Fulcanelli’s Final Revelation: Raising the Djed at the End of Time by Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges

Part One

Since A Monument to the End of Time first came out in the summer of 1999, we have been asked repeatedly if the world was going to end on the autumn equinox of 2002, the date described on the Cross at Hendaye. The answer is both yes and no, but probably not so as you’d notice as you lived through it.

This paradoxical answer typifies the question as a whole. As we look around us today, it is hard not to see that we are in a “fin de siecle” to end all such cycles. If we are not experiencing the beginning of the end of the world, then this is at least a good approximation. However life goes on and we can adjust to change. Up to a point, that is’

On a dark and stormy night in 1997, when we first decoded the date from the monument at Hendaye, we were stunned by the bold simplicity of the design. Anyone with an understanding of the Kabbalah and/or a deck of Tarot cards could read the symbolism, and provided of course that they understood the secret of how these symbols related to time and the movements of the heavens, the date could be directly determined. The secret was hidden in plain sight, and, when we figured it out, the date was less than five years away.

This monument to the end of time sits in a very small courtyard just to the south of the church. There is a small garden with a park bench nearby. Standing about 12 feet tall, The Cyclic Cross at Hendaye looms over the courtyard, an ambiguous apparition in the clear Basque sunlight. The monument is brown and discolored from its 300 plus years. The facade is starting to crumble and it’s obvious that the air pollution ( the Cross sits a few yards from a busy street on the main square) is speeding its dissolution. The Cross will be completely eroded in a few more years. The images and the Latin inscription on the Cross have no more than a generation left before pollution wipes the images clean and the message disappears forever.

The base of local sandstone sits on a broad but irregular three-step platform, and is roughly cubic. Close examination reveals that it is a little taller than it is wide. On each face are curious symbols, a sun face glaring like some ancient American sun god, a strange shield-like arrangement of A’s in the arms of a cross, an eight-sided starburst, and most curious of all, an old-fashioned man-in-the-moon face that also resembles a boat. Rising from this is a fluted column, with a suggestion of Greek classicism, on top of which stands a very rudely done Greek cross with Latin inscriptions. Above the sun face on the western side can be seen a double X figure on the top portion of the cross. Below that, on the transverse arm, is the common inscription “Hail, O Cross, The Only Hope,” broken in an odd way apparently to fit in the space. On the reverse side of the upper cross, above the starburst, is the Christian symbol INRI.

What we found encoded on this enigmatic monument at Hendaye cannot easily be visualized without the use of a sophisticated astronomy program. Even with that, the key, as Fulcanelli slyly warns us, is where to stand. Taking our initial cue from Champagne’s Frontispiece to Le Mystere des cathedrales, we chose to stand at Giza, metaphorically in front of the Sphinx.

All we had that first night back in ’97 was a simple ephemeris calculated for midnight Greenwich universal time. From that, we could determine that Fulcanelli’s interpretation of the monument’s symbolism pointed to a twenty year or so span from the summer solstice of 1992, in which the sun and Venus were conjunct at the galactic antipodes, the cusp of Taurus/Gemini, to the winter solstice of 2012, when the sun is conjunct the center of the galaxy, the cusp of Scorpio/Sagittarius. This “season” was clearly marked by its mid point, the fall equinox of 2002. (See star chartsA, B, and C.)

Fulcanelli insisted that the cross, the Greek khi (x), has here the shape of an S, the snake, “and takes over its esoteric meaning.” This Fulcanelli explains as “the heliocoidal track of sun having arrived at the zenith of its curve across space, at the time of the cyclic catastrophe.” Heliocodial simply means “the sun’s curving track,” and can refer to both the ecliptic path of the solar year, and the Great Year of Precession’s backward motion along the same track. From the monument itself we could determine that the “season” of the catastrophe was the 20+ year span from summer solstice 1992 to winter solstice 2012. If this arc of the sun’s curving path was, as Fulcanelli said, the season of catastrophe, then the zenith of the heliocodial track, the time of the “catastrophe” itself, or the most critical moment, could only be the fall equinox of 2002, the mid-point/zenith of the solstice-to-solstice arc.

The sun at the zenith of it heliocodial track at dawn 9/23/02 in Cairo.

When we turned to the fall equinox of 2002, we found that it fit the directional symbolism of the monument perfectly. The equinox sunrise formed a Great Cross, a 90-degree alignment, with the galactic center and antipode. We expected that, as all the equinoxes in the target period were roughly at 90-degree angles to the galactic center/antipode axis. What we could not see at first was how many other precessional markers came into resonant alignment at that equinox. But we could determine from the basic facts that the equinox symbolism of this period resembled the pattern of nature’s transformation. Since the Great Cross fell on the cusps, marking the change of one element into another, earth/fire, air/earth, water/air, and fire/water, it was not hard to see in this a symbol of the alchemical process, as Fulcanelli himself directs us to the mystery of INRI.

At first it seemed strange that Fulcanelli should apply this very Christian symbol of the crucifixion to the four world ages and specifically to the Day of Judgment. But as we discovered in the course of researching A Monument to the End of Time, Christianity is a religion based on the Gnostic idea of a final judgment and the restoration of the harmony between heaven and earth. The symbol of this harmony is the descent of the New Jerusalem cube at the end of time. Fulcanelli seems to be telling us that when the INRI that hung above the crucified Jesus appears in the sky, then Judgment Day is at hand. Therefore, the INRI in the sky is somehow connected to the creation and alignment of the New Jerusalem Cube of Space.

Traditionally, alchemists have used these letters with various esoteric meanings. In Monument, we cite three of the most significant, Igne Natura Renovatur Integra, or By Fire is the whole of nature renewed, Igne Nitrium Raris Invenitum, The Shining is rarely found in fire, and Isis Naturea Regina Ineffabilis, Isis the Ineffable Queen of Nature. The orthodox, exoteric Christian meaning is Iesus Nazerenus Rex Iudeorum, or Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, and its appearance on the crucifixion cross is usually understood as an indication of his divine status as Son of God and the Hebrew Messiah. What it suggests to someone of an esoteric perspective is that Jesus was crucified on the Cross of the four elements. In Hebrew, the first letters of the names of the elements spell out INRI ‘Äì Yam/water/I, Nour/fire/N, Ruach/air/R, and Yebeshas/earth/I. The Kabbalist would also see that Yod/Nun/Resh/Yod, or 10/50/200/10, adds up to 270.

Now this is so curious as to be shocking. The letters and their gematria, the number 270, link all of the above alchemical, Egyptian and Christian interpretations. This is a key number in the precessional sequence (270 x 8 = 2160, one of twelve zodiacal ages in the Great Year of Precession, 12 x 2160 = 25,920 years), and its use as a mystical symbol for the Son of the Hebrew God, YHVH, begins to make a kind of cosmo-mythic sense. The gematria of YHVH, Y/10, H/5, V/6, H/5, equals 26, the closest whole number factor to the years in the Great Year, 26,000. The Son of God would therefore mean the specific INRI of 270 years out of the 26,000 years of the Great Year of IHVH, when the Cube of Space returns for the Day of Judgment.

Since other clues on the monument pointed to the 20.5 years between solstices as the season of catastrophe Fulcanelli described, with the fall equinox of 2002 as the zenith or mid-point of that arc, then we could expect to find the INRI of the Day of Judgment/Cube of Space alignment in the sky. And indeed, just as Fulcanelli suggested, the INRI appears in the sky on the equinox dawn.

On the sun face panel of the Hendaye Cross, we find four six-pointed stars, two above the horizon and two below. These match the locations of Jupiter and Mars, above the horizon in Cancer and Leo, and Venus and Mercury, below the horizon in Libra and Virgo. If we assign each planet the Hebrew letter for the element of the sign in which it falls, we have I/Jupiter/water/Cancer, N/Mars/fire/Leo, R/Venus/air/Libra and I/Mercury/earth/Virgo, or quite simply INRI. This seemed, when we discovered it, as clear as a sign post in the sky saying X marks the spot.

This clue, and the other indications from the monument, made us certain that the moment indicated was the fall equinox of 2002. The Great Cross of the galactic alignment at that moment made it obvious how to align the Cube of Space and project the Tree of Life on the celestial sphere. And when we did this, we found that it matched rather nicely the description of the New Jerusalem Cube in St. John’s Revelation. With this important piece in place we could see and intuit the outline of the completed pattern.

The fall equinox dawn at Cairo, specifically the Giza Plateau and the Sphinx, was the center point, the place to stand, in order to see and understand the erection of the precessionally correct Cube of Space. The INRI in the sky is clearly displayed along the ecliptic arc between galactic edge and center. Even better, the constellation Leo, the Sphinx in the sky, rises in the east just before sunrise. The last time it appeared just that way was on the spring equinox at the opposite end of the precessional arc 13,000 years ago. So the signs were clear that the key to the moment of alignment was contained at Giza.

