The Eighth Tower
Other Anomalist Books by John A. Keel
________________________
Jadoo
Operation Trojan Horse
The Eighth Tower:
on Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum
John A. Keel
Anomalist Books
San Antonio * Charlottesville
The Eighth Tower: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum
Copyright © 1975 and 2013 by John A. Keel and the Estate of John A. Keel
ISBN: 9781938398186
Originally published by the Saturday Review Press in 1975. The Estate of John A. Keel has authorized this Anomalist Books edition.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Book design by Seale Studios
For information, go to AnomalistBooks.com, or write to: Anomalist Books, 5150 Broadway #108, San Antonio, TX 78209
PART ONE
I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive.— Charles Fort
1
“What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?” Gestas, a fully accredited scoundrel, gasped as the ropes around his arms sawed into his flesh.
“How come you couldn’t beat this hum rap?” Dismas grunted, his body hanging loose against the wooden beam, defeated by the irrevocable law of gravity.
Between them, suspended from a third wooden cross of questionable workmanship, the man named Yehoshuah moaned and mumbled incoherently. Unlike his two companions, Yehoshuah was not tied to the crossbeam but had been nailed in place. He was in considerable pain. A heavy spike had been driven into each of his palms and his full weight rested upon the delicate muscles and hones of his bleeding hands. The tension on his outstretched arms worked against the other muscles in his body, particularly his diaphragm, which actuates the lungs. Breathing would become increasingly more difficult until, finally, death by asphyxiation would result.
Overhead, the desert sun dimmed and the skies darkened.
“What’d he say?” Gaius Cassius asked.
“Don’t know. Something about somebody named Elias. Must be one of those freaks that were hanging around him.”
“They all took off in a hurry, didn’t they?” The centurion chuckled.
“They wanted to save their own skins. Never saw it fall.”
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Cassius asked his friend.
“The robe that guy was wearing. It’s a pretty good robe.”
“Yeah, well if that’s all we’re getting out of this, we might as well cut it up.”
“It’s too good to cut. It’s really a good robe.”
“Okay, okay. Then we’ll draw lots. The winner keeps the whole thing. Somebody might as well get something our of this.”
“Funny. That guy made all kinds of claims. He was a real religious nut, you know. And all he left behind was this robe? “Rotten business,” Cassius winced. “A man lives thirty years and all that’s left is a piece of cloth. Nobody will even remember his name.”
“What was his name anyway?”
“Yehoshuah. Doesn’t mean a thing. There’s thousands of Yehoshuahs around here.”
Writing spurious biblical dialogues has been a very profitable business for centuries. Scores of best-selling novels have appeared, all based on minor references, even single lines, in the Scriptures. Children’s books and Sunday school papers by the thousands have presented reconstructions of vaguely defined biblical events, offering imaginary conversations carefully phrased in King James’s English. The reality of those events was certainly far removed from the pious thee and thou of the modern interpreters. As the life and death of the man called Yehoshuah assumed increasing importance across the centuries, an army of fanatical scholars labored to verify obtuse scriptural references from other historical writings, and a mountain of myth supplanted molehills of fact. Interpretation became a theological art.
Did Yehoshuah exist at all? The slender evidence accepted by billions of people during the past two thousand years would not stand up in a modern court of law. It does not even meet the more flexible standards of contemporary journalism. The ancient codices, or parchment scrolls, recounting the life and death of Yehoshuah were compiled many years after the events, and were based upon hearsay instead of direct eyewitness testimony. While they presumed knowledge of the intricate details of Yehoshuah’s birth, these codices offer no information whatsoever about his[1] formative years, nor do they furnish substantive background on his family.
We do not even know this man’s full name.
Yehoshuah, which means Joshua in English, was gradually isolated from his Judaic background by theologians anxious to make him acceptable to the gentile population. The earliest codices were written in Greek rather than Aramaic, the language of Mesopotamia, which had been adopted by the Jews. The Greek rendering of Joshua is Jesus. Jesus was known as Yehoshuah during his lifetime, and the Greek version did not come into usage until about A.D. 100, nearly two generations after his death.
The term Christ or the Christ was not formally added to the name Jesus until about A.D. 400. However, Yehoshuah’s disciples were contemptuously labeled Christians a few years after the crucifixion. Christ stems from the Greek Christos, the translation of the Hebrew mashiakh, which means “anointed one” or “Messiah.” Yehoshuah himself did not claim to be the Messiah. According to the biblical texts, he repeatedly referred to himself as “the son of man.”
In a literal sense, Jesus Christ never existed.
