In my previous piece I looked at Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory and how I see it playing out in the contemporary fights over new understandings of human history. That piece included a look at debates over funding, politics, worldview clashes, and the like all come into play as soon as we enter the terrain of human history.
There I covered what I would call the more mundane (or perhaps exoteric) reasons for why there's so much consternation over the newly arising evidence necessitating a complete re-think of human origins (aka a true paradigm shift in Kuhn’s actual meaning of the term).
In this piece I want to go a bit further a field and speculate as to some possible more esoteric reasons that could be behind the extreme emotional reactivity towards this new information coming to light.
In order to get a sense of those more hidden possible causes, I’d recommend this piece exploring the depiction of Giordano Bruno in the recent PBS series Cosmos. In that piece I argue that the depiction of Bruno in that show is used as a limited hangout to keep attention away from the deeper secret at the heart of Bruno's thought—namely that science is an inherently magical and alchemical process. It’s a complex argument that I won’t rehash here but the conclusions of that piece become a jumping off point for this piece.
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In 1976 Robert Temple published a book entitled The Sirius Mystery. The premise of that text is that the Dogon tribe of Mali possessed information of an alien intervention into human affairs from the Sirius star system. Temple based his book on an earlier field study by two French anthropologists (Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen). Griaule and Dieterlen’s research was published in a book translated into English as The Pale Fox. In that text, the two anthropologists posited that the Dogon tribe held an oral tradition that was able to correctly predict both the existence and position of a second smaller star in the Sirius Cluster (Sirius B) which was invisible to the naked eye and had only been discovered by Western astronomy in the 20th century.
A later anthropological study was later sent to disprove Griaule and Dieterlen’s thesis because it offered evidence that undermined the very foundations of scientific materialism. Carl Sagan attempted to debunk the Sirius star knowledge with completely unsubstantiated claims that the Dogon must have had learned about Sirius B through some modern traveler. There was a pretty colonialist air to the whole controversy, with multiple white (uncannily "pale") individuals proclaiming that these "less advanced" black skin folk could never possibly have some knowledge, given their lack of understanding of "enlightened" Western science. (Please note that Sagan of course was the host for the first run of Cosmos, the show which Neil deGrasse Tyson used to perform the limited hangout on Girodano Bruno).
In their book, Griaule and Dieterlen report that the Dogon claimed that they knew of the existence of Sirius B because they encountered beings from Sirius B who gave them this knowledge. Robert Temple, when working on his book, had one of the only English translations in existence of The Pale Fox. That copy was stolen by members of a three-letter intelligence agency.
Yes, you did just read that. Intelligence agencies were trying to thwart a researcher from publishing an ancient alien text on a West African Tribe and its knowledge of the Sirian star system. Think about that one for a second. I don’t want to focus here on Temple’s argument particularly but rather the intelligence agency attacks on his research. I’m not an ancient alien theory advocate and I think Temple misunderstands the nature of what The Dogon meant by saying they encountered beings/entities from Sirius B who gave them specialized knowledge. I’ve written a separate piece exploring the mysticism of star beings wherein I argue that star beings are not necessarily to be thought of as concrete entities (a la ancient alien/astronaut theory) but rather the consciousness of the stars personified symbolically as beings.
Either way the point here is why would intelligence agencies seek to prevent wider dissemination of the Dogon’s understanding of the existence of Sirius B? Why the attacks from Carl Sagan? What do those point to in terms of the ongoing fights about a better understanding of our human origins (what we may well call a conspiracy)?
Laird Scranton’s research has shown that the Dogon’s cosmology is deeply tied to that of ancient Egypt, an ancient Egypt which claimed that it itself was the descendant of a previous antecedent high culture. I talked about this topic in the last piece with the evidence of the Sphinx being thousands of years older than mainstream archaeology acknowledges. The mystery deepens even further when we learn that Scranton’s research also show significant connections to the cosmologies of ancient China, Polynesia (Maori), and India among others. Gregory Little’s research connects astro-theology (star theology) from Egypt and The Dogon with that of the mound builder cultures of The Americas.
