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Hydraulic Engineer Claims Hydraulic Engineering Proves Atlantis Was in Indonesia

9/30/2016

In the current issue of Ancient Mysteries & Advanced Archaeology Review, hydraulic engineer Dhani Irwanto has an article promoting his book from last year alleging that Plato’s Atlantis could be found in Indonesia. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Graham Hancock made the same claim based on the similar speculation of Indonesian geologist Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the excavator of the allegedly “Atlantean” ruins of Gunung Padang on Sumatra. Irwanto, with his less than fluid English, is less effective than Graham Hancock at making the same point, but he earns points for trying to cram all of the Timaeus and the Critias into his homeland.

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Sam Osmanagich Claims Bosnian "Pyramids" Have New Age Magical Healing Powers

9/29/2016

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Most readers will remember Dr. Sam Osmanagich, the fringe researcher who alleges that some hills in Bosnia are actually the world’s largest and oldest manmade pyramids. Well, in the latest edition of the Ancient Mysteries & Advanced Archaeology Review, a fringe publication, Osmanagich makes some rather astonishing claims about his “pyramids.” Now they are no longer simply ancient structures but miraculous healing devices capable of medically inexplicable cures.

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A Weird Argument about Oak Island, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Golden Fleece

9/28/2016

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Yesterday Scott Wolter posted a new blog in which he attempted to make the case that he was shaken to his core by numerology when he discovered that the imaginary Megalithic Yard was almost but not quite the same number of American customary unit feet (2.72) as the York Rite Masonic sacred numbers 22 and 8 when divided arbitrarily one into the other (2.75). American customary unit feet are based on British feet that were not standardized until medieval times, and technically the current value only dates to 1959. Worse, the English foot was not recognized on the Continent, where Wolter’s French conspirators allegedly operated. But beyond this, earlier this week the bosom buddies behind Xplrr Media, LLC announced on social media that they were in the process of “vetting” an unspecified claim relating to the fringe theory that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden on Oak Island. In the process of reviewing this, I researched some of the previous fringe claims about the Ark on Oak Island and discovered a very strange claim that sort of gets at the heart of the failure of fringe types of think about challenges that come with dealing with real documents rather than pop culture fantasies.

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Listen to Me on the Archaeological Fantasies Podcast

9/27/2016

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Last week I reviewed Scott Creighton’s new book, The Great Pyramid Hoax, and I’m sure many readers will find the discussion of my review on the Graham Hancock website message board to be both instructive and amusing. There, critics contend that I had no business reviewing the book because I am a “blogger” and lack the necessary advanced degrees to credibly evaluate whether Creighton, a Scottish engineer and AboveTopSecret.com message board moderator, was able to develop a coherent argument. It’s amusing that I supposedly need greater credentials than either Creighton or Graham Hancock possess to evaluate whether Creighton was able to meet the basic requirements of argumentation. Apparently it is unfair to apply the simple test of asking whether, if we take Creighton’s evidence at face value, it supports the conclusion he derives from it.

In lieu of a lengthier blog post today, however, I would like to direct you to the Archaeological Fantasies podcast No. 56, in which I discussed H. P. Lovecraft, ancient Egypt, and a host of other topics with Jeb Card and Sarah Head. We recorded the discussion a few weeks ago, and I think you’ll enjoy it. It even gives a few hints at the real-life book that seems to be the model for the Necronomicon. Let’s just say that King Surid and Nyarlathotep might have more in common than you think.

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Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Final Part)

9/26/2016

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I am, frankly, at a loss for what more to say about The Ascension Mysteries. Each new chapter of David Wilcock’s autobiography offers a myopic list of the slights and wrongs he accrued over the decades, usually listed day-by-day, contrasted with his growing certainty that science fiction and horror movies, books, and TV shows were communicating to him cosmic secrets. (He believes Fallen Angels finance genre fiction to indoctrinate believers.) At one point we listen to Wilcock rage against a “jock kid” who humiliated him (hatred of “jocks” is an ongoing theme), and at another point he recounts his friendship with a young sadist whose parents he suspected were government UFO disinformation agents. He contrasts events like these with the music teacher who failed to recognize what he claims is his savant-like musical talent and the Cognitive Abilities Test scores that belied his low grades. “I just couldn’t take the dullness of practicing,” he writes, and that same ethos carries over into the other areas where he believes himself a genius: research, insight, and writing, all of which are decidedly lacking in the professional polish that would make this tome less of a slog.

