by Jay Weidner
The cross at Hendaye, a true monument to the end of time, demonstrates how to calculate the traditional date of the Day of Judgment. It points to a very specific date, the fall equinox of 2002, and, by Champagne’s implication, a specific place, the paws of the Sphinx on the Giza plateau. Interestingly enough, the Great Pyramid, another mysterious monument at Giza, is thought to contain a prophetic design in its passages and Grand Gallery that ended on September 17, 2001.17 This is exactly one year and five days before the Hendaye date, which is the time period required to prepare for the transition from pharaoh to a living star in Orion according to the Pyramid texts.18
Keeping in mind Jesus’ admonition that no one knows the exact day or hour of the Judgment, we might think the monument’s exactness to be presumptuous at the least. Fulcanelli, however, gives us another clue with his use of phrases such as “days of Judgment,” and “fatal period.” The exact date derived from the monument is a marker to an apocalyptic season. The easiest way to identify a time period by one date is to choose the midpoint. This is logical enough, since an equinox itself is a midpoint in so many ways.
If September 22, 2002, is the middle of the season, then how do we identify the beginning and the end, or culmination? If we think of the XX on the upper cross as meaning twenty years, in addition to referring to trump XX and the twentieth century, then we have an acceptable period on either side of our target date. Strangely enough, this brings our monument into line with two vast systems of counting time from opposite ends of the planet, the Mayan calendar and the Tibetan Kalachakra, or Wheel of Time. It also solves the remaining problems of the monument’s design.
The Tibetan Kalachakra contains a prophecy indicating that 860 years after its introduction into Tibet, which happened in 1127, the conditions would be fulfilled for a twenty-five-year period that would culminate in the appearance of the Tibetan version of New Jerusalem, the hidden city of Shambhala.19 Eight hundred sixty years after 1127 is 1987, and twenty-five years after that is 2012. These dates are also significant in various versions of the Mayan calendar.
The Harmonic Convergence, José Arguelles’s attempt at a global New Age coming-out party in 1987, was billed as a significant date in the Mayan calendar. While this is debatable in terms of the traditional Mayan calendrical system—a better choice would have been 1992, the beginning of the last katun, or twenty-year period—it does mark the significant moment when the eschatological calendars of these widely separated cultures began to synchronize.
September 22, 2002, falls on the midpoint of this last Mayan katun, 13 Reed and 20 Ahau, calculated from the summer solstice of 1992 to the winter solstice of 2012. While this is a nice fit, and a confirmation that all of these systems are working from the same ancient traditions, the question is, Can we find this season on the monument at Hendaye?
So far, our interpretation of the base has been more concerned with the corners and their alignments and attributions than with the faces of the base. We have used their Tarot images to calculate the attributions that led us to our target date. We found that date displayed in the Saint Andrew’s cross of the upper cross, a symbol for the equinox alignment. The upright square cross, known, as Hewitt informed us, as the cross of Saint George (see fig. 11.15), is also displayed by the opposition of the east/west and north/south faces. The Saint George cross is traditionally used to mark the solstice alignments. The eight-armed cross, the Templar cross, is the combination of the two. Since our interpretation of the Hendaye cross evolves it into this same eight-sided figure, the unavoidable suggestion is that our equinox cross is the midpoint between two solstice events.
Figure 11.15. A selection of different crosses showing how they relate to the eight-rayed star.
Looking at the monument, we find that the sun and the star are paired, as are the moon and the four A’s. Since each member of the pairs is found on opposite sides of the monument, we might think of them as being in opposition. Another way to see it is to think of the base as transparent so that the images are in conjunction. Actually, as we shall see, either way works because what is conjunct on one solstice is in opposition on the other. The problem lies in identifying the star and the four A’s.
