Physicist Thomas Brophy’s 2002 treatise, The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric, Megalithic, Astrophysical Map and Sculpture of the Universe, offers compelling evidence that 15,000 years ago the Egyptians had a detailed understanding of the galactic structure of the universe. Brophy, who happens to be a prominent white physicist, notes that, “in our schools today we are taught that ancient Greece is the true progenitor of what, after many twists and turns, would become our contemporary Western culture. Everything older than that, or other than that takes a secondary position ranging from merely inferior to primitive and superstition. Yet these ancient Greeks themselves routinely acknowledged their intellectual and cultural debt to the far older Egyptian civilization.”
So we see that we are making progress in expanding the purview of contemporary Western science. However, there still remains a gap in the thinking of many between the science of ancient Egypt and that of the West today. However, there exists a body of knowledge that links directly back to the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. It is known as the Hermetic Tradition. To understand its roots we have to go back to the point at which Western Religion and Science began to diverge.
In Europe during the Renaissance, the period of rebirth following the thousand year decline after the fall of the Roman Empire, Religion and Science were at war. The Church established the Inquisition and burned heretics at the stake. Ever since, the two realms have drifted steadily apart as Science has made more and more findings that clash with Religion’s teachings. Each has experts, hierarchies, novices, followers and a multitude of ways to ostracize those who stray.
Each lays claim to “The Truth.” Religion’s wisdom is revealed, Science’s is discovered. Science notes that Religious beliefs cannot be proven. Religion counters that Science’s explanations only go back but so far. Science can tell us what happened up to one billionth of a second after the Big Bang began (yes, one billionth of a second) but cannot say anything about what happened before. Religion, however, posits a Creator, but then who created the Creator?
Each is, at its root, a system of faith. Religions have professions of faith and Science has professors (of faith in Science.) Each has dogma, experts, jargon, ritual and a precise set of beliefs and actions that one must strictly adhere to.
The “History of Christianity” and the “History of Science” are handed down by their hierarchies to the masses, without outside scrutiny, and thus enshrined. But there has always been another key factor in the mix, the Hermetic Tradition. The Hermetic Tradition is a body of arcane, dimly understood ideas believed to have been derived from ancient Egypt. Christianity and Western Science are deeply connected to it.
Says Brophy, “The Hermetic Tradition, rooted in the conviction of an advanced spiritual or ‘sacred’ Egyptian science (long predating the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks,) survived and was devoted to perpetuating what remained of this ancient doctrine. Hermeticism influenced much of Western and Islamic thought following the decline of Egypt and eventual demise of the Roman Empire.”
Pythagoras, the famed Greek philosopher, studied in Egypt for many years and was a devoted practitioner of Egyptian religion. Sir Isaac Newton the Father of Physics, was, according to Maynard Keynes, the legendary British economist, “not the first scientist but “the last sorcerer.” Newton spent more time on Egyptian and Hebrew texts, believed to contain fragments of the Hermetic Tradition, then on Physics and Chemistry. They heavily informed his vision. Keynes documents the fact that Newton “left behind more than a million words on the subject of alchemy. . . . (T)he influence of Newton’s researches in alchemy was the key to his world-changing discoveries in science. His alchemical work and his science were inextricably linked. Newton shared the view of many intellectuals of the period that the most ancient civilization was also the most knowledgeable, the most pure, the most advanced.”
In 711, an African army from the area of modern day Morocco invaded and ultimately conquered Spain and Portugal. The last of the Muslim forces did not leave the Iberian Peninsula until 1492. Their capital, Cordoba, was the foremost city in Europe, and the University they established there was the pre-eminent center of learning in Europe during the Middle Ages. During that time the phrase, “as far away as Timbuktu,” came into popular parlance. Timbukutu was the site of the University of Sankore in what is today Mali. During the Middle Ages the caliphate of Andalus extended from the Iberian Peninsula to the heart of West Africa.
The word “alchemy” is derived from the word “Kemet” which is what the Egyptians called their country. “Al” is Arabic for “the.” Thus “alchemy” is shorthand for “the Knowledge of Egypt.” Over time as the purely rational worldview overspread Europe in the 17th century, “alchemy” became “chemistry” as alchemy was shorn of its spiritual aspects, leaving only its purely rational elements. Similarly, Astrology shorn of its spiritual aspects became Astronomy. (Also, our numbers are derived from what are properly called “Arabic numerals.”)
None of this jibes with the established history of Science, so these things are rarely mentioned. Likewise, with