The Tall Ones.
Various traditions state that “the knowledge” and other important records of “men of high learning” not only survived the flood but were promulgated by groups of adepts, the most notable being the Seven Sages, and the Akhu Shemsu Hor, “the shining ones, followers of Horus.” In the Edfu Texts they were the only divine beings who knew how temples and sacred places are to be created.
The Tamil Puranas also mention how seven sages visited the sacred hill of Arunachala after the flood to collect ‘the knowledge’ and embark on reconstructing the area between the Indus and the Ganges, creating new temples and sowing the seeds of civilization. Likewise, Andean traditions describe the megalithic monument builders as the Huari, a race of unusually tall, white-skinned, bearded giants, the most celebrated of which was a builder god named Viracocha. Together with seven “shining ones,” he set about re-building the temple complex of Tiwanaku, from whence they set out to promulgate the knowledge throughout the Andes.
The same story is repeated over and over by cultures seemingly disconnected from one another. And it is due to their efforts that we have inherited this legacy of temples and places of veneration.
As I mentioned earlier, the initiates at the temple of Edfu were instructed to “stand up with the Ahau” who measured 9 cubits tall. There is evidence that such beings not only existed but their descendents survived well into historic times. In the Pacific Ocean, the first European explorer to reach the island of Te Pito o Te Henua (‘Navel of the World’) was Jacob Roggeveen, who did so on Easter Sunday, 1722, hence it’s recent, anglicized name of Easter Island. He faithfully recorded the experience along with some of the islanders’ traditions; one of them states that the population consisted of two types of races – the Short Ears and the Long Ears.
The Short Ears referred to the typical homo sapiens. As for the Long Ears, Roggeveen and his crew had direct interaction with them: “In truth, I might say that these savages are as tall and broad in proportion, averaging 12 feet in height. Surprising as it may appear, the tallest men on board our ship could pass between the legs of these children of Goliath without bending their head.”
Are we dealing here with the same Ahau associated with ancient Egypt? Possibly. Like so many other lands and their flood myths, Easter Island is said to have been part of a larger landmass before a giant cataclysm and a subsequent rise in sea level claimed much of it. Ocean maps validate this to be the case: what is now Easter Island was once a longer ridge of mountain ranges. The natives apparently received survivors from the drowned land of Hiva, and that seven sages, “all illuminated men,” carefully surveyed the island before setting up sacred mounds at specific locations. Here we find several linguistic associations with Egypt and its builder gods, the Ahau, for the sacred platform constructed at the original landing place is called ahu, upon which seven moai were subsequently erected in commemoration of the original seven extraordinary builder gods.
There is also the word akh, (‘everlasting spirit’), not a far cry from the Egyptian ankh, meaning ‘everlasting life’.
The magician-builder gods of Easter Island were called Ma’ori-Ko-Hau-Rongorongo (‘master of special knowledge’) and they are claimed to be the ancestors of the Long Ears. According to oral tradition they moved the moai with the use of mana, a kind of psychic force where matter yields to the focused intent of a person skilled in the subtle arts. Legend states that by “words of their mouths” the enigmatic stone heads were commanded to walk through the air.
There is an echo of this in Central America. Just as the Popul Vuh represents the oral history of the Quiche´ Maya, so the Codex Vaticanus records faithfully the very ancient oral traditions of Central America. In one curious passage it states that “in the First Age, giants existed in that country [Mexico]. They relate to one of the seven whom they mention as “having escaped from the deluge…he went to Cholula and there began to build a tower… in order that should a deluge come again he might escape to it.” Indeed the pyramid of Cholula still stands, partly because a newer, Spanish church now resides on top of it, and mostly because it’s the largest pyramid ever constructed in the world – its volume is greater than that of the great pyramid at Giza. In Nahuatl language it’s named Tlachihualtepetl (‘artificial mountain’). Originally it was named Acholollan (‘water that falls in the place of flight’).
Certainly these builders were physically and intellectually endowed, as one account after another credits these unusual individuals with achieving the seemingly impossible by using techniques that bend the presently-known laws of physics. At the temple complex of Uxmal, the Pyramid of the Magician is said to have been raised in just one night by a man of magical disposition who “whistled and heavy rocks would move into place.” Compare this with the traditions of Tiwanaku, in which “the great stones were moved from their quarries of their own accord at the sound of a trumpet… taking up their positions on the site.” Similar attributes are common to the creators of Teotihuacan and Stonehenge, as well as the original Egyptian temples, which are described as “speedy at construction.”
Such legends are consistent with the use of mana by the magician builders of Easter Island.
The purpose of the temple.
The primary purpose behind the temple – and the builder gods who re-started this legacy – was to go on promulgating the knowledge over an enormous span of time, by which I mean 4,000 years at a stretch. This is an unimaginable reach of time by modern standards, particularly as we in this computer age can barely cope with planning a quarter of the year at a time; even three days in the world of e-mail seems like a century. Physical evidence of the multiple layers of structures beneath present temple buildings suggests the original sites were maintained, improved and expanded over the course of thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian traditions assert beyond their 3,000-year recorded history that no site was considered sacred unless it had been built upon the foundations of earlier temples, particularly those connected with Zep Tepi.
A temple built during the historic period and superimposed on the foundation of another was determined by a pre-existing entity set in the time of myth, so that this new structure became a concretization of its ancestral predecessor, or as the Pyramid Texts inform us, “...made like unto that which was made in its plans of the beginning.” Thus, the foundation mound of the Great Pyramid at Giza dates to 10,500 B.C, but the additional final courses of outer casing stones over the inner core of the building features shafts that reference specific stars in 2,500 B.C.
Aside from the visual impact of the sight of Tiwanaku on the eyes of Pedro Cieza de Léon in 1549, it’s not unusual that such places should still exert a tremendous influence on the pilgrim like a master hypnotist’s pass of the hand. The art of creating temples was serious business involving the synthesizing of universal laws and the harnessing of natural forces to create spaces where the veil between worlds is thinner.
As a testament to the skill of the builder gods, their practical magic is still palpable across face of the earth, their creations remain sentient, living and breathing, like organisms. Their structures are mirrors of the universe. When we stare at them we see our own image reflected back in stone. The experience is commonly-shared from generation to generation. This may not seem so far-fetched because the locations chosen by the builder-gods for their “cities of knowledge” are places where planetary electromagnetics behave differently. And being electromagnetic by nature we cannot help but be influenced by these subtleties.
The Edfu Building Texts – as well inscriptions at Teotihuacan and instructions in the sacred texts of the Tamil – describe how the temples were to be designed as places where the individual can be “transformed into a god, into a shining star.” In other worlds, the purpose of the temples was nothing less than the complete self-realization of the individual through a transfiguration of the soul. Their craftsmen wished to remind us of this someday, lest we forgot. Thus when they built temples, they also created myths and rituals to preserve the knowledge so it survived whatever cataclysm the Earth cared to brew.
The Gnostic Gospels unearthed in 1947 at Nag Hammadi, near the temple of Dendera, offer a graphic reminder of this aim and why the tradition was maintained from age to age. The papyri state that temples were built “as a representation of the spiritual places,” and in doing so, created an antidote against forces of darkness that “…steered the people who followed them into great troubles, by leading them astray with many deceptions. They died not having found the truth and without knowing the God of truth. And thus the whole creation became enslaved forever from the foundations of the world.”
Based on material from Freddy Silva's book, The Divine Blueprint: Temples, power places, and the global plan to shape the human soul.
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