All this evidence links up with Graham Hancock’s argument that there was a high culture prior to the cataclysmic flooding of the Younger Dryas and refugees of this culture went around the world and shared their insights and teaching.
Speaking of links between ancient Egypt and The Americas, Edgar Cayce, America’s sleeping prophet, predicted that a sunken land mass would arise off the coast of Cuba & Florida called Bimini. He claimed that it was part of Atlantis. As crazy as that sounds, it turns out that sunken land mass has arisen precisely where and precisely when Cayce predicted it would and lo and behold there’s a constructed road on it. As Dark Journalist, Daniel Listz has pointed out, that area of Cuba, Bimini, and Miami is home to a strange host of intelligence agency activity around archaeological sites (shades of Robert Temple all over again.)
In the previous piece in this series I pointed out that 19th century science based itself philosophically on ideas of uniformitarianism and gradualism—that things happened in slow, micro movements over time. Darwinian evolutionary theory similarly holds to such gradualism and uniformitarianism—random mutations over thousands and millions of years worked on by natural selection. But by the 20th century a number of academic disciplines began understanding the much deeper role of catastrophe, chaos, and emergence: first in mathematics, then in physics, and later in complexity and systems sciences.
Archaeology is stuck in the 19th century progressivist, gradualism, and uniformitarian worldview. Part of that unwillingness to mature as a discipline and grow into a more non-linear systemic (and genuinely evolutionary) understanding of the human journey is, as argued in the previous piece, due to factors Kuhn outlined in his work on paradigm shift.
But I think it goes deeper than those factors as well and here we’re touching into what those other, more esoteric elements might well be.
Let’s assume that the teachers who taught The Dogon about Sirius B were not ancient aliens flying in literal spaceships but rather modes of information (perhaps symbolically personified) achieved through higher or altered state of consciousness. The Dogon have rituals that offer access to psi capacities. If that proposition holds true, then it relativizes all of Western science. It does not invalidate (Western) science; it de-limits it. It draws boundaries around Western science and points out that other methods of inquiry may also grant powerful insight into reality, even astronomical reality. It would point back to the fact that science has its roots in hermeticism, magic, and alchemy which require changed states of consciousness in order to (co)create material effects.
To wit, as Laird Scranton has also shown, The Dogon have remarkable drawings that seem to presage insights from quantum mechanics, general relativity, and other 20th century scientific discoveries.
If that’s the case then the progressivist model of history has to be thrown out the window entirely. Progressivism is deeply tied to secularism and the denial of consciousness and its ability to effect material reality.
The UFO Phenomenon, as Jacques Valle argued, is a conscious technology. UFOs do have material expression like right-angle mid-air turns, anti-granitic maneuvers, turning off and on nuclear missile sites (!), and leave burn marks where grass and flowers will not grow any longer after contact with such a reality.
UFOs also have consciousness effects: time loss experiences; increases in intuition, healing capacities and precognitive dreams in contactees, etc.
As I’ve argued elsewhere, the UFO in some ways may be thought of as a force of evolution in form. That is, UFOs are “from the future” not in a literal sense of time traveling (at least not necessarily) but rather already exist in a future potentiality made manifest in that phenomenon. As I’ve speculated, perhaps that future is the psychic state of consciousness manifest as new structure of consciousness.
Which brings us back to the ancients and whether we might be going “back to the future.”*
Magic and the ability of conscious intention to effect material reality was denied officially by the secular scientific establishment in order that magic could be monopolized by an elite. When the CIA is training remote viewers in psychic espionage they well know that consciousness is real and materialism is bunk.
Similarly if such intelligence agencies are deeply involved in studies of ancient texts and temple sites the world over, something very strange is going on. My guess is that intelligence agencies understand that ancient cultures had access to some forms of knowledge, technology, and engineering currently not available, at least publicly (even if the nature of that insight is not yet fully understood).
If materialism is the public cover so that magic and the paranormal can be kept hidden and monopolized by an elite, then progressivist public views of history serve the same function. Progressivism is to keep hidden an understanding of human origins so that whatever is found in that reality can be monopolized by an elite (the same elite very likely).
