Page 215

The earliest-surviving references to the 'Followers of Horus' occur in the Pyramid Texts. It is therefore unlikely to be an accident that the notion in the Edfu Texts of the Great Primeval Mound emerging from the waters of a universal deluge coincides exactly with imagery that has also been preserved in the Pyramid Texts in which, as E. A. E. Reymond summarizes: 'The Earth in its earliest shape was pictured as a mound which emerged from the primeval water. This mound itself was then considered as a divine being, and as the original terrestrial configuration on which the creator, Atum, dwelt.' ²⁸
As is well known, the compilation of the Pyramid Texts was undertaken by the priests of Heliopolis.²⁹ It may therefore be of relevance that ancient Egyptian traditions attribute the founding of Heliopolis to the 'Followers of Horus' - in a period long before the beginning of Dynastic times - and that there is an Egyptian papyrus, now in the Berlin Museum, which clearly suggests that Heliopolis in some way 'existed before the earth was created'.³⁰ Once again, this interlinks closely with a central proposition of the Edfu Texts, namely that the 'new world' created by the Sages after the Flood was conceived of and designed by its makers as 'the resurrection of the former world of the gods.' ³¹
There are other links too. For example what Reymond calls 'the manifestation of the resurrection of the first holy world' took the form in the Edfu Texts of an upright column or rod, 'the Perch' on which a great bird, the Divine Falcon, rested³² In Heliopolis there stood a pillar (indeed Innu, the Egyptian name for Heliopolis, actually means 'pillar,³³) on which it was believed that another 'Divine' bird - the Bennu, or phoenix - periodically rested.³⁴ And interestingly the hieroglyph for Heliopolis - a column surmounted by a cross above (or beside) a circle divided into eight parts ³⁵ - is virtually identical to a hieroglyph depicting the Edfu 'Perch' that is reproduced by Flinders Petrie in his Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties ³⁶
For all these reasons, and many others, Reymond concludes that 'the Edfu documentary sources offer. . . one argument more in favour of the theory that the ritual of the Egyptian temple was Heliopolitan in origin. . . We are of the opinion that the Edfu records preserve the memory of a Predynastic religious centre which once

/ Page 216 /

existed near to Memphis, which the Egyptians looked on as the homeland of the Egyptian temple.' ³⁷
What better candidate is there for that 'Predynastic religious centre near to Memphis' - that 'homeland' of the Egyptian temple - than the sacred city of Heliopolis and its associated Pyramids and other structures on the Giza plateau? Moreover, as the reader will recall, the Giza / Heliopolis complex lies to the north of ancient Memphis. In this light a well-known text on the inner face of the enclosure wall of the temple at Edfu takes on a special meaning, for it tells us that the temple was built 'at the dictates of the Ancestors' according to what was written in a certain 'book' which had 'descended from the sky to the north of Memphis'. ³⁸
There is of course a sense in which the cosmic monuments of Giza could themselves be said to be a kind of 'book' written in stone and 'descended from the sky' - for, as we now know, the three great Pyramids are the terrestrial counterparts of the three stars of Orion's belt and the Sphinx draws down to earth the regal image of Leo, the celestial lion.
Cycle of the phoenix
The Primeval Mound, identified with the Great Pyramid and with the natural mound of rock that is incorporated into the foundations of that monument, is envisaged in the Pyramid Texts as a place at once of birth and death, and also as a place of rebirth ³⁹ These ideas fit well with the ancient Egyptian rituals for 'awakening Osiris' and attaining astral immortality - and with the quest of the Horus-King - that we have described in earlier chapters. They also accord with the sense that the texts convey of a cyclical rhythm at work in the universe as the vast 'Mill' of the zodiac grinds out the destiny of world ages.
In Heliopolitan theology, all these processes were grouped together, summarized and expressed in a single image - the Bennu bird, the legendary Phoenix which at certain widely separated intervals 'fashioned a nest of aromatic boughs and spices, set it on fire and was consumed in the flames. From the pyre miraculously sprang a new phoenix, which, after embalming its father's ashes in an egg of myrrh, flew with the ashes to Heliopolis where it deposited them in

