FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME by L.M. Lewis

 

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver space ships flyin'

In the yellow haze of the sun

There were children cryin' and colors flyin'

All around the chosen ones

You might think that 1975 is getting a little late in the game (after the gold rush, even) for yet another bold type, going-beyond-Chariots-of-the Gods? blurbed Ancient Astronauts piece, but author L.M. Lewis tells us he's been working on the mystery behind THE MASTER RACE for years, and far be it from us to deny him sharing the fruits of his life's work ...

Looking back fifty years later, despite Lewis' frequent invocation of the MASTER RACE that came from the stars and gifted humanity with our civilizational uplift, thankfully this isn't another Holocaust denyin' or otherwise fascistic work. Frankly, Lewis comes out far ahead of von Daniken in this regard. No, this is enjoyable, pure crank writing - Lewis has pegged the arrival of the MASTER RACE to exactly 6790 BC, and walks us through his maths as the enlightened ones from outer space interact with burgeoning human societies, ultimately taking their leave in 1451 BC for reasons Lewis will also elucidate ...

We've seen all this before, of course: Ezekial's wheel was a UFO, Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked, the pyramids were built by aliens - or, more properly in this case, inspired by aliens, as Lewis gives the Egyptians full credit for the hard work, albeit in an outdated way as he believes they relied on slave labor for the feat. Anyways, the point is that Mr. Lewis presents some tried and true Ancient Astronaut grist in an engaging manner, all killer no filler. Let the man speak for himself:

In 1970 the author became convinced that (1) the Master Race landed on this planet in 6790 B.C., with as much wheat as they could conveniently carry. (2) Quickly establishing themselves, they multiplied their stocks by two harvests a year - one natural, the other artificial - for five years. (3) With an eye to the future, they instructed the Egyptian nomads (who began to settle down two years later, namely in 6783 B.C.) in the growing of wheat and in agriculture. Villages and towns began to grow up, and officials of the Master Race guided the affairs of the infant nation for the next forty-nine years- "when gods ruled Egypt"! (4) Members of the new nation taken gradually into the government as they progressed (in 6770 в.c.) wished to build the biggest monument ever to the freedom they had been promised within fifty years. (5) The Master Race agreed to supply the brains and "know-how," the Egyptians, the materials and labor, which the Master Race would control. As stated earlier, Memphis was founded and work started on the great road in 6764 B.C.

By these calculations, it will be observed that the coming of the Master Race, the founding of Memphis, and the building of the Great Pyramid, all took place in the seventh century before the Flood.

History is full of the manifestations of novel ideas, unusual happenings, and unlooked-for results, all of which make it stranger than fiction! How many decisive battles have been won and lost. How many great men have stepped upon the mighty stage of Earth's affairs for one brief day of glory that at evening passed away. Some names will always be remembered, but they are few in number. Undoubtedly the most amazing is Jesus Christ - that astounding young man who put the world on fire, whose memory has often changed the intentions of mankind, and whose words, after nearly 2,000 years, are still a living power! Because he lived - and died - even man's reckoning of time has changed.

Lewis is fond of lists and summaries. Compare this to W. Raymond Drake's endless and interminable series of Gods And Spacemen from hither and yon as featured in the opening ad page. By the time Drake has gotten around to Gods and Spacemen in East Lansing, Michigan, Lewis has already said his piece and retired to a sensible evening after this one and done title.

No quickie cash-in huckster he, it's only right to give Lewis the final word as well:

Poised on the brink of a third and final world war, the nations of mankind stare enviously at each other in mutual fear, akin to mesmeric terror. How much time will elapse before the seemingly inevitable happens and the nations again start murdering their neighbors?

No! Don't deny the fatal probability. As an unbiased and logical person, take a good look for yourself at the world of today. The peoples of the Earth stand armed to the teeth! The majority are half-starved, because the world's substance is being squandered on hydrogen bombs, ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, poison gas, and offensive germ cultures. All this is in the cause of "defense," of course! What utter stupidity!

If these international propensities were manifested in individuals rather than by nations, we should be well justified in immediately incarcerating them in a criminal lunatic asylum!

