Thursday, April 19, 2007
PHOENIXFIRE 6
Sorry about the delay with PhoenixFire 6,I have been in Egypt and Brazil, we should be recording the show on the 22nd of April, and it should be posted by the 24th.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
PHOENIXFIRE 6
PhoenixFire 6 will be delayed until about the third week in April due to my travel commitments.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
PHOENIXFIRE 5
Son of Mystery of the Sphinx, part 3.
The book of Boris.
RIP. Boris Said.
My ex-partner (and ex-friend) Boris Said died on March 24, 2002 of liver cancer, aged sixty-nine. Those on this list who have been following the long, convoluted progress of the Sphinx theory and all that relates to it may be familiar with Boris's name and with his role in producing our video, MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX. Without that video, the theory and all the rest would be relegated to a distant back burner on an obscure stove somewhere. Boris's name and his memory are tied in my mind inextricably to that project.
Those who met Boris at any time over the course of his 69 years, even briefly, probably will not have forgotten him; physically powerful, radiating an almost superhuman, high octane intensity, with a quick, coarse humor and and even quicker, coarser temper, infinitely resourceful especially when his back was to the wall -- which it usually was, since he found ways to make sure that's where it stayed. Boris Said (pronounced Sa-yeed - half Russian, half Persian) was a memorable, unique (well, we are all unique, but some are more unique than others) larger-than-life character, ex-race driver (Ferrari/Porsche -- sports cars, never made Formula driving) ex-Captain of the U.S. Olympic Bobsled team, absolutely fearless; a man of endless anecdotes, endlessly dreaming up admirable projects, indefatigably organizing film crews, support, sponsors, finances and then, almost as if programmed, finding ways to sabotage these projects just prior to completion, bringing everyone involved down with the ship, including himself. As self-destructive as he was destructive, Boris made many enemies; and unfortunately kept but few friends.
One of these days, in the multi-volume autobiography I work on sporadically, the Book of Boris section will be vivid reading, and it won't be brief. I do not know exactly who or what the demon was that drove him, but driven he was, only very rarely arriving at his chosen destination. There was a memorial service for him in New York, attended, I'm told, by a couple of dozen people he'd somehow managed not to alienate. I wasn't included in the invitation list; perhaps because it was feared I might stand up and say pretty much what I'm saying here, and I would have, so this was a wise decision. (I can never understand this custom of eulogizing people at death no matter what their faults may have been or how much havoc they may have caused in life. What's the point? Is the ka of the deceased hovering about, and hearing everyone spouting a lot of well-intentioned baloney, it says to itself: Gee, I guess I wasn't such a louse after all? This is not esoteric philosophy as I understand it!)
Why not just tell it as you see it; the good and the ill?) In this case, while others might have been at that service largely because they'd never actually been burnt by Boris, I might have been the only person there who had something specific to be actively grateful to him for, and so might have made a unique contribution to the gathering.
MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX was, I think, the only one of Boris's many projects that made it to completion and a showing. Without him that video would not have been produced or launched. At the same time, it was only through the concerted efforts of the rest of our crew, realizing along the line how destructive and divisive he was and uniting to prevent him from scuttling it before it was complete, that we managed to rescue it. It was a hair's breadth escape at that. Later we learned he'd managed to plunder close to $150,000 out of the till along the way. So, successful as the show was, (one of the most successful documentaries ever made) it ended up, and to this day remains, deep in the red.
But MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX is not just another documentary. A financial debacle it was, certainly; but much more than finance is at stake in terms of science, scholarship, the history and possibly even the future of human civilization itself. If our Sphinx theory is endorsed by the geology panel we intend to bring to Egypt in the near term future, and if that produces the desired impact, forcing a radical rewriting across a spectrum of disciplines, Boris will have played a key, unique and absolutely essential role in that process. Nobody else could have or would have done what he did. Without him there would be nothing.
I do not know if plea bargaining is allowed in the Great Court of Osiris, but if it is, I like to think that his role in making this show happen, thereby generating all that followed...(and that is yet to come) will be placed on the feather-side of Ma'at's balance. For the heart side, I suspect, will not be light.
While we were working on the show, before relations got edgy, and long before I realized the extent of the wholesale financial plunder, Boris started calling me Pharoah (a role I was never very comfortable with! Royal Scribe, maybe, OK. But Pharoah? No ... not my style.) Anyway, I retaliated by calling him 'General' for which he was, at least in principle, much better suited. I can think of nothing Boris would like less in death than to have people wish him: Rest in Peace!
