The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  For this reason alone the Nine should be taken seriously, even if this requires a massive suspension of disbelief. They may be who they claim to be — the ancient Egyptian gods — but it seems highly unlikely. There is another possibility: the Nine may be real, in the sense that they are not hoaxes or delusions — and not monsters created by Dr Frankenstein-Puharich - but genuine nonhuman intelligences trying to deceive us into thinking that they are the Heliopolitan Ennead for reasons of their own.153

  We have already noted the influence that the Nine have over the New Age, but there are other arenas in which their influence is surprisingly, not to say disturbingly, strong. As we have seen, Richard Hoagland gave a lecture at the United Nations, organised by a special interest group of UN employees and representatives called the Society for Enlightenment and Transformation (SEAT), run by employees Susan Karaban and Mohammad Ramadan. It is heavily influenced by the Nine, as can be inferred by the identity of previous SEAT speakers at the UN, who included James Hurtak and Andrija Puharich. Hurtak has also written articles for the SEAT newsletter on the Face on Mars and extraterrestrial intelligence.

  Mohammad Ramadan gave a lecture at the First Scandinavian Conference on Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Future in Helsinki, Finland, in November 1996, in which he quoted extensively from the Nine. The theme of his lecture was the potential impact of widespread belief in extraterrestrial communication, if and when the spaceships land. He used channelled material to illustrate what the extraterrestrials themselves thought about this, although he added words of caution about their reliability and the possibility of the message being distorted by the channellers’ minds. But he has a novel solution to this problem: ‘I have taken special care to use the messages taken only from their highest hierarchy, that is from beings of the 5th Dimension and above, or the ultra-terrestrials as futurist Dr James Hurtak calls them.’154

  But we only know which extraterrestrials are fifth-dimensional because they tell us. In other words, Ramadan only trusts the entities that tell him they’re trustworthy. And the only people who appear to be qualified to sort the extraterrestrial wheat from the chaff are Phyllis Schlemmer and James Hurtak.

  Some of the figures lurking further back in the shadows also reappear time and time throughout this story, such as the American multimillionaire (and former Navy intelligence officer) Henry Belk, a close associate of Puharich in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of the few who attended his funeral in 1995. Belk appears in the acknowledgements of The Only Planet of Choice as the person ‘who started it all’, although tantalisingly, how he did this is not explained. He is known to have funded James Hurtak,155 and the two of them were also involved with another controversial research foundation with particularly high-level connections. This was the Human Potential Foundation, which was founded in 1989 by Senator Claiborne Pell, and whose president was one of Pell’s aides, C.B. ‘Scott’ Jones, a veteran of US Navy intelligence.

  According to Jim Schnabel, ‘Scott Jones was in touch with a ring of psychics around the United States, who he occasionally put in touch with various intelligence officials on operational matters.’156 One of Jones’s favourite psychics was Alex Tannous, who also worked for the US Army’s Project GRILL FLAME, and in 1984 was brought in by the CIA to remote view the location of a CIA station chief who had been kidnapped in Beirut. (Tannous identified the correct place and accurately revealed that the agent was dead, although this seemed highly unlikely at the time.)157 Jones invited Tannous to remote view the Sphinx: the results of this are unknown, although it is known that Jones sent his report to ARE.158

  The Human Potential Foundation received funding from several prominent individuals, including Laurence Rockefeller. Its employees included Dick Farley, who resigned in 1994 after three years as director of program development.

  From his inside knowledge, Farley has become extremely concerned about the increasing influence of the Council of Nine over politicians and decision-makers. He writes that the Nine ‘maintain a working network of physicists and psychics, intelligence operatives and powerful billionaires, who are less concerned about their “source” and its weirdness than they are about having every advantage and new data edge in what they believe is a battle for Earth itself.’159

  Farley records a meeting of Jones, Henry Belk and James Hurtak to discuss, among other things, the funding of the Human Potential Foundation.160 This suggests that Hurtak’s - and the Nine’s — philosophy is reaching the highest levels of US politics. Jones’s superior, Senator Claiborne Pell, is an extremely powerful figure in Washington. He was Chairman of the Senate’s influential Foreign Relations Committee and is the elder statesman whom the younger Vice-President Al Gore has come to respect. Pell and Gore worked closely together when the latter was a senator. The two share a passionate belief in the paranormal and both are great supporters of government-funded psi research. According to Farley, Pell has ‘long been a friend and advocate of [Henry] Belk’s’161 and he is on the board of Edgar Mitchell’s Institute of Noetic Sciences. Uri Geller told us how he had been brought in by Pell, Anthony Lake (later President Clinton’s National Security Advisor) and Gore to help ‘influence’ the Russian team at arms reductions talks in Geneva in 1987.162 Pell also arranged for Geller to secretly brief government officials on his psychic information on Soviet strategy in a secure room in the Capitol. The audience included senators and Pentagon officials.163

  There is cause for concern here. Not only do Vice-President Al Gore and Senator Claiborne Pell share the same esoteric interests, but they are also political allies. It is reasonable to assume that Gore is familiar with the Nine; if so, how much is he influenced by their teachings - or, in the worst case scenario, even their instructions? The evidence suggests that he is by no means the only top-ranking American politician to have been drawn into the Nine’s sphere of influence.