/ Page 217 /

the altar of the Egyptian sun-god, Re. A variant of the story made the dying phoenix fly to Heliopolis and immolate itself in the altar fire, from which the young phoenix then rose... The Egyptians associated the phoenix with immortality.' ⁴⁰
Sources vary as to the period of the Bennu's return, but in his authoritative study on the subject R. T. Rundle Oark mentions the figure of 12,954 years:! Let us note that this figure accords very closely with a half-cycle of precession (where the full cycle, as we have seen, is 25,920 years). As such, 'the return of the phoenix' could be expressed in astronomical terms either as a slow 'sweep' of the vernal point through six houses of the zodiac - for example from the beginning of Leo to the beginning of Aquarius - or, at the meridian, as the number of years required for a star to move between its minimum and maximum altitudes above the horizon.
When considering such co-ordinates in the sky, we are immedi-ately reminded of the Giza necropolis - of how the gaze of the Great Sphinx targets the vernal point on the eastern horizon, and of how the star-shafts of the Great Pyramid lock in to the meridian with machine-age accuracy. Moreover it can hardly be an accident that the capstone or pyramidion placed on top of all pyramids was known in the ancient Egyptian language as the Benben and was considered to be a symbol of the Bennu bird (and thus also of rebirth and immortal-ity).⁴² These capstones were replicas of the original Benben stone - perhaps a conical, 'orientated' meteorite ⁴³ - which was said to have 'fallen from heaven' and which was kept in Heliopolis, perched atop a pillar in a Temple called the 'Mansion of the Phoenix'.⁴⁴
Is it not apparent, therefore, that we are confronted here by a tightly knit complex of interwoven ideas, all additionally complicated by masses of Egyptian dualism, in which stone stands for bird, and bird for stone,⁴⁵ and both together speak of rebirth and of the 'eternal return'?
The capstone is of course missing from the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza. And the Benben of Heliopolis was already long lost to history by the time of the Greeks. . . ⁴⁶
Will these treasures, too, sooner or later 'return'?
 
Here yon scribe writ these words, ABBA -Father, Ben, azin son, and Benjamin, azin Joseph and The Coat Of Many Colours

Page 14 

If the ancient civilizations of America had developed locally in Mexico or Peru, the archaeologists should be able to trace the sites where gradual development had taken place. But wherever a centre of civilization was found in Mexico or Peru, excavations proved that it had arrived in fully mature form, developing local variants later on. There was no clear beginning to be found anywhere. So the answer should be obvious: importation. If civilization began suddenly without local evolution, it must have been imported. Infiltration from overseas. Obviously. The only trouble was that at the time when the great civilizations were beginning to flourish in the New World, some centuries before Christ, if present theories hold good, a couple of thousand years had passed since corresponding culture had ceased to exist in Egypt. So the answer was not obvious at all. We were stuck. But why make a comparison only with Egypt? Why not with Phoenicia, for instance, where the chronology holds good? Why not with the island people of the Mediterranean?
Why build a papyrus boat? My thoughts floated away again. via America, right out into the Pacific. There I was on my home ground. It was there that I had devoted all my time to research and field work. I had been visiting Egypt simply as a tourist when I first saw the wall-paintings of reed boats in the Valley of Kings four years earlier. I had recognized the type of boat at once. It was of the same general type as the pyramid-builders in North Peru had painted on their ceramic pots when their civilization flourished in South America, long before Polynesia was inhabited. The largest reed boats in Peru were depicted as two-deckers. Quantities of water jars and other cargo were painted in on the lower deck. as well as rows of little people, and on the upper deck usually stood the earthly representative of the sun-god, the priest-king, larger than all his companions, surrounded by bird-headed men who were often hauling on ropes to help the reed boat through the water. The tomb paintings in Egypt also portrayed the sun-god's earthly representative. the priest-king known as the pharaoh, like an imposing giant on his reed boat, surrounded by miniature people, while