We must discard both Venus and Sirius as candidates for the star. While a summer solstice alignment is possible with both, neither fits our dates. Such an alignment happens every year with Sirius, too often to be a marker of any singular celestial event, and Venus was behind the sun for the summer solstice of 1992 and will be in front of the sun for the winter solstice of 2012. The star, therefore, cannot be either of these. The sun, however, does relate to the center of the galaxy in the right pattern. It rises in opposition on the summer solstice and in conjunction on the winter solstice during this period, becoming exact on the winter solstice of 2012, the end point of the Mayan calendar.
If we think of Fulcanelli’s image of the dragon’s mouth, the center of the galaxy, spewing out flame and light, then the star might just relate to an eruption from the galactic center. Coupled with the angry sun face, this might also be a clue to the “double cataclysm.” The starlike disturbance from the center of the galaxy might trigger a reaction in our own sun, hence Fulcanelli’s insistence on a “double” catastrophe.
If the star is a representation of the center of the galaxy, then what is the meaning of the four A’s? Since this image depicts the great cycle of time, it might also stand for the main alignment point of the cycle, the galactic center. In that case, the moon would also be in opposition or conjunction on the solstices. And this was, in fact, the case.
Standing again on Giza between the paws of the Sphinx, we note that on the morning of the summer solstice, June 21, 1992, there was a partial lunar eclipse in Scorpio, in opposition to the rising sun in Taurus/Gemini. This is the starting point of our twenty-year countdown, and matches the moon–four A’s alignment on the Hendaye cross, even to the partial eclipse of the moon face.
Even better is the winter solstice, December 21, 2012, when the sun rises in perfect alignment with the center of the galaxy on the cusp of Scorpio/Sagittarius, while the moon sets on the cusp of Taurus/Gemini. On the summer solstice at the beginning of our apocalyptic season, the moon was conjunct the center of the galaxy and the sun was in opposition. On the winter solstice, the end point of the period, the sun will be conjunct the galactic center and the moon will be in opposition. Thus the solstice alignments, as revealed on the Hendaye monument, act as brackets or bookends to our midpoint of September 22, 2002, defining a twenty-year period as the season of apocalypse.
We have now answered our third question from chapter 1: “What do the symbolic images and ciphers on the cross mean? How are they ‘the rarest symbolic translation’ of an apocalyptic philosophy?” And, most important of all, “Do they suggest a date?” We have unraveled the meaning of the images on the cross and now understand how, in truth, they are the “rarest symbolic translations” of an ancient astronomy. While our answers are somewhat disturbing, they do at least make astronomical sense.
They also raise more questions. How did Pope Sylvester know about the center of the galaxy, and about its millennial anniversary? For that matter, how did the designer of the Hendaye cross or even Fulcanelli know? The galactic core was not officially discovered until 1917, and yet they, as well as the Maya and the Tibetans, clearly knew. Fulcanelli is at his most simple and truthful when he tells us that the unknown sculptor of the monument “possessed real and profound knowledge of the universe.”
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE AND THE QUALITY OF TIME
After decoding the cross at Hendaye, we found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, we could be fairly certain that we were reading Fulcanelli and the monument’s message correctly. On the other hand, there seemed to be no way its message could be true. The end of the world has been predicted many times before, and since those predictions have failed to come true, why would the prophecy encoded in the Hendaye cross be any different? If the end is coming, it is a
self-fulfilling prophecy based on our capacity to destroy ourselves. Cosmology would seem to have little to do with it.
And yet Fulcanelli insists that it does. His suggestion that alchemy and chiliasm are connected led us to the Gnostic concept of the Great Return of the lesser lights to the Light and its origin in the illuminated astronomy of the Bahir. According to tradition, this ancient science derived from Abraham’s covenant with the God Most High, the El in the sky. As we saw above, Abraham was revered as the greatest astronomer of his age, drawing on the wisdom of Egypt and India.20
From the Bahir, the Bible, and surviving esoteric fragments from groups such as the Golden Dawn, we can reconstruct the major points of this astronomical perspective. Space was envisioned as a cube within a sphere. The equator of that sphere was the sun’s apparent path through the constellations of the zodiac. As shown in figure 11.16, the cube was positioned so that its vertical edges intersect the cusps of Sagittarius/Scorpio, Gemini/Taurus, Pisces/Aquarius, and Virgo/Leo. Above the cube, in the top portion of the sphere, the constellation of Draco coils about the still point of the north ecliptic pole. This El in the sky was antiquity’s High God, with the planets hanging from its coils. The south ecliptic pole of the sphere rests on the brilliance of the Lesser Magellanic Cluster.