As our research on Monument continued, we came back to Giza to look at the ancient Egyptian science of becoming a light body or sentient star in the bardo or transition fields between Giza and the star birth area at the heart of Orion. We noted the alignments to Orion and the summer solstice sunrise, but failed to heed our own strictures and look at Giza and its monuments in terms of the equinox 2002 Great Galactic Cross alignment. By focusing on Orion and the star birth aspects of the ancient Egyptian light body practices, we missed the clues we had already collected in terms of timing. We noted that: “Giza’s monuments function as a cosmic clock, ticking off the ages through cyclical stellar alignments while establishing galactic scale resonance with the regions of star birth far off in Orion.” We did not understand, when the above was written, that the alarm on this cosmic clock was set to ring at dawn on the fall equinox of 2002.

The answer was right in front of us the whole time. We commented that the enclosures of Tehuti were the pyramid complex on Giza and the shrines of its secret chambers were the stellar alignments, but we failed to note that these alignments were in fact the coordinates of the Cube of Space. We correctly surmised that the secret was astronomical, which could be expressed in a text with illustrations and perhaps a model armillary sphere, but we failed to connect this directly with the Great Cross and the galactic alignment.

Fulcanelli, in his Hendaye chapter, draws our attention to the inscription on the monument and its odd Latin mistake in breaking a letter off one word and sticking it on the end of the word before it. He tells us that this was done on purpose, so that we would examine the deeper meanings of the simple phrase O Crux Ave(s pes) unica, “O Cross, hail, our only Hope.” As we described in Monument, this odd break results in a complex of possible meanings for the Latin inscription.

If we read the broken word in reverse, the phrase becomes “Hail O Cross, the only Snake (seps).” If we try to fix the second line, pes unica, we come up with pes uncia “the measure of the 12th part,” an odd but meaningful phrase in terms of the Great Cross and the precessional year. Fixing the first line by putting the unnecessary letters together, we now have “Os crux ave pes uncia,” or “the essential cross salutes the measure of the 12th part.” The essential cross suggests a marker of the galactic alignment and the measure of the 12th part points to the completion of a precessional cycle.

Without any more complicated coding or anagramming, the inscription is telling us that the monument is a way to measure when the snakes and the crosses coincide. This moment of union will fall on the completion of the precessional cycle. We could see how this pointed to the fall equinox of 2002, but we failed to notice an important clue in this same discussion, where Fulcanelli tells us that the inscription also points to the place of refuge. We unravelled and followed the anagram clue (Inca Caves, Cusco Peru) toward Peru and found Atlantis and the significance of the Southern Cross. Following an even more subtle thread of clues led us to the Red Serpent document and Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France, where we found a real western example of light body attainment who just might have been the author of Revelation and its description of the New Jerusalem/Cube of Space alignment.

With this, we felt that we had come full circle. Yet, we still had not completely solved the mystery of Fulcanelli’s place of refuge. Like so many things in this tangled mystery story, the answer was in plain sight all along. We were just too close to see it.

Part Two

Fulcanelli had one last trump card hidden away in the Hendaye chapter of Le Mystere. That we didn’t find it until the 11th hour is due to our ineptitude. Fulcanelli did everything he possibly could to draw our attention to it.

The oddly misspelled Latin inscription is the key. Fulcanelli himself does not suggest an anagram style of approach. “Paul Mevryl” introduced this into the discussion in his afterward to K. R. Johnson’s The Fulcanelli Phenomenon. While Mevryl’s work with anagrams of the inscription seemed designed to discredit the whole idea, our version, The Peru Interpretation, did yield some interesting results, including a possible location for Atlantis, Tiahuanaco, and an important astronomical clue. The Urcos Cross (the final anagram of our interpretation) did exist and, significantly, was used as an ancient sighting marker for the Southern Cross.

The constellation Crux stands on the galactic meridian and its vertical axis points to the south celestial pole. Its horizontal axis is tilted, at this precessional epoch, to point directly at galactic center. If we continue the vertical line from the south celestial pole through the Cross and on to Centarus and Corvus and then to the cusp of Leo/Virgo, we see that the Southern Cross is a perfect precessional marker in the sky. The age can be read by its vertical orientation. The Southern Cross connects the south celestial pole and the start point of the Great Year of Precession in Leo/Virgo. As this axis moves backward through time, the Southern Cross forms the galactic seasons by aligning the celestial and ecliptic poles with the solstice and equinoxes and the galactic meridian.

The Southern Cross alignment with the south celestial Pole (SCP)

Since the Southern Cross is now a southern hemisphere constellation, we do not realize that it was visible on the southern horizon above the 30 degrees north latitude line for most of the precessional epoch of Aries. The Greeks, who were too far north to appreciate it clearly, considered it as part of the constellation Centarus and only learned of its importance, and the idea of precession itself, from the Egyptians. As the epoch of Aries drew to a close, it was obvious that the Cross was leaving the northern hemisphere for another 23,760 years. Thus the Southern Cross is the “essential cross (which) salutes the measure of the 12th part,” or the one precessional epoch of 2,160 years out the twelve epochs of the complete precessional year, 25,920 years, when it is visible above 30 degrees north latitude.

That the essential Cross in the sky, the cosmic precessional marker, should be disappearing at this particular moment might just be the inspiration for the idea of the messiah, or cosmic redeemer, that was so prevalent in the cultures of the region in the early 1st century CE. The story of the magi told in Matthew’s Gospel supports this theory. A group of Zoroastrian magi, possibly from the Iranian highlands north of Tabriz, followed a “star” to the south/southwest to the town of Bethlehem southwest of Jerusalem. The nature of this star has occasioned much speculation, but the obvious conclusion, that the magi were following the setting of the Southern Cross, seems never before to have been suggested.

Southern Cross setting at the Birth of Jesus, September 4 BCE

The line from Tabriz to Jerusalem and Bethlehem matches the line of the rising Southern Cross at that period. It also stretches beyond Bethlehem to Cario and the Giza Plateau and its monuments. It is possible that this is the reason why Matthew’s Gospel insists that after the visit of the magi, the Holy Family fled along the rising Southern Cross line to Egypt. Coptic tradition tells us that the Holy Family stayed in Egypt for six years. If we assume that the nativity of the messiah was in September of 4 BCE, when the Southern Cross was setting on the Cairo/Jerusalem/Tabriz line, then the Holy Family left Egypt and returned to Jerusalem in the winter of 2 CE. As a further confirmation of the connection with the Southern Cross, this was the moment when the Southern Cross was visible for the last at the latitude of Jerusalem. It set in mid February, never again, or least for a very long time, 23,760 years, to return and stand complete and upright on the southern horizon.

Even though this connection has never been openly commented on, it apparently survived as part of the esoteric tradition of the west. Curiously enough, it is Michel Nostredame, the 16th century Seer of Provence, who provides evidence of this survival. In quatrain 10/72 (the quatrain number itself suggests a precessional meaning, as it takes 72 years for the sun to precess one degree along the ecliptic) Nostradamus tells us that 1999 years and seven months after a certain point in time, a great Mongol king of terror will be seen in the sky. Since July of 1999 passed without incident, we can be sure that Nostradamus wasn’t counting according to Dennis the Short’s reworked calendar.

Southern Cross setting on February 11, 02 CE, 1999 years and seven months before WTC attack

However, the attack on the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001 does seem to match the idea of an eastern King of Terror, Osama bin Laden, planning an attack from Afghanistan, an ancient Mongol/Mogul stronghold. Only the date is two years off. Perhaps Nostradamus was counting from the last time The Southern Cross appeared as a complete constellation in February of 2 CE. That would indeed be almost exactly 1999 years and seven months later. By dating this pivotal event in this way, Nostradamus reveals the hidden significance of the Southern Cross as a precessional marker.

The legend of the Holy Family and the magi leads us to Egypt, specifically the area of Cairo, although at that point it was Heliopolis, Giza and the Roman fortress of Babylon. Cairo didn’t exist until after the Muslim conquest of the 7th century CE. The name originated with the Arabic word for Conqueror or Redeemer, and it is with this word that Fulcanelli played his hidden Green Language trump.

