image: Wikimedia commons (link).
The preceding post outlined some reasons why the "ancient aliens" theory as generally articulated is somewhat incompatible with the evidence that the myths, scriptures, and sacred stories are built upon a common, worldwide system of celestial metaphor.
As shown in that post, proponents of the ancient alien hypothesis often state explicitly that the ancient stories of gods and goddesses represent a kind of "primitive misinterpretation" of contact with ancient extraterrestrials and their spacecraft, weapons, and other advanced technologies.
However, there is abundant evidence (we might even say super-abundant evidence) that these ancient myths and sacred stories allegorize the celestial cycles of the sun, moon, visible planets, and constellations, and that they do so in order to convey truths about an Invisible Realm which is very real and vital, even though unseen.
Obviously, it is very unlikely that the myths can simultaneously represent "primitive attempts to describe spacecraft and aliens" and "sophisticated allegorization of solar, lunar, planetary, and celestial cycles, objects, and constellations." It is possible to argue that the myths somehow describe both, but the possibility seems very unlikely, especially because the number of myths and scriptures which encode the same constellations in very different settings or "plot lines" makes it very difficult to argue that any single myth is describing some historical event. I believe the stories themselves encode the motions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets (as well as the cycle of precession and other heavenly cycles), rather than literal events involving physical persons on earth -- or physical spacecraft and aliens.
It should be pointed out, however, that such a position is by no means incompatible with the possibility of an extremely advanced ancient civilization (or civilizations) which is at present unknown or ignored by conventional timelines of human history.
In fact, the presence of the very sophisticated, worldwide system of celestial metaphor underlying the myths and sacred stories found in virtually every culture on our planet would seem to argue very strongly for the possibility of such an advanced ancient civilization (or civilizations).
The opening chapters of Hamlet's Mill explain that the hints left to us in the mythologies and scriptures appear to "reveal a world of vast and firmly established complexity, infinitely different from ours" (4). Later on in the same page, they speak of the fragments in the myths and fairy tales (which are "no longer understood") as remnants of some "great world-wide archaic construction" upon which "the dust of centuries" had already settled by the time "the Greeks came upon the scene" (4).
The evocative books of John Michell, View over Atlantis and New View over Atlantis, discussing the evidence from the stone monuments and "dragon lines" and "ley lines" which are found all around the globe, declare that "the pattern that emerges is one so incompatible with our idea of civilization that it is easy entirely to miss its significance." He then proceeds to describe in memorable terms something very similar to what the authors of Hamlet's Mill were describing (although Hamlet's Mill is looking primarily at myth rather than at structures and alignments -- and note that View over Atlantis and Hamlet's Mill were both published in the same year: 1969). Michell writes:
A great scientific instrument lies sprawled over the entire surface of the globe. At some period, thousands of years ago, almost every corner of the world was visited by people with a particular task to accomplish. With the help of some remarkable power, by which they could cut and raise enormous blocks of stone, these men created vast astronomical instruments, circles of erect pillars, pyramids, underground tunnels, cyclopean stone platforms, all linked together by a network of tracks and alignments, whose course from horizon to horizon was marked by stones, mounds, and earthworks. New View over Atlantis, 83.
As I discuss in The Undying Stars (2014), Michell explored evidence that suggested that at least one possible use of this vast world-wide array involved the use of flying machines or travel upon levitated stones or other craft, possibly linked to the ley lines or lines of earth-energy and telluric current. He writes:
Stone levitated by sound could become a flying chariot, moving along the line of a certain magnetic intensity, whose course was marked out on the ground by alignments of stones and earthworks, linked by raised causeways and forest rides. With the earth's magnetic field regulated, and the streams that run through it diverted to conform to straight lines, the stone craft and its navigator could float from centre to centre, picking their way through a canal network of alternating currents and choosing the level of intensity to which their vibrations were attuned. New View over Atlantis, 204 - 205. Also quoted in The Undying Stars, 193.
There is some evidence in the myths to support such incredible assertions. For one thing (as many researchers have noticed, including advocates of the "ancient aliens" hypothesis), there are numerous myths in which gods, goddesses, and mortals have access to flying craft of one type or another -- perhaps most intriguingly in the Vedas of ancient India.
