In this episode, Ancient Aliens crosses over into the Holy Bloodline of Jesus territory by looking at the way royal and imperial claims of descent from a god (read: alien) produce a divine right to rule. Since Laurence Gardner was both a dedicated advocate of the secret Holy Bloodline of Jesus that he thought led to all European rulers sharing genes with the children of Christ and Mary Magdalene and was also an ancient astronaut theorist who thought Jesus was the fruit of an extraterrestrial lineage, I imagine that makes him the spiritual godfather of S06E07 “Emperors, Kings and Pharaohs.” We open with the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and the anointing of the monarch with holy oil. David Wilcock says it is “a very interesting connection” that the British Monarchy uses Christian teachings and texts, as though Christianity weren’t the state religion of England.
Various pundits talk about monarchs’ claims of divine descent, and we go (as always) to Egypt to look at Ramses II’s temples and his many statues of himself, including those of him as Osiris. We rehearse the death and resurrection of Osiris and his son Horus’ assumption of the Egyptian throne. From this fictive history, the narrator asks us whether the Egyptians were right that the gods reigned before humans and that the pharaohs were human-alien hybrids descended from those pharaohs. Here we get into an issue Ancient Aliens doesn’t want to tackle, which is that the various dynasties of Egypt were not all lineal descendants of one early king but rather used fictive claims of descent to justify various usurpations and conquests. The pharaohs did not consider themselves to be descendants of Horus but rather to be Horus (and, after death, Osiris); thus, anyone by being pharaoh, was the god. Unable to keep on this idea for a full two minutes, the show talks about the architecture of Ramses’ temples, but even here the show seems to recognize it’s grasping at straws. The door of one temple, Abu Simbel, is designed so that twice a year the sun shines straight down the main hall and illuminates Ramses’ statue. This is a rather simple calculation, and one no one bothers to suggest was designed by aliens; instead, the show speculates that it was done to “channel” supernatural energy. However, the show can’t quite work up the conviction to suggest that this energy is alien, just symbolic. Giorgio Tsoukalos claims that Ramses II asserted he was in contact with the aliens, by which he seems to mean that Ramses’ inscriptions make conventional reference to his consultations with the gods, which is about as definitive proof of aliens as Bill O’Reilly’s claim that the Holy Spirit comes to him in his sleep to suggest topics for new books. David Childress adds that pharaohs’ DNA contains extraterrestrial traces, which really ought to be something we could test—yet no one seems interested in doing that. Next we move to Asia to look for alien emperors. The Yellow Emperor of China, Huangdi (or Huangti), is claimed to be a civilizing alien. I have posted the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian’s accounts of the Yellow Emperor in my library (first paragraph of chapter one) so you can see for yourself that Tsoukalos is not on firm ground when claiming that the Yellow Emperor orbited the earth and descended from the sky. Sima Qian is quite clear that he was born here on earth, a human child. Instead, Tsoukalos seems to be vaguely referring to modern interpretations that see the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) as a historicizing figure derived from the Shang sky god (Shangdi). The on-screen graphics do the work that the words cannot or will not and make Huangdi’s magic cauldron into a beacon signaling a yellow, grasshopper-shaped spaceship meant to represent a Yellow Dragon. While the show quotes unidentified folklore that the Yellow Emperor ascended to the sky after death, Sima Qian records that he died and was buried like any other person. The Chinese today believe that he died, and they venerate him at his mausoleum in Shaanxi, where they tell visitors that his body still lies. Now we’re off to Japan and its first emperor, who was the descendant of the sun goddess. Although she was (and is) the sun in Shinto, William Henry says she is “like” the sun to make her into an alien. If this be true, the sun goddess is a terrible alien overlord since Japanese emperors have been notoriously powerless throughout Japanese history, only occasionally asserting control over government. Today, the emperor isn’t even the titular head of state; he is merely a constitutional officer with fixed functions. Erich von Däniken, Giorgio Tsoukalos, and David Childress suggest that the ancient Japanese emperors’ magic mirror was a tablet computer giving him spy capabilities across the Pacific. It’s interesting that in the past, before the iPad, these same theorists likened such devices to television sets and were convinced they were cathode ray tubes. Now they’re touch-screen tablets. Ancient alien ideas seem to keep up with the latest tech trends. As we pass the halfway point, we go to India to talk about King Rama and his mighty weapon, the Brahmstra (= Brahma Astra, or “Brahma’s Weapon”). This magical device existed