If there was a paleoancient high culture then the evidence increasingly points to the strong possibility that they had access to the psychic state of consciousness, though it would have likely been embodied through the magical-animistic structure of consciousness. In other words it could have been, in certain regards more evolved than ours and yet, in many others respects, less developed simultaneously. Or at least far less extensive in its build out than ours.
That is to say, we don’t have to imagine it was some sci-fi Disneyfied version complete with flying cars (i.e. not Wakanda). More likely they would have had access to a lighter, more elegant tech, perhaps with sound and very possibly with some altered states—particularly through connecting to the energy and consciousness of stars (astro-theology).
As others have pointed our contemporary technology is built on incredible force. Digging up entire mountains of coal, burning that mountain of coal to power massive machines, sucking oil out of the ground and igniting it. What if there was some other, more elegant, lower-impact technology and engineering? If it came through access to the psychic state then it could have had powerful implications without necessarily having to be some New Age sci-fi utopian paradise.
As I’ve written about elsewhere, there is strong evidence for the viability of so-called free energy (or over unity processes), not only in the realm of energy but also interestingly in finance and economic policy. As I argued in that piece I believe Universal Basic Income policies are being pitched by elites nowadays as a supposedly progressive but ultimately suppressive cover to hide the reality of over-unity processes. I think it also functions as a “devil’s bargain” to bring in large scale AI, robotics, automation, and transhumanism. (I say devil’s bargain there intentionally since I think much of those ideas are rooted in shadow dynamics of the Luciferian and Satanic archetypes). Like the lidless Eye of Sauron, it’s worth noting that the conspiratorial view is always pyramidal. The distortion of our understanding of the pyramids specifically and our ancient ancestors broadly carries extra weight in that light.
While I’m not an ancient alien advocate, it is highly strange that notions of alternative (“Atlantean”) views of human history very often line up with the UFO Phenomenon. As with Robert Temple and others of the ancient alien ilk, I think they misunderstand the nature of that connection. They too easily reduce it to simplistic “aliens did it” when encountering the historical anomalies of human ancestry and culture. But based on this line of thought I can offer an alternative rationale for their deep tie to one another
That is, The UFO Phenomenon is the psychic state of consciousness manifest as a technology. Similarly, the ancient high culture—if there was one—must have similarly touched into the same state-realm as the UFO does. That idea, by the way, lies at the root of Morris Jessup’s argument and the very strange events around his death point yet again to possibilities of deep state actions at work.
If so, then it is indeed “back to the future.” But it’s going to have to be a future differently embodied than that of the past. For one reason because various further structures of human consciousness have emerged in the meantime, meaning such conscious technology and engineering would need to be deployed in a radically changed context and environment.
Two, in order for this tech to work it must have a different result.
The story (“myth”) of the Atlanteans is that they grew too ambitious and arrogant in their technology and consequently brought destruction upon themselves. If we are indeed returning in some way to aspects of culture and technology humans previously had but subsequently forgot (and/or were suppressed), then humans are not exactly showing signs of doing it differently this time around either.
We started this set of essays looking at the question of why there's so much anger and hate towards the new evidence of much older and deeper human culture. We covered a whole host of reasons but ended up in a some very strange possibilities. Namely that studying those new pieces of evidence eventually pulls a thread that unravels the entirety of secularism, as well as the top-down dominance model that runs the world (“the pyramid of power”). The rabbit hole goes so deep on this one and that I think, more than anything, reveals why there is so much energy around the topic. It’s touching the deepest, rawest nerve imaginable.
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* An all too brief note on Terence McKenna’s archaic revivalism in this light. Archaic is a misnomer there in many respects since what McKenna was largely (though perhaps not exclusively) discussing was the magical-animistic structure of consciousness not the archaic one. And the revivalism also is a bit flawed in that much of what he was really describing were psychic-state aspects as they were embedded in the then dominant magical structure of consciousness. It’s not archaic and not a revival. It’s primarily a re-imagination and re-embodiment in a different structure of consciousness of aspects of a principally psychic state awareness and energy/tech. Though admittedly that's not as pithy or sexy a title as archaic revivalism.