Part Three

Early in our research, we came across the amazing Gnostic alchemical work “Isis the prophetess to her son Horus’ in the Codex Marcianus, a medieval collection of Greek Hermetica. As we studied this text, we found a deep level of resonance to the clues from the monument at Hendaye. The angelic Amnael invokes the secret for Isis with these words: “I conjure you in the name of Fire, of Water, of Air and of the Earth; I conjure you in the name of the Heights of Heaven and the Depth of the Earth’s Underworld; I conjure you in the name of Hermes and Anubis’ As we noted in Monument, this part of the invocation creates the cube of space. It also points to the INRI in the sky with the planets in the appropriate elements, and brings in Hermes/Thoth and Anubis/Anpu, who preside over the Egyptian Day of Judgment.

As suggestive as these clues are, the key to Fulcanelli’s trump card can be found in the odd Greek word kairoi. It is used in the “Isis the Prophetess” text in the sense of a specific situation or place of alignment: “‘after the passing of the kairoi and the necessary movement of the heavenly sphere’ Isis could not be initiated into the secret of alchemy until certain astronomical conditions in the sky were matched on the ground. Kairoi, which usually means location or place, with the implication of a sacred place, in this unusual usage means a situation or place of alignment. The word was interesting enough to leave in the original Greek in the quote we used in Monument.

But Fulcanelli’s trump didn’t fall until we decided to do an extra appendix to the third edition of Monument with better star charts of the “season of the catastrophe.” The impetus for this was an article by astrologer Rush Allen on the Dire Gnosis 2012 website (http://www.siloam.net/NewYorkWTC/tribute/ae2002/index.html and http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/new.htm). Allen states: “The striking revelation of these star charts is that speculations regarding a monument (circa 1680 AD) in the town of Hendaye in the Pyrenees known as the “Monument to the End of Time” as reported at the Dire Gnosis 2012 web site have been verified. The charts reveal the ancient moment known as the “End of Time” will be properly passed at the moment of the autumn equinox in 2002.”

He goes on: “The dark rift of the Coalsack contains a tear, which united with the Cross was represented by the Ankh. The Ankh represented life, for it was a symbol of a tear dedicated to rising above the trials of existence. In the Southern Hemisphere the “Pointers” are Alpha and Beta Centaurus. A line perpendicular to the mid point of these two stars intersects the long axis of Crux at the “bottom of the celestial sphere.” Thus, the pillar in Hendaye is a metaphor for the Moment of the End of Time as established by the South Pole marker of the celestial axis…” We found this to be striking independent confirmation of our discovery that the Southern Cross was a true precessional marker.

Allen’s charts were based on noon at about the location of Singapore. This showed the basic alignments, but Allen didn’t seem to grasp the important of the Great Cross or the alignment to Galactic center on which it is based. Therefore, in our opinion, he was right in places for odd or obscure reasons. We decided that better star charts could show the Great Cross and the other signs on the monument with great clarity and precision. Which brought us back to exactly where on earth we should stand to make the observation.

Cairo was still the obvious choice, and as we already knew, dawn fell close to the moment of the equinox. This meant that the Great Cross would be precisely defined at sunrise. We turned to the Voyager II astronomy software for help.

Cairo at the moment of the Great Djed: 5:30 am 9/23/02

Our first star chart (chart C) shows the moment of the equinox/dawn on September 23, 2002 from the Giza Plateau in a 360 view with a galactic meridian/equator orientation. On the extreme right and left of the image is the north celestial pole, the point in space that corresponds to the north pole of our planet. If we bend this image around us, connecting at the NCP, then we have a sphere or globe with the poles of that globe, as marked by the coordinate lines, tilted away from the equator of the sphere, the galactic meridian. We also notice that the horizon line is now tilted at a 90-degree angle to the galactic meridian, which causes the zenith and nadir of the apparent sky to fall along the galactic axis from center to edge. In other words, the snakes of the ecliptic unite with the cross of the galactic alignment.

Saturn sits on the galactic antipodes in Gemini/Taurus and at dawn the zenith of the apparent sky aligns with this point. The nadir of the sky at that moment falls on galactic center, directly beneath our feet through the earth, echoing Amnael’s “Heights of Heaven and the Depth of the Earth’s Underworld.” Also, and just at the latitude of Cairo, 30 degrees north, the galactic meridian stands straight up in the sky like a column of light or the mythical Djed pillar. This can be seen even more clearly in a 360 degree view centered on the horizon line. (See chart D. Also charts E and F show the same moment in different projections.)

So dawn at Cairo was certainly a propitious “situation” from which to observe the Great Cross. But we were still slightly worried that we were following a clue from Champagne, who drew the Frontispiece with the Sphinx, and not Fulcanelli himself. Fulcanelli seems, in the text of the Hendaye chapter, to be pointing in other directions. His “single space” of refuge is strangely undefined, and even the Peru Interpretation fails to point to a specific place identifiable on the ground that matches the alignments in the sky. The Cusco Caves and even the Urcos Cross, while they exist, do not match the Great Cross alignment when mapped on the ground. We must consider these clues as important informational diversions, not as markers of the place of refuge.

We turned back to Fulcanelli’s words in the Hendaye chapter with renewed determination. Somewhere Fulcanelli must have hidden a definitive clue to the place of refuge, otherwise why would he go to so much trouble to set up his complex pattern of clues? An unsolvable mystery wouldn’t have served his obvious purpose of communicating the secret. If Champagne’s Frontispiece was the real location, then Fulcanelli himself must have known and recorded the secret in the Hendaye chapter. It was “up to us to find it” as Fulcanelli commented.

We found a great many useful clues that convinced us that our reasoning concerning Cairo and the dawn equinox were correct, but no smoking gun, no clear and unmistakable indication. We will examine the other clues a little later, but without a specific pointer from Fulcanelli they were not conclusive.

As we went over the paragraph in the Hendaye chapter concerning the place of refuge for the hundredth time, we finally noticed the footnote. At the end of the French sentence formed from the phonetics of the Latin letters, Fulcanelli adds a note on espace, space. In the note he points out that the usage of space is that of Tacitus’ spatium, meaning place or situation, and that it corresponds to that of the Greek word Kairoi, from the root Kora.

The moment we transliterated the Greek words, we knew we had it, the smoking gun. Fulcanelli is pointing to the exact usage of kairoi in the “Isis the Prophetess” text. Even more interesting, kore, a phonetically similar word, is part of one Isis’ hermetic titles, Kore Kosmica, or Virgin of the World. All of these words contain the key Greek consonants, Khi and Rho, X or K and R, familiar to us from early Christian iconography. In Monument, we published a photograph of a 1st century CE altar piece now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. In this image, we see the Khi-Rho standing between two Djed like pillars flanked by Ankhs. Above, at the zenith of the sky’s arc, we see a disk or circle with a smaller circle/disk inside. Below, under the Khi/Rho, we find a solar boat with the alignments of the cube of space. This collection of symbolic images is simply astounding and demonstrates the importance of the Khi-Rho, kairoi, kore/kora complex of ideas.

Fulcanelli, the master of the punning Green Language is here hiding the clue in plain sound. Cairo, from the Arabic Al Cahirah, the Conqueror or Redeemer, is phonetically Cai/Khi ‘Äì ro/Rho. The single space, the specific kairoi, or place of alignment, is the Khi-Rho of Cairo, even more specifically, the monuments on the Giza plateau, which are the true monuments to the end of time. The monument at Hendaye is but a glyph pointing us to the Monuments on Giza.

The kairoi, the places of alignment on the ground, must match the Khi-Rho of the celestial Great Cross, so that we have two symbolic crosses. Fulcanelli informs us: “Above is the divine cross, exemplifying the chosen means of expiation; below is the global cross, fixing the pole of the northern hemisphere and locating in time the fatal period of this expiation.” With this, Fulcanelli has told us, as plainly as he can, that Cairo/Khi-Rho, the pyramids on Giza, defines both the place and the moment of the alignment.

Part Four

The Great Pyramid of Khufu is an ancient geodetic marker placed at the exact center of the earth’s major landmasses and geometrically encoded with the ratios and proportions of the northern hemisphere of the planet itself. This, along with the precise North/South, East/West alignment of its faces, makes it the perfect focal point to visualize the erection of the Cube of Space. It is also the top half of a platonic solid, the octahedron, which has, as we will see, a specific relationship to the cube.

Let us imagine that we are standing on the top of Khufu’s Pyramid, at the location of the missing capstone, at dawn, 5:30 am local time, on the 23rd of September 2002. The first thing that we would notice is that the Milky Way is arcing directly overhead, on a line from the northwest to the southeast corners of the pyramid, with the bright twinkle of Saturn at the zenith of the sky. Since Saturn and the zenith of the apparent sky fall on the cusp of Gemini/Taurus, which marks the edge of the galaxy, then the center of the galaxy, the nadir of the sky, would be directly beneath the pyramid through the center of the earth. This alignment of the Djed pillar of the zenith/nadir meridian, with the galactic dragon axis of edge to center is rare enough, occurring for a span of 270 years (another INRI sign) every 13,000 years, to be considered a major precessional marker. We will return to this point later, as it is the key to the mysteries.

