In 1961, FCC chairman Newton N. Minow declared television “a vast wasteland” populated by sadism, violence, and advertising. He advocated for programming in the public interest, calling on broadcasters to take responsibility for the content of their shows. How quaint. The satellite television station The Documentary Channel, which is not subject to FCC regulations, has been re-airing this week a 2010 series called “The Pyramid Code,” produced by an independent production company and sold to stations in 34 countries. I have not seen the series as I do not have Direct TV or Dish Network. The show’s claims, however, are available on the production’s website, and it seems to be a rather clichéd recapitulation of the David Childress-Chris Dunn school of pyramid fantasy. The program’s five episodes postulate that the Egyptian pyramids represent “superior technology and sophisticated knowledge of physics, astronomy, biology, and cosmology.” According to the producers, the Great Pyramid was built with “high science,” including some type of free/quantum/magic energy we do not understand. The program claims that the Egyptians “had more refined senses, experienced higher levels of consciousness,” and therefore had superpowers as reflected in myth.
Naturally, they also worshiped (sigh) the “Sacred Feminine,” just like Henry Sinclair and the Templar-Cistercian-Freemason cult of the Holy Bloodline! The series concludes by arguing that Egyptian chronology is incorrect and must be re-dated by applying the “Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages of Plato’s Great Year.” Because the Egyptians had superpowers, they must have lived in the Golden Age, which therefore means that the pyramids “must” date back to the start of the cosmic cycle, thousands of years earlier. I think that the show is conflating Plato’s “perfect year” from the Timaeus, describing how a perfect calendar would measure solar, lunar, and planetary motions until all returned to their first positions (he was referring to the daily motion of the stars, not precession, so this was an astrological event), with Plato’s view from The Republic that souls come in gold, silver, and bronze in proportion to their function. This, I imagine, they must cross with Hesiod’s idea of the five ages (gold, silver, bronze, heroic, and iron) from the Works and Days (109-201) as modified in Ovid’s four ages (gold, silver, bronze, and iron) from Metamorphoses (1.89-150). These were not part of the precessional cycle but rather measured time from the creation of humanity. According to Jerome, translating Eusebius, this period began around 1700 BCE. To tie this to the Great Year, as in precession of the equinoxes, they must have to link it to the Hindu cycle of the four ages, even though these ages are not part of the 26,000 year cycle of precession but rather a 4.32 million year cycle. At any rate, I can’t work out any other way to get from Plato to a “Great Year” made up of four ages. Last month the producers of the documentary series have started offering “courses” of study on pyramid mysteries, beginning with one about the alleged 25,000-year-old Bosnian pyramid that isn’t any such thing. (It is a natural formation.) The course teaches that the Bosnian pyramid and its surrounding area form a giant Tesla-style free energy device and that the pyramid is the remnant of a “fallen age,” which I can only interpret as some mystical-religious appeal to a vanished Golden Age. The course concludes with “a guided, pyramid-activation meditation with Linda Star Wolf, a neo-shaman who claims to hold a “Doctorate of Ministry in Shamanic Psychology” from the University of Integrative Learning, an unaccredited school that claims to be “exempt” from accreditation because of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. I guess we can add Star Wolf to the list of alternative and New Age writers who disdain academic knowledge but want to ape the authority of academia.
25 Comments
Brian Peck
5/7/2013 09:07:15 am
Yet these Egyptians with their superpowers couldn't cure themselves of bad teeth, hardening or the arteries, and short life span (and that's the elites). Too funny.
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Shawn Flynn
5/7/2013 02:35:57 pm
Hahahahaha, heh. I fer sure hope the faux college calls her Dr. Star Wolf. I wonder if she studied under Prof. Energy Turtle or Dr. Moonbeam.
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5/7/2013 05:24:11 pm
The University of Integrative Learning doesn't need to claim Constitutional protection to refuse accreditation. There are no laws that prevent someone in a doublewide trailer from calling themselves a University as many diploma mills do. Accreditation merely guarantees that someone else will recognise your degree. Of course, if you can't find anyone to recognise your credentials and you're ambitious enough, you can always create your own accreditation organization like Rand Paul did. Playing the Constitution card is grandstanding and nothing else.
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5/9/2013 11:01:01 am
True. But then people who know that sort of thing aren't really the audience for the University of Intergrative Learning.
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Christopher Randolph
5/8/2013 03:35:10 am
"I guess we can add Star Wolf to the list of alternative and New Age writers who disdain academic knowledge but want to ape the authority of academia."
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Gary J
5/8/2013 02:35:45 pm
Is Star Wolf the American Indian woman who has been on either Ancient Aliens or UFO Hunters? That seems to be the name I remember. I think she was talking about the Hopi Blue Star among other things.
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5/9/2013 10:59:28 am
I'm not sure. She has blue eyes and blonde hair, and she calls herself a "spiritual granddaughter of Seneca Wolf Clan Grandmother Twylah Nitsch," who promoted fabricated ideas about the Hopi and visitors from Sirius in conjunction with the Maya Apocalypse of 2012.
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Christopher Randolph
5/9/2013 11:20:56 am
"She has blue eyes and blonde hair..."
Gary J.
