The Great Chi-Rho Pyramid and the Singing Stones of Jerusalem

The following is a short extract from a mosaic or patchwork-quilt of data and reflections I first assembled in 1987 but have only now made available on the Internet. They were inspired by my reading of Evidence (1986) by Associate Professor of Architecture Bodvar Schjelderup (Forlaget Fredag, Skansegata 26a, 7014 Trondheim, Norway) who had, at that time, already dedicated thirty years to a painstakingly meticulous study of the available data..

The same author has more recently and most movingly illustrated and discussed several other features of this vast expanse in his Loggbok for en Helgen - A Saint's Logbook (ISBN 82-476-0012-9). He is also the author of Peregrino - Pìlagrìmur - Pilgrim - Pèlerin - Nguòi-hanh-huòng - Pelgrim - Pilger - Pilgrim- Pielgrzym - ... - Pilgrim - ^†-oilithreach - Pilgrimas - ... - ... - Pyhiinvaeltaja - Svétcelnieks - Palveräeltaja - ... - Pilgrim - Pelerinul - Bassivàddjuleaddje - Pilegrim (Fredagsobservatoriet, Skansegata 26a, Trondheim 7014: 1991).

"When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming towards the boat, they were for taking him into the boat, but in no time it reached the shore at the place they were making for." (John, chapter 6) That no time at all, in which the accomplishment of purpose coincides with the intending of it, is a rare moment in most people's experience. Such moments merit unhurried attention.

Upon a sheet of virgin papyrus from Chi Rho
position one grain of sand from Saqqara -
Sprinkle this prayerfully with pure Nile water
dripping from the Sun-burned tip
of a sharp-pointed stone
taken from the Great Pyramid.
Then draw a small crocodile into the vicinity.

It is better to hear No Thing than to listen to anything. Looking is the enemy of seeing. "Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish them but to complete them." (Matthew, chapter 5)

Even if Bodvar Schjelderup's interpretation of the data is only approximately correct, one is clearly justified in understanding Christ's claim that he had completed, not abolished the work of the Law and the Prophets as signifying very much more than any mere fulfilment of Old Testament Messianic prophecies would, alone, have sufficed to do. It is, indeed, on such an interpretation that the legitimacy of the Universal or Catholic model of Christianity most clearly emphasized by St Luke and St Paul clearly rests.

In writing his Preface to Evidence in September 1986, Bodvar Schjelderup succeeded in confusing and perplexing many of his readers by the exquisite delicacy and also the trenchant honesty of his own new found simple vision. Here, before making any further use of the Key with which he then, after several years of devoted and generous labour, provided us, it is, I feel, appropriate to relate that vision to the visionary. So, here is a composite and modified half-quotation, half-paraphrase of his main message:

The Holy Spirit mentioned by Jesus was active long before He arrived in the flesh. This little book deals with matters most of us do not know from our daily experience. Or, if we do know them, we fail to notice this fact. A change of heart and a different attitude of mind are indispensable prerequisites for perceiving what the Language of the Beginning, the Language of Recognition, living within our own minds, is always saying to us, as its whisperings try to make us hear and see. I have seen, and I want to let you see.

The Great Pyramid is totally different from 'mere architecture', from use, or art, or technology. It is a word spoken in wholeness, an entire message from the transitional point where indivisible Oneness expresses and presents Itself in the realm of diversity. It is tale and law, reading and power, matter and meta-matter - in one grasp. So, in order to make a complex, woven pattern into a linear sequence of a text, I often choose to move quite freely from one topic to another, often without defining the transfers. For me, the least inadequate terms available to describe the function and meaning of the Great Pyramid are these, Temple and Catalogue.

It speaks by means of Symbols, image-exposing signs consisting of the basic elements of number, geometrical form, and measurement. Although what is to be read and interpreted was consciously signified by the actual chroniclers and builders who designed and built this and other sacred monuments, they were guided by the superconsciousness on which they depended, in other words, by Providence.

My justification for affirming this, is that the intricately complex and undeniably clear connections in evidence between phenomena belonging to different periods in time and to quite distinct cultural traditions can only be explained in terms of a potential insight behind the screens of history, a movement from possibility and chance conditions to consequences and fulfilment in process at a much higher level of survey than that of human genius and skill.

In the light of this pristine Language of the Beginning, the most revealing Language available for our use, all other past and present models of human living and the natural world, of history, science and time require urgent revision. The harsh realities of hunger, oppression and violence, and of our still continuing perverted abuse of the Earth remind us incessantly that the Language of the Beginning is not a luxury we can safely choose to go without. That is an utter lie.

Faithful acknowledgment of the Language of the Beginning brings us much closer to real problems and actual solutions than any amount of abstract talk, academic research and scientific technique can or ever will.

Those who have learned to appreciate the fragrant flowers in this Language of the Beginning may, in due course, be permitted to taste its fruits. The resulting process of renewal and self-transformation will engender a deepened affection for the Good News of Jesus and, indeed, for his Pentecostal Spirit who incessantly repeats the (Mother-)Father's Message in a potentially infinite variety of tongues.

The road that points to the New Age is attractive to many, but those who neglect Tradition may eventually only succeed in falling into the ditch that runs along beside it.

Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and The Turning-Point well describe the convergence between Eastern mysticism and Western science. From intentionally opposite directions, these two movements are now saying Yes to Oneness and No to duality. Their encounter at the level of intellect has allowed us all to breathe a sigh of relief, but the distance to be travelled in actual experience remains great. We stand on the threshold of a deeper level in space and time, and a radical change is now invited.

The fisherman casts his nets and waits, hoping that luck will come; the potter weighs some clay in his hand, shapes it, and attempts to create something quite new. Let the fisherman learn to be a potter; the potter a fisherman!

I both saw and saw Glastonbury for the first time in July 1971. Today almost 25 years later I am still wondering what are the scientific implications of the Lady of All Nations being also Queen of All Creation...

The active side of human nature may appropriately be symbolised by the image of a person standing erect and poised for action, and R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that in about 1370 B.C. the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Luxor was, indeed, built in these dynamic proportions.

The more receptive or willingly passive side of human nature is, of course, much better expressed by persons who are simply lying down, and the inhumation graves of pre-dynastic Egypt (5000-3100 B.C.) may, therefore, symbolise that people's attitude of hopeful waiting in peaceful expectancy of a fuller and higher life to come.

The familiar lotus-posture balances active alertness with passive serenity, and so best symbolises a person's integrity and maturity. It has, therefore, from time immemorial, provided the basis for one of the most powerfully evocative and richly fertile symbols known, the greatest wonder of the Ancient World, the pre-Egyptian Great Pyramid at Giza.

The adult human head is normally precisely one fourth of that person's height while sitting, the nipples marking the half-way line, with the first quarter rising from the base to just below the level of the navel. These proportions are repeated on a smaller scale in the head itself, where the pupils of the eyes mark the half-way line, with the first quarter rising from the throat to just below the bottom of the nose. The physical proportions of the Great Pyramid are essentially those of a headless human sitting in the lotus-posture. This symbolism is striking.

The ground-plan of the Great Pyramid is simply a square, but the mobile Tabernacle of Moses, who had also been born and educated in Al-Misri, or Mitzraim as the Hebrews called it, the "Land of Measure", was designed on a base of two equal squares, and the plan King David gave Solomon for a Temple at Jerusalem was based on three such squares, while Yeshua meNatsrat (Jesus of Nazareth) in referring to his own individual physical body as a Temple fulfilled Luxor's symbolic prophecy of a four-square Temple, that of humanity no longer without a Head.

Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Romans, but was formerly located near, although not exactly in the centre of Temple Mount, which is in the Eastern sector of Jerusalem, and was designed as a large open area, and only completed by King Herod, in other words, in Christ's own life-time.

While the Great Pyramid at Giza (our longitude 31.13° East - and note that, although degrees of latitude and longitude are nowadays each divided into 60' of 60" each, for the Ancients, whose 0° passed through the centre of the Great Pyramid, sub-divisions into hundredths of a degree sufficed), the sides of which face exactly North, South, East and West, stands in the very centre of the land-surface of planet Earth and is, allowing for atmospheric refraction in taking a natural human view of the stars, located precisely 30° (= 29.98° N.) North of its Equator, Temple Mount 27.12° North by East removed from it (but exactly 30° East by North from Sinai), is only very approximately oriented to the four cardinal points of the compass.

Also, far from being a perfect square, it is not even oblong. This is because, while the Mount's South-Western and North-Eastern corners are rectangular, its North-Western corner forms an angle of slightly less and its South-Eastern corner one of rather more than 90°. In other words, its shape is that of two only approximately similar right-angled triangles so arranged that they share a common hypotenuse.

These two triangles may, therefore, conveniently be referred to here as NWS and SEN, NS being their shared diagonal, and W and E the rectangular corners, of which the North-Eastern one (E) faces the outside and the South-Western one (W) the interior of the city of Jerusalem. When Solomon's Temple was standing, its Eastern end just grazed the diagonal NS, but the entire edifice was located within the interior Western triangle.