Due east is the equinox sunrise, on the cusp of Leo/Virgo and due west is the vernal equinox point in Pisces/Aquarius. This is marked in the sky by the swiftly setting moon, a day and a half past full. This east/west line is clear and definitive, the equinox sunrise is always due east, and so we look to the north/south line for something as definitive. Due north we see Draco rising like the Loch ness monster above the horizon, with the north pole of the ecliptic, the path the sun makes in its yearly journey, just above the horizon line. Directly above this point is Polaris, the current Pole Star in Ursa Minor. This means that the top half of the precessional ellipse, or egg shape marking the changing position of the Pole Star point, is visible on the due north horizon. This precise due north alignment occurs only at the moment of local dawn.

Fixing the Poles – north and south

And, as Fulcanelli insists, this moment is defined by “fixing the pole of the northern hemisphere and locating in time the fatal period’ Both the ecliptic poles, based on the sun’s path through the zodiac, and the celestial poles, the point in space above the earth’s poles, are aligned together on the due north/south axis. Khufu’s Pyramid is very precisely aligned to this north/south axis and an alignment such as the one on dawn of the fall equinox could be marked or fixed on the ground by the sides of the pyramid.

The corners of the pyramid also align with reference points in the sky. The galactic meridian arches up from the northwest to the southeast corners, standing straight up the sky along that axis with the edge of the galaxy at the zenith and the center at the nadir. This places the north and south galactic poles along the other corner axis of the pyramid, from northeast to southwest.

These coordinate points form the intersecting Cubes of Space. The zenith/galactic edge and nadir/galactic center axis crosses the equinox axis to form the corners of the local Cube of Space. These points are also the Tiphareth points of the projected Tree of Life on the celestial sphere. Therefore, the galactic axis and the equinox axis, The Great Cross, form the four horizontal faces of the Cube of Space, while the ecliptic and celestial pole alignments form the vertical plane faces, the top and the bottom of the cube. If we form such a cube based on the pyramid, then this Cube of Space, from our perspective on Giza, is tilted up on its side, at right angles to its vertical axis, the alignment of the north/south ecliptic and celestial poles.

We can think of this as the local, solar orientation of the Cube of Space, the New Jerusalem described in St. John’s Revelation. The four vertices of the octahedron that fall in the same plane also define the faces of the cube; as the octahedron transforms into its dual, the cube, these vertices become the center of a face of that cube. In the local Cube of Space only the vertical axis falls on the vertices of the octahedron. The vertices to face transformation of the octahedron into a cube forces us to look to the next Cube, that of the galaxy itself, for an exact match.

But where is the galactic Cube of Space and how does it fit in the pattern? If we were thinking of the pattern in terms of a 4D hyper-cube, then the shift, in 2 and 3 dimensions, would involve both a 45 degree shift on the horizontal plane and a 90 degree shift on the vertical plane to produce the cube within a cube of the hyper-cube in 3D space. The solar Cube of the New Jerusalem is embedded within a larger Cube of Space based on the galaxy as a whole.

The orientation and alignment of the pyramids on Giza at this moment, the fall equinox of 2002, reflects this embedded cube within a cube. If we consider the galactic meridian and galactic polar points as the four horizontal plane faces of another cube, with the galactic center/edge axis as the vertical axis, then the galactic Cube of Space transforms perfectly from the octahedron of the Khufu Pyramid, the geodetic model of the northern hemisphere.

There are of course three pyramids on the Giza plateau, Khufu, Khaphre and Menkaura as named for their supposed builders. Each is half an octahedron in structure and the geometry of their orientation and placement is nothing short of amazing. The length of the side of Khufu’s and Kaphre’s pyramids are used to create a complex Throne of Osiris gnomon that, when expanded into three dimensions with four such 4 x 4 grids, forms a gnomic cube of 64 interior cubes, with 16 square faces on each side for a total of 96 faces on its surface. The 64 cubes that compose the Cube suggest a link with DNA and the I Ching, and the 96 faces (16 per face x 6 faces = 96) may be the same process expressed in terms of precession. Our INRI period of 270 years is 1/96th of the Great Precessional year of 25,920 years (25,920/270 = 96).

According to Hero of Alexandria, “A gnomon is any figure, which, when added to an original figure, leaves the resultant figure similar to the original.” In nature, we see this in growth by accretion or accumulative increase such as can be seen in bones, horns, shells and even our brains. Perhaps our best example of a gnomic perspective is the night sky. Every glance up toward the stars is look into the distant past, with light whizzing by us on its the way to the future. Our world, our visible universe, is but a residue in which all time exists in ever-present layers.

Concerning the Throne of Osiris gnomon, Robert Lawlor, in his Sacred Geometry, comments: “In Egyptian iconography the square and its gnomon appear on the throne of Osiris upon which the king takes his seat. The enthroned king, as representative of the eternal solar power on earth, is thus appropriately associated with the fixed element, the square with its gnomon, which is constant through growth and change. Yet this throne is also the throne of Osiris ‘Äì the divinity representing the cyclic pattern of change in nature ‘Äì in his otherworldly kingdom of potentiality. In this sense the throne is the fixed support upon which the Osirian cycles of flux must rest.”

This echoes our findings about the Giza pyramids, particularly the idea of a “fixed support” by which the cycles of flux or time is coordinated. Lawlor continues: “The throne on which Osiris sits is clearly depicted as the square of 4, as it transforms into the square of 5 through the principle of the square root of 5 on which all the phi proportions rest. It is therefore shown as the seat of the world of transformation through death and rebirth, represented by Osiris.

“This figure also images the passage from 4 to 5, that is from the elemental or mineral realm associated with the number 4 to the realm of life associated with the number 5, since Nature begins to create pentagonal figures only with the advent of life. The original unity within the four squares of 2 squared is projected outward to form the gnomon, the fifth part, which is equal in area to each of the other four squares,” Lawlor concludes.

This aspect of the Throne of Osiris, “the passage from 4 to 5,” is represented by the geometry of the pyramids on Giza. Each of the 4 x 4 growth gnomons, based on the length of a side of the great pyramids, Khufu and Khaphre, are related to its neighbor and to the overall structure by means of square root of 5 gnomic expansions. The pyramid complex on Giza is a perfect three, or, when the alignments are considered, a four dimensional Throne of Osiris. It is indeed the fixed support upon which the cycles of flux rest. It is the Hyper-Cube of Space/Time animating the cube of matter to produce the phi ratio of organic life from which sentience evolves. This 4 x 4 x 4 gnomic cube formed by the geometry and alignment of the pyramids on Giza is nothing less than the Philosopher’s Stone itself.

The center pyramid, that of Khaphre, is the focus of the local solar New Jerusalem Cube of Space and defines the edges and the center of the expanding and interconnecting gnomic cubes. This means that the whole pattern folds and unfolds through the local solar Cube of Space. This meridian alignment connects the galactic cube/cube of the earth alignment of Khufu’s pyramid and its reverse, the cube of earth/galactic cube proportional alignment of the third pyramid, that of Menkaura, in a pattern of constant flow through, and circle around, the center point of the middle pyramid. Life on earth, symbolized by the square root of 5 gnomic expansion of the Menkaura 4 x 4 gnomon, fits within a framework of intelligent design that is mediated by the square root of 5 gnomic expansion of the solar Cube of Space and informed by the same gnomic expansion of the great Galactic Cube. All of these gnomic cubes are defined by the square root of 5 gnomic expansion of the cube in which Khaphra’s octahedronal pyramid is inscribed.

The Throne of Osiris then could be literally the middle pyramid, attributed to Khaphra, at Giza. It is the center point from which the ordering of space/time and the evolutionary flow of change is directed, the “seat of the world of transformation,” as Robert Lawlor called it. If this is indeed the central secret at the heart of all the mystery, then to understand the moment that is about to occur we must turn at long last to the mysteries of Osiris, his Throne and the World Tree formed from his backbone, the Djed. It is in these mythological waters that we will find the true meaning of the up coming Day of Judgment and season of the apocalypse, in its original sense of the unveiling of Isis.

Part Five

The Djed is a pre-dynastic “fetish” which somehow was absorbed into the Egyptian language as the ideograph for stability. The best we can say is that in its original connotations, the djed was connected with fertility, the supernatural life energy of the grain itself. When the First Dynasty priests began their grand synthesis of Egyptian theology, the djed became one of the fourteen powers or “kaw” of the Great God RA. Each power was given to one of the Memphis triad, and so Ptah ended up with the djed.