5/12/2013 01:18:21 pm
No, it's not the woman I'm thinking of. I watched a bit of one of the AA reruns after my first post, and she was on. I'm fairly certain the name I saw was Nancy Red Star. She has dark hair and eyes, so it's definitely not the same person.
mia
7/24/2013 09:17:01 am
did you watch this documentary? you would have to be incredibly stupid to deny those facts. have YOU been to egypt? I think you will soon be eating your words my friends, because the truth needs nothing to exist. you have allowed the lies and stupidity you have been taught all your lives to become YOU and you are denying yourselves meaning and reality. im sorry for you. your lives are wrapped up in qualifications and egos and rule-making boundary-creating masculinity. i am sorry you dont own the truth. but you are a part of it. let the truth come into you accept our true history and you will be happier and more understanding of the universe. we will never know everything. just try to learn and be humble. love is law
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Lily
9/22/2013 03:00:28 pm
You're cynical critique of a documentary series you never even bothered to watch echoes the same sad know-it-all arrogance that has mankind in the fix it's in today. If we are so advanced, why is our "modern technology" bringing the to planet to it's knees in less than 100 years?
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formidable foreskin
3/10/2017 02:36:12 pm
You're = you are. I mean, really!
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Aaron
3/30/2017 02:19:43 pm
Really compelling counter argument YOUR making! ❤️
Person
6/23/2017 01:24:03 pm
Agree. Don't know who's wrong or right, but how do you criticize what you haven't watched or don't have expertise in?
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crawford jennings
3/4/2014 03:00:28 am
I stopped reading your article at the exact moment you said that you have not watched it....I'm fascinated by your superpowers of uninformed opinion.
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3/17/2014 04:49:10 am
Thank you for the suggestions for how the Pyramid Code may be constructed from ancient Greek, Christian, and Hindu sources. While inaccurate, the Pyramid Code as you describe it is kind of charmingly poetic. Also, thanks for noting the "Documentary Channel" falls outside FCC regulation. Good to know! I think the Pyramid Code appeals to folks' wishful thinking and desire to tie up the messy randomness of history into a neat bow.
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Vinny Rac
3/31/2014 02:57:49 am
I've been searching around the internet to see if anyone else noticed: At about 15:44 into Episode 1, as the camera pans up the Sphinx, if you look to the left, there is clearly an anomalous flying object in the screen shot moving from left to right in the sky. I've looked at it dozens of times and I can't figure out what it is. It's much clearer on the Nexflix rental than on the youtube clips. (presumably on the DVD as well) I'm hoping someone will take a look. Yes, I get the comments about the "junk science" and I'm sure that adding a comment about UFO's will only discredit this documentary even more, but there is something there that the camera has caught. Check it out.
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Angela
6/25/2014 03:35:59 am
Wow, a commentary on a documentary you didn't even watch. . .that is the epitome of arrogance and ignorance. Blogs like this are one reason why our world is filled with closeminded people. I am all for science, and debunking junk, and in fact am an Atheist because of it, but when you actually study the past as I have, you will find abundant evidence that the ancients were every bit as advanced and more then we are now. As a matter of fact, just as the cargo cults started from white pilots dropping down into jungles of ignorant natives and giving them gifts, I am convinced that all the evidence of the gods says they were just basically like us now. If you care to read some actual evidence about the past, read my blog about the past gods. http://passionateproject.blogspot.com/2014/04/real-evidence-of-god-part-3.html
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Kate
9/16/2016 04:27:37 am
It's great to have an opinion but having an opinion doesn't make you correct - it's just your view. And endeavoring to ridicule the work, research, beliefs, views and opinions of others doesn't give much credibility to your own opinion ... even more so when you admit to not even watching the documentary. I have watched it and can say confidently that some of your assumptions are way off and some of your 'facts' about the information contained in the documentary are very unreliable. Right or wrong, true or false it's an interesting series and an even more interesting perspective. Don't be so afraid of an alternative narrative that you resort to ridicule in order to add weight to your own closeted beliefs and perspective. After all almost all the research and findings we have are merely an interpretation of the archeology or evidence that has been discovered. None of us was there so how can anyone be completely certain of what really was. Just my opinion of course :)
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Phil
7/24/2017 06:30:12 pm
You write a small piece on a documentary you haven't watched.
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George
2/20/2018 12:13:23 am
I watched the 1st 2 episodes of The Pyramid Code. What an incredible waste of time. Not only on my part for watching it but for the time and effort spent in its' production. Nothing scientific. No data. No numbers. No empirical results. No hypothesis or conjecture as to how this "theory" fits with the weak, strong or electromagnetic field formulas. BTW, I strongly object to the flippant use of the word 'theory' in this kind of presentation. At best, what is being purported is wild, unsupported speculation. A scientific theory must not only explain the results of repeatable experiments, it must also make predictions of new observations. This program is tripe.
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Chris
12/5/2019 01:20:51 pm
I see the show rubbed you the wrong way, and I think it will for people who have been educated to believe that nothing ever happened in the history of the earth and the universe until Europeans arrived to show everyone the way.
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Richard
12/21/2019 05:37:15 pm
We do have the technology to build pyramids. We just have to reason to because the design is very inefficient. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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