/ Page 15 /

the same mythical men with bird heads towed the reed boat through the water.
Reed boats and bird-headed men seemed to go together, for some inexplicable reason. For we had found them far out in the Pacific Ocean too, on Easter Island, where the sun-god's mask, the reed boats with sails, and the men with bird heads formed an inseparable trio among the wall-paintings and reliefs in the ancient ceremonial village of Orongo, with its solar observatory. Easter Island, Peru, Egypt. These strange parallels could hardly have been found farther apart. Apparently they could hardly furnish better proof that men must have arrived independently at the same things in widely separated places. Apparently. But what was even more strange was that the aboriginal people of Easter Island called the sun ra. Ra was the name for the sun on all the hundreds of Polynesian islands, so it could be no mere accident. Ra was also the name for the sun in ancient Egypt. No word was more important to the ancient Egyptian religion than Ra, the sun, the sun-god, ancestor of the pharaohs. The one who sailed reed boats, with an entourage of bird- headed men. Giant monolithic statues as high as houses had been erected in honour of the sun-god's earthly priest-kings on Easter Island, in Peru and in ancient Egypt. And in all three places, solid rock had been sliced up like cheese into blocks as big as railway trucks and fitted together in stepped pyramids designed on an astronomical basis according to the movements of the sun. All in honour of the common ancestor, the sun, Ra. Was there some connection, or was it just coincidence?..."
 

Page 382

"Despite such apparently inauspicious beginnings, Shu and Tefnut (who were always described as 'Twins' and frequently depicted as lions) grew to maturity, copulated and produced offspring of their own: Geb the god of the earth and Nut, the goddess of the sky. These two also mated, creating Osiris and Isis, Set and Nepthys, and so completed the Ennead, the full company of the Nine Gods of Heliopolis. Of the nine, Ra, Shu, Geb and Osiris were said to have ruled in Egypt as Kings, followed by Horus, and lastly - for 3226 years - by the Ibis-headed wisdom god Thoth.8"

Page 248

"In short it seems that secret knowledge is indeed available in the myth of Osiris and in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. With this secret knowledge, if we wanted to fix a specific date - say 1008 years in the future - and communicate it to other initiates, then we could do so with the 'special number' 14 (72 x 14 = 1008). We would also have to specify the 'zero point' from which they were to make their calculations - i.e the present epoch - and this might be done with  

Page 71

"...Osiris, The ancient Egyptian high god of death and resurrection..."
"…He was plotted against by seventy-two members of his court, led by his brother- in -law Set..."
"… Set, out hunting in the marshes, discovered the coffer, opened it and in a mad fury cut the royal corpse into fourteen pieces,..."

Page number 272 omitted.

Archaeo-astronomer Jane B. Sellers, who studied Egyptology at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, spends her winters in Portland, Maine, and summers at Ripley Neck, a nineteenth-century enclave 'downeast' on Maine's rocky coast. 'There,' she says, 'the night skies can be as clear as the desert, and no one minds if you read the Pyramid Texts out loud to the seagulls. . .'¹
One of the few serious scholars to have tested the theory advanced by Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill, Sellers has been hailed for having drawn attention to the need to use astronomy, and more particularly precession, for the proper study of ancient Egypt and its religion.² In her words: 'Archaeologists by and large lack an understanding of precession, and this affects their conclusions concerning ancient myths, ancient gods and ancient temple alignments. . . For astronomers precession is a well-established fact; those working in the field of ancient man have a responsibility to attain an understanding of it,³
It is Sellers's contention, eloquently expressed in her recent book, The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, that the Osiris myth may have been deliberately encoded with a group of key numbers that are 'excess baggage' as far as the narrative is concerned but that offer an eternal calculus by which surprisingly exact values can be derived for the following:
1 The time required for the earth's slow precessional wobble to

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cause the position of sunrise on the vernal equinox to complete a shift of one degree along the ecliptic (in relation to the stellar background);
2 The time required for the sun to pass through one full zodiacal segment of thirty degrees;
3 The time required for the sun to pass through two full zodiacal segments (totalling sixty degrees);
4 The time required to bring about the 'Great Return'⁴, i. e, for the sun to shift three hundred and sixty degrees along the ecliptic, thus fulfilling one complete precessional cycle or 'Great Year'.
Computing the Great Return
The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are 360, 72, 30 and 12. Most of them are found in a section of the myth which provides us with biographical details of the various characters. These have been conveniently summarized by E. A. Wallis Budge, formerly keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum:
The goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be delivered of a child in any month of any year. Then the god Thoth, who also loved Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days. These he joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted [emphasis added]. On the first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the moment of his birth a voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born.⁵
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
Thus far we have been provided with three of Sellers's precessional numbers: 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.