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Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Part Two)

9/25/2016

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In the first part of my review of David Wilcock’s bestselling nonfiction book The Ascension Mysteries (Dutton, 2016), we learned that Wilcock believes (or pretends to believe) himself to be a divinely ordained spiritual leader born to undo the convulsive Satanic curse that was the 1960s. Can the book get worse? Of course it can. But it also gets sadder as Wilcock describes in unnecessary detail an almost day-by-day account of his childhood, from the age of three onward. The artlessness of his narration and the minutiae of his memories are balanced only by the depressing horror of what Wilcock unintentionally reveals.

Please note that nothing here is intended to diagnose Wilcock with a psychological condition. The diagnoses mentioned in my review are those Wilcock disclosed himself. He did not provide a discussion of whether he sought professional treatment in the past, or whether any treatment is ongoing.

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Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Part One)

9/24/2016

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I received an eBook copy of David Wilcock’s newest book, The Ascension Mysteries: Revealing the Cosmic Battle Between Good and Evil (Dutton, 2016), which sold more than 5,000 copies in its first week and became a bestseller on the Nielsen BookScan sales list. I believe it is a public service to provide a review of a book from a major publishing house that outsells most major nonfiction hardcover releases. Just so we’re clear: David Wilcock’s publisher is a division of Penguin Books, one of the largest publishers on Earth. Penguin is in bed with a vile, reprehensible snake-oil salesman who feeds his audience a diet of paranoid fear trussed up in the glittering garments of Elohim and is happy to lend his dubious credibility to the most loathsome Russian anti-American propaganda. Penguin should be ashamed of themselves, but so long as Wilcock can push 5,000 books a week, Penguin is happy to give him a platform to spread his message of fear, anger, and hate.

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Review of Scott Creighton's "The Great Pyramid Hoax" (Part 2)

9/23/2016

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Yesterday I presented the first half of my review of Scott Creighton’s new book The Great Pyramid Hoax (Bear & Company, 2017), a book that takes a chapter from his previous 2015 book The Secret Chamber of Osiris and expands it to ten times its original size. Stripped of context and purpose, this inflated chapter becomes mostly unreadable as a book, an incomplete indictment of the “quarry marks” in the relieving chambers of the Great Pyramid that Creighton never bothers to give much in terms of purpose. Aside from a few vague assurances that discrediting these marks would leave the Great Pyramid’s builder uncertain, he never uses that assertion to build a case for anything, nor does he suggest, as he did in his previous book, that the Pyramid is anything but an Old Kingdom construction. If one were not already a reader of Scott Creighton’s books, I imagine this now volume would seem dry and pointless.

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Review of Scott Creighton's "The Great Pyramid Hoax" (Part 1)

9/22/2016

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At the end of 2014, I reviewed Scott Creighton’s book The Secret Chamber of Osiris (Bear & Company, 2015), in which the author admitted that he borrowed his background conceit—that Egypt’s monuments were antediluvian and intended to preserve knowledge from the Flood—from medieval Arabic pyramid lore. Now, two years later, Creighton is about to release another new book, The Great Pyramid Hoax (Bear & Company, 2017) in which he builds on his earlier acceptance of medieval mythology to posit a vast conspiracy to “hide” the true history of the pyramids from the public by fabricating Khufu’s name in one of the relieving chambers above the Great Pyramid’s King’s Chamber in order to suppress the antediluvian reality.

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L. A. Marzulli Says Scott Wolter Inspired Him to Hunt for Nephilim and Europeans at America's Stonehenge

9/21/2016

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Comedian and macadamia nut farmer Roseanne Barr suggested that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a “Nephilim,” which the former sitcom star used as a synonym for space alien: “I think he’s an alien from another planet,” Barr told The Star. “He doesn’t seem fully human. Was this guy invented in a lab?” The reporter wasn’t able to follow Barr’s reference to Nephilim and so discussed it parenthetically as “fallen angel, son of god or space alien.” Barr meant this as a joke, but it reinforces the idea that the ancient astronaut theory and Ancient Aliens is seeping into everyday discussion in weird ways.

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<<Previous

Hydraulic Engineer Claims Hydraulic Engineering Proves Atlantis Was in Indonesia

Sam Osmanagich Claims Bosnian "Pyramids" Have New Age Magical Healing Powers

A Weird Argument about Oak Island, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Golden Fleece

Listen to Me on the Archaeological Fantasies Podcast

Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Final Part)

Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Part Two)

Review of "The Ascension Mysteries" by David Wilcock (Part One)

Review of Scott Creighton's "The Great Pyramid Hoax" (Part 2)

Review of Scott Creighton's "The Great Pyramid Hoax" (Part 1)

L. A. Marzulli Says Scott Wolter Inspired Him to Hunt for Nephilim and Europeans at America's Stonehenge

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