Figure 11.16. The alignment of the Cubes of Space, solar cube inside the large galactic cube. Draco sits enthroned above the Cubes, which rests on the back of the “turtle” of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
This eternally unmoving axis was thought to be the middle pillar of a vast Tree of Life in the world of action. Kabbalistic theory suggested, however, that if there was one Tree in a world, there should also be a reflection of all four Trees in the multiverse. The Bahir addressed this by implying a projected, jewel-like Tree that covered the surface of the sphere. The center point of the sphere, our sun in the Tiferet position, would then be projected outward onto the edges of the cube to form four interlocking trees, as shown in figure 11.17.
This arrangement also gives us the basis for the Four Ages. The sun’s precessional alignment with these projected Tiferet centers is the transition point between ages. Each time the equinox or solstice crosses one of these points in the 26,000-year precessional cycle, the earth enters a new age. But our illuminated astronomy also provides us with two more Teli, or dragon axes. These can be seen as the “snake” of the Milky Way and the “snake” of the planetary equator formed by the wobble of the earth’s tilt. The snake or dragon of the Milky Way crosses the solar ecliptic in the northwest at Scorpio/Sagittarius and in the southeast at Taurus/Gemini, both Tiferet corners. The equatorial snake of the planet, however, controlled by the precessional wobble, moves its equinox point on the ecliptic one degree counterclockwise approximately every seventy-two years. Thus, those moments when the snakes make right angles or direct conjunctions with each other determine the quality of time for that age.
Figure 11.17. Projecting the Tree of Life onto a sphere.
The event, which gave Abram his insight into the nature of time, which was the window of the letter heh needed to spell Abraham, was his covenant with God. At this event, we are told in Genesis, a fiery torch passed through the alignment of sacrifices from the northwest to the southeast, an alignment preserved to this day by the location of the Black Stone in the cube or Kaaba of Mecca. This line from the north-west to the southeast corner is the galactic axis, of course. Abraham’s covenant represents a shift from the High God of the El to a new hidden god controlling the temporal quality of the galactic axis and its alignments. This God, unlike the placid and benign El, could become angry and dispense judgment and destruction.
This God promised Abraham that his descendants would become as the stars, but whether in number or quality is uncertain. The chiliast promise also lay at the heart of the hidden God’s covenant. Just as He could dispense judgment, so too could He dispense transformation— Inshallah, “as God wills it,” as a Muslim would say.
Now, let us imagine this astronomical object, this sphered cube or “stone of the wise,” from the outside. As in figure 11.17, we see twenty-two circles (twenty-six if we include Daat) on the surface of a sphere that contains a cube formed from the intersection of the three planes generated by the dragon axes. On each plane is a Tree of Life, joined at the center of the sphere. This breaks the sphered cube into eight cells, each of which has three faces reflecting outward from the central Tiferet point. From this arrangement we can see that the astronomical “Stone of the Wise” is also a depiction of a tesseract (see fig. 11.18), a four-dimensional or hypercube with 8 cells, 16 vertices, 24 faces, and 32 edges. Note within this the geometric progression (8, 16, 32) of the star and the sun on the Hendaye cross.
Figure 11.18. A four-dimensional hypercube, or tesseract.
As noted before, the cross at Hendaye is an exploded or schematic view of this philosopher’s stone in the heavens. This is easy to see by simply collapsing the cross into the space of the pedestal, as in figure 11.19. The pillar folds in along the northwest–southeast axis, with the two arms of the upper cross forming the other two axes. Think of these as plane surfaces with Tree of Life patterns on them and we have the Precious Stone of the Wise from the Bahir.