If it's not too late, Footprints on the Sands of Time is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975

SECRETS OF THE PYRAMIDS REVEALED by Robert K. Moffett

By now, it may have become apparent that doctorates carry substantial weight among the nonconformist schools of pyramid study. In fact, academic titles abound to a point where it is hardly paranoid to conclude that they are used for the purpose of impressing the reader with the author’s scholarship. But do they not also imply a promise that the scholarship in the books will be sound?

Perhaps a more accurate title would have been Secrets of Pyramidology Revealed? Author Robert K. Moffett teases us with a pointless introduction in a style that seems to have been de rigueur for skeptical works in the '70s: dressing up your critical work like it's just another mystery mongering meatloaf volume. Moffett mentions Karel Drbal and his razor sharpening pyramids, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, and Uri Geller - but none of these are relevant for the rest of the book. Moffett's actual text is about how we got here, to the pyramid mania of the '70s, through a history of the theories of the original pyramidologists. It's a crash course on writers like John Taylor and Howard Vyse (and their precursor John Greaves), fine tuners like Piazzi Smyth, and then bandwagon jumpers on up to the 20th century and the modern day. 

Moffett gives context on why specific writers were interested in certain aspects of the pyramids, and how oftentimes their facts and figures had less to do with the actual stones in the sand than with contemporary religious and political struggles:

At this point, Taylor was sure he had had a revelation, for this was a matter of keen topical interest.

The metric system, developed in France, had by this time spread throughout the Continent, and there was agitation both from the scientific community and export-conscious manufacturers to adopt it in Great Britain. But there was a strong British resistance movement largely based on religious grounds. The French Revolution, with its strong anticlerical bias, had aroused grave misgivings in Britain, and the metric system was closely identified with it. As originally proposed, the metric conversion had involved switching to a ten-day week. Genesis made it perfectly clear that the Lord endorsed the seven-day week. That, after a period of trial, the French themselves had abandoned the decimal week was immaterial. If, in this, the original thinking had been contrary to the Will of God, the entire system was suspect.

Now Taylor could perceive the true function of the Great Pyramid: It was not by chance that the pyramid used the British system of weights and measures. Rather, it was a compendium incorporating the original, Divinely inspired system which had survived in Britain. The Great Pyramid was a message passed down to modern times to strengthen the wills of the anti-metric faction.

The search for cosmic truths collapses inward! Moffett writes with a dry humor, respectfully conveying various crank ideas but occasionally popping an especially ridiculous balloon such as in the case of psychic gadfly Edgar Cayce:

In terms of both current popularity and sheer volume, the most important of the clairvoyants to have contributed to the story of Atlantis was Edgar Cayce who, despite the widespread belief in his ability to communicate across the barrier between this and the afterworld, hasn’t been heard from since his death in 1945.

Once we've completed our journey with Moffett from Ancient Egypt to 19th century Europe to 20th century America, we might be able to say we've learned something about human thought and frailty.

Tempo Books gifts us a few typos here and there, but at least they also give us a picture spread in the middle with lots of vintage images. Moffett, a class act, also gives us a bibliography:

Moffet has a few other books available, including one coauthored with (presumably) his wife - not the title you'd think though! Their shared author blurb says that "Robert and Martha Moffett are both editors as well as published writers. Mr. Moffett's introduction to the animal kingdom was as a snake farmer."

Pyramid Power now and forever! This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tempo Books, 1976

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: ARE THE INVADERS COMING?

Steven Tyler's hopeful-but-skeptical UFO text Are the Invaders Coming? is now available to read and download at archive dot org! Whither our man of mystery? He wrote one more book on the paranormal and then disappeared into the unknown ...

Courtesy Tower Books, 1968.