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With this last number in hand, suggests Sellers, we are now in a position to boot-up and set running an ancient computer programme:
12 = the number of constellations in the zodiac;
30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal constellation;
72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic;
360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic;
72 x 30 = 2160 (the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, i. e., to pass entirely through anyone of the 12 zodiacal constellations);
2160 x 12 (or 360 x 72) = 25,920 (the number of years in one complete precessional cycle or 'Great Year', and thus the total number of years required to bring about the 'Great Return').
Other figures and combinations of figures also emerge, for example:
36, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of half a degree along the ecliptic;
4320, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of 60 degrees (i. e., two zodiacal constellations).
These, Sellers believes, constitute the basic ingredients of a precessional code which appears again and again, with eerie persistence, in ancient myths and sacred architecture. In common with much esoteric numerology, it is a code in which it is permissible to shift decimal points to left or right at will and to make use of almost any conceivable combinations, permutations, multiplications, divisions and fractions of the essential numbers (all of which relate precisely to the rate of precession of the equinoxes).
The pre-eminent number in the code is 72. To this is frequently added 36, making 108, and it is permissible to multiply 108 by 100 to get 10,800 or to divide it by 2 to get 54, which may then be multiplied by 10 and expressed as 540 (or as 54,000. or as 540,000, or as 5,400,000, and so on). Also highly significant is 2160 (the number of years required for the equinoctial point to transit one zodiacal

/ Page 275 /

constellation), which is sometimes multiplied by 10 and by factors of ten (to give 216,000, 2,160,000, and so on) and sometimes by 2 to give 4320, or 43,200, or 432,000, or 4,320,000, ad infinitum.
Better than Hipparchus
If Sellers is correct in her hypothesis that the calculus needed to produce these numbers was deliberately encoded into the Osiris myth to convey precessional information to initiates, we are confronted by an intriguing anomaly. If they are indeed about precession, the numbers are out of place in time. The science they contain is too advanced for them to have been calculated by any known civilization of antiquity.
Let us not forget that they occur in a myth which is present at the very dawn of writing in Egypt (indeed elements of the Osiris story are to be found in the Pyramid Texts dating back to around 2450 BC, in a context which suggests that they were exceedingly old even then⁸). Hipparchus, the so-called discoverer of precession lived in the second century BC. He proposed a value of 45 or 46 seconds of arc for one year of precessional motion. These figures yield a one-degree shift along the ecliptic in 80 years (at 45 arc seconds per annum), and in 78.26 years (at 46 arc seconds per annum). The true figure, as calculated by twentieth century science, is 71.6 years.⁹ If Sellers's theory is correct, therefore, the 'Osiris numbers', which give a value of 72 years, are significantly more accurate than those of Hipparchus. Indeed, within the obvious confines imposed by narrative structure, it is difficult to see how the number 72 could have been improved upon, even if the more precise figure had been known to the ancient myth-makers. One can hardly insert 71.6 conspirators into a story, but 72 will fit comfortably.
Working from this rounded-up figure, the Osiris myth is capable of yielding a value of 2160 years for a precessional shift through one complete house of the zodiac. The correct figure, according to today's calculations, is 2148 years.¹⁰ The Hipparchus figures are 2400 years and 2347.8 years respectively. Finally, Osiris enables us to calculate 25,920 as the number of years required for the fulfilment of a complete precessional cycle through 12 houses of the zodiac.