Not too many years ago anyone who dared question the validity of the Scriptures would have been stoned to death in the public square or, at minimum, ruined financially and ostracized socially. But in the last century a group of leading theologians and religious scholars took a very close look at those documents and concluded that the entire Yehoshuah/Christ story could be seriously questioned. The Gospels describing Christ’s life and ministry were derived from a single source, according to those who studied the style and content of the original codices. (The validity of many other parts of the Bible, such as Jonah’s testimony about his adventure inside the whale, is now mired in controversy.) Other religious and historical documents of the period make no reference to Christ, including the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which were hidden away about thirty years after his death. Early fanatics tried to correct this deficiency by composing a number of false records and documents. Court records and official documents covering the first years of the first century were later methodically collected and destroyed. All that remains are the somewhat unsatisfactory and contradictory biblical texts.
Fundamentalists—those who take the Bible literally—manage to overlook the less than flattering profile of Christ in the New Testament. He is clearly described as a man who led a small band of thieves and prostitutes who openly defied the authorities and violated the laws of that place and time. While professing humility and concern for the impoverished, he had his followers wash his feet in an extremely expensive form of perfume, and his body was interred in a tomb that had been prepared for a wealthy man. On the cross he did not behave like a man undergoing a death that had long been prophesied. In fact, he died with less dignity than the two thieves who shared his fate. He moaned and groaned, and whined that he had been forsaken.
Nevertheless, billions of people have responded emotionally to the story of Christ and his suffering, just as an almost identical story dominated the Egyptian civilization for four thousand years. The spiritual life of Egypt was centered on the myth of Os
iris, who, like Chris, was a great spiritual leader who sacrificed his life in a fight against evil. And, like Christ, his apparition returned to guide his people in times of trial. Many of the Christian beliefs are adaptations of the earlier Osiris theology that eventually spread to Greece. The Greeks had a great influence on early Christianity, and many of their earlier beliefs overlapped into the new religion.
According to E. A. Wallis Budge, the great archaeologist and Egyptologist,
The story of Osiris is nowhere found in connected form in Egyptian literature, but everywhere, and in texts of all periods, the life, sufferings, death and resurrection of Osiris are accepted as facts universally admitted. Osiris was the god through whose suffering and death the Egyptian hoped that his body might rise again in some transformed or glorified shape, and to him who had conquered death and had become the king of the other world the Egyptian appealed in prayer for eternal life through his victory and power. In every funeral inscription known to us, from the pyramid texts down to the roughly written prayers upon coffins of the Roman period, what is done for Osiris is done also for the deceased, the state and condition of Osiris are the state and condition of the deceased; in a word, the deceased is identified with Osiris. [2]
When I was living in India, I was puzzled by the frequent rumors and stories of direct encounters with the myriad Hindu gods. Even today lone individuals strolling through the bush reportedly come upon luminous entities who resemble the fierce deities of the ancients and receive messages designed to support and enhance their particular beliefs and frame of reference. Similarly, apparitions resembling the traditional artists’ concept of Christ appear annually before thousands of people, offering them comfort and reaffirming their belief. I have interviewed several of these percipients and have been impressed by their mental stability, honesty, and sincerity. In order for the myth of Osiris to have survived for four thousand years, it is very probably that apparitions of Osiris also manifested themselves frequently and repeatedly, generation after generation.
The central problem is not the questionable reality of these images of Vishnu, Osiris, and Christ. It is the human and/or cosmic system that produces the entities and the beliefs they motivate. Are these things mere hallucinations, tricks of the human mind and malfunctions of the human sensory apparatus? Or are they produced by a mysterious exterior force that has the ability to manipulate us? If so, what is the purpose underlying such manipulations?
These are not easy questions to answer.
The existence of Christ is of less importance than the influence that the belief in his existence has had upon a large segment of the human race. Even the biblical texts admit that Christ had little or no effect upon his own people during his lifetime. It was not until after his death that the Christian movement was born. His disciples wandered leaderless across the Middle East, preaching his teachings. But if Christianity had relied on a few wandering illiterates for its preservation, we would still be worshipping Zeus and Baal.
Christ was more a symbol than a founder of a new theology. The theology was borrowed from the Egyptians and Greeks and refined over the centuries by scholars and intellectuals, tailored to suit the continuing manifestations of seemingly supernatural forces. The manifestations described in the Bible are still occurring, often on a worldwide scale during given periods of time, and we are just now beginning to understand the mechanism that causes them. Before the end of this century we will have a complete scientific explanation, and many of our religious and occult beliefs will have to be revised or abandoned altogether.
In the Acts of the Apostles, the story of Paul’s conversion is repeated three times (Acts, 9: 1-19; 22: 5-16; 26: 12-18), and it describes a series of manifestations that have occurred repeatedly in modern times with only minor variations. Surprisingly, these manifestations are largely ignored today, even by the theologians who complain that “God is dead” and that the wonders of biblical times have long since ceased. We are, in fact, surrounded by the same kind of happenings that were once regarded as miracles.