Thus, this three-square Temple faced away from the Old Testament religious capital of the world, but always looked into the face of the rising Sun across an external triangle that, while physically empty, was symbolically pregnant with spiritual promise.

Measured in what Bodvar Schjelderup in Evidence has, for reasons there explained, called "universal cubits" - and which I in this present context have, for similar reasons, preferred to call "catholic cubits", the shared diagonal NS is slightly more than 1081 catholic cubits in length (= 2 × 540.5 catholic cubits or 2 × 278.3 metres), but a circle of radius 540.5 catholic cubits, with its centre midway between the pillars of Yakin and Boaz (which marked the limits of the porch leading into Solomon's Temple), will pass precisely through the corners SEN, N and NWS of Temple Mount, thus forming a Temple Ring or ritual Circle of Protection from which is, however, excluded that projecting pinnacle situated at S, the South Eastern corner of Temple Mount.

When Jesus permitted the Devil to tempt him while he was standing on that point of vantage, his human purity of soul was such that he was able, in other words, simultaneously to renounce not merely Satan's empty promises but also to turn his back on all those ritual forms of symbolical and quasi-sacramental protection that confinement within the established limits of Jewish tradition would have guaranteed him; indeed, since when our planet completes its daily revolution its circular path at the Equator takes it through a distance of precisely 144,000 × 540.5 catholic cubits, Jesus was symbolically not only depriving himself of the security of the Hebrews' most sacred Circle of Protection, but also completely abandoning any form of reliance on Earth-related assistance - his faith was in G-d in the mystery of eternal transcendence beyond all limits of space and time. He had given his heart to the One beyond the Void, to the Mother+Father (Tradition, not gender-prejudice, says "Abba-Father") whose dwelling is in the Darkness of Light Inaccessible.

This all too frequently ignored interpretation of the religious significance of that Temple's location is, moreover, as Bodavr Schjelderup explains in detail, confirmed by numerology.

The Hebrew liturgical day begins with sunset and, reading the values of the three angles of the seemingly empty external triangle from North-West clockwise through North-East (E) so as to finish at the South-East, one pronounces these three letters of the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet: M - Sh - H; they spell "Messiah". When on the first Palm Sunday Jesus claimed that, if the fickle crowd ceased to sing his praises, the very stones would sing out in his honour, they were, indeed, for those who have ears to hear, already doing so - and not by accident!

Although numbers in their relatively recent and unnaturally complicated decimal form feature increasingly in many aspects of life today, and even though most people still think at least occasionally about some numbers being luckier than others, the majority have never been properly introduced to the symbolic values of simple numbers as natural expressions for spiritual qualities, and not just arbitrarily conventional signs of merely material quantities.

This almost lost knowledge lies at the very heart of numerology, and is a most important aspect of the ancient language of symbols. Pythagoras and the author of the Book of Wisdom taught that the whole of Nature is intelligible in terms of numbers, and an inscription on the Temple of Delphi reminded everybody that "Number" (in other words, rhythm, resonance, proportion, ordered vibration) "is the Law of the Universe."

Chapter 20 of St Matthew's Gospel begins with the parable of the landowner who hired various persons to work in his vineyard for an agreed wage of a penny a day. The first group started very early in the morning, but he supplemented those with several others in the course of the day, the last working-party being taken on when it was almost finishing time. Then he instructed his bailiff to pay each of them a full penny, but to make sure that the late-comers were paid first and the early-starters last.

Although some of the workers who were kept waiting complained that even the stragglers had been given a full-day's pay, some of them may have noticed that it was his love of their company that had made the landowner reluctant to part with them, and none of those he had hired were surprised that the same rate of pay initially been offered to everybody, quite independently of their age, qualifications and experience - or so a modern Trade Union negotiator, accustomed to lengthy discussions about differentials, might be inclined to think.

When I was a child in working-class Lancashire, a penny from a generous aunt or a pleased teacher was enough to purchase a bag of toffees as a treat, but a penny will not buy much today, and in some schools quite young children are already being encouraged to use special credit-cards for all their purchases from the tuck-shop and the book-room, as well as to pay for school-meals and special clothing. Each pupil's spending-power is limited by a credit-limit corresponding to money the parents have deposited in the school's own bank, and the idea is, of course, to enable the youngsters to learn about prudent budgeting, living within their means, and putting a little extra to one side for a rainy day.

In modern society we use numbers a lot, and the meaning of them is changing all the time, but the impression Chancellors of the Exchequer and other leading economists and financiers attempt to leave adults with is that the monetary system is, nevertheless, in good shape, and that certain general policies can still be relied on to see us through.

In the sort of society Jesus Christ approves of, however, persons and direct relationships between persons always come first. Nobody is ever subordinated to a plan or a system. Each one is acknowledged to be unique, and all judgments of merit or demerit are made in the light of each person's qualities and potential.

This is why, as mentioned in chapter 19 of the same Gospel, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and it also explains why the widow in chapter 21 of St Luke's Gospel is praised for putting to very small coins into the Temple collection-box: "I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them; for these have all contributed money they had over, but she from the little she had has put in all she had to live on."

Two coins are mentioned in connection with the Temple, because its religious context requires us to make sure that love of G-d goes hand-in-hand with love of neighbour.

In everyday living, away from the symbolic Temple of institutional spirituality, these verbally distinct virtues are essentially just two sides of one and the same coin - in the vineyard of his undivided Nature G-d gives each of us, therefore, one penny every day, and we are expected that very day to give it all back to G-d, by using it in unstinting love and service, and without any thought of tomorrow.

Life, in other words, is always here and now. This is the meaning of "one".

It will not have been difficult for Jesus's original hearers to understand that, just as every finger-print, every leaf, every snowflake is special and unique, so each person's "penny" can be of a different size, a different weight, a different metal, since the ancient use of numbers was entirely based on this fundamental idea of individual personal relativity.

In the Second Letter of St Peter (chapter 3, verse 8) we are, therefore, reminded "that with the Lord, 'a day' can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day," while even the entire life-time of those who neglect to take G-d's justice into their reckoning is compared in the previous chapter (verse 17) to a dried-up river, or to "fogs swirling in the wind, and the dark underworld is the place reserved for them."

This "dark underworld" represents chaos as distinct from cosmos, beginnings without their appropriate fulfillment, death instead of life.

Although the external appearance of the Great Pyramid suggests a very simple geometry, its inner spaces are much more complex in both meaning and structure.

The raw rock on which it sits is not flat, but rise up inside towards the middle to a point horizontally corresponding to the point of distinction. This has been very clearly and deliberately marked out in the design; it is the meeting-place between the blocked ascending passage and that which comes down towards it from the outside.

Both these passages, be it noted in passing, diverge at an angle of 26.28° from the horizontal. A traveller setting out from the Great Pyramid and proceeding constantly 26.28° North by East will pass in this way through Bethlehem, the place of Jesus Christ's birth, crossing the river Jordan at the point where Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, and will eventually reach what was in Jesus's time the sacred temple-city of Shiz, now Takht e-Soleiman in North-Western Iran, which was mentioned by Marco Polo by the name given to it in his day as the place from which the three Magi had travelled together to pay homage to the child Jesus. Bethlehem is, moreover, situated exactly at one quarter of the distance from the Great Pyramid to Shiz. Tradition claims that the Magi were Kings, and three quarters of the way down from the Crown chakra to the Base is, of course, the location of the Sacral chakra which, as well as being closely associated with the umbilical, is often identified with the Chalice of the Holy Grail.

Once the descending passage in the Great Pyramid passes below the point of distinction, the explorer has already made a symbolic entrance into the "dark underworld". The Deep Chamber with its pit touching rock bottom 75.976 catholic cubits (= 39.12 metres) below, as well as its opening into an at least apparently dead-end horizontal passage symbolize intention as yet without extension, an absolute ideal that remains ignorant of its intrinsic relativity, potential awaiting realization.

Descent is easy enough for any person who has been granted right of entry, but in order to emerge from this chaos of symbolic death and carry the newly conceived promise of spiritual renewal upwards into light it is necessary to ascend by a much more difficult route, a steep shaft which, like the blocked ascending passage, leads directly to the beginning both of the ascending Grand Gallery and of the horizontal corridor that leads to the Queen's Chamber.

"Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life." (Matthew, ch. 7, v. 13.)

There is a small grotto more than halfway up the steep shaft, precisely where it arrives at a point horizontally corresponding to the point of distinction. This horizontal plane inside the Great Pyramid is its true symbolic base as a living structure. It is not at ground level but 9.824 catholic cubits (= 5.058 metres) higher up, in other words at exactly the level required to make the perimeter at this symbolic base actually measure in reality precisely 1728 catholic cubits, each side measuring exactly 432 catholic cubits.

