm something that many earlier Atlantean and ancient-astronaut theorists have been at pains to point out. This is the undeniable fact that certain sea-maps of ancient mariners – like, for example, the Piri Re'is map of 1513 – not only show Antarctica, which was only 'discovered' in 1818, but also depict the continent as free of ice! Even more incredible is the knowledge that some of these maps show Antarctica as two separate land-masses, a fact completely unknown in modern times until 1958.15
The only logical explanation for this baffling mystery is to suppose that the sea-maps were copies of much older charts, which had themselves been copied from earlier versions, and so on and so forth, back to a time when Antarctica was last free of ice, which is estimated to have been around six thousand years ago.16
Tracing the Elders
Could any of these theories explain the presence in Egypt of a highly advanced elder culture from the thirteenth millennium BC through till around 9500–9000 BC? Might I be able to pin down the true genesis of this lost race by further assessing what little evidence is available?
Early Judaic literature gives the Watchers, the elder culture's apparent descendants, specific physiological characteristics, and these appear to define the striking contrasts between these individuals and those who came into contact with them. To define them one last time, these human angels are described as extremely tall with white skin, white woolly hair, ruddied complexions, piercing eyes and serpent-like faces. Mesopotamian texts, as well as other tales of giant races from the Near East, appear to confirm that the gods, goddesses and ancestors of their own races were also of 'giant' stature. More importantly, anatomical remains unearthed both in Iraq and in the Predynastic graves of Egypt, have shown that individuals of great size with long heads represented the aristocratic, or ruling, class of the countries' earliest cultures during the fourth millennium BC. It is therefore possible that Egypt's elder culture also bore the same characteristics as their Near Eastern counterparts.
This is all the evidence we have so far, and even if the Judaic texts can be taken at face value, then there is no reason whatsoever to assume that these distinctive physiological traits were borne by all the race. Indeed, it is far more likely that only a few individuals were exceptionally tall, or possessed white hair or viper-like faces. Yet for obvious reasons it was encounters with these particular individuals that were more readily preserved by the story-tellers of subsequent cultures. If this is correct, then it is also probable that only a very few of Egypt's elder culture ever bore extreme physiological traits like those of the Watchers and Nephilim described in Enochian and Dead Sea literature.
Beyond this, everything is pure speculation. In similar with its Kurdish descendants of post-9000 BC, the antediluvian elder culture has left us with just a few tantalizing clues as to its former glory. The Great Sphinx and the other cyclopean monuments of Egypt, as well as the glimpses of extraordinarily advanced technology possessed by the Near East's very earliest cultures, the astro-mythology encoded in creation epics found throughout Egypt and Asia, and perhaps even the maps of the ancient seakings, are all faint echoes of their presence in this world. Yet simply to admit this would be to end the book on a frustrating cliff-hanger. We all want to know exactly who these people were and where they came from. Did they just evolve as a race in Egypt? or did they migrate to this region from somewhere else?
Perhaps the elder culture developed in southern Africa before migrating northwards into Egypt sometime before the thirteenth millennium BC. Sophisticated mining operations dating back to at least 80,000 to 70,000 BC have been found in southern Swaziland, demonstrating the level of technological advancement among the supposedly primitive ancestors of mankind, even at this very early stage in human evolution.17 It would be easy to suggest that the level of evolution achieved by these mining communities increased gradually and finally culminated with the rise of Egypt's elder culture. Yet such words would ring blatantly hollow without even the slightest corroborative evidence to support them.
Authors such as Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin would have us believe that both the elder culture and its Near Eastern off-shoots, the Watchers, Nephilim and Anannage, were extraterrestrial in origin. This, however, must remain a completely unsupported claim, unless hard evidence of alien contact with the human species, either in the past or in this present age, should ever come to light. As I do not see this as a likelihood in the forseeable future, I am unwilling to entertain this wild hypothesis at the present time.
In stark contrast to the ancient-astronaut theorists, the FlemAths, Graham Hancock and others are promoting the more realistic hypothesis that the elder culture developed in Antarctica – in my estimation the only plausible candidate for the fabled Atlantis of Plato's writings. Then, during the long period of cataclysms that accompanied a proposed crustal displacement between 15,000 and 9500 BC, the race abandoned Antarctica and migrated to different parts of the world, including Egypt. Certainly, legends found both in Egypt and in the Near East speak of the respective cultures' earliest ancestors as having originated in a mythical land, seen sometimes as situated in the south.18 Furthermore, there is compelling evidence preserved by ancient cultures world-wide, particularly in Meso-America, which speak of tall white men with beards, or even anthropomorphic serpents, who were the original bringers of knowledge and wisdom.19 These are tantalizing clues to the presence in the world of a universal culture responsible for the rise of organized society after the cessation of the last Ice Age.