JAPAN'S MYTHICAL MARTIAL ARTS MASTERS by John Lindsey

A fantastic surprise lurks in an old issue of Black Belt magazine: Did winged goblins teach the ninja and the samurai? Author John Lindsey traces the martial mythos of the terrible Tengu, spiced with some Ancient Astronaut style pondering which echoes writers like Vaughn M. Greene and W. Raymond Drake:

Said Greene in Astronauts of Ancient Japan:

‘‘Tengu’’ are vampires that rage in the air. Each lives on his own mountain peak. Were they remnants of the old Gods? The giant Tengu “‘So Jo Bo’’ appeared to Ushi-Kawa and taught him the art of writing. These proud beings are divided in two groups. The ‘‘Officers'' wear red robes, have long noses, and long, matted hair. When Admiral Perry first landed in Japan, he was drawn by a Japanese artist like a Tengu. Other Tengu—the ‘‘soldiers’’—have bird heads (space helmets?) and wings. Tengu hold secret conventions in remote mountain valleys, like those the early Jomon inhabited.

Meanwhile, Drake in Gods and Spacemen of the Ancient East had this to say about the Tengu:

The ‘exceedingly long nose’ of the ‘winged creature in human form’ no doubt referred to some headpiece with breathing apparatus, for to some Extra-terrestriala our oxygenated atmosphere may be poisonous; we are reminded of Oannes, a Being with the body of a fish, who according to Berossus taught the Babylonians the arts of civilisation, his likeness to a fish probably denoted the Stranger was wearing a Spacesuit, perhaps one of those Jomon Dogu ‘pressure suits’ reproduced in the various statuettes found all over Japan? Since the long-nosed winged creature gave rise to a superstition it would suggest that his manifestations in the mountains of Japan were not infrequent throughout several centuries showing regular surveillance of the Children of the Sun.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

Rack 'em!

From Black Belt magazine, Vol. 27 - No. 3, March 1989.

JESUS CHRIST, HEIR TO THE ASTRONAUTS by Gerhard R. Steinhäuser

I was staying at the Marriott

With Jesus and John Wayne

I was waiting for a chariot

They were waiting for a train

My ride's here ... though it's more of a metaphysical passage, more Morning of the Magicians than Chariots of the Gods?, and even though Steinhäuser's book postdates von Daniken, he's much more in tune with the esoteric authors like Pauwels, Bergier, and others that Erich was ripping off. In fact, reading through this volume, one is reminded of just how shabby, how lazy, how slapdash von Daniken's work was in comparison to his predecessors. For better of for worse, writers like Steinhäuser make you work for it!

Steinhäuser starts off with the basic question, was God an astronaut? We get the usual ancient art and architecture, the electric Ark of the Covenant, the "white" god Quetzalcoatl, and so on. But he goes a step further ... could it be that all of our major religions are outright massive cons, not simply garbled interpretations of gods from outer space but deliberate frauds perpetuated by priestly PR men simply borrowing aspects of the true alien visitors? Was Jesus simply a dime-a-dozen would-be prophet with the good (posthumous) luck of Peter and Paul shoring up his legacy with borrowed themes? 

It's the idea behind Christian/pagan/esoteric syncretism, but cast out further: Von Daniken used his science fiction gloss to try to shore up the Bible, while Steinhäuser aims to shred it to bits - though his introduction denies antagonism, saying the Churches are doing a good enough job of discrediting themselves!

Churches and temples are our own feeble attempt to replicate the wormhole gates that enabled the gods to travel across the universe without even needing spaceships - ritual doorways and gateways and arches are the key here, in Steinhäuser's view.

Steinhäuser tracks other potential alien influence through the ages and around the globe, asserting on page 123 that "the nearer the subsequent religious centres (e.g. in Egypt, Asia Minor, China and South America) were to the former "residences" of the gods, the clearer and more distinct is their tradition; the further away they were, and the less frequently they had contact with the gods (e.g. in northern Europe and North America) the more obscure and unintelligible are their traditions." 

One might also wonder if he simply has better access to sources to mine for those areas "closer" to the gods ...

Part of Steinhäuser's bibliography

Steinhäuser (1920-1989) wrote a handful of Ancient Astronaut texts, though this appears to be the only one ever translated into English.

Hardcover edition

I was staying at the Westin

I was playing to a draw

When in walked Charlton Heston

With the Tablets of the Law

He said "It's still the greatest story,"

I said, "Man, I'd like to stay

But I'm bound for glory,

I'm on my way."

My ride's here ... This title was translated into English by Susanne Flatauer and is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Coronet Books, 1976 (original pub. 1973)