This implies, of course, that the distance from the outside to the centre at that level is 216 catholic cubits, in other words, 364.5', indicating, perhaps, that the last day of each person's "year" spent in penetrating to the heart of the mystery of life ought always to be regarded as a Second Birthday, and so as only the first day in one's "year" of truly living in accordance with G-d's eternal design.

The scholarly Icelander Einar Pálisson has proved that 144,000 yards or 432,000 feet is, moreover, a crucially important measurement in many ancient rings of settlement in Scandinavia, Iceland, the British Isles and also in Iran.

Although in these cases the rods used were, therefore, clearly of a different length than that with which the perimeter of the Great Pyramid and the radius of the Sacred Circle of Jerusalem's Temple Mount were measured, the symbolism of their construction may have been guided by a similar intention.

Six is the lowest number that expresses the relationship between all three primary numbers 1, 2 and 3 which necessarily emerge together as soon as counting compels a reassessment of the value of the originally supposed No-Thing or 0. Indeed, 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 and 6 = 1 × 2 × 3. 432 is another number which reinforces the idea of a 1, 2, 3 progression, since 432 = 2 × 6³.

The Ancients undoubtedly noticed and attached very considerable importance to this sort of thing. The Pythagoreans were familiar with the right-angled triangle that forms the base of three squares whose areas are 1, 2 and 3 sq. " respectively, and the Ten Commandments comprise 2 × 1 statements about G-d, 2 × 2 precepts regarding human conduct towards G-d, and 2 × 3 regulations of inter-human relationships.

When Moses conducted the Isrælites out of Egypt they advanced 24.48° North by East (= 65.52° East by North) carrying the mummy, or perhaps simply the canopic jar containing the heart of the patriarch Joseph (who may have been Grand Vizier to Thutmosis IV) back to his original home, in other words, towards Hebron for a distance of 1 × 432,000' if, that is, we regard the Great Pyramis as their symbolic point of departure; this Pyramid also happens to be exactly 432,000' from Tanis, a city in the Nile Delta which may have been built by the Isrælites and which Bodvar Schjelderup believes to have been their quasi-capital or main homestead until the time of the Exodus. During the second World War the great archæologist Pierre Montet, working under the patronage of the Third Reich, excavated there a set of intact tombs of the 21st and 22nd dynasty kings and other members of the Ancient Egyptian royal family.

Travelling in the direction they did, this first leg of their journey will have brought the Isrælites to a point just East of the modern Suez canal, to a spot near a lake they needed to cross and, incidentally, to a place which mathematically relates to Hebron in the way in which the radius of a circle relates to its circumference (1/Pi).

An unbroken circle symbolizes potential and promise, while the straight line generated by repositioning its entire circumference in any consistently maintained direction appropriately symbolizes the realization of that potential and the actual fulfillment of that promise.

Jews and Christians alike have been accustomed to think of the Isrælites miraculous dry-shod crossing of the "Red Sea" at this point as a sign of the divine favour, but if we remember that in baptism immersion in water symbolizes salvation, it would seem at least equally reasonable to believe that here Pharaoh and his faithful army of followers were granted immediate entrance into Heaven, while Moses and the Isrælites were, as a rebuke of their relative lack of faith, obliged to wait.

At all events, they turned sharp right off their original course, and journeyed exactly another 2 × 432,000' to Mount Sinai (33.98° East; 28.53° North), which is exactly 30.24° South by East (= 59.76° East by South) from the Great Pyramid.

It was only after receiving the Tables of the Law (something persons of authentic living Faith would not actually have been in any need of) inscribed on stone tablets after his vision of the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai that Moses was permitted once again to lead the recalcitrant Isrælites in the direction of their final destination.

Both Mount Nebo where he died, and the place where Joshuah and all the other survivors finally crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land are situated precisely 3 × 432,000' from Mount Sinai.

As previously mentioned, this particular reach of the river Jordan has traditionally been identified as the place where Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, nor in order to be cleansed himself, but in order to fulfill the promises made of old by personally hallowing those waters with the aura of his sacred presence.

Nor are these the only features worthy of comment. Mount Nebo is situated beyond Hebron along the line that marks Moses' original route. Hence, while in one sense he failed to reach his objective, in another sense he transcended and went beyond it.

Although we may think of what I here call the "catholic" and Schjelderup the "universal" cubit used to measure the 4 × 432 units base of the Great Pyramid as being equivalent to 51.49 centimetres, for the Ancients who didn't use decimals or, indeed, any abstract form of mathematics at all, it was simply one unit of length as measured with what seems to have been, by whatever name they called it, the most sacred measuring-rod known to them in their own divinely appointed time and place.

They will have measured the lengths of the four sides of the Great Pyramid at this symbolic base-line position very carefully, but because they only used natural fractions, they would have thought the very idea of having one fraction called "¾" a contradiction in terms.

Their is abundant evidence of their practical familiarity with pi and ø which, quite correctly, along with the square-roots of 2, 3 and 5, they regarded not as numbers but as functions. However, the only "fraction" they knew that had a numerator larger than 1 was 2/3, a figure which for them was, as the corresponding Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph shows, actually not a fraction at all. Instead, it symbolised the original division of One into Two without their ever becoming entirely separate from it - hence, they all simultaneously remain interrelated as Three.

This gives us additional confirmation of the importance of the 1, 2, 3 relationship.

Like St Peter when he compared his fellow Christians to so many living stones needing to be built up into the one living Temple and Body of Christ, Plato and Pythagoras had wisely followed the Ancient Egyptians in understanding that geometrical and numerical representations, which form the bases of all subsequent systems of harmony, rhythm and proportion, should not, when marked out on plans, be interpreted as having any form of existence independently of the actual structures to which they symbolically refer, but Euclid lacked this indispensable insight. By mistakenly treating merely paper triangles as if they were real, Euclid laid the foundations for the still prevalent illusion that the Pythagoreans had been rather scared of "irrational" numbers.

There has, in fact, never been anything even remotely irrational about either natural numbers or their various functions, but a great deal does appear to be irrational about the preferences of modern mathematicians, who seem to concentrate most of their energies on attempting to solve a theoretically infinite quantity of purely imaginary and utterly abstract problems!

A similarly justified criticism may of course also be directed against all those theoreticians, whether theologians or lawyers, statisticians or technocrats, scientists or social-workers, who seek to adjust people to plans instead of plans to people. Hence, the symbolic value of adopting a truly "universal" unit of measurement instead of simply accepting the most conveniently practical one for any particular job.

The "catholic" or "universal" cubit is, however, not the only ancient unit of measurement to have survived - not, in this case, as an actual rod, but in the undeniable and abundant evidence of its use, which Schjelderup's painstaking researches have so wonderfully brought to light.

As well as the still familiar foot and inch (= 2.54cm but originally defined as "three grains of oats"), one pied-du-roi, for instance, measures 32.5cm. This useful unit is sometimes said to have been given to Charlemagne as a present by Haroun-al-Rascid in about 789 A.D., but, as well as having been used in both England and France before that date, it was a feature of the Minoan civilization of Crete and of that of Ancient Egypt. It may have originated somewhere on the Persian plateau about five thousand years ago.

There is also a slightly smaller "Roman foot" of 29.5cm. As its name suggests, this unit was later used extensively for building purposes throughout the Roman Empire, but it had already been employed in the Middle East for at least two thousand years when the city of Rome had not yet been even founded.

Another unit is the Pes Manualis of 35.4cm, which we might think of as being six fifths of a Roman foot but, as I feel I ought again to emphasise, for the Ancients relationships were not between measurements, but between the measured realities.

Archæologists are familiar with another unit used by the Ancient Egyptians, their Royal cubit of 52.4cm. Allowing for proportional differences required to make a measuring-rod at one latitude realistically correspond with another at quite a different latitude without any change in symbolic value, a simple calculation comparing the cosine figures for these to angles shows that a catholic cubit in Bethlehem matches precisely a Royal cubit at Giza. This fact in itself strongly suggests a mainly Christ-centred interpetation of the symbolic significance of the Great Pyramid.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) believed that another important unit employed by those who built the Great Pyramid was the Sacred cubit. This he defined as 1/10,000,000 of a half of the Earth's polar axis. In the light of present-day knowledge, that makes this unit one of 63.57cm (= 25").

Interestingly, too, expressed in catholic cubits this same half polar axis has, according to my own reading of the available data, a length of 12345678.9! This fascinating number while intrinsically related to the conventions of the decimal system, also at least suggests the possibility of a real relationship between the uses to which the Sacred and the catholic cubits were each of them put, and quite a dynamic relationship does, Schjelderup believes, exist.

According to the 1980 satellite observations the Earth's diameter at the Equator is at present 12,756,274 metres, a figure which partly reflects the ravages of time but also the fact that this planet is not, in any case, a mathematically perfect sphere.