in the realm of pure thought and appeared only after its user exerted great meditational power. It’s the same weapon that appears in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and led to David Childress’s false quotations used to assert the reality of ancient nuclear warfare. We don’t spend even a second thinking about this because it’s time to look at stupas and King Ashoka. We review a text I am not familiar with called the Ashokavadana in which a levitating, meditating monk was half on fire and half dripping water, inspiring Ashoka to convert to Buddhism. I checked John S. Strong’s 1983 translation of the text, and this is the poetic wording from the section called “Samudra and Asoka’s Conversion”: From half of his body, water poured down; From the other half, fire blazed forth. Raining and flaming, he shone in the sky… The show asserts that this is an “eyewitness account” even though many versions, with discrepancies, exist in Asian poetry. It is, instead, a polemical text designed to emphasize the power of Buddhism; such mastery of the elements is the highest level of yoga. The stupas we’ve discussed before when Ancient Aliens last claimed they were inspired by UFOs because they are round. After the break, we assert that the House of Windsor are among the most powerful and long-lasting royal families “in human history,” which would be a surprise to the British, who know that the Windsors were formerly the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, and they originate (in the female line of Victoria) from minor German princes from Hanover in 1714, when George I became king to resolve the crisis of establishing an acceptable successor to Queen Anne, when the succession fell, by parliamentary decree, on Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and then to Anne’s second cousin George I, who claimed the right to rule not because he was the closest relation to Queen Anne—that was the Stuart family—but because he was the closest Protestant relation, the Catholic Stuarts having been disqualified by the Act of Union of 1707 between England and Scotland. George’s relationship to the Stuarts was only though his maternal grandmother. Oh, right, none of this matters because the show ignores all of the history of the monarchy to assert that Elizabeth II descends from the Norse God Odin, in his Germanic form, Woden. No proof of this is offered. Instead, we talk about Odin’s Wild Hunt at midwinter, when the ghosts of the dead followed the psychopomp to the underworld. Tsoukalos asserts that Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin, was “fiery” (I can’t find proof of that in the Eddas) and was therefore (as the graphics show) a spaceship with eight fiery thrusters. David Childress dances around the Holy Bloodline conspiracy by noting that European royalty claims “special” blood that is protected through intermarriage to preserve alien DNA. (I guess the Duke of Cambridge didn’t get the message, marrying a commoner and all. Worse, the Danish Crown Prince married an Australian commoner. Both even reproduced with these commoners!) In January 2013, the show says, a “unique” DNA sequence was discovered that 24% of “leadership behavior” is attributed to DNA--non-alien DNA, let’s note—and somehow we’re supposed to feel that this means that the aliens imputed that DNA into royal families to make them “born to rule.” This is genetic determinism of the worst sort; leadership behavior is nebulous and varies by culture. Worse, many of the “divine right” rulers were, frankly, worthless. One of the truths about “royal” bloodlines is that the inbred rulers produced more duds than brilliant leaders. Even the show seems to lose its own train of thought and instead throws up its hands, recognizing that if everything they just said in this hour were true, then the “alien” DNA would be present in the genomes of “millions” (actually, billions) of people worldwide. “The implications are both astonishing and profound,” says the narrator. Well, no: The implications are exactly what you prattle on about every week: the claim that aliens genetically engineered humans. Of course, this neatly absolves the ancient alien theorists from needing proof: If everyone has alien DNA, then there is no way to find it since we think it’s just regular DNA. But it also means that this entire hour was a complete waste of time since the “royal” bloodlines aren’t special or unique and therefore have nothing to do with the final claims of the hour, which were presented as a religious revelation: You, too, dear viewer, are both related to royalty and a descendant of the divine. Holy, holy, holy, the spark of divinity is within you. Fall to your knees and send money, please.
57 Comments
Only Me
11/9/2013 04:51:37 am
I wonder if Tsoukalos is confusing Sleipnir's fiery countenance with how it has been portrayed in some modern art I've seen.
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Varika
11/9/2013 02:27:27 pm
Speaking as an artist, I'd probably put the "cushions" under the feet to indicate that he's RUNNING through the air (as the myths described) rather than just flying or levitating. It's a visual trick; if the feet never contact anything, the human mind just thinks it's hovering there.