/ Page 276 /

Hipparchus gives us either 28,800 or 28,173.6 years. The correct figure, by today's estimates, is 25,776 years.¹¹ The Hipparchus calculations for the Great Return are therefore around 3000 years out of kilter. The Osiris calculations miss the true figure by only 144 years, and may well do so because the narrative context forced a rounding-up of the base number from the correct value of 71.6 to a more workable figure of 72.
All this, however, assumes that Sellers is right to suppose that the numbers 360, 72, 30 and 12 did not find their way into the Osiris myth by chance but were placed there deliberately by people who understood - and had accurately measured - precession.
Is Sellers right?
 The scribe again counts letters

The twa brothers then Re - cap

Page 248 /

"...In short it seems that secret knowledge is indeed available in the myth of Osiris and in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. With this secret knowledge, if we wanted to fix a specific date - say 1008 years in the future - and communicate it to other initiates, then we could do so with the 'special number' 14 (72 x 14 = 1008). We would also have to specify the 'zero point' from which they were to make their calculations - i.e the present epoch - and this might be done with some kind of symbolic or mathematical marker to indicate where the vernal point presently is, i.e. moving out of Pisces and into Aquarius."
 

Page 890.

8 x 9 iz 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 seventy-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 customary 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."
One this page 890, two and seventy occurs once. Seventy-two occurs four times. Five times seventy-two makes three hundred and sixty as in "three hundred and sixty days of the year not counting the odd days,"
 
Page 891.

8 x 9 x 1 = 72.
Second and third line down.
"Possibly at the last minute one of the seventy-two."
 

Page 274.

"Seventy-two = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic."
 
  During this stillness of a moving point the Zed Aliz Zed yon scribe and those come hither go thither, but mostly go thither shadows, accompanied wah Brother Graham on talkabout.

 Page 310

Tombs and Tombs Only?
 "Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure . . . Cheops, Chephren, Mycernius. Whether they were referred to by their Egyptian or Greek names, the fact remained that these three pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty ( 2575 - 2467 BC) were universally acclaimed as the builders of the Giza pyramids."
Fourth Dynasty ( 2575 - 2467 BC) . . . 2575 take away 2467 = 180.
 

Khufu 5, Khafre 6, Menkaure 8 . . . Cheops 6, Chephren 8, Mycernius 9.
5 + 6 + 8 = 19 . . . . . . . . . 6 + 8 + 9 = 23 . . . . . . . 19 + 23 = 42 . . . divided by the six names = 7
5 x 6 x 8 = 24 . . . . . . . . . 6 x 8 x 9 = 432 . . . . . . . 24 + 432 = 456
 After the re-inclusion of the brothers offerings, sent on a wing and a prayer via marathon man, Zed Aliz Zed said. Here thy iz wah scribe, other, someat n' nowts for thee ta include.
 

Page 96

9 x 6 = 54

" There exist not one, but three universal languages. The first of them can be spoken and written while remaining within the limits of ones' own language. The only difference is that when people speak in their ordinary language they do not understand one another but in this other language they do understand. In the second language, written language is the same for all peoples, like say figures or mathematical formulae; but people still speak their own language yet each of them understands the other even though the other speaks in an unknown language. The third language is the same for all both the written and the spoken. The difference of language disappears altogether on this level."
Thus spake the prophet Gurdjieff.
 
Page 283

"In western systems of occultism there is a method known by the name of 'theosophical addition', that is, the definition of numbers consisting of two or more digits by the sum of those digits. To people who do not understand the symbolism of numbers this method of synthesizing numbers seems to be absolutely arbitrary and to lead nowhere. But for a man who understands the unity of everything existing and who has the key to this unity the method of theosophical addition has a profound meaning, for it resolves all diversity into the fundamental laws which
govern it and which are expressed in the numbers 1 to 10. As was mentioned earlier in symbology,
as represented , numbers are connected with definate geometrical figures and are mutually
complimentary one to another. In the Cabala a symbology of letters is also used and in combination with the symbology of letters a symbology of words.A combination of the four methods of symbolism by numbers, geometrical figures, letters and words, give a complicated but more perfect method."
Thus spake the prophet Gurdjieff