Classical Greek temples were always given horizontal bases that incorporated a slight but quite deliberate curve. In the case of the Parthenon at Athens the mid-point at each end is located about 12cm higher than the corner-point, from which it is some 35 metres distant. Taking those measurements as symbolic indicators, the radius of the Earth works out at precisely 10,000 catholic cubits, a correspondence which Schjelderup feels is unlikely to be just fortuitous.

As previously mentioned, 432,000' = 144,000 yards. The platform of Temple Mount in Jerusalem is exactly 1,440 catholic cubits above sea-level, and the distance from its eastern wall to the end wall of Jesus's tomb is also exactly 1,440 catholic cubits. This is additional confirmation that the radius of the Sacred Circle of Temple Mount is not by chance 1/144,000 of planet Earth's mean circumference at the Equator.

In chapter 14 of the Book of Revelation the Lamb is described as standing on Mount Zion with 144,000 people, "all with his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads."

The only other unit of length that needs to be mentioned here is that of 58.1cm used by the prophet Ezekiel, if Schjelderup's theory is correct, for the purposes of measuring that Temple which is still to come. In other words, one Ezekiel cubit = (4/pi)^-2 catholic cubits. Obviously, an even better and more all-embracing account of symbolic standards of measurement may eventually be discovered, and in due course the author of Evidence hopes to discuss Ezekiel's Temple design in much more detail.

Just as a circle expresses the potential of a wheel, and a straight line extending the length of its circumference the actual energy expended and also produced by turning it through one complete revolution, so the arrangement of matter into a circular or spherical shape symbolises a spiritual intention to nurture one's relationship with G-d as the universal source, while its disposition in a square or cubic pattern emphasises the divisibility, relativity and separateness of each particular human ephoch, nation, person and achievement.

The Ancients, therefore, felt that by squaring the circle they very appropriately symbolized the marriage of Heaven and Earth, a balanced union of opposites, and the reconciliation of chaos and cosmos.

The Great Pyramid connects a circle with a square having the same perimeter, since if its height is regarded as 4, its width measured in units of the same scale is precisely pi. This dynamic 4/pi proportion makes this monument an eloquent sign of a potentially eternal but historically ever to be renewed and realised Covenant between G-d and all those who inhabit planet Earth.

If, moreover, we take the number 4 to symbolize the square or Earth-bound limits of our individual lives, and 36,000 to indicate moment to moment relationships, measured in hundredths of degrees from the Great Pyramid and in every possible direction to each and every attainable goal, the product of multiplying these figures is, of course, 144,000.

This symbolism suggests, therefore, that even if, because of some obstinate abuse of their gift of freedom, not all persons actually share in the Wedding-Feast of the Lamb, most certainly all, and not only a few, are persistently being invited and re-invited time and time again to his Royal Supper!

Although the word "symbol" is widely used today and often, too, in a context that differentiates between, for instance, the entirely arbitrary convention that requires players in a particular football-team to signify their membership of it by wearing black shorts and a green T-shirt, and the natural and spontaneous way in which smoke can symbolize fire, most modern meanings of "symbol" are fundamentally different from the Ancient sense of that expression.

This may seem hard to credit, since Carl Jung's interest in the symbolism of dreams is known to have motivated him to make a quite considerable study of Ancient symbols in art and culture, and also because most religious symbolism has remained to all appearances virtually unchanged for centuries and millennia.

Universities and other Higher Centres of Learning, moreover, usually devote extensive resources to research studies in which a more accurate interpretation of the presumed meaning of Ancient symbols is a central feature.

Despite the increasing emphasis on the value of interdisciplinary studies, however, cooperation between specialists tends to consist of, say, an expert in carbon-dating suggesting how old something probably is, while an expert on social life in that remote period gives an opinion about the likely rank of any person rich enough to have such a thing buried with her or him, and a theologian may discuss the religious implications of the object in question when found at that time in such a context.

In other words, of these three persons, one is believed likely to know more than the others about carbon-dating, a second is credited with a clearer insight into life within some particular society, and the third is deemed to know more about religion. This means that there is still a division of labour, there is still specialisation, and the better cobblers are still believed to be those who keep to their last!

Not so the Ancient Shaman, whose task it was simultaneously to reassure the community of the past, present and future integrity and validity of thier entire society and way of life, of their attitudes and values, and not only that, but also to interpret all signs and symbols whether natural portents or of human origin, and besides this appropriately and effectively to signify to all beings, whether friendly or hostile, outside or above the established limits of that group's culture the needs and wishes of its members, including, when necessary, a specification of the terms and conditions subject to which the community would, in the interests of mutual peace and harmony, arrange some modification of their own culture out of respect for that of their neighbours, or in order to acknowledge without any loss of dignity their own submission to the natural law of unavoidable necessity.

Unless a person was clearly equipped properly to discharge this demanding and complex function, she or he would not be considered a Shaman, Prophet, High Priest or King - and for that same reason would, very properly, be regarded as knowing nothing about Symbols in the Ancient sense. The difference between a polymath, a think-tank or a panel of modern academic experts on the one hand, and the Wise Woman or Man of Old is, therefore, quite clear and quite simple.

Socrates and Plato invented abstract language by teaching the Greeks to treat words as though they had a meaning which was separable from the total community context in which alone living speech occurs, and, as previously mentioned, Euclid invented abstract mathematics by treating the conventional signs for numbers and their natural functions as though their meaning could be separated from the total Cosmos in which alone natural symbols have from time immemorial been acknowledged as being the warp and woof of the ever-shifting but ever-present plan of Chance/Destiny/Fate/G-d/Luck/Providence that is woven into every fibre of Nature's seamless robe: Indra's net, the web of Wyrd.

To interpret the meaning of this short paper in any way akin to that its writer has been attempting to signify, each reader is, therefore, invited at least temporarily to suspend her or his adherence to Greek and other more recent habits of thought, to bracket off as irrelevant to present purpose all considerations of a purely abstract character and, even if she or he is utterly convinced that all the Ancients were, speaking objectively, ignorant children or demented savages, to humour the writer for the moment, and to pretend they weren't, to pretend she or he doesn't even know how to use numbers and words as if they were separate from the Big Wide World to which they, like the rest of us, inevitably belong - in a word, to play at make-believe.

This, I feel, is what the best among the Ancients always did, and I think they did it extremely well; indeed, I have an idea that some of them are still doing it today!

One useful key with which to open the Magic Door of Natural Number Symbolism has already been mentioned. While the circumference of a circle expresses potential, a straight line of the same length as that circumference and extended outwards from any point on it may be seen as a quite natural external manifestation of that intrinsic potential as specified by the one and only one corresponding interior radius that grows out towards that same point. Such a straight line, the Ancients acknowledged, symbolizes the full realization of that potential within the limits of each one's uniquely individual and, therefore, unavoidably restricted situation. As it happens, this image (O———) also looks quite like a key: The Ancients put this key to very good use, unconsciously according to Schjelderup and yet somehow acting under divine guidance or, as I prefer to believe, quite deliberately and in full awareness of what they were doing which was not, in fact, anything at all complicated for a Master of Symbolism (to use Isha Schwaller de Lubicz's apt expression).

Symbolically (a modern theorist might prefer to say metasymbolically) this key explains wholeness as the addition and integration of two aspects of one symbol of meaning, the circular line (C) of a circle of unbroken identity and the straight line (S) of a circle of broken identity.

Incidentally, this also enriches our understanding of the traditional symbolism of the crossed-keys of St Peter in relation to binding and loosing as on Earth so in Heaven, and vice versa.

More generally, though always in the dynamic context of living Nature and praxis, and never simply at the modern abstract level of formulated law or systematic logic, the key always speaks of wholeness as "Both-And" rather than "Either-Or".

Hence, it validates Jung's cardinal insight, as expressed in his most valuable booklet, which he had printed privately in 1925, VII Sermones ad Mortuos - The Seven Sermons to the Dead written by Basilides in Alexandria the City where the East Toucheth the West: "The pairs of opposites are qualities of the pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each. As we are the pleroma itself, we also have all those qualities in us."

Jung felt this work so important that he never allowed it to be sold during his life-time, and it was actually entirely omitted from the original listing of his collected works.

If beneath the centre of the base of the Great Pyramid a sphere tangential to it were so constructed that its central point was horizontally aligned with the ceiling of the Pyramid's Deep Chamber, one arrives immediately at the circular portion (C) of the Great Pyramid's symbolic key. What has been called the broken circle, the straight portion (S) of that key, is, of course, pi times, i.e., slightly more than three times the diameter of the symbolic sphere in the Underworld. Ascending fractionally more than another diameter higher brings one to exactly where the vertical centre of the Great Pyramid above its base (the level of the point of distinction) would be, had this Ancient Temple been built with a capstone (as were, of course, very much more recently, all the pyramids originally constructed by the Ancient Egyptians).