  The usual suspects

  By now it is plain that the Nine are behind the messages of Giza and Cydonia, and that all three are now inextricably entwined in a sort of inescapable juggernaut of the ‘truth’. It is impossible to have one without the other, thanks to the sterling work of the intelligence agencies, who ensure that this new belief system is constantly being topped up with new rumours and counterrumours, so that we will never fail to be gripped by the unfolding story. But welded firmly on to a very reasonable interest in the mysteries of Mars and the secrets of ancient Egypt lies the insidious presence of the Nine and their ever-eager disciples.

  Just like the New Egyptology and the Message of Cydonia, this is a scenario in which controversial ‘alternative’ events are intimately connected with, if not seemingly directed by, intelligence agencies. Moreover, these three strands, although each seemingly had independent origins, have gradually, but inexorably, been drawn together like three fish caught in the same tightening net. The pronouncements of the Nine have - through Hoagland and Myers — been integrated with the Message of Cydonia, and this in turn has been firmly welded to the mystery of the Egyptian civilisation and the search for its lost secrets.

  The same individuals play major parts in all three stories. The prime example is James Hurtak, the ultimate guru, who channels the Nine, was Puharich’s second-in-command at Lab Nine, was the first person to make the Mars — Egypt connection public, and was — and still is - also a major player in the events at Giza.

  There is also the involvement in all three stories of SRI, an organisation with intimate connections with defence and intelligence communities in the United States. SRI crops up in Giza, in the Mars story, and, through its involvement with Puharich, in the events surrounding the Nine.

  Thanks to this complex, often covert, input from clever men and women, what seems to be happening under our noses is the creation of a new belief system that efficiently brings together many different elements in order to broaden its appeal as much as possible. But does this merely represent a natural progression, a syncretism of ‘fringe’ ideas, or are they being spun together deliberately? A
nd who or what really sits at the centre of this gigantic web?

  This is a conspiracy of enormous proportions, so successful that it is impossible to pinpoint any one person or group as the real controllers, although we have catalogued those they use. We have seen how the Nine’s circle were and are supported by very wealthy people, such as Barbara Bronfman and Joyce Petschek, but it is unlikely that they are in on the secret; they are too easily identified. It makes more sense that they, too, are being used as part of an experiment, perhaps simply to see how easy it is for outlandish beliefs to persuade such people to part with their money. Of course it also has an eminently practical purpose: it makes the operation self-financing. The CIA always has its balance sheets in mind. (In the United States there is a tradition of close ties between private business and the defence and intelligence communities, which is not so apparent in other countries. Where such a special relationship exists elsewhere, it is likely to be the result of Masonic dealings.)

  There are two major elements in this gigantic, complex conspiracy. One is the apparent attempt to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligences — the Nine - using whatever means are available. The other is the exploitation of these contacts in order to promote a message. Like all propaganda, this does not depend on the reality of the communications, only on the belief that they are real. But why bother? What is the motive behind the business of the Nine?

  There are several possible agendas:

  (1) A powerful cabal is trying to establish contact with extraterrestrials, either through a physical stargate or telepathic communication/possession, in other words, channelling. This would explain the involvement of official US agencies in the search for something momentous in Egypt. In this scenario, Puharich’s attempts to establish contact with the Nine were based on the belief that they really are ‘out there’ but that mental communication is difficult and has to be ‘encouraged’ in likely ‘trainees’.

  (2) The conspirators are deliberately building up an expectancy that such contact is about to happen. In this scenario, an entirely fictitious belief system has been constructed and disseminated through various sources.

  (3) Both of the above. The conspirators are trying to establish real contact, but are also engaged in a covert ‘softening-up’ exercise to prepare us for the imminent return of our creators, the ancient gods of Egypt.

  There is a further possibility. The conspirators themselves could be being duped — by the Council of Nine. History is replete with cases of otherworldly visions and voices that may promise heaven, but who actually deliver something quite other — or, as Shakespeare put it:

  And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

  The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

  Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

  In deepest consequence.164

  But never before have they had so many of the world’s most powerful individuals in their insubstantial grip.

  6

  The Secret Masters

  In an email in August 1998, Jack Sarfatti told us he was amazed at our discovery that the Nine had been known of for fifty years: he thought they dated only from the 1970s. But we were to discover that even half a century fails to cover the whole story of their strange, disquieting genesis. In the same bubbling cauldron from which the Nine was to emerge, also lay the misshapen homunculi of twentieth-century totalitarianism. We found that some of the key figures intimately involved in the Nine’s lengthy gestation are surprising, not to say unsettling. The story includes such figures as L. Ron Hubbard, the consistently controversial founder of the Church of Scientology, and the flamboyant magus Aleister Crowley, who may or may not have earned his tabloid soubriquet of ‘The Wickedest Man in the World’, but who certainly relished such notoriety.