Ptah’s Djed was often shown with a Uas scepter plugged into the top of it, along with the crook and flail that would later become the emblems of Osiris himself. It would appear that Osiris assumed those objects from the ideograph of the djed. Ptah had become associated with Sokar, the God of the Land of the Dead, which Osiris absorbed at the beginning of the Old Kingdom.

Fortunately, Egyptian is very logographic as well as ideographic and phonetic. This means that word signs can be spelled out using similar sounds and meanings to the sign. Djed is also the Egyptian word for “to speak,” “to declare,” “to say.” With emphasis, Ddd-jed, it is the sacred word itself, speech deified. Interesting as this is, it is the other roots that really strike a suggestive nerve. Djedd, the same word with a slightly different emphasis, means, “star;” actually, the culmination or azimuth of the star.

According to Djed researcher and archaic futurist Moira Timms (whose extensive research and unselfish sharing of her material puts her in a class by herself on all matters concerning the Djed): “The Djed is the supreme unifying symbol of all polarities, connecting us to the transcendent reality of the whole, the One. It symbolizes the macro and microcosmic “axis.” As the cosmic axis the Djed is the “cylinder,” the column of light linking the Earth to the pole star. It represents stability because it aligns the North Pole of Earth with the still-point of the revolving “dome” of the heavens-the pole star.” In the same article, “The Raising of the Djed,” 1995, she goes on to say: “From the geodetic and astronomic perspective, the raised Djed is the fixed reference point which makes firm the bond between Heaven and Earth, evoking geophysical stability at a time of increased potential for Earth changes.” She also reminds us that: “according to the texts of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the Djed served its greatest purpose and revealed its greatest mystery at the ending of one world age and the beginning of another.”

While it is logical to think of the stable point of the sky as the pole star around which the sky turns on a nightly basis, from the perspective of precession, the pole star, which marks the north celestial pole, is hardly constant. When the “Book of Coming Forth Unto Day” was written down in the pre-dynastic era, the pole star was in the tail of Draco. The Djed does seem to indicate a point of stability, a link between earth and sky formed by a star at its zenith, but that star does not seem to have been the pole star, although we have images of the Pharaoh, such as those of Seti I at Abydos, aligning the Djed to the north celestial pole. This Djed would be a simulcrum of the precessional marker in the sky, the Southern Cross, which in that time period stood high on the southern horizon throughout the winter months.

But this was perhaps a later and more explicitly exoteric understanding of the concept connected to the epoch of the Southern Cross in the precessional age of Aries. The north celestial pole does have a role to play in precessional timing, but this usage of the Djed does not address the solar aspects of the concept.

Timms herself considers the Djed alignment to be something other than an alignment with the north celestial pole. In a personal communication to one of the authors in 1992, Timms shared an image that intuited the correct Djed alignment. This image showed the ahker of the two horizons, two lion-headed sphinx-like figures facing opposite directions, falling on the Leo/Virgo and Aquarius/Pisces equinox axis and crossed by the Djed pillar marking the galactic meridian of center/edge. In this arrangement, the celestial polar axis does fix the midpoint of the ahker, the place where the Djed rises, but the Djed orientation itself is 90 degrees from the polar axis. This shows that Timms had intuited the correct orientation for the primal Djed and its connection with the Great Cross of the galactic alignment.

In her article cited above, Moira Timms continues: “In the ancient Egyptian creation myth the Pillar of Shu (god of atmosphere) was the column of light that separated the union of Earth and Sky, setting them apart and in correct relationship to each other. The dome of the sky overlay the surface of the Earth according to the divine blueprint of creation so that, in the words of Thoth the great Master Initiator of Light, ‘That which is above is like that which is below.'” The pillar of Shu is clearly the zenith/nadir of the sky, and we can think of this column of light as the original image of the Djed.

This concept is made even clearer by the specialized word for astral light or psychic brilliance in Egyptian, which is also pronounced djed. Written as the combination of the “kaw” powers light and stability, this word has very definite magical connotations. The light ideograph, a sun disk shown radiating energy downward, has no phonetic value but indicates a being of light. In this sense it finds its way into the word aakhu, a spirit being. Light in this sense is divine light, the cosmic beam mediated through the vibrations of the sun itself, a solar Djed. It also shows us the nature of the precessional mystery and gives us a clue to creation of the twin soul RA/Osiris.

If we think of RA as the personification of all that we now call the nature of light, then his role as the original creative principle suddenly comes into sharp focus. Time, we are told, began with the first appearance of RA; eternity is referred to as “since the time of RA.” These are ideas that strongly suggest the role of light as the ultimate yardstick of the space/time continuum. Without the activity of photon binding and threshold kindling, our physical reality would not exist. It is the discontinuous nature of quantum events, the absorption and emission of photons, which creates this discreet and sentient existence. Even our DNA seems to communicate its design through the use of photon emission and absorption. Therefore, RA, when understood as the nature of light, does creatively enact our world and all its parts.

The ancient Egyptians expressed this in the way they spelled the word, ra. The “r” sound is rendered as a mouth, or a vesica piscis and the “a” is the out-stretched hand symbol. The determinatives are: a sun symbol with a line to the ground and the seated god figure, which tells us that this ra is a god who localizes the energy of the sun, or great light. The phonetic symbols suggest, in hieroglyphic rebus fashion, that the waves give or supply the energy of the sun. The mouth of RA is a schematic for the sine wave of a vibrating string, and, as the vesica, generates the irrational number of the square root of 3. This number divides the volume-form of the cube (a cube with edges equal to 1, the diagonal equals the square root of three) and, remember, every form in the created universe is a volume. Think of the square root of three as a form generator, regular polygons arising one after the other in the succession of vesica constructions unfolding from the self-division of unity. This form-creating flow, the glyphs suggests, is the gift of the local energy source, the sun. This gift of form is the essence of what the Egyptian theologians considered divine. In that sense, RA was indisputably the One God, the unity at the heart of diversity.

Hang on to that realization. It is a clue to understanding the basic mysteries of Egyptian theology. The Followers of RA, like the Henmemet, who visited Heliopolis in the early dynastic era, were real people, not spirits. It is from them that the concept of “God the Principle,” the “RA Function” passed to the priests of the City of the Sun. The “Light Beings,” that is, creatures that are fed on, clothed by, and enveloped in light, naturally became the focus of the religious concept they taught. If we believe (as did the early Egyptians) in the RA Function, the “One God who is All Gods,” then we will become like these light beings, the henmemet, when we die, and like them, we will voyage forever in the Boat of a Million Years…

Beliefs such as these were popular with the priests and the intellectuals, but the mass of Egyptian people never wavered from their faith in the shamanic paradise of Osiris, a vegetation god whose worship created a cult of the deified dead. If the RA function existed since the beginning of time, then the Osiris cult surely has its beginnings in the moment the first Handy Monkey (Homo Habilis) learned of death. The only god worthy of respect to that grieving monkey was one who could assuage the awful lonely emptiness of extinction. An afterlife of judgement and reward ensured that existence was continuous and that it had meaning, even if that meaning was judged as negative. Ausar Un-Nefer, Osiris the Justified One, filled the existential void of death with a myriad of shamanic ordeals and divine interaction. Life was anything but dull in the Hall of the Lord of the Dead.

The genius of the IVth Dynasty Heliopolitan theologians lies in their creative resolution to the problem of these two contrasting afterlives. Ausar (Osiris) was invited into the Boat of a Million Years and was asked to sit at the right hand of RA. In fact, he was asked to be RA’s regent, his viceroy among the monkeys, as it were. The name, Ausar is spelled with the eye of RA above a throne, with the god figure as a determinative. His distinctive function, “stability,” symbolized by the backbone-like djed, was once, along with “light,” considered one of the powers of RA. Their merger thus elevated and equated Osiris worship, with its shamanic paradise, with the RA function at the level of a universal religion. As such it long out lasted the priests of RA, whose functions were usurped by Amun of Thebes. We find traces of this apocalyptic Gnosticism surviving at the center of the mystical faiths of all three monotheistic religions.

The union of these two god-forms produced the central mystery of the Egyptian religious experience. A line of the Vth Dynasty Pyramid Texts reveals: “The Great Secret, The Great Mystery; it is RA, it is Osiris.” From this, we can glean that the secret of the Djed is not its exoteric north pole alignment, but the moment when the two Djeds that of Ra and that of Osiris, align with the sun and fix by their alignment the celestial and ecliptic poles.