My own posthumous message would be: No, don't rest in peace. Charge!!! But this time, if you're given another chance on that battlefield, train your weapons on the enemy! Not on your own troops and yourself! Understood?
Adios, General!
CLICK HERE TO HEAR PHOENIXFIRE SHOW 5
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
PHOENIXFIRE 4
Son of Mystery of the Sphinx, part 2.
When I began this Son of Mystery of the Sphinx program I knew that there were considerable mnemonic funds squirreled away in the Long Term Memory Bank but I had never really tried to tally up the balance sheet. As it turned out there is a treasure trove of detail there, a saga Hollywoodian in its complexity, with embittered opposing scholarly factions, academic, journalistic and financial skullduggery aplenty, a bizarre tapestry of interwoven plot threads, a cast of improbable characters Central Casting would be proud of …
What was intended as a single program has now stretched to two … with, I now realize to my own astonishment, still more to come.
In this thrilling episode we enlist the services of the NYPD’s chief forensic detective Frank Domingo, to question a highly questionable but hitherto largely unquestioned Egyptological assertion; our presentation at the Geological Society of America’s Annual Meeting produces media fireworks, international headlines and academic sparks that quickly fan into flames…and more…
CLICK TO HEAR PHOENIXFIRE SHOW 4
When I began this Son of Mystery of the Sphinx program I knew that there were considerable mnemonic funds squirreled away in the Long Term Memory Bank but I had never really tried to tally up the balance sheet. As it turned out there is a treasure trove of detail there, a saga Hollywoodian in its complexity, with embittered opposing scholarly factions, academic, journalistic and financial skullduggery aplenty, a bizarre tapestry of interwoven plot threads, a cast of improbable characters Central Casting would be proud of …
What was intended as a single program has now stretched to two … with, I now realize to my own astonishment, still more to come.
In this thrilling episode we enlist the services of the NYPD’s chief forensic detective Frank Domingo, to question a highly questionable but hitherto largely unquestioned Egyptological assertion; our presentation at the Geological Society of America’s Annual Meeting produces media fireworks, international headlines and academic sparks that quickly fan into flames…and more…
CLICK TO HEAR PHOENIXFIRE SHOW 4
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Debunking the debunkers
Adrastus writes in Thothweb
>I remember in a class I took with Kent Weeks, back in the early 90's (before he spent all his time on KV5) someone asked him about John Anthony West. Without missing a beat, Doc Weeks said "John Anthony West? What can I say? He's not a real Egyptologist...His methods are sloppy, his ideas are ludicrous, and his mother dresses him funny."
We all had a great laugh about that.<
Jaw responds
>Without missing a beat, Doc Weeks said "John Anthony West? What can I say? He's not a real Egyptologist..<
Correct; I am not a ‘real’ Egyptologist. That is why I know something.
The ‘real’ Egyptologists (with a very few exceptions, Weeks not among them) spend their time arguing over how many asps killed Cleopatra* or, like Doc Weeks, scrabble around on their knees (apposite position) in the dust of yet another meaningless tomb, sifting rubble and eventually publishing a meaningless book or meaningless paper of zero interest or significance to anyone. **
>His methods are sloppy, his ideas are ludicrous,<
Without examples or citations it is impossible to address the charge of sloppiness, but no examples are needed to address ‘ludicrous’.
If Doc Weeks is talking about my work on the water-weathering of the Sphinx and the need to drastically redate it, it should be enough to say that at two separate Annual Meetings of the Geological Society of America (1991, 2000) the overwhelming, indeed, near unanimous reaction of hundreds of professional geologists was that our evidence looked very convincing indeed. The word ‘sloppy’ was never used, nor did anyone shout ‘ludicrous’.
I should also like to point out here, or re-point out (as George Bernard Shaw liked to say, ‘I always quote myself. It adds spice to the conversation.’) the argument about the Sphinx is based upon weathering patterns in rock, plain and simple, and when it comes to opinions about weathering patterns in rocks, an Egyptologist’s opinion is no better than a proctologist’s.