Adding weight to this argument are the findings of Professor Charles Hapgood. He concluded that those who had made the maps of the ancient sea-kings must have been 'one culture' with maritime connections all over the globe.20 This makes sense of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend's observations in Hamlet's Mill regarding the original sources behind the astromythology and precessional information contained in myths and legends world-wide. In similar with the nineteenth-century mythologist, Gerald Massey, they concluded that this complex data must have originated with 'some almost unbelievable ancestor civilization'.21 In addition, Massey came to realize that this same high civilization must also have been responsible for the carving of the Great Sphinx during the age of Leo some 'thirteen thousand years ago'.22
It is therefore quite conceivable that before the end of the last Ice Age there existed in different parts of the world an ocean-going, high civilization with international cities and ports, thus implying that the Egyptian elder culture had simply been one of its many foreign colonies. There is another possibility, however; and this is that the elder culture did develop in Egypt, or north Africa at least, and that after its apparent fragmentation in the tenth millennium BC, remnants of the race not only entered and settled in the Near East, but also travelled to other parts of the world searching for safe havens where they could escape the on-going series of cataclysms. Some of these isolated colonies would certainly have disappeared without trace. Yet others may well have been responsible for the rise of civilizations – the Watchers of Kurdistan being a prime example.
I favour the second solution, but do not discount the first. All that can be ascertained with any certainty is that the Egyptian elder culture may be seen as an evolutionary tributary in the development of the human species, especially in respect of the development of the Eurasian neolithic age. The actual place of origin of this culture, some members of whom would appear to have been extremely tall with white skin and white hair, must for the time being remain a complete mystery.
Maybe we will have an answer in the not too distant future.
In the past no one believed in dinosaurs, and the first ever evidence of their former glory on earth was greeted with much derision among the academic and literary communities of the world. Yet once knowledge of their awesome presence had become more widely accepted, overwhelming evidence of their existence poured in from all over the globe. Now there are very few people who would deny their existence.
Maybe in time the same will be said both of Egypt's elder culture and their Near Eastern descendants -the Watchers of Kurdistan. Now that the scene has been set, there is no reason why our knowledge of this lost world will not increase accordingly. The angels of the Bible are coming back to life and there seems no way we can prevent it happening, for they now exist not only in our minds, but also in the pages of human history. For some reason I feel they are with us to stay this time, and no one should deny them their lost heritage.
Towards the New Millennium
Modern supporters of an advanced civilization in primordial times are turning more and more to psychics for revealed information on how best to investigate this subject further. Many realize that the only way forward is to combine intuitive processes alongside sound, objective research. If this proves to have been the correct decision, then great discoveries are likely to be made in the coming years, especially as all eyes will be on the Great Pyramid as the world sees in the new millennium.
One compelling prophecy suggests that there are, beneath the Giza plateau, twelve rock-hewn chambers positioned in a double-hexagonal arrangement, each representing one of the precessional signs of the zodiac. All chambers are linked via a series of interconnecting corridors with a large central chamber containing a huge multi-faceted crystal that symbolizes the cosmic egg, the point of first creation in the physical universe.23
Ancient myths and legends preserved by many different cultures have all alluded to the existence of such chambers, referred to by Edgar Cayce as the Hall of Records. Judaic tradition asserts that these underground chambers were constructed by the patriarch Enoch, with the help of his son Methuselah, to contain the ancient sciences at the time of the Great Flood – a theme still preserved in European Masonic tradition (see Chapter Two).
Until recently, no one knew whether or not such a hidden legacy might lay undiscovered beneath the drifting sands of the Giza plateau. Then, in 1993 seismic soundings of the hard bedrock below the Sphinx enclosure revealed the presence, some sixteen feet down, of a large, rectangular room. This hollowed-out area was quickly identified as a hewn-out chamber some thirty feet by forty feet in size. The geophysicist in charge of the operation, Dr Thomas Dobecki, is a former professor at the Colorado School of Mines who now works in the commercial sector. Naturally he has been somewhat cautious about the significance of this discovery, but is willing to admit that: 'The regular, rectangular shape of this (chamber) is inconsistent with naturally occurring cavities, so there is some suggestion that it could be man-made.'24
If this chamber does constitute the entrance into an underground complex constructed by Egypt's elder culture, either before or during the age of Leo, then the impact of such a discovery on our understanding of religion and world history cannot be underestimated. Once and for all the human race will be obliged to realize that the collective amnesia from which it seems to have been suffering over the past 11,000 years, is no longer a valid excuse to deny the fact that we were never the first.
Perhaps, deep inside, each of us knows the truth about humanity's dark past, the cataclysms that befell Egypt's elder culture, and the fall of the Watchers.
Maybe it is this that has made us so want to obliterate it from our conscious memory for so long.
Yet, inside ourselves, we know.
Somehow fallen angels are important to our past, and at some point we will have to address the problem they pose once and for all.
In my view there are only three choices.
Either the Watchers were incorporeal beings – divine messengers in the service of God who fell from grace. Or they were simply the creation of our ancestors' deep psychological needs, fears and desires. Or they really did once walk the earth as beings of flesh and blood.
The evidence is there. The choice is yours.