  Godfather of the New Egyptology

  R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz has had extraordinary influence on the New Egyptology, on the thought and writing of John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval and many others. Although, since his death in 1961, he has become a kind of ‘godfather’ to such writers, Schwaller de Lubicz was, in many ways, hardly a laudable role model. His ideology — and the company he kept - would hardly endear him to today’s politically correct reading public, which is presumably why his bestselling admirers fail to mention them.

  We noted earlier that Schwaller de Lubicz emphasised the significance of the number nine in the ancient Egyptian religion, and also that he — uniquely — translated the Egyptian neter, meaning ‘god’, as ‘principle’, often speaking of the ‘Nine Principles’. He wrote:

  Heliopolis teaches the metaphysics of the Cosmic Opus by revealing the creative act that scissions the Unity Nun; it also speaks of the birth of the Nine Principles, the entire basis on which the sensorial world will establish itself in becoming accessible to human intelligence.1

  He stresses that the Ennead are ‘the Nine Principles’:

  Pharaonic myth illustrates this through the Heliopolitan Mystery, recounting the creation of the Great Ennead (the Nine Principles) born of Nun, the primordial waters.2

  Schwaller de Lubicz’s wife Isha (this was her mystical name - originally she was just Jeanne) explained:

  The Neters were not what have been infantily called ‘the gods’, as they are not ‘gods’... The Neters are the Principles, they are the symbols of functions.3

  This is exactly how the Council of Nine first introduced themselves to Andrija Puharich through Dr Vinod back in 1952. It was not just the term ‘Nine Principles’ that Schwaller de Lubicz shared with the Council of Nine, but also the same mystical interpretation of the numbers one to nine and their relationship with the number ten. As he wrote in 1913: ‘As number it is 10, containing and surrounded by the nine principles, the irreducible One, the eternal fecundator.‘4 And John Anthony West wrote in Serpent in the Sky: ‘The Grand Ennead ... is not a sequence, but the nine aspects of Tum [Atum].‘5 This perfectly reflects the words of Tom (allegedly Atum) himself in 1974: ‘We are the nine principles of the Universe, yet together we are One.’6

  This seems to be too much of a coincidence. Had the Council of Nine read Schwaller de Lubicz, or had he written those words while under their influence, way back in the early years of the twentieth century? His master work, the three-volume Le temple de l‘homme (The Temple of Man) was published in 1958, six years after the ‘Nine Principles’ had introduced themselves to Puharich through Dr Vinod. However, the key neter/Principle interpretation also appeared in Schwaller de Lubicz’s similarly named Le temple dans l‘homme (The Temple in Man), published in 1949. (It would have been very obscure in terms of its influence in the United States as it was published only in French and with a very small print run in Cairo. An English-language edition did not appear until the 1970s.) Schwaller de Lubicz first published his mystical interpretation of the number nine as long ago as 1913, in a series of articles he wrote for the French Theosophical journal Le Théosophe, where he described the number ten as ‘containing and surrounded by the nine principles; the irreducible One, the eternal fecundator’. But at that time he did not elaborate: the parallel with the Egyptian Ennead came later.

  So Schwaller de Lubicz seems to have been a key figure in the genesis of the Nine well before Puharich’s machinations, taking the story much further back than we had anticipated. But as we delved further into his occult philosophy and the traditions that inspired him, a very different picture emerged from the dispassionate, scholarly mystic so carefully and respectfully portrayed by John Anthony West and others. We discovered that the occult interests of Schwaller de Lubicz are generally played down. Hancock and Bauval, for example, simply refer to him as a ‘mathematician’.7 However, the truth is that first and foremost he was an esotericist, his particular interests being Hermeticism and alchemy.

  We should clarify our own position on the subject of the occult. By now it should be obvious that we ourselves are by no means opposed to most manifestations of the esoteric, and deplore the popular concept that anything ‘occult
’ is automatically superstitious and worthless at best, and downright evil at worst. In our view, some forms of ‘occultism’, particularly Hermeticism, represent the highest and most noble search for knowledge the world has ever known, and many of today’s scientific and technological triumphs are the end result of the so-called ‘black art’ of alchemical research. It may be that writers do not mention Schwaller de Lubicz’s occult leanings either because they do not know about them or because they have no wish to lose their audience or waste precious pages on lengthy explanations and caveats. However, Schwaller de Lubicz’s occultism is not the only aspect of his life and works that is not widely acknowledged. Less mention is made of his political ideology, with good reason, for it would seriously antagonise the majority of today’s readers.

  Schwaller de Lubicz has been described as a ‘protofascist’:8 he was a highly influential figure in the development of the mystical underpinnings of Nazism, and a particular inspiration for Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s complex, occult-minded deputy. For such a highly influential figure, Schwaller de Lubicz seemed curiously disinclined to bask in the limelight: on the contrary, he appeared to be more than content to lurk in the shadows, so it is difficult to find biographical detail about him. Only since his death - and because of his ideas about ancient Egypt — has his name reached a wider public. Apart from Isha Schwaller de Lubicz’s somewhat sanitised 1963 biography of her husband, which skips over lengthy portions of his life, the only source is AL-Kemi, written by the American artist André VandenBroeck in 1987, but even that only covers the two-year period (1959 — 60) that he spent with Schwaller de Lubicz as his pupil in Plan-du-Grasse in the south of France.