Note that my assertion that these myths and scriptures are based upon celestial metaphor (for which I find a lot of evidence) does not at all preclude the possibility that these metaphorical or allegorical stories came to us from some advanced ancient civilization or culture that did indeed know of or use such flying craft.
In other words, just because the stories themselves can be shown to be metaphorical in nature (rather than literal and historic) does not mean that the ancient sages who gave us these precious myths did not use "technologies" with which they were actually familiar when they formulated the stories themselves in allegorical form.
To use an example, there are many myths involving a "trial with a bow," in which a character must string a massive bow (sometimes it is a divine bow, belonging to the gods) and successfully launch an arrow at a seemingly-impossible target, in order to win a prize (usually the prize is a woman). This myth-pattern is quite obviously present in the Odyssey (at the end of the hero's journey), as well as in the Mahabharata (quite early in the story) and in the Ramayana.
I believe that all these stories can be conclusively shown to be based upon specific constellations -- constellations which appear to be holding a great bow in the sky, or shooting a bow and arrow. However, just because the story itself is a metaphor does not, of course, preclude the possibility that the ancient cultures in which this celestial system originated actually did know about bows and arrows as a military technology! It would be ridiculous to assert that just because someone uses something in a story or allegory, they don't actually possess that "something" in their culture. In fact, in the case of the "trial with the bow," the metaphor is much more meaningful for the very reason that the listeners did know what a bow and arrow was, and how bows operate (and how difficult they can be to string, when they are extremely heavy in draw-weight).
Thus, just because I assert that the Vedas and other scriptures of ancient India can be shown to be celestial metaphor does not mean that the "technologies" they describe and use as metaphors were completely fantastical: it is very possible that the ancient originators of some of these myths actually use the metaphor of flying craft in the stories because they did indeed possess such technologies, which would have been familiar to their listeners!
It should be noted that this is only a possibility -- I am not asserting that just because a "technology" appears in a myth, it was actually in use at some ancient time. What I am pointing out is that just because the myths can be shown to be metaphor does not mean that the metaphors they use were never actually in use in terrestrial history (although perhaps so long ago that it is now forgotten, and indeed completely denied by the conventional paradigm of human history).
I do believe that the evidence around the globe overwhelmingly argues for the existence of an advanced ancient culture at some point in our planet's past. I have written about this evidence many times in books and in this blog (here's just one example) -- and of course, many other researchers have also detailed such evidence in great detail (some of them will be speaking at the upcoming Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge, at the end of this month in southern California).
Finally, there are some researchers who suggest an intriguing tie between modern evidence of "history that has been excluded from the conventional paradigm" and the ancient evidence of an advanced civilization which is also excluded from the conventional paradigm. Some researchers see a pattern of very serious searching for ancient cities and artifacts by groups in recent centuries (certainly in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, but perhaps going back even further than that, to the time of the Conquistadors and other expeditions in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries), which suggests that at least some of them are looking for the secrets of advanced technologies known to the ancients and forgotten or suppressed by conventional histories.
Two of the most prominent authors who have described such a possibility in their work are Joseph Farrell and Walter Bosley -- and both have written numerous books detailing the evidence that this has been going on for centuries, with extensive documentation and notes to supporting evidence and sources to back up their hypotheses.
Two of the most prominent authors who have described such a possibility in their work are Joseph Farrell and Walter Bosley -- and both have written numerous books detailing the evidence that this has been going on for centuries, with extensive documentation and notes to supporting evidence and sources to back up their hypotheses.
I believe that the evidence in the ancient myths found literally around the world conclusively reveals that whoever imparted these stories to our distant ancestors possessed an extremely high level of spiritual wisdom and knowledge.
It is very possible that, whatever the source of these ancient myths which form the "great world-wide archaic construction" described in Hamlet's Mill, or of the world-wide system of monuments and alignments which form the "great scientific instrument" described in New View over Atlantis, also possessed an extremely high level of technological wisdom and knowledge (although perhaps of a nature very unfamiliar to us today).
And, in fact, it is also very possible that the two were somehow intimately related (the spiritual knowledge and the technological knowledge).
If any additional evidence were needed that some groups have been urgently hunting for the lost technologies of the ancients for quite some time, we also have the testimony of the great filmmaker, Steven Spielberg, in movies such as the original Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981):