These proportions confirm, or at the very least strongly suggest, that the summit platform was designed as a platform, and that it was never meant to be capped by anything other than a purely spiritual capstone, as befitted that part of the Great Pyramid Symbol which linked the sitting, headless body of expectant humanity to its supreme Head, symbolised by the last quarter of the key - the remaining third of (S), the as yet invisible Cubic Stone, G-d's previously hidden Word made manifest in Jesus Christ, "the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by G-d" mentioned by St Peter in his First Letter (2:4) or, to quote from the Letter to the Hebrews:

"At various times in the past and in various different ways, G-d spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is. He is the radiant light of G-d's glory and the perfect copy of his nature, sustaining the universe by his powerful command: and now that he has destroyed the defilement of sin, he has gone to take his place in heaven at the right hand of divine Majesty.
So he is now as far above the angels as the title which he has inherited is higher than their own name, and he was acclaimed by G-d with the title of High Priest of the Order of Melchizedek. On this subject we have many things to say, and they are difficult to explain because you have grown so slow at understanding. Really, when you should by this time have become Masters, you need someone to teach you all over again the elementary principles of interpreting G-d's oracles; you have gone back to needing milk, and not solid food!
Let us leave behind us then all the elementary teachings and concentrate on its completion. This, G-d willing, is what we propose to do. Melchizedek, king of Salem, is first, 'king of righteousness' and also 'king of peace'; he has no father, mother or ancestry, and his life has no beginning or ending. Think how great this man must have been, if the patriarch Abraham paid him a tenth of the treasure he had captured.
But now Christ has come, he has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, which is better than the one made by men's hands, because it is not of this created order. It is not as though Christ had entered a man-made sanctuary which was only modelled on the real one; but it was heaven itself, so that he could appear in the actual presence of G-d on our behalf.
He had made his appearance once and for all, now at the end of the last age, to do away with sin by sacrificing himself. When he appears a second time, it will not be to deal with sin, but to reward with salvation those who are waiting for him.
Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for. It is by faith that we understand that the world was created by one word from G-d, so that no apparent cause can account for the things we can see. Is there any need to say more?"

^{To the Hebrews 1:1-4; 5:10-12; 6:1-3; 7:1-4; 9:11,24-28; 11:1-3,32.}

Many scholars devoting their attention to a close study of the childhood and early years of Yeshua meBet-Lehem, even if unaware of several matters to which attention has here been drawn, have been so impressed by the regularity with which the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life match like a glove the minutiæ of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah to come, that they have grown to feel these accounts, far from resting on objective experience or historical research, are nothing more than a vividly dramatised interpretation of those Old Testament texts which, therefore, they utterly depend on, and in no way add to.

St Luke, in the Prologue to his Gospel doesn't actually claim, for example, that he chatted with Mary of Nazareth, but that his account relies on things "exactly as these were handed down to us by those who from the outset were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word", adding that he has gone carefully over the whole story from the beginning. Most of us are, of course, familiar with many stories that date back, if not to the beginning, at least to a most remote past. They usually begin: "Once upon a time …"

It is not, in other words, a thoughtful person may very fairly inquire, much more plausible that the Evangelists chose to make Bethlehem the location for Christ's birth, knowing already thatr it was 26.28° East by North of the Great Pyramid, than that those who built that monument together with the Sphinx, some time before the sea flooded the area that later became the Sahara desert and Ancient Egypt, should have deliberately so arranged the gradients of the ascending and descending passages in the Pyramid that they precisely forecast the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, perhaps about 13,000 years later?

Similar queries naturally arise in any reasonable person's mind with regard to various other details so far mentioned and, indeed, in respect of the way in which the life of Christ, as related by all four Evangelists, so neatly matches the relatively recent Old Testament prophecies. Many non-Roman-Catholic biblical scholars have claimed that Luke's account of Jesus's childhood in particular is simply a midrash, a gloss upon Old Testament texts.

Although an Instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, dated 21 April 1964, signed by Fr George Castellino, S.D.B., and issued by authority of Pope Paul VI, cautioned Catholic scholars against favouring this view, when I was Prefect of Studies at Salesian House, Beckford, Fr Castellino told me himself that it was more than likely the midrash hypothesis is correct. He added that this was the reason why the Instruction had been couched in the very precise terms in which it is written.

General acceptance of the midrash hypothesis so that it becomes the majority opinion among scholars will, of course, require a radical review by preachers and pastors of souls of their own currently very different way of presenting these truths to the res of faithful believers in Christ's message of Good News. Nothing is gained, and much can be lost when fools rush in where Angels feaar to tread!

St Peter himself anticipated some of the sorts of doubt that acceptance of a midrash theory might quite unnecessarily arouse in the minds of persons insufficiently equipped to cope with it, those, in other words, to whom the words of the Letter to the Hebrews still apply, those who "need someone to teach them all over again the elementary principles of interpreting G-d's oracles."

He, therefore, wrote quite clearly in the first chapter of his Second Letter:

"It was not any cleverly invented myth that we were repeating when we brought you the knowledge of the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: we had seen his majesty for ourselves. He was honoured and glorified by G-d the Father, when the Sublime Glory itself spoke to him and said, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour'. We heard this ourselves, spoken from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain.
So we have confirmation of what was said in prophecies; and you will be right to depend on prophecy and take it as a lamp for lighting a way through the dark until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in your minds."

The sand in the Sahara desert is still full of sea-shells, and the largest piece of sculpture in the world, the Great Sphinx of Giza just outside Cairo, carved out of a single ridge of living rock 140 feet long and 66 feet high, continues to exhibit undeniable evidence of very considerable water erosion. It was undoubtedly fashioned some time before the least great flood in about 10,000 B.C. had made a sea of what is now the surrounding desert.

Yet, so far as the Western Tradition goes, only one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World still exists. One cannot visit the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Tomb of Mausolus, Diana's Temple at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, or the Pharos of Alexandria. The statue of Zeus by Phidias has also been lost.

The much more massive Great Pyramid, only a short camel-ride away from the bus-stop where visitors from Cairo alight, is the remaining Wonder, and the monument most tourists rush to visit, but the majority of guides and guide-books still refer to it as the Pyramid of Cheops.

Its base is 756' square (755.58' to the East; 755.77' to the West; 755.43' to the North; and 756.08' to the South). This makes it the largest pyramid at Giza and it now has a height of 450', although it it had ever had a material capstone at its summit, its apex would have originally been 481.4' above ground level.

Its material structure covers 13.1 acres, and comprises 6 million tons of limestone blocks, so that it is bigger than St Peter's Church in Rome, St Paul's in London and Westminster Abbey all rolled into one. Some have claimed that to build it today would cost several billion and take at least six years, but a group of Japanese enthusiasts who recently attempted to make a very large-scale model, using every conceivably relevant method known to modern technology, were eventually compelled to acknowledge their own utter failure.

Though this Temple is still usually, and quite confidently, said to have been built by Pharaoh Cheops in the IV Ancient Egyptian dynasty (2613-2494 B.C.), it was then probably only repaired and restored or, perhaps, also subtly and quite deliberately modified; like the much smaller neighbouring Temple of the Sphinx, with its intriguing blocks of red Aswan grantite buried 54 feet below the level of today's surrounding sands, it almost certainly dates back to a much more remote past. Most handbooks describe it more or less as follows -

The angle of the sides to the base is 51° 52', the East and West sides are exactly placed, azimuth 90°, so that the pyramid points to the sunrise on the first say of Spring, the vernal equinox, as it has always done.

The North side points only very slightly West of true North, and some investigators have attributed this to more recent continental drift. The average "error" for the three large pyramids at Giza is 0° 4'; that of the Great Pyramid itself is 0° 5' 30".

The joints between the different granite and limestone blocks of which the Great Pyramid is made are never more than 1/50" wide.

Almost exactly midway across its North face and about 55' above ground-level is the entrance to a 3' square corridor that descends at an angle of 26.28° into an unfinished Deep Chamber, the South wall of which opens into what at least seems to be a blind passage. About 60' from the unfinished Deep Chamber another shaft, probably an air-vent, leads to the descending corridor. An ascending corridor 129' long opens up 60' from the entrance to the descending corridor within that corridor itself.

At the top of the ascending corridor, a horizontal passage leads off into the 17' × 18' Queen's Chamber with a pointed 20' high roof. Dead-end shafts go up out of the North and South walls, and the East wall contains a nich 3½' deep, 5' wide and 15' high.

The King's Chamber is approached by the Grand Gallery, 100' long, 30' high and 7' wide (a 3' 6" passage flanked by catwalks 1' 9" wide and 2' high), which goes up from the end of the ascending corridor at an angle of 26.28°.

A narrow, low passageway, less than 4' square, links the Grand Gallery to the King's Chamber itself. This passageway is of polished limestone, though the small antechamber, a third of the way along it, into which it temporarily widens out, if of red granite, like the King's Chamber. This latter is 17' by 34' wide and 19' high. There are shafts in the North and South walls and a granite coffer (often described, quite erroneously, as a "sarcophagus") near the West wall - it is 1" wider than the ascending corridor.