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Sacqueboutier
11/9/2013 09:38:30 am
I gyess they finally laid Phillip Copoens, ghost to rest.
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11/9/2013 09:41:32 am
No, he was still there, but they're clearly running out of material to excerpt, so he didn't have anything interesting to say this time.
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11/9/2013 02:13:53 pm
Did they ever acknowledge his death? A little "in memory of" or anything? I haven't watched at all this season and don't remember seeing one last season.
Sacqueboutier
11/10/2013 12:09:52 am
Ah. I totally missed it.
Mark L
11/11/2013 01:12:15 am
I think they did, if memory serves, at the end of the season immedaitely after his death.
Richard "Dick" Neimeyer
11/17/2013 07:38:52 am
I thought there was a on screen "in memory of Phillip Coppens" at the very end of the credits in one episode just before the Prometheus logo. 11/17/2013 08:02:28 am
That's possible. H2 usually runs about 20 sec. over the hour, so my DVR tends to cut off the last few seconds.
Dave Lewis
11/9/2013 01:52:48 pm
Jason said...."It’s interesting that in the past, before the iPad, these same theorists likened such devices to television sets and were convinced they were cathode ray tubes. Now they’re touch-screen tablets. Ancient alien ideas seem to keep up with the latest tech trends."
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Mandalore
11/9/2013 04:45:35 pm
If I'm not mistaken, Jesus has a compound in Siberia where he lives with his followers. Duh.
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Gunn
11/10/2013 03:24:34 am
Jason: "Holy, holy, holy, the spark of divinity is within you. Fall to your knees and send money, please."
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11/10/2013 04:33:59 am
Gunn, that line is mocking the way Ancient Aliens presents issues of faith, substituting aliens and solipsism for traditional faith. I'm not telling anyone to send me money; I'm implying that that is the message of ancient astronaut theorists.
Clint Knapp
11/10/2013 04:35:31 am
Bob,
Varika
11/10/2013 10:57:58 am
Gunn, go to Hell. I'd never post "died for YOU!" because I don't believe in Jesus at all. I will NEVER "repent" of that, and I don't believe in God's mercy.
Jim
11/10/2013 04:23:11 pm
Gunn,
Scott David Hamilton
11/9/2013 02:54:55 pm
I wonder if any ancient alien researchers have ever dealt with the fact that the three treasures of the Japanese royal family are supposed to be extant. If they really think the mirror is an iPad, or that the sword is a missile, and the jewel is a, I don't know, let's say a PS4 controller, shouldn't they go to any lengths to get a hold of them? Of course, I've wondered the same about all the alternate history people who've claimed to be one room away from the real Ark of the Covenant.
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Harry
11/10/2013 02:20:05 pm
All of the dynasties ruling the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time of their conversions to Christianity claimed to be descended in the male line from Germanic gods and almost all of them claimed to be descended from Woden in particular. The royal dynasty of Wessex, the kingdom that eventually swallowed all of the others, likewise claimed descent from Woden. Queen Elizabeth II's ancestor, King Henry I, married Matilda of Scotland, a descendant of the Wessex Dynasty (her mother was the grandniece of King Edward the Confessor, the next to last Anglo-Saxon king).
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Gunn
11/11/2013 03:35:16 am
Settle down, skeptics. The demons you don't believe in are becoming increasing riled.
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Clint Knapp
11/11/2013 07:51:16 am
You fail to grasp the point, Bob. The point is not to "slam God" (and frankly, I've never seen Jason do such a thing). Announcing one's disbelief in any deity is not slandering that deity, it is only proclaiming one's own belief, or disbelief.
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Gunn
11/11/2013 12:28:10 pm
Clint, you fail to grasp the point, not me, which is that Jason does purposely slam God. If you make of study of this, going back, you will see a sordid slamming taking place, on a near continuous basis. He mocks and ridicules the idea of God and creation, as most "scientific" skeptics must, I suppose. We have gone this course before. 11/11/2013 12:38:45 pm
Gunn, freedom of the press belongs to him that owns one. I own this website, so you don't get to say whose opinions "belong" here. This is not a public forum. It is MY forum, which I pay for with my own money. If you want something different, go back to your own website and host your own forum.
Gunn
11/11/2013 12:42:30 pm
Wrong, Jason, it YOUR forum, and also, then, the public's forum...unless you want to restrict freedom of speech after spewing forth your own sometimes biased information.