This blending of cosmological and metaphorical values supplied the inner tension that kept the Egyptian mysteries vital for over three thousand years. The path of RA offered a transcendentally cosmological existence in the boat of a million years, while the path of Osiris promised eternity in an astral metaphor for life along the Nile. We are told in the “Book of Coming Forth Unto Day,” commonly called the “Book of the Dead,” that RA and Osiris are twin souls, united between the pillars of the Djed, but we are left with only a few clues from an ancient calendar scroll as to how this unification was accomplished. Since however both the sun and the zenith of the sky can never fall on the north celestial pole, we can be sure that these are very esoteric Djeds indeed, which unite Ra and Osiris in one being.

The Cairo Calendar, an ant-eaten piece of papyrus bought by the Egyptian Museum in 1943, mentions the Djed three times. The first comes on the nineteenth day of the second month of Inundation. The Calendar tells us: “It is the day of the going forth of Nun to set up the Djed pillar in its place to compensate the gods in its presence.” Now this is most intriguing. If Nun is the primal water, the original being, then who are the gods? Two days before, on Day 17, we are told that the Major and Minor Ennead emerged from “the chaotic waters of Nun.” These are the gods before whom Nun set up the first Djed. “In its place” would, of course, be the primal mound at Giza, but how are the gods compensated by its presence? Why do gods need to be compensated? What does the Djed pillar do for these primal beings?

The next Djed date, the 26th day of the third month of Inundation, is very important. “It is the day of establishing the Djed of Atum in heaven and on the land of Heliopolis at the moment of the uproar. The Two Lords are reconciled, causing the land to be in peace. All of Egypt is given to Horus, and the entire desert to Set. Tehuti goes forth to be judged before RA.”

The Cairo Calendar is a curious collection of folkloric fragments. Its hieratic script dates it to the New Kingdom, but some of its phrases are extremely obscure, suggesting that they go back to the Old Kingdom and perhaps beyond into pre-dynastic times. Certainly this glimpse of the resolution of the conflict between Horus and Set is rather unusual, with its almost deus-ex-machina-like djed. “The djed of Atum” is a unique concept, which can be found nowhere else. Atum is the Heliopolitan creator god, the self-created lord of all. In the 175th chapter of the Book of the Dead, Atum addresses Osiris concerning the end of the world:

“I am but doing away with all that I have done since the earth emerged from the watery primal state of the abyss of Nun. I am fate and Osiris. I have changed into other serpents. Neither the gods nor mankind can perceive the double beauty I have created for Osiris, greater than all the gods. I have granted him the Mound of the Dead.”

The serpents of course, are connections to the solar ecliptic, the word serpent in Egyptian, djed-ft, is related to the roots used in the Djed itself, indicating that the concepts were related. Atum’s statement, “I am fate and Osiris,” is the core of the mystery. We can read the meaning of this as close to the Buddhist’s “suffering and the release of suffering.” Granting Osiris the Mound of the Dead is to give him the position of the original Nun djed-pillar, as a sort of mediator among the worlds.

The last Djed day in the Cairo Calendar is the sixth day of the second month of Emergence. “It is the day of putting up the djed-pillar of Osiris. The gods are sad, with their faces downward when they remember Osiris.” The Calendar lists the other Djed days as very favorable, but this one is listed as very unfavorable. The sadness of the gods suggests their compassion for the human condition. In that sense, the “djed of Osiris” can be seen as a sort of divine rescue. Saddened by our fate, the gods gave us an escape mechanism, the Djed.

Now, let’s try to pull all of this information into a coherent picture. The djed began as a power object to the Neolithic cultures of the Nile valley. It symbolized “stability,” or rather “divine establishment.” The world tree or axis is a common motif in shamanic practices, indicating an awareness of the infra-structure of the universe. As this idea became a word, it was associated with similar sounding words in order to have a phonetic spelling. The root complex of the spelling of the word djed encompasses the concepts of speech, including divine speech, the culmination of a star and an olive tree, the world tree itself. This tells us that the ancient Egyptians thought of the Djed as something divinely pronounced, an axis/tree that links the earth and the stars.

Stability then becomes the link between earth and stars. We are stable only as long as we are connected to our stellar source. For the ancient Egyptians, this meant internal as well as external. They envisioned everyone as connected to a Khabs or star body. The personal djed, the spine of the individual, became the channel for that divine, or stellar connection. A person who had this internal stellar connection was seen as one who had control of the life force itself, a Djedi. There are many elements of sexual energy in this connection, suggesting both Hindu and Tibetan Tantric practices, as we can see in the Djedi tale from the Berlin papyrus quoted in Monument.

The Cairo Calendar gives us some tantalizing fragments of a Djed myth, one that connects Nun, Atum and Osiris in new and unusual ways that point away from the Djed as the axis of the celestial poles. If this can be accepted as a fragment of Heliopolitan secret lore, the secret contained in the chamber called Revision in the city of On, then, combined with the Throne of Osiris geometry of Giza, we have the key to the mystery of the Djed.

Part Six

From the fragments of the Great Myth gleaned from the Cairo Calendar, we find three Djed raisings. The first, the Djed of Nun on the primal mound, can be dated to the epoch half a precessional cycle ago when the galactic edge/center axis aligned with the solstices. At that time, the center of the galaxy fell on the zenith and the edge of the galaxy aligned with the nadir. The Djed of Nun then is the primal Djed alignment of galactic meridian and zenith/nadir meridian, aligned with galactic center and the noon sun on the summer solstice of 10,957 BCE.

The next Djed is that of Atum, erected to settle the disturbance caused by the struggle between Horus and Set. This can be dated to around 4,400 BCE, when the galactic center/edge axis fell on the equinoxes and the Leo/Virgo and Aquarius/Pisces alignment marked the solstices. As it had 6,000 years earlier, the meridian of the galaxy stood straight up in the sky at the latitude of Giza and Heliopolis. However, the zenith/nadir line at this era fell at right angles to the center/edge galactic axis. (See star chart H.)

The disparity between these Djed alignments can be seen as the cause of the conflict between the two antagonists, Set and Horus. The moment is marked by the alignment of the sun with the galactic antipode at the cusp of Gemini/Taurus. The Two Lords refer to the opposing Djed alignments, that of the galactic meridian and that of the zenith and nadir of the sky. At the moment of the spring equinox in 4,477 BCE, when this conjunction of sun and galactic antipode rose at dawn, we find this clearly shown in the sky. Horus, the risen Osiris represented by the constellation Orion, whose torch seems lit by the sun on the galactic antipode, was awarded all Egypt. We may take this to mean all of the land along the river Nile, whose analog in the sky is the Milky Way galaxy. Horus rules all Egypt, the Nile of the galaxy, from the delta/edge of the galaxy to the source far upriver at the galactic center. In other words, Horus was awarded the Djed of the galactic meridian.

Set was awarded the desert part of the sky marked by the north/south meridian and including at that epoch the poles of the galaxy and the north/south ecliptic and celestial poles, the zenith/nadir Djed axis, which contained the alignment of the djed with the celestial polar axis. (Since the Pharaoh aligning the djed to the north celestial pole is named for Set, then we might suppose that the Djed of Set was indeed the north celestial pole alignment, the axis of the “desert” in the sky.) The desert is therefore all of the sky not “watered” by the Milky Way/Nile. This arrangement brought peace to the land, but Tehuti, or Thoth, was brought before Ra to receive a judgment. As Tehuti is the neter or god who measures the arc of time, so we might think of this as a judgment, perhaps on Set, meant to last the 6,480 years until the erection of the next Djed.

Which brings us to our current epoch and the Djed of Osiris. The Cairo Calendar simply informs us: “It is the day of putting up the djed-pillar of Osiris. The gods are sad, with their faces downward when they remember Osiris.” In the “Book of Coming Forth Unto Day,” we find Atum, who erected a Djed to settle the conflict between Set and Horus, declaring that at the end of the world Osiris will be granted the Mound of the Dead, which is by association the primal mound. On that point he will erect his Djed and conduct the Day of Judgment and therefore restore stability to the universe.

This primal mound, the Mound of the Dead, seat of the Throne of Osiris in the Duat, would seem by the weight of the astronomical alignments and the geometry of their placement and structure to be the pyramids on Giza. We don’t have to argue their probable age to understand this point. If they were built in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, then they were designed to model these eternally recurring patterns of cosmic alignment. That in fact might be even more astounding than that they were built by a pre-catastrophe world culture of unknown sophistication. If Khufu, Kaphre and Menkaura built the pyramids attributed to them, then they were, without a doubt, privy to a very deep understanding of celestial mechanics and what can only be called sacred science.