If ‘ludicrous’ refers to the ‘Symbolist’ interpretation of Egypt that I champion, as developed by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, well, that is another matter; one not to be solved by ‘hard’ science as such but rather supported by a corpus of meticulously accumulated and detailed factual documentation.
Thereafter, what is required is an ability to accurately interpret those facts. This is where ‘real’ Egyptologists like Doc Weeks find themselves in uncharted and, for them, scary territory. Their reaction to this work is, however, perfectly understandable.
The Tao Te Ching (google it up, Adrastus) summarizes the situation well.
‘When the best student is taught the Tao, he practices it assiduously.
When the average student is taught the Tao it seems to him there one moment and gone the next.
When the worst student is taught the Tao, he laughs out loud; if he did not laugh, it would be unworthy of being the Tao.’
Or put another way; it is futile to talk moonbeams to the blind, or music to the deaf, and dangerous to talk sex to eunuchs, they just get angry, sometimes violent.
BTW, I note that the career of the legendary Adrastus was marked chiefly by a succession of failures; certainly a well-chosen pseudonym.
>‘…and his mother dresses him funny ‘ We all had a great laugh about that’<
I trust you’re still laughing.
John Anthony West
>I remember in a class I took with Kent Weeks, back in the early 90's (before he spent all his time on KV5) someone asked him about John Anthony West. Without missing a beat, Doc Weeks said "John Anthony West? What can I say? He's not a real Egyptologist...His methods are sloppy, his ideas are ludicrous, and his mother dresses him funny."
We all had a great laugh about that.<
Jaw responds
>Without missing a beat, Doc Weeks said "John Anthony West? What can I say? He's not a real Egyptologist..<
Correct; I am not a ‘real’ Egyptologist. That is why I know something.
The ‘real’ Egyptologists (with a very few exceptions, Weeks not among them) spend their time arguing over how many asps killed Cleopatra* or, like Doc Weeks, scrabble around on their knees (apposite position) in the dust of yet another meaningless tomb, sifting rubble and eventually publishing a meaningless book or meaningless paper of zero interest or significance to anyone. **
*Serpent in the Sky, p.9, margin note.
**cf., a list of abstracts of any Egyptological conference anywhere in the world.
>His methods are sloppy, his ideas are ludicrous,<
Without examples or citations it is impossible to address the charge of sloppiness, but no examples are needed to address ‘ludicrous’.
If Doc Weeks is talking about my work on the water-weathering of the Sphinx and the need to drastically redate it, it should be enough to say that at two separate Annual Meetings of the Geological Society of America (1991, 2000) the overwhelming, indeed, near unanimous reaction of hundreds of professional geologists was that our evidence looked very convincing indeed. The word ‘sloppy’ was never used, nor did anyone shout ‘ludicrous’.
I should also like to point out here, or re-point out (as George Bernard Shaw liked to say, ‘I always quote myself. It adds spice to the conversation.’) the argument about the Sphinx is based upon weathering patterns in rock, plain and simple, and when it comes to opinions about weathering patterns in rocks, an Egyptologist’s opinion is no better than a proctologist’s.
If ‘ludicrous’ refers to the ‘Symbolist’ interpretation of Egypt that I champion, as developed by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, well, that is another matter; one not to be solved by ‘hard’ science as such but rather supported by a corpus of meticulously accumulated and detailed factual documentation.
Thereafter, what is required is an ability to accurately interpret those facts. This is where ‘real’ Egyptologists like Doc Weeks find themselves in uncharted and, for them, scary territory. Their reaction to this work is, however, perfectly understandable.
The Tao Te Ching (google it up, Adrastus) summarizes the situation well.
‘When the best student is taught the Tao, he practices it assiduously.
When the average student is taught the Tao it seems to him there one moment and gone the next.
When the worst student is taught the Tao, he laughs out loud; if he did not laugh, it would be unworthy of being the Tao.’
Or put another way; it is futile to talk moonbeams to the blind, or music to the deaf, and dangerous to talk sex to eunuchs, they just get angry, sometimes violent.
BTW, I note that the career of the legendary Adrastus was marked chiefly by a succession of failures; certainly a well-chosen pseudonym.
>‘…and his mother dresses him funny ‘ We all had a great laugh about that’<
I trust you’re still laughing.
John Anthony West
Monday, February 5, 2007
PHOENIXFIRE 3
Son of Mystery of the Sphinx, part 1. The Geo-panel and the quest to rewrite history.