The King's Chamber has no less than 6 exactly made ceilings with compartments between each, possibly for greater protection, the uppermost being pointed, the rest flat; the bottom one is made of nine limestone slabs with a total weight of about 400 tons and, though time has caused all of these to crack, none are broken.

Cunningly arranged granite plugs seal off and conceal the ascending from the descending corridor, the passageway to the Queen's Chamber from the ascending corridor, and the Grand Gallery from both.

Bodvar Schjelderup follows the hermeticist R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and several pyramidologists in emphasising that what for him is only the material top of the Great Pyramid is, like the Temple of Luxor, rather an anomalie.

The Luxor Temple is in the proportions of an adult human skeleton, but of one so arranged that that part of the skull wich would be covered by a cap of maintenance, a crown or a mitre falls outside, not inside, the end-wall of its sanctuary; in other words, this symbolical head-gear does not cover the mammalian brain, but represents its replacement.

In the case of the Great Pyramid, built in the proportions of a person reposing in the lotus posture, not merely the mammalian brain but the entire head is excluded from the material construction. Unlike most other pyramids, in other words, the Great Pyramid terminated in a level platform at the position of the throat chakra, and was always capped by an invisible bio-electromagnetic capstone only, and never by one made of gross physical matter - not even orichalc (= amber?) or quartz.

Clement of Alexandria wrote - "The path of souls to ascension lies through the twelve signs of the Zodiac," adding: "The descending path is the same." Clearly, he did not think of Jacob's Ladder as being any sort of everyday material object.

The symbolic Base of the Great Pyramid is, according to Schjelderup's measurements, only 75.976 catholic cubits above the bottom of the pit in the Deep Chamber at the end of the descending passage, and 127 catholic cubits above sea-level, but the smaller platform at the apex is 383.74 catholic cubits above sea-level and, measured from symbolic Base to summit platform, the sloping edge at each of the Pyramid's four corners is also exactly 383.74 catholic cubits in length.

Thus, the theoretical height of the apex itself would have been 402 catholic cubits above sea-level, thereby placing it, significantly enough, another 405 catholic cubits higher than the level of the Sea of Galilee.

When Jesus of Nazareth shortly before his Passion was being fêted by the crowd, as he rode on a donkey towards Jerusalem, St Luke tells us: "Some Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Master, check your disciples', but he answered, 'I tell you, if these keep silence the stones will cry out'."

In explanation of this, the Evangelist then continues: "As he drew near and came in sight of the city he shed tears over it and said, 'If you in your turn had only understood on this day the message of peace! But, alas, it is hidden from your eyes!
Yes, a time is coming when your enemies will raise fortifications all round you, when they will encircle you and hem you in on every side; they will dash you and the children inside your walls to the ground; they will leave not one stone standing on another within you - and all because you did not recognize your opportunity when G-d offered it!' " (Luke 19:39-44).

That expression "in your turn" recalls the already quoted opening words of the Letter to the Hebrews: "At various times in the past and in various different ways, G-d spoke to our ancestors through the prophets." It would, I suggest, be excessively narrow-minded to understand by "ancestors" anything less universal than human forbears of either gender.

While the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D., just as it had been previously destroyed in 587 B.C., the Great Pyramid, though damaged, is, in marked contrast, still standing, and its stones, as we shall gradually discover, continue to cry out for justice to those who have ears to hear.

Hearing and seeing (which latter is somewhat akin to hearing-at-the-speed-of-light or, more properly, at the frequency of illumination and above) are, by the way, particularly apt verbs with which to signify our innate capacity to interpret natural symbols.

Symbols properly understood are, as Terence O'Brien has emphasized, "the medium through which personal growth takes place," because they facilitate an interior integration of the most ancient with the most recently developed functional areas of the brain and, as José Argüelles has very clearly appreciated, because each "symbol is a resonant structure, the reverberation ot a particular quality of radiant energy that takes form in our senses."

A symbol in this ancient and traditional sense is never, in other words, a matter of arbitrary convention, but is both the fruit of and the key to a vital contemplation of the essential and dynamic unity that exists between Nature and Spirit.

It is a "form-constant that exists in and defines a field of consciousness that transcends both time and the individual. The world is a weave of symbols, and it is through symbols that we weave our understanding of the world."

The writings of St Hildegard of Bingen also constantly recall us to this holistic position, which we moderns have for so long sadly failed to appreciate. Nothing is, however, entirely forgotten, and faint recollections of this symbolic way of living very likely account for the popularity of Umberto Eco's best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, as well as of the associated film of the same name.

"When we understand that symbols are actually resonant structures, vibratory form-fields, and that we ourselves are resonant to our very core, then we can see that symbols are not something æry-færy but are completely vital to our functioning as whole beings. Asleep and unconscious to the potency of symbols, our dreams become nightmares, and we live hostages to a world which is in reality the eclipse of symbolic knowing.
As we know, we do not live by bread alone. Though we may feel that spirituality is a vague concept and transcendence a remote aspiration, it is really our own belief in the separation of Science, Spirituality, and Art that keeps us from a full comprehension of symbols and symbolic knowing. As resonant structures, symbols literally create, work with and inform our light-body. It is not poetry alone that commands us to declare that just as a flower cannot live without light and water, we cannot live without symbols."

Adopting a topography factor of 1/20 in interpreting the significance of the very careful and accurate measurements on which most of the following observations are based, and a factor of 1/10 in the case of calculations involving points below the symbolic base-level of the Great Pyramid, Schjelderup has, I think, persuasively demonstrated that the Deep Chamber within it, which was so arranged that a priest inside it could easily deliver a prophetic message to persons outside, symbolically represents the Ark of G-d's original covenant with humankind of, to cite the words of the Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Mass: "Glory to G-d in the Highest, and on Earth peace to those who are G-d's friends."

Now, while the process of initiation within the Great Pyramid quite naturally commenced at its base, the corresponding process in what most Christians nowadays still call the Holy Land started at sea-level, Earth-point zero, not necessarily a sign of any very great progress having been made by G-d's Chosen People, and a justification of the complaint already quoted from the Letter to the Hebrews, a complaint which naturally applies at least as forcibly to members of most, if not quite all races currently inhabiting this planet.

Thus, while the platform of Temple Mount in Jerusalem is, quite appropriately, situated 1440 catholic cubits above sea-level, the traditional spot from which Jesus, the new Adam, commenced his glorious Ascension into Heaven is another 117 catholic cubits higher up, exactly 1440 catholic cubits above the level of the ground on which the Great Pyramid rests - "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." (Matthew 2:15)

Using the proportions already mentioned, of 1:20 above, and 1:10 below the Base, the floor-level of the Queen's Chamber vertically corresponds to the location in the hills of Nazareth of the traditional sites of the Annunciation made to Mary and possibly of the greater part of her son's boyhood experiences.

As will be much more easily appreciated by those readers who have already visited both places, but can also quite readily be understood by studying the relevant diagrams in Schjelderup's Evidence, Temple Square in Jerusalem similarly matches the bottom level of the step-riser between the end of the Great Pyramid's ascending corridor and Grand Gallery, and the High Chamber itself, where the floor-level and Great Step correspond to the heights of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the heights at which, in other words, Jesus was born, cruelly put to death and, as I believe, rose in newness of Life.

Similarly, the crown of the head of an average man standing upright inside the coffer in the High Chamber, also known as the King's Chamber, matches the geographical location, in terms of heigh, of the Mount of Olives and the place of Christ's final Ascension.

I find myself irresistibly compelled to read in a much more literal sense than I otherwise might these inspired words of St Paul:

"This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name - Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of G-d." (Ephesians 3:14-19)

All of these chakras are, incidentally, also appropriately located, and an understanding of their symbolic meaning put in evidence, in the 1370 B.C. Temple of Luxor previously mentioned, which was built in the exact proportions of an adult human male, save for one unusual feature - the penis is located at the position of the umbilicus and may, in other words, have been meant to evoke an image either of self-generation or of virginal birth - or possibly both.

This detail, however, still seems to have escaped the notice of most commentators. As I wrote to Bodvar Schjelderup early in 1987: "Too often, I believe, looking prevents truly seeing; listening becomes an obstacle to childlike hearing. How much we need to relearn to hear and to see."

Ancient Egypt accommodated many other pyramids. Limiting ourselves to the more important ones, and including the Great Pyramid "of Cheops" as more customarily dated, three date from the III dynasty, seven from the IV, six from the V, four from the VI, one from the VIII, one from the XI, seven from the XII, and one from the XIII dynasty. According to the usually accepted chronology the III to VI dynasties ruled Egypt from 2686-2181 B.C.; the VII to X dynasties from 2181-2040 B.C.; the XI and XII dynasties from 2133-1786 B.C.; and the XIII dynasty from 1786 B.C.