Let us consider then that the Throne of Osiris on the Mound of the Dead where Osiris as Lord of the Duat conducts the Day of Judgment is indeed the pyramid complex on Giza. The Djed of Osiris would therefore be the alignment of the galactic meridian Djed with the Djed of the apparent sky, the zenith/nadir axis. This would match, with the directions of the galactic Djed reversed, the sky in 10,957 BCE, and would therefore be the re-alignment of the primal Djed of Nun.

To see this, we must look once again at the celestial mechanics of precession that produce the alignments. Along the 30 degree north latitude line, the zenith and nadir of the apparent sky fall about 60 degrees from the north celestial poles. These points rotate every 24 hours as the earth turns. This zenith/nadir Djed axis crosses the same points in the sky every day, but the long haul of the Great Precessional Year shifts the stars against which these points fall. From the latitude of Giza, for instance, the nadir and zenith points in 4,477 BCE came closest to the zodiac at Aquarius/Pisces and Leo/Virgo, the solstices points, and crossed the galactic meridian at Crux and Puppis and Cassiopia and Cygnus, 60 degrees away from the galactic center/edge meridian. At the dawn equinox point, the zenith/nadir fell in the middle of this galactic encounter, 90 degrees from the galactic center/edge axis, with the nadir in Velis and the zenith between Cephus and Cygnus.

Due to the movement of precession, these background star reference points shift so that 13,000 years ago, as now, the zenith and nadir of the sky fell close to the center and edge of the galaxy. Only at these times, and only at the latitude of Cairo can the Djed of the sky and the Djed of the galaxy merge into one Great Djed. We can therefore date these times with a degree of precision by charting when the galactic edge/center points fall closest to the 60-degree celestial latitude of the zenith/nadir meridian.

In our current precessional epoch, these galactic meridian points began their closest approach to the zenith/nadir points on the spring equinox of 1789. The close approach lasts for 3.75 degrees of arc, or 270 years. The mid point of this period fell on the fall equinox of 1924, making this the closest conjunction of the zenith/nadir and the galactic center/edge meridian. However the Djeds were not yet perfectly aligned. The galactic meridian was still one degree off 180 degrees from the last period of alignment in 10,957 BCE. That one degree, or 72 years, clicked off in 1996 and for the next 18 years until 2014, or one quarter of a degree, the Djed of the galactic meridian and the Djed of the zenith/nadir of the sky will be in perfect alignment on the fall equinox sunrise and the spring equinox sunset, as well as noon and midnight on the solstices. The period includes the end date of the Mayan calendar on the winter solstice alignment with the galactic center and the end point of Fulcanelli’s catastrophic season. It also includes our target date of the fall equinox 2002, the Great INRI Cross shown on the Hendaye monument.

If this is a return, albeit in an opposing orientation, to the primal Djed of Nun, then we might have some answers to our questions concerning the “gods.” The Major and Minor Ennead gives 18 ‘gods’ echoing the 18-year, quarter of a degree of arc, alignment of the Great Djed. The original Djed compensated these gods by giving them a fixed point from which “fate and Osiris” could unfold. As there are four Great Djed alignments in these 18 years, we have a total of 72 Djed moments, or a one-degree of precession model of the complete cycle.

While we might think of this entire period of time as the Djed of Osiris, there is indeed one moment in time during these 72 Djed alignments when the Djed of Osiris Lord of the Duat appears in the sky. This moment is dawn on the fall equinox of 2002. In addition to the Great Cross of the galactic equinox alignment, the INRI formed by the planets, the alignments of the Cubes of Space and the erection of the Great Djed of the zenith/nadir-galactic meridian, there is one final marker that identifies the moment with clarity and precision, the planet Saturn.

Fulcanelli hints at its importance: “The age of iron has no other seal than that of Death. Its hieroglyph is the skeleton, bearing the attributes of Saturn: the empty hourglass, the symbol of time run out, and the scythe, reproduced in the figure seven, the number of transformation’ Osiris, in his immortal form as Lord of the Duat, was considered to have seven bodies. At dawn on the fall equinox, seven alignments, two for the Great Cross, one INRI, two Cubes, one Djed and one Saturn conjunction, combine to create the Throne of Osiris on Giza. We may think of these alignments as the seven bodies that combine to generate Osiris’ immortality in the Duat. The seventh, that of the Saturn conjunction with the zenith and galactic antipodes, is the critical body, the crucial component, the one that, when it aligns, animates and crystallizes the other six.

Saturn, because it is at the greatest distance from the sun of all the visible planets, has the longest “year,” taking a little less than 30 years to complete one circuit of the zodiac. This makes it the best precessional timekeeper of all the planets. Saturn completes one precessional Great Year of 25,920 years every 864 of its “years,” a half cycle every 432 of its “years,” a quarter cycle every 216 of its “years,” and an eighth of a cycle every 108 of its “years.” This equals (108 x 30) 3240 years, or 45 degrees of precessional arc. We can continue counting in Saturn years down to 9, one 96th of the precessional year, or 3.75 degrees of arc and 270 earth years, which brings us to the alignment period of the galactic meridian and the zenith/nadir axis.

If we note when Saturn fell on a significant marker, such as the galactic center or antipode, then we can simply count Saturn cycles to mark the span of the Great Precessional Year. In this way, we could determine that if Saturn fell on the galactic antipode and made a station (since the earth is moving faster than Saturn, it appears as if it is overtaken, making it appear to stand still in the sky to mark the moment), then 432 Saturn cycles ago it was making a station at the same location, and would be doing so again at the completion of 864 Saturn cycles.

Since Saturn is making just such a station on the galactic antipodes for the 11 months between August 2002 and July 2003, then we have our target time period between the cross hairs of multiple precessional alignments. The fall equinox of 2002 is the first equinox since the exact Great Djed alignment began in 1996 to have Saturn, the planetary precessional counter, on the zenith point conjunct with the galactic antipode. With this last timer in place, we have our moment of the Djed of Osiris erected on the Mound of the Dead; and it is dawn on the fall equinox in Cairo, precisely 5:30 am local time when the zenith/nadir axis aligns with the galactic meridian axis and Saturn is on the antipodes at the cusp of Taurus/Gemini. All the other pieces of the puzzle, the planetary INRI, the Great Cross and the Cubes of Space, all fall into place at this magical moment. The seven bodies of Osiris align to create the Cubic Throne and the Great Djed, marking Osiris’ emergence as Lord of the Duat.

The Great Djed of Osiris Lord of the Duat, 9/23/02, 5:30 am Cairo

Locating the Djed of Osiris so precisely in time and space allows us to turn to the mythic aspects with a completely new perspective. According to archaic futurist Moira Timms, in her 1995 article “The Raising the Djed”: “The story of Osiris is in the shamanic tradition, and it begins with Osiris’ murder by his evil brother, Set. One version says his body was cast into the river, washed ashore and entombed within a great tree (a type of the Djed) that grew around him. Eventually he was discovered and extricated from the tree by the great goddess Isis. The bare bones of the other version are that his body was dismembered and scattered throughout Egypt, but that after a long and arduous search, Isis retrieved and re-membered his parts. Both accounts end with Isis raising Osiris’ spine to a vertical position, “making him stable,” and resurrecting him to life by means of the words of power taught her by Thoth, the Master Initiator of Light.”

From this we can discern a few crucial points. Osiris was cast into the river of the Milky Way/Nile and became entombed in a djed-tree from which he was released by Isis. His body was dismembered and scattered along the Nile in the other version, but the image is reinforced. The Djed of Osiris, along which his body is spread, is the galactic meridian, the celestial Nile. The critical point is the role played by Isis. She resurrects Osiris by raising his spine to align with the Great Djed, returning him to life by the words of power taught her by Thoth. By these deeds, Isis makes Osiris the Lord of Duat.

The glyphs for Isis and Osiris help us understand this a little more clearly. Isis’ glyph is the throne, and Osiris’ is a throne with the eye of Ra above it. Osiris rules life and fate or chance from the Cube of Space of his throne, the 64 gnomic cube formed by the alignments on Giza. This Throne, or Cubic Stone, is in turn part of the greater Cube of the Galaxy. This is the Throne of Isis, with the Great Goddess as the creative matrix at the center of the galaxy. Osiris’ Throne, as shown by his glyph, is the solar Cube of Space, which sits or rests on the galactic Cube. When Osiris is triumphant and ruling as the overseer of Ra over both “Egypt” and the Duat, then the sun rests atop the Great Djed of the galactic meridian and the zenith/nadir axis. This era arrives once every 12,960 years, and we are in such an era now.