The true age of the Great Sphinx of Giza may seem like an academic question, to be discussed among academics. The answer would seem to have little to do with the price of eggs, or of gasoline, for that matter. Why should we care?
Central to our reigning and entrenched Church of Progress is the unshakeable conviction that we of the 21st Century, represent the highest (read ‘most evolved’) specimens of humanity ever to have accidentally mutated through 'a series of lucky coincidences' (in the immortal words of Daniel Dennett) on this planet.
But the Great Sphinx is beyond doubt the most spectacular single sculpture ever produced by human beings and the temples adjacent to it are the result of an astounding technology that we cannot emulate today, not even with the most advanced moving equipment at our disposal. In other words, we don’t know how they did it – a fact carefully avoided in the hallowed Groves of Quackademe.
Even in its standard chronology (supposedly carved around 2500BC) the Great Sphinx stands (or rather rests magnificently recumbent) as an enigma –maybe that’s why the much later Greeks had the idea to use the Sphinx (in a variant of their own) as the embodiment of mysteriousness and inscrutability: in their famous Riddle of the Sphinx.
But if the Sphinx is much older, by untold thousands of years, than its accepted attribution, that in and of itself throws the whole notion of Progress (as a perhaps disorderly but nevertheless inevitable linear process leading from the primitives of the past to our advanced technological selves) into serious, perhaps terminal disarray.
In PhoenixFire 3, I tell the tale of the quest, now some 40 years in the making. Through a set of odd coincidences I'm put in touch with Boston Geologist Robert M. Schoch. Initially skeptical, Schoch eventually becomes convinced the water weathering theory is correct, and puts his tenured neck on the block to promote it. Between us we set out to unriddle the Sphinx and in the process eventually force a drastic revision of all of very ancient history and with it - perhaps even more importantly - of the standard and accepted account of the development and evolution of human civilization . We are not who or what we think we are and it may be a matter of critical consequence to understand who we really are, and who we really once were.
While even this will not directly affect the price of eggs or gasoline, it might, with luck, oblige us to look upon such merely economic matters in a new and very different qualitative light.
CLICK TO HEAR PHOENIXFIRE SHOW 3
The true age of the Great Sphinx of Giza may seem like an academic question, to be discussed among academics. The answer would seem to have little to do with the price of eggs, or of gasoline, for that matter. Why should we care?
Central to our reigning and entrenched Church of Progress is the unshakeable conviction that we of the 21st Century, represent the highest (read ‘most evolved’) specimens of humanity ever to have accidentally mutated through 'a series of lucky coincidences' (in the immortal words of Daniel Dennett) on this planet.
But the Great Sphinx is beyond doubt the most spectacular single sculpture ever produced by human beings and the temples adjacent to it are the result of an astounding technology that we cannot emulate today, not even with the most advanced moving equipment at our disposal. In other words, we don’t know how they did it – a fact carefully avoided in the hallowed Groves of Quackademe.
Even in its standard chronology (supposedly carved around 2500BC) the Great Sphinx stands (or rather rests magnificently recumbent) as an enigma –maybe that’s why the much later Greeks had the idea to use the Sphinx (in a variant of their own) as the embodiment of mysteriousness and inscrutability: in their famous Riddle of the Sphinx.
But if the Sphinx is much older, by untold thousands of years, than its accepted attribution, that in and of itself throws the whole notion of Progress (as a perhaps disorderly but nevertheless inevitable linear process leading from the primitives of the past to our advanced technological selves) into serious, perhaps terminal disarray.
In PhoenixFire 3, I tell the tale of the quest, now some 40 years in the making. Through a set of odd coincidences I'm put in touch with Boston Geologist Robert M. Schoch. Initially skeptical, Schoch eventually becomes convinced the water weathering theory is correct, and puts his tenured neck on the block to promote it. Between us we set out to unriddle the Sphinx and in the process eventually force a drastic revision of all of very ancient history and with it - perhaps even more importantly - of the standard and accepted account of the development and evolution of human civilization . We are not who or what we think we are and it may be a matter of critical consequence to understand who we really are, and who we really once were.
While even this will not directly affect the price of eggs or gasoline, it might, with luck, oblige us to look upon such merely economic matters in a new and very different qualitative light.
CLICK TO HEAR PHOENIXFIRE SHOW 3
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