The most recent pyramid in Egypt is Khendjer's, 170' square, at Saqqara, where one may also see two of the oldest, Zoser's (411' × 358') and Sekhemkhet's (395' square). The other III dynasty pyramid is that of Khaba (276' square) at Zawiyet-el-Aryan. Almost all of the pyramids were built on the fringe of the desert West of the Nile in the neighbourhood of Memphis, when it was the seat of government for a united Upper and Lower Egypt.

However, the Ancient Egyptians believed that it was from the watery chaos Nun that there had, at a very much earlier date, originally arisen a mound with Atum upon it, who begat himself and then created air (Shu) and moisture (Tefnut), these then giving birth to earth (Geb) and sky (Nut). This mound was, for them, the original pyramid.

There are also pyramids in many other countries.

At Moche on the northern coast of Peru near the modern city of Trujillo are two which date from about 600 A.D. There is a third pyramid just South of Lima, and a fourth at Tiahuanaco, 13,000' above sea-level, twelve miles S.E. of the world's highest navigable lake, Lake Titicaca. This fourth pyramid is 50' high and has an area at the base of about 690 square feet.

The pyramids in Mexico are much older. The pyramids of the Sun and Moon in the sacred city of Teotihuacan date from about 600 B.C. The pyramid of the Sun gives the illusion of infinite height and space. Its planes and terraces are so designed that an observer standing at the base of the great staircase cannot see people at the top, so that a procession moving upwards would seem to be disappearing into space - though, in fact, the top platform was wide enough to have houses for priests around the sides of it, just as there are shops and houses today on the roof of St Peter's in Rome.

There is also a big complex of pyramid structures in the Shensi province of China, the main pyramid being over a thousand feet high - all the pyramids are aligned to true North; they are made of line and clay, covered with casing-stones, and painted in various colours. A shimmering white pyramid in the Himalayas has a jewel-like capstone, possibly a crystal. In Cambodia the ancient jungle ruins of Angkor include some vast pyramids.

A million tons of dirt were heaped 150' high some 4700 years ago in Wiltshire to produce the Silbury Hill pyramid, which has a 5-acre base.

In the Spring of 1970 a Soviet attack by bombers and fighter-planes is said to have blasted from the face of the Earth a complex of pyramids in the central Siberian uplands, so that these could no longer be used as a flying-saucer base! Pyramids are also reported to have been sighted on Mars and, I think, Neptune…

No mummies have ever been found inside any of the Egyptian pyramids, and some archæologists explain this by claiming they have all been stolen by tomb-robbers. Other "experts" say the rooms so far discovered are only dummy chambers and blind alleys designed to prevent robbers ever finding the real burial chambers wich are still hidden somewhere inside. A third group of scholars believe the pyramids were never used for burials; they were all temples of initiation. The special empty coffers, the so called "sarcophagi" they contain were used at the moment of each initiate's ritual death but, after three days (if some recently channeled information is to be relied on), hopefully, she or he then symbolically rose again.

The available data are, of course, open to various interpretations, but there definitely seems to be a relation between the shape of the space inside a pyramid and the physical, chemical and biological processes going on inside that space. The Great Pyramid, for instance, accumulates static electricity, and we may conjecture that most pyramids act as resonating cavities which are somehow able to focus cosmic energies, just as a lens focuses light waves; this also seems to be true of Stonehenge.

Even a 4-inch pyramid can generate an energy vortex 8' high and almost 6' in diameter, this diameter increasing the higher its place on the ascending spiral of the helical vortex.

Many quite ordinary people believe that psychic powers are stimulated or heightened by the use of a home-made pyramid as a meditation area; certainly alterations in states of consciousness seem to occur more rapidly in such an environment. Usually, it is necessary to sit or lie prone along the North-South axis beneath the apex of the pyramid.

Napoleon Bonaparte passed the night inside the Great Pyramid and reported having a deeply significant experience. Specific results vary very considerably. Some persons experience visions, others feelings of serenity. Some positions inside pyramids are not beneficial, and may induce headaches, if nothing worse! Energy seems higher as one moves up towards the apex.

Pyramids can relieve migraine, and rheumatic pain can be eased simply by placing one's hand palm upwards for a few minutes beneath the apex of a small pyramid.

It has also been found that if an accurately made scale-model of the Great Pyramid is placed with the base lines facing precisely North-South and East-West, a dead cat, rat or bat put inside it one third of the way up will be mummified. A razor-blade similarly placed inside such a pyramid, beneath its apex, will be sharpened, as the crystalline structure of the edge of the blade is aligned and restored. In 1959, in fact, after the chief scientist at the patents' office in Prague had tested this invention for himself, the "Cheops Pyramid Razor-Blade Sharpener" was registered under the Czechoslovakian Republic Patent no. 91304.

If you are of an inquisitive turn of mind, it is quite easy to make such a pyramid yourself. Cut four pieces of heavy cardboard into equal-sized isoceles triangles with the proportion base to sides of 15.7 to 14.94 and tape them together, so that your pyramid stands exactly 10.0 units high. Position this pyramid exactly North-South and East-West, away from all electrical and magnetic equipment. Under the apex place a small stand 3.33 units high to support your blade. For larger-scale models calculate the ratio of vertical height to base-line as 1:1.57079 (i.e., ½pi).

As well as sharpening blade by restoring their elasticity overnight (provided they are aligned precisely as they initially were for a few days' preliminary incubation before first being used at all), such a pyramid will mummify veal, beef, mutton, eggs, flowers, dead frogs, lizards and snakes.

Incidentally, there has also been a certain vogue for pyramid hats, and it has been suggested that these formed part of the secret power of the old-time witches and wizards. Egyptian priests, when praying to the Sun-god, Ra, wore pyramid hats, and bishops' mitres may later have been designed on the same principle, in order to invoke the gift of intelligence from on high for the benefit of their needy wearers!

The modern mind has difficulties in grasping these sense of that famous inscription on the Temple at Delphi: "Number is the Law of the Universe". However, when the Pythagoreans taught that our entire Cosmos was founded on mathematical principles, they were referring nto to the abstract formulæ familiar to modern physics, but to a living and innate sense of rhythm as ordered vibration. This is also among the primary meanings of the often quoted verse from the second chapter of the Book of Wisdom: "Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight."

It is, however, important to understand these symbolic, if not quite cymbalic, musical vibrations of the singing stones of both the Great Pyramid and the Jerusalem Temple as occurring at a very high frequency, so fast, indeed, as to exceed the measurable range of frequencies now associated with the activities of any of the human chakras or bio-electromagnetic relay-stations.

While Aristotle thought "weight" was a force impelling all bodies towards the physical centre of the Earth, St Augustine of Hippo more correctly appreciated that it is the fundamental attraction which all created things experience as drawing them irresistibly into the very heart of G-d. For anybody sufficiently attuned to the Ancient mentality it will not be difficult to appreciate that Aristotle and Augustine were not so much making rival truth-claims as separately affirming complementary aspects of one and the same, essentially sacramental or symbolic universe.

In this connection, to readers unable to give very much time to studying the external details of any of the world's great ancient civilizations, I can, in passing, heartily recommend Isha Schwaller de Lubicz's Journey Into The Light. The Yugoslavian writer Bika Reed, who has lived in London since 1963, has, incidentally, also written a beatiful commentary on an Ancient Egyptian text of about 1800 B.C. (c. 200 years after Abraham) called The Revelation of the Soul of Shu. Both writers help one to understand how unobjectifiable facts can exercise an extremely important creative function.

Such self-education in love can unlock far memory and release energy for improved relationships through personal development from within. I became a dark riddle to myself, and I questioned my soul, wrote St Augustine of Hippo.

The longer conscience has remained hidden in any sort of unnatural darkness, the more painful may seem the birth of true enlightenment, as memories in natural darkness dim the eye, but enhance the vision, and you awaken to discover who and what you really are! Anguish and hardship fall away.

For example, as a vibrantly dynamic natural symbol, the hurricane of Friday, 16 October 1987, undoubtedly shook many things within the deep foundations as well as in the external fabric of the present English establishment, and did not merely tear down a few much loved material buildings.

When such a variety of trees, so long cherished as to have become even too much taken for granted, were so suddenly and dramatically uprooted, countless good persons found themselves abruptly cleansed from the dross of their accumulated bad habits, and summoned up the fresh reserves of courage, which we all urgently need, if we are to succeed in our daily task of eradicating the hidden, neglected, and yet secretly quite well known sources and causes of all our main problems.

In many ways, then, that hurricane came to us as one more of Nature's powerful, yet relatively gentle declarations of this small planet's continuing right to maintain Mother Earth's own G-d-given right to sustain her own health and strength.

Presume not to hope that, in the words of Cardinal Newman, a "kindly light" will lead you daily on, but let that one glimpse of light suffice as guarantee. Though you stumble and fall, with difficulties and unexpected turnings along the way, you are on the right road now. Let Faith alone guide you!