But it is the Saturn alignment, as we have seen, that determines the moment of the Djed of Osiris. Isis erected the Djed of Osiris, crowned by the star of the Duat, and gave him life by the magic of Thoth. But the story doesn’t end there. Osiris must return to life in order to reign once more as the Lord of the Two Lands, Egypt and the Duat. The Lord of the Dead, planting the seed of his reincarnated form, Horus the Sun God and King, therefore impregnated Isis. Symbolically, this is represented in the sky by the moment the sun’s disk touches the horizon on the fall equinox of 2002.

In Cairo on the 23rd of September 2002, the moment of the Djed alignment is 5:30 am. Seventeen minutes later at 5:47 am, the sun’s disk touches the horizon. These 17 minutes are the moment of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage between Isis, the center of the galaxy, and Osiris, triumphant in the Duat on the galactic antipode, and their union on earth at the moment of the sunrise. It is perhaps the most sacred 17 minutes in the last 13,000 years.

Death of Osiris 6/21/01

If this moment is indeed the Djed of Osiris as Lord of the Duat, then we should also be able to locate the moment of Osiris’ death and dismemberment as well as the birth of the new Horus King. In the version of the legend that describes Osiris’ dismemberment, we are told that he was split into 15 parts. If we think of this as units of time, then we are led to count them as months because 15 months before the fall equinox of 2002 is the summer solstice of 2001. (See star chart I) This is an appropriate moment because the sun was close to the galactic antipode, and most interesting of all, there was a solar eclipse. This date therefore fits quite nicely with the mythic pattern.

But what of the birth of the new Horus King? Nine months after the hieros gamos we find the summer solstice of 2003 when the summer sun will be conjunct with both Saturn and the galactic antipode. This signifies the moment when the resurrected or reincarnated Osiris/Horus is reborn as the King of Egypt and the Duat, the land of the living and the dead. (See star chart G)

Birth of Horus 6/21/03

These great mythic dramas are played out by means of the alignments in the sky and their markers here on earth. The myth of Isis, Osiris, Set and Horus define the events in the sky that mark the changes of the precessional seasons. We participate in the Cosmic drama, whether we understand its import or not. The myths in the sky move us, in deep and strange ways. We can either remain ignorant, and be taken unaware by changes, that when we have lived through them, will seem major enough to describe as the end of the world, or we can align ourselves to the new dispensation of the risen Osiris and assist the punctuation of evolution caused by the cosmic resonance of the moment. If we make the choice, we can all take part in, as Fulcanelli says, “the mission of renewing for regenerated humanity the chain of tradition of the humanity which has disappeared.”

The choice is ours, because we are alive at this moment. Let us hope we all choose wisely’

Postscript: An Addendum for Dead Heads

Perhaps the most strange of all the many coincidences and synchronicities involved in the tale of our five year long quest for Fulcanelli’s place of refuge is the discovery of the role played by the rock band Grateful Dead in the raising of the Djed. A more unlikely connection could hardly be imagined’

It was as if we discovered that Fulcanelli was not only was still alive and well, but also had fronted a rock group in the 1960s. In one such segue of pure weirdness during the writing of this article we thought we had found just such an event. One hit wonder band ? and the Mysterians, who performed masked, had a Number One with a bullet hit on the pop charts in September 1966 with “96 Tears.” We considered, briefly, that this was a reference to the INRI/270 years, 1/96th of the precessional cycle, of the Djed’s alignment. Also, if we considered each square on the face of the 64 cube as a tear, or tear, in the fabric of reality, then ? was singing about the cosmic cube of the Throne of Osiris. Mercifully, this fancy passed quickly when we discovered the original title was “69 Tears.”

But the Grateful Dead connection could not be so easily dismissed. Its mythic qualities blended nicely with the actual events and their astronomical relationship to the moment of galactic alignment. And it was all archetypal, orchestrated from some deeper, higher, further level with virtually no conscious awareness.

The legend begins with the name itself, grateful dead’ In 1969, Jerry Garcia described the moment of revelation: “Big black letters edged around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination. So I said, “How about Grateful Dead?” The band didn’t like it, but the hippies did, and so the name stuck.

The phrase is actually a folkloric motif tag for a tale found in many cultures, that of the simpleton, a fool, who gives his last penny to a corpse to aid his journey into the land of the dead. The resurrected dead man subsequently rewards the fool for this act. This motif can be found, with minor changes, in New Kingdom Egyptian papyri. In these tales, the dead and resurrected protagonist is Osiris, the original grateful dead.

Sometime in the mid 1970s, the rumour begin that the name actually came from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Book of Coming Forth Unto Day. While mentions of the dead are found in this text, one would have to stretch to find a translation that would fit “grateful dead.” Rock Scully in his memoir Living with the Dead quotes an unreferenced saying from someone’s version, which, while it may not be literal, is nonetheless moving and significant. “We now return our souls to the creator and as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness, let our chant fill the void, that others may know: In the land of the night, the Ship of the Sun is drawn by the Grateful Dead’

All of this would be simply the mythic maundering of a psychedelic rock band except for the curious timing and location of their Egyptian concert. The idea had been in the wind since before the band’s beginning. By early 1976, it had become a project, and by the summer of 1978, all the pieces were in place. The Grateful Dead would play three concerts in the Sound and Light Theatre in front of the Sphinx with the pyramids of Giza as a backdrop. By coincidence, the third night, September 16th 1978, was a full lunar eclipse. As the Dead played to 1,500 people, half western, half Egyptian, the eclipsed moon hung in the sky above the Great Pyramid. To many of the Dead family, it was the highlight, and perhaps the high point, of their long strange trip.

But the band played badly, the piano was consistently out of tune, and the trip was never turned into anything even vaguely commercial. A cheap tour book and some bootleg tapes are all that remain. It was the moment, the experience that was important, well worth the half of a million dollars it cost, according to Jerry Garcia. “It didn’t matter. We had a wonderful time, man, we really did’

So, an American band from California, with a name that derived ultimately from a folktale about the resurrection of Osiris manages, to perform in Egypt in front of the Sphinx during a full lunar eclipse. Strange as that may be, the true weirdness lies in the timing of the event and its connection to the Great Djed of Osiris, and his moment of resurrection in the Duat.

As we noted above, the galactic meridian returned to its exact degree of precessional opposition in 1996. Observationally, the 1/4 of a degree on either side could be considered as exact enough. To understand this how fine a measurement this really is, we need to visualize a 3cm wide paper matchbook held at the distance of one mile. That is what 1/2 a degree of arc looks like to the naked eye. The 1/2 a degree of space covered by the precessional motion of the Djed alignments takes 36 years of time to complete. With 1996 as the midpoint, then 1/4 of a degree, 18 years, before and after is the width of the alignment. Eighteen years before the zero point of the fall equinox of 1996 takes us back to 1978.

Since we need a marker point to measure such a fine degree of alignment, it is synchronisitically convenient that there should be a lunar eclipse close to the target point of the last 1/4 of a degree of alignment, the fall equinox of 1978. The eclipse fell on September 16th, just 5 days before the equinox. With measurements these fine, a few days are insignificant. The lunar eclipse point is simple and unmistakable and the roughly 18-year span between eclipses makes it perfect for counting the years of the Djed alignment. The lunar eclipse in 1978 is the start point, the lunar eclipse of September 27th 1996 is the midpoint and the eclipse of October 8th 2014 is the end point. This gives us an error of only 22 days over 36 years.

The Grateful Dead performed as the moment of the galactic alignment, the return of the ancient gods of Egypt playing out their precessional drama in the sky, began its 24-year trip toward the moment of completion on the fall equinox of 2002. Before 1978, India and the Far East were seen as the source of hip spirituality, and Egypt was where mummies chased 1940s comedians across the burning sands. After 1978, this slowly began to change, until now, as I write this, Fox Television is broadcasting a live tomb opening and sending a robot into the mysterious hidden chamber in Khufu’s Pyramid. In this span of time, we have seen the rise of what was called the New Age Movement and its great events such as the Harmonic Convergence and 11:11. It is not hard to see the origin of such spiritual festivals in the freewheeling Dead concerts in front of the Sphinx.

It was also the first, and totally spontaneous, raising of the Djed as the axis of the galaxy and the sky came into alignment. A band named for the original grateful and resurrected dead, Osiris, opened the season of transformation, whether it brings extinction or enlightenment, with a musical bridge from a Nubian folksong to the song “Fire on the Mountain,” which echoes the image of hexagram 56 from the I Ching. Entitled the Wanderer, the hexagram uses the metaphor of a wild fire on a mountain to suggest the fleeting moment of inspiration.

The Dead themselves lit the spark and myth became reality. “Let our chant fill the void, that others may know: In the land of the night, (in the depths of the eclipse-like age of iron) the Ship of the Sun is drawn by the Grateful Dead.’