The images on the three-dimensional surface of our pedestal-cube act as informational markers telling us how to align our hypercube to predict the quality of time in our age. As we saw above, this alignment involves the precessional equinox cross of Leo on the fall equinox combined with solstice markers that include the heliacal rising of the hidden God of the galactic center with the winter solstice sunrise. Our Bahiric philosopher’s stone suggests that this season in time is one of great transformation, perhaps even the Day of Judgment alignment prefigured by Abraham’s sacrifices.
Our Precious Stone of the Wise becomes even more curious when we consider that there are stars in each of the twenty-two or twenty-six circles on the surface of the celestial sphere. By using the most prominent star closest to the center of each circle, we can create a unique intergalactic distance/density zip code for our local solar system. If we had set out to design a system that tells us the specific quality of time in a specific locality of space, it is hard to imagine anything more simple and efficient than this apparently ancient perspective.
Figure 11.19. The Hendaye cross as a schematic for the hypercube “Stone of the Wise.” A. The Cube of Space aligned to the cusps of the great cross; SW/NE diagonal tells of the major energy gradient of the local galactic neighborhood; SE/NW is the galactic axis from center to edge. B. The planetary alignments on September 22, 2002. Note that the planetary grouping around the Leo/Virgo cusp falls on the local galactic hot spot, indicating the fiery nature of the event. C. Collapsed Hendaye cross showing, in 3D, the structures of the “Stone of the Wise.”
This information survived purges and persecutions until someone coded it in stone in the late seventeenth century at Hendaye. Even then the information wasn’t lost; it was merely rediscovered in the nineteenth century and revealed to the public in the twentieth by Fulcanelli. When the Hendaye chapter was published in 1957, however, less than fifty years remained until the first precessional marker. Perhaps this was part of the plan, because only in the last fifty years or so has science caught up with Abraham the patriarch’s level of understanding.
Now, with our chiliast season identified, we turn our attention to science. Is there any evidence connecting a cyclic, precessional-based catastrophe with the center of the galaxy? Could an asteroid swarm or a comet also be somehow involved, as Mevryl suggests? And most important of all, does the Hendaye cross truly point to a “place of refuge”?
TWELVE
CATASTROPHE AND REFUGE
COSMIC SUPERIMPOSITION: WILHELM REICH, ORGONE, AND THE CENTER OF THE GALAXY
Even though the center of the galaxy wasn’t officially discovered until 1917, any primitive culture watching the skies would quickly discern that there was something special in that direction. The Milky Way, the heavenly Ni
le, bulges just where the sun’s ecliptic crosses it (fig. 12.1).
Figure 12.1. The Milky Way crosses the sun’s ecliptic at its widest and narrowest points, the center and edge of the galaxy, which suggests some kind of radial flow, from center to edge, that causes this precise alignment.
At the other ecliptic crossing, the Milky Way looks thin and wispy, as if it is fading away. From this observation, we can see why this axis is described as a dragon or a snake, complete with the Pleiades as the snake’s rattle. The sun crosses these points twice a year, but the precessional axis, marked by the sun’s equinoxes or solstices, crosses these points only twice in a precessional Great Year.
One question for which the modern astronomer or cosmologist has no answer is why the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way at just those specific points (fig. 12.2). There seems to be no astrophysical reason why the ecliptic should intersect the plane of the Galaxy, the Milky Way, along its radial axis. It could as likely be at a right angle to that axis, or even more likely parallel to it so that the Milky Way matches the solar ecliptic. Yet, there it is, a cosmic synchronicity that suggests that some energy or magnetic “force” flowing from the center of the Galaxy, so womblike to the ancients, shapes our Cube of Space-time so that its long-term temporal quality, and perhaps even the evolution of life itself, is somehow related to its alignment along the radial axis of the Galaxy.
Figure 12.2. The alignment of the ecliptic, the solar cube of space and the galactic meridian. Note that the ecliptic crosses the galactic meridian at the edge, as shown, and at the center. The Southern Cross points to the galactic center crossing point.
