Pyramid Quest by Robert M. Schoch

Author:Robert M. Schoch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2015-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

THE SHAPE OF THE SACRED

Widely considered the greatest scholar of comparative religion in the twentieth century, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) spent his life probing the nature of the human impulse toward spirituality and religion. In his fascinating book The Sacred and the Profane (1937), Eliade details how a sacred space, like the Taj Mahal or the Great Pyramid, differs from a profane one, like the toolshed out back or your neighbor’s garage. The profane space is built for some simple functional reason, like keeping hammers, saws, and automobiles out of the rain and snow. A sacred space may have practical uses, such as a burial ground or a communal gathering place, but what dictates its shape, form, and fundamental use is the intention to replicate the cosmos and thereby capture its sacredness.

A writer from a very different background than Eliade’s, Manly P. Hall (1901-1990) made a similar point in his analysis of the Great Pyramid’s internal passages. A Canadian who lived most of his life in Los Angeles, Hall began his career on Wall Street. There he witnessed something that changed his path: a man despondent over investment losses taking his own life. Realizing that everything was much less than it was cracked up to be, Hall entered upon a search for meaning. Largely self-taught, thanks to the bounty of the New York City Public Library and his ability to aquire then at affordable prices what are now rare and costly volumes, he wrote a book that is popularly known as The Secret Teachings of All Ages (first published in 1928) to codify the results of his quest and pull together the most unusual aspects of myth, religion, and philosophy. In the course of covering an extraordinary range of material, Hall looked at ancient Egypt and the Great Pyramid. “Much of the information concerning the rituals of the higher degrees of the Egyptian Mysteries has been gleaned from an examination of the chambers and passages in which the initiations were given,” Hall wrote.14

Hall was making the same point as Eliade—and, even in their own curious ways, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Robert Menzies, Morton Edgar, and David Davison. The key to understanding the purpose and meaning of the Great Pyramid lies in understanding the sacred import of its shape.

Throughout this book we have encountered repeated evidence of the cosmic nature of the Great Pyramid and the Giza monuments—from the zo diacal star clock to the replication of Orion’s Belt, from the perfect northerly orientation to the Descending Passage’s alignments with the celestial north pole. In addition, Stecchini’s measurements show that the Great Pyramid maps the Northern Hemisphere in exquisite geodesic detail. The ancient Egyptians went to a great deal of trouble to chart their world, both heaven and earth, and create a cosmic sacred space in the Great Pyramid.

Surely they carried that motivation over to the internal passages. This wasn’t a case of the builder changing his mind or losing courage at various points in the process, as various Egyptologists have proposed. The

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.