Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Egypt #4: New Age Loons


We ran into the loons in Egypt. Not the birds that walked among the reeds of the Nile but the kind that have something wrong in their head. Our first experience was while we were waiting in line to get tickets for the Great Pyramid of Giza. These tickets would allow us entry INSIDE the pyramid and only a few hundred in the morning and another few hundred in the afternoon were allowed. While we were waiting to be among that few hundred we were told by our guide that a group, primarily Americans, paid over $15,000 to open the pyramid early so that just 10 of them to get into the pyramid by themselves for an hour to “meditate”. They believed in the power of the pyramid and believed they would gain special “knowledge” or “blessing” from that meditation. The pyramid was cool to be in but certainly didn’t give me any special powers when I was there. But maybe there were too many of us and I didn’t meditate right.


Our second encounter with the loons of Egypt was in Abydos. Abydos is the holy site of ancient Egypt. After the epic battle between Osiris and Set led to the dismemberment of Osiris he was again reassembled in Abydos and later buried there after reviving enough to have a child with his wife Isis. Osiris was worshipped for thousands of years as the god who ushered you into the afterlife and so his burial place was important. You can find the oldest temple, rivaling that of the great pyramids in Abydos. Within one of the temples at Abydos you will find sculptures up high in the supports of the roof with unusual Egyptian characters. One looks a LOT like a helicopter, one like a submarine and another like a blimp. How did the ancients know these items? How did they sculpt them into their stone 4000 years ago? Many of these New Age Loons will tell you it was because of aliens or at least a “special” knowledge grasped by the ancients and so we found many lugging their “prayer” rugs around Abydos so they could meditate and pray in this sacred alien place.




Now I love ancient Egypt and am developing relationships with some modern Egyptians as well but I don’t worship the ancients or the aliens who may have influenced them. I look at the monoliths and I see nothing more than human ingenuity. Enough people and enough time and you can move a mountain or build a mountain. The work done by the ancients was hard work but it wasn’t hard-to-understand work. We are amazed simply because we build buildings in a matter of a few years where they would plan for decades. We are amazed because they would coordinate tens of thousands of people to work together and we have trouble with more than three trying to get together. We are amazed because they maintained a culture for five thousand years and we are worrying about whether we will last through our third century.


Don’t worship men who worshipped gods that were poor substitutes for the true God. Don’t meditate on wonders of human ingenuity when you have the same image of God within yourself. Don’t stand amazed at the past; do appreciate it, do learn from it, and most of all DO follow the truth into the future.

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