Gunn
11/11/2013 12:44:28 pm
Jason, you pervert the purpose of your blog when you enter religion or politics is such a personal way. It's not necessary. 11/11/2013 12:46:19 pm
You seem to mistake my relatively lenient policy of allowing anyone to comment with a legal right to use my forum for your own fun. I can and will delete your posts at will whenever I judge them to be abusive. You may take this as notice that you are no longer welcome to post when you are off topic.
Gunn
11/11/2013 12:48:17 pm
Okay, then, I'll wait for you to bring up the KRS again...I predict it won't be long.
Gunn
11/11/2013 12:51:35 pm
Okay, for the record, you yourself, Jason, can be off-topic, as concerns mocking God, etc., but then no one else can respond, or you may censor them? You introduce and treat a topic however you want, without consequences? How lovely. How do you do that, again? 11/11/2013 12:55:54 pm
The only posts I have ever deleted have been spam ads from India and abusive, libelous posts. Yours, Gunn, are becoming abusive.
Gunn
11/11/2013 01:04:04 pm
So then, we see you are selective in who you want to attract and influence? Your pitch is to a certain crowd?
Gunn
11/11/2013 01:08:28 pm
I'll do you a favor. Good-bye for a while.
joris drie[inter
11/19/2013 11:06:58 am
Please Jason, ban Gunn already. I'm new to this site, but reading these comments... it looks like this has been going on for a long time. As someone rightfully said, Gunn can expound his apparently deep felt convictions on his own site. And the people who come here for YOUR blog aren't forced to read his rants threatening you and others with eternal damnation etc. 11/19/2013 11:11:47 am
I wish I could do that easily, but unfortunately, the comments system lets people post with just an email address, so I'd have to manually delete every comment.
The Other J.
11/11/2013 06:22:45 am
Jason wrote: "The pharaohs did not consider themselves to be descendants of Horus but rather to be Horus (and, after death, Osiris); thus, anyone by being pharaoh, was the god."
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Liz H
3/18/2014 08:09:00 pm
I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm a nerd about this sort of thing. You're right, though: the claim to divinity is a useful fiction. Claiming to embody a god on Earth is a way to give legitimacy to your claim to rule, regardless of whether or not the guy before you did the exact same thing. People then start to buy into it and it becomes not serving an earthly king, but serving a divine power who has graced your humble realm with its awe-inspiring presence. But at the same time, they recognize that this is, in fact, a human being leading them. I guess it's a bit like the leader of your cult (to use the closest modern example I can think of, good or bad) claiming to be divine by birth/nature even though he is, in fact, a normal human being.
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Only Me
11/11/2013 04:06:04 pm
Wow.
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Clint Knapp
11/11/2013 04:36:27 pm
Not to worry, Only. I really have nothing against anyone or their beliefs, and I've tried to ignore Gunn posts altogether because I don't like getting in off-topic arguments.
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Shane Sullivan
11/11/2013 05:54:42 pm
I, for one, am grateful that he ignored (or missed) my response to him the other day, or else I would be a confused, Hell-bound fool as well. =P
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11/12/2013 06:37:45 am
I would never presume that an individual's behavior was indicative of an entire group. Don't worry about it.
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Varika
11/12/2013 09:36:59 am
While Gunn and those like him--and I have met many--have played a role in my decision to not convert to Christianity, I have never particularly had a problem with other people being Christians, or even with discussing belief systems. Honestly, I'm generally even nice to the Witnesses who show up on my doorstep like clockwork, as long as they're nice to me first. But I can't deny that Gunn's treatment recently has left me feeling very hurt and upset--and definitely persecuted. It does help, though, to see others who identify as Christians distance themselves from that behavior, so thank you, Only Me.
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Jalopenohead
1/16/2015 06:53:19 pm
This Gunn fellow knows nothing of being a Christian. He's probably new to it. Christ didn't die so people like him could judge another. He is in fact a hypocrite if anything. Take it from a cradle to the grave Roman Catholic (with ancient alien blue blood lines) that he's not reading the new testament.
Only Me, you're a trouble maker. I caught you in error before, and you apologized and cleaned it up, and I graciously forgave you. I caught you in another error, not understanding what Jason was saying about Satan's power, confusing what I was saying with what he was saying, and you neglected to clean it up. Rather, you came in as a luke-warm Christian, saying this blog is no place for evangelism. Double shame on you. (The scenes will be replayed for you one day, unless you ask for forgiveness. You know the rules, buddy.)
