Page 475 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
P. 475
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
I suspect, if the situation were bad enough after the cataclysm, that
many of the civilizers would fail, or meet with only limited success. But let
us suppose that one small group had the skill and dedication sufficient to
create a lasting and stable beach-head, perhaps in a region which had
suffered relatively little damage in the disaster. Then let us suppose that
some other unexpected disaster were to occur—an aftershock or series of
aftershocks from the original catastrophe perhaps—and the beach-head
was almost totally annihilated.
What might happen next? What might be salvaged from this wreckage
of a wisdom cult which had itself been salvaged from a greater wreck?
Transmitting the essence
If the circumstances were right it seems possible that the essence of the
cult might survive, carried forward by a nucleus of determined men and
women. I suspect, too, with the proper motivation and indoctrination
techniques, plus a means of recruiting new members from among the
half-savage local inhabitants, that such a cult might perpetuate itself
almost indefinitely. This could happen, however, only if its members (like
the Jews awaiting the Messiah) were prepared to bide their time, for
thousands and thousands of years, until they felt confident that the
moment had come to declare themselves.
If they did that, and if their sacred objective were indeed to preserve
and transmit knowledge to some evolved future civilization, it is easy to
imagine how the cult members might be described in terms similar to
those used for the Egyptian wisdom god Thoth who was said to have
succeeded in understanding the mysteries of the heavens [and to have] revealed
them by inscribing them in sacred books which he then hid here on earth,
intending that they should be searched for by future generations but found only
by the fully worthy ...
22
What might the mysterious ‘books of Thoth’ have been? Is it necessary to
suppose that all the information they were purported to contain should
have been transmitted in book form?
Is it not worth wondering, for example, whether Professors de
Santillana and von Dechend might have earned their place among the
‘fully worthy’ when they decoded the advanced scientific language
embedded in the great universal myths of precession? In so doing, is it
not possible that they might have stumbled upon one of the metaphorical
‘books’ of Thoth and read the ancient science inscribed upon its pages?
Likewise, what about Posnansky’s discoveries at Tiahuanaco, and
Hapgood’s maps? What about the new understanding that is dawning
concerning the geological antiquity of the Sphinx at Giza? What about the
questions raised by the gigantic blocks used in the construction of the
22 The Egyptian Hermes, p. 33.
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