Saul of Tarsus was a tentmaker and a man of some education when he set out on the road to Damascus to join a battle against the growing Christian cult. At high noon on the desert a blinding light “above the sun” appeared suddenly, and Saul fell flat on his face, possibly going into a trance. The men traveling with him reportedly heard a voice but saw nothing. When Saul arose, or regained consciousness, he was blinded. He remained blind for three days. Then Ananias, a Christian who had visions, was guided to Saul, touched him, and cured his blindness instantly. Impressed, Saul gave up his hobby—killing Christians—and changed his name to Paul. He was instrumental in spreading Christianity, even though he had not known Christ personally. (However, he did believe that the voice from the light was Christ’s.)
Blinding aerial lights from an unknown source still appear hundreds of times each year, and thousands of witnesses have suffered temporary conjunctivitis similar to the eye burn you can experience on a beach if you don’t protect your eyes from the sun. This is caused by the ultraviolet actinic rays, which can also tan your skin. Loyal flying-saucer fans around the world have documented innumerable cases of this.
An even more curious effect of these “meandering nocturnal lights,” as the U.S. Air Force calls them, is temporary deafness, probably caused by high-frequency ultrasonic waves generated by rapid pulsating. It is not unusual for witnesses to such lights to lapse into epileptic-type trances and experience elaborate hallucinations. Some see horrible monsters, while others see space creatures, angels, and great luminous godlike beings.
All great religions and countless fringe cults began with the exposure of a single person to this phenomenon. Saul, Daniel, and other biblical personages saw luminous phenomena at the outset of their adventures, usually failing on their faces or passing out. While in this condition they received messages and accurate prophecies. Later, when they passed the prophecies on to their friends and followers, and those predictions came true right on the nose, they felt the holiness of their condition had been proven. The ranks of their followers grew. It was this process that inspired the spread of Christianity.
In other ages the same process spawned the pagan religions and the myths of demonology. Various studies have found that between 10 and 15 percent of the population have extrasensory equipment and can see slightly beyond the narrow band of the spectrum of visible light. They can also project and receive thoughts (ESP), and a few are even able to tune into the future and intercept brief flashes or visions of events yet to come. Their talents attract less gifted individuals, so they become prophets and cult leaders. Some receive almost daily visits from entities who dictate ponderous books that supposedly contain vital information for the whole human race. There are now thousands of these “inspired” books, most of them privately published and poorly circulated. The authors are usually poorly educated and not well read. They are totally unaware of the fact that the same information, most of which is nonsensical, has been tediously transcribed and published by thousands of others across the ages. It is almost as if some giant phonograph in the sky has been patiently playing the same record over and over again for centuries.
The early Christians heard a replay of the record that had stimulated the followers of Osiris thousands of years earlier. Today many UFO contactees (people who think they have had direct personal contact with unidentified flying objects from some other planet) are caught up in this tired game. Like Saul, they have been exposed to a blinding light followed by a vision or by an aural, or audio, hallucination. Often the experience is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of euphoria almost sexual in nature. Religionists call this an “ecstasy.” It is a kind of mental orgasm. It is not unusual for percipients to change their entire way of life after the experience, quitting their jobs, divorcing or abandoning their wives and families, and changing their names. (Earlier percipients adopted biblical or angelic names, while modern UFO contactees often become convinced that they are spacepeople the
mselves and are given space names. For example, one prominent contactee of the 1950s became “Prince Neosam” of Saturn.) Generally speaking, exposure to this phenomenon is ultimately destructive to the individual. He or she is reprogrammed to self-destruct. Saul/Paul died in prison. Others have been murdered or assassinated. Suicide is common, as are complete emotional breakdowns. At best, the victims are reduced to fanaticism. The pale religious zealots proudly exposing themselves to laughter and ridicule on city street corners are often victims of this visionary process. So, too, are the fiery-eyed flying-saucer advocates who preach the plurality of inhabited worlds and the arrival of the Brothers from space who are coming to save us from ourselves.
This cosmic system for reprogramming the human mind was brought under temporal control when the world was divided up by the great religions. But the control was broken with the founding of the United States with its constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. In the early 1800s those mysterious aerial lights launched a score of new religions in America. A boy named Joseph Smith fainted dead away in a farm field in New York State and heard from the angel Moroni. He founded the Mormon religion and was eventually murdered. Others launched the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other religions. All kinds of new bibles were inspired, from The Book of Mormon to Oahspe (which was written by a New York dentist while in a trance state), just as the Muslim bible, the Koran, had been dictated to the prophet Mohammed a few centuries earlier.
Large portions of the Bible were undoubtedly produced in the same way: dictated to psychics who humbly accepted the prophet’s role. Modern UFO contactees are often able to describe their experiences and the long, involved spoken messages of the benign space Brothers in a singsong, memorized manner as if the whole thing had been implanted into their brain by rote. The earlier prophets probably had this same ability, so even those who were totally illiterate were able to recite everything to a scribe or priest later. In those days almost anything written down was considered holy. The scrolls dictated by the prophets were carefully guarded in churches and temples and read aloud on holy days.
THE EIGHTH TOWER: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum Page 1