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Only Me
11/14/2013 12:28:16 pm
Ah, yes, that's me; the rebellious son instead of the prodigal one. Let's examine this latest diatribe, shall we?
Gunn
11/14/2013 02:14:40 pm
Only Me, caps no longer work for Varika...overworked. The boy crying wolf. Your caps don't help either, to express your erroneous view that this blog belongs to Jason. You are failing to understand that when this blog is "live" it represents a segment of the public square. For example, many have come here as a result of googling America Unearthed. There was no censorship towards anyone responding to the google information to go to a particular stump, that is, to this blog. Therefore, anyone seeking information about America Unearthed may end up here on Jason's stump, hearing him blister against his Maker. At this point, anyone directed here by the internet is partaking of the public square, with Jason standing on a stump...right, over in a dark corner, slamming Jesus. Anyone is perfectly welcome to disagree with Jason about doing this as long as he keeps "his" public blog open.
Only Me
11/14/2013 03:28:20 pm
Yes, I see now that with or without caps, your comprehension is hamstrung. Now, let's play a little game.
Gunn
11/15/2013 05:41:43 am
You don't use good logic at times, Only Me. Are you Jason?
Only Me
11/15/2013 05:04:41 pm
No, Gunn, I'm not Jason. The difference in our writing styles should tell you that.
Gunn
11/16/2013 05:00:12 am
Why are you still talking? I thought I was through several comments ago, but you can't seem to shut up. Maybe you don't know, either, that Jason has censored a response I had in in the past, and several times threatened to do so, usually when I was making some kind of successful point to someone. The problem I have with you, repeatedly, is that you don't follow the comments on the blog correctly. That's why you felt you had to apologize before...because you were temporarily incapable of following the dialogue. You did it again over the matter of the Devil's power, attributing to me an idea I didn't foster. How can I deal with someone who has been my harshest critic so far on this blog, yet can't follow what's going on? I'll try to be patient with you as you tediously go back and find the spot you went wrong in erroneously twisting things around again. Challenge yourself to get it right...again. Then after you find out, again, that you misrepresented me, I'll accept your sorry apology. I expect you'll be on a guilt trip pretty soon, but do me a favor and keep it to yourself this time, unless you intend to change.
Clint Knapp
11/16/2013 05:39:33 am
Boy am I glad I happened to scroll far enough down the front page to see this rant resumed... Look, obviously Gunn has some issues with understanding the nature of the internet and what constitutes "public" and "private", so I'm just going to skip over all that rambling about who's the good and proper Christian and cut to the heart of the matter using Gunn's own analogy in the hopes this will help him understand:
Only Me
11/16/2013 11:04:00 am
Who cares, Gunn? Since you are purposely rude on this blog, really, who cares about your input at all? Nice one day, rude the next. Explain yourself, please. Are you an over-inflated person at times, prone to rudeness? What pressure are you and why? Examine yourself, please, and give us a report. What makes you tick, and why do you feel a need to be rude at someone else's expense? Just having fun?
Dan D
11/12/2013 08:07:14 am
"I'll do you a favor. Good-bye for a while."
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Bill
11/12/2013 11:40:44 pm
Gunn is not representative of all Christians or even all Evangelical Christians. He is so convinced he is right he doesn't even realize he is in the minority.
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BP
11/13/2013 05:43:59 am
Having to do with Ancient Aliens (but not the episode discussed here...
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Harold Pogar
11/14/2013 04:19:55 am
I remember in the 60's Abu Simbel was taken apart and 're assembled on higher ground to preserve it from the location being flooded by construction of the High Aswan dam. Any sunlight movements into it now are not relevant as it is not in it's original location.
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Sekhmet
8/14/2015 11:56:54 am
Actually, when they reassembled Abu Simbel, they made sure that the light lines were the same as what they were at its original building location.
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Rengade Havoc
11/18/2013 01:07:46 am
"The Yellow Emperor of China, Huangdi (or Huangti), is claimed to be a civilizing alien."
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8/22/2014 09:30:53 am
Gunn should be 'gunning' for the AATs who've been perverting religion to serve their ends all along, while protesting, tongue well into cheek, they're not. Thank you, Jason, for keeping things straight.
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