The Great Pyramid is not the only Symbol of which the meaning may more adequately be interpreted by making use of Schjelderup's (C,S) Key. Indeed, a very common Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, the Ankh sign, may signify it, as well as expressing several other known meanings. A stone-relief, probably from a monastery, on Mason Island in Ireland similarly combines a circle of wholeness with a rod of relativity. In each case, the cross-piece added to the Key may signify the importance of correct compass-bearings.

The application of the Key Symbol to the Great Pyramid as a whole has already been discussed. This Key Symbolism also guides the Pyramid-Temple's internal geometry in various other ways. If C is, for instance, a verticle circle inscribed in the King's Chamber and S rises vertically above it, S will terminate precisely at the apex of the 6th stone ceiling.

Similarly, if C is a vertical circle so inscribed that the external opening into the Great Pyramid lies within it and both the point of distinction and the external side-wall are tangential to it, the extremity of S will, approximately at floor-level, touch the wall dividing the Deep Chamber from the so called dead-end Underworld passage at a point equidistant with the distance from the point of distinction to a correspondingly located point just inside the King's Chamber vertically above it. Nor are these the only examples that could be given.

Mention has already been made of the 1440 catholic cubits' distance that separates the Tomb of Jesus from the Eastern edge of Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As a glance at the survey-map of Isræl suffices to show, a line running North from Bethlehem to Nazareth so bisects this distance that if the closed circle C tangential to Jesus's Tomb lies West of this Bethlehem to Nazareth line, the broken and extended circle S to its East will, indeed, be 3.1416 times the length of the diameter of the closed circle. The centre of the Knesset facade, moreover, is oriented exactly to face the point where S emerges from C; this also applies to the frontage of the Hadassa Alef hospital.

Another valid application of the (C,S) Key can just as easily be appreciated by a simple glance at any map showing Bethlehem (B), Capernaum (CP), the place of Jesus's Baptism and Joshuah's earlier crossing of the Jordan (JC), Mount Sinai (MS), Nazareth (N), the Great Pyramid (P), and Qadesh Barnea where the Isrælites made their so called Great Halt (Q), providing, that is, an overlay grid of parallel lines placed over this map has been suitably prepared visually to exhibit the East-West and North-South relationships.

As the relevant map in Bodvar Schjelderup's book indicates, if C has CP and JC tangential to it, S is the further distance one must travel North from MS to reach JC; in other words, the Promised Land was not meant to be a region of fulfilment for the Isrælites, but a place of renewed potential, a further chance for that progression from Law to Faith they had failed to make when they crossed the "Red Sea".

If C has B and N tangential to it, S is again the distance to be first of all travelled North from MS (Mount Sinai: Symbol of the Law) - this time to reach B. This is a shorter distance, indicating that conversion from Law to Faith is more easily achieved by the practice of a childlike simplicity (symbolized by B: Bethlehem) than by any formal adult-style conversion from institutional Judaism to organized Christianity (JC: the flowing Jordan where the Old Testament is, by John the Baptist, both fulfilled and transcended by the New Covenant).

If C has JC and Q tangential to it, S represents the distance East from P to Q. Here again the movement is more one of involution, than of evolution; the broken S precedes the unbroken C. The symbolism seems to be saying again and again that to fulfill the promises from of Old was not the final goal implicit in the pristine revelation of G-d to humankind, but only one further staging-point on the wayfarer's journey into G-d.

Partly in order to avoid losing the economic support of Christians and Jews prejudiced against Ancient Egyptian culture which was, of course, not all roses, Egyptologists have overemphasized the superstitious elements in the daily life of what is generally recognized as having been the friendliest, healthiest and most cultivated of Ancient peoples, and have insufficiently attended to the evidently very considerable esoteric lore possessed by those who designed and built its monuments and guided its millennary destiny.

Moses' departure from Egypt was not an abandonment of that great centre of Wisdom and Spirituality, but his promotion to the missionary task of replanting the seeds of that Wisdom in an even less material and, therefore, much more spiritual environment. This, of course, was very well symbolized by preferring a nomadic life to urban settlement, and a mobile Tent of Meeting to any of Ancient Egypt's magnificent stone Temples.

The historical snag was, however, that the ill-prepared Isrælites kept on dreaming of comfort and settled boundaries; they were reluctant to let go - "a stiff-necked people", a label which is again symbolic, and applies not merely to Jews according to the flesh, but to all those who prefer reason to Faith, matter to Spirit, the "known" present to the Great Unknown Timeless Presence.

Finally, if C has P and Q tangential to it, S signifies the distance from Q to N. This confirms that P and Q are both not residences but merely temporary halts along the way. Nazareth is home, a place that is certainly not Jerusalem, a place, indeed, about which people had their reservations - "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Symbolically., therefore, N represents Jesus's option for the poor in spirit.

So far I have been following Bodvar Schjelderup in using the (C,S) Key vertically within the Great Pyramid and horizontally in respect of the movements of the Isrælites and the topology of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Some others things are, I think, also apparent as one considers the map. From the North-South point of view - excluding, in other words, all consideration of any differences in position along the East-West axis, the Great Pyramid is exactly 1/3 of the distance between Mount Sinai and Capernaum. Although an integral part of G-d's Plan, the Isrælites; dependence on a Lawgiver, followed by Judges and Kings represented a step backwards, when compared with the level of spirituality characteristic of those imitating Jesus in his preferential option for those who are little and despised (cf Mark 9:33-50).

Its East-West bearings, moreover, if we consider these independently of any differences in location along the North-South axis, also make the place where the Isrælites crossed the "Red Sea" 9/19 part of the way between the Great Pyramid and Mount Sinai; it was their Rubicon, their point of no return.

It is, however, also possible to advance a stage further, simply by transforming the closed circle C into what it has, in any case, always been, the expression of a relatively compact sphere, of which S × 144,000 represents the quasi-simultaneous expansion in all directions - if, i.e., we suppose four positions of C in its own sphere North-South, East-West, N.W.-S.E. and N.E.-S.W., with each divided, Ancient style, into 360° with 100 subdivisions to each degree.

It has already been noted that in the Book of Revelation the reference to "144,000" persons saved symbolizes the universal availability of salvation for all.

The summit platform of the Great Pyramid may be regarded as the material base of an invisible symbolic cube, this cube being the meeting-point, by mutual compenetration, of thirteen other invisible and, therefore, Greater Pyramids, the equivalent of the Ezekiel Temple and of the Heavenly Jerusalem mentioned, I think, by St Paul in the poem incorporated into the first chapter of his Letter to the Colossians:

"He is the image of the unseen G-d
and the first-born of all creation
for in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers -
all things were created through im and for him.
Before anything was created, he existed,
And he holds all things in unity.
Now the Church is his body,
he is its head.

As he is in the Beginning,
he was first to be born from the dead,
so that he should be first in every way;
because G-d wanted all perfection
to be found in him
and all things to be reconciled through him and for him
everything in heaven and everything on earth,
when he made peace
by his death on the cross."

The result has been that his has learned not only to see, but to see - which in this context may, as already mentioned, usefully be thought of as rather like hearing taking place at the speed of light. Because Bodvar Schjelderup is primarily a see-er, he insists that "words are little more than flecks of dust. They spring forth to draw the picture, to serve the union by way of the picture. But as soon as they have served their purpose they must be swept away. To save them is to collect dust. To celebrate them ends in difficulties. So it is with all things which are to help us on the way. Numbers. Geometry. The screens of the Earth and of the human body. The text of signs and temples. When they have served thier purpose they become anachronisms. They are but dust and soil the path of validity."

He who spoke through them yesterday says the same thing today. He always says the same thing. But not in the same way. The former forms are in the way. Full, true and listening attention is needed, with the fisherman concentrating on sight, signs and duty, and the potter creating new vessels with intensified ardour and skill.

Evidence was accepted as an integral part of a research programme within the Department of Architecture of the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and the text, illustrations, art and layout were entirely Associate Professor Schjelderup's work. In 1986 he also set up his own publishing-house in Trondheim, Forlaget Fredag, in order, as he told me in February 1987, not to lose time, and also so as to by-pass what he then felt would have been irrelevant discussions with other potential publishers.

When, in August 1989, I ventured to suggest to him that, with hindsight, he might agree that, despite the importance of the substance of his message, and notwithstanding the many excellent qualities exhibited by both his illustrations and the accompanying verbal commentary, certain improvements might be both possible and desirable, he disclosed that he had himself been thinking along rather similar lines for some time. He had, in fact, spend the Winter 1988 and Spring 1989 months in mounting quite an elaborate travelling-exhibition, under the title "The Stones Sing", with Trondheim's city-centre as its first provisional site. After a successful preview within the University as part of its open Culture week, the main exhibition, accompanied by a series of lectures in both Norwegian and English, ran in parallel with the St Olav Celebrations from 27 July to 6 August 1989. Later presentations included one in Budapest and another in Boston, U.S.A.

Extracted from The Rainbow Cymbal (1989), pp. 167-200    
and now slightly modified.    

           

The Neith Network Library 10:02 10/02/2006, Feast of the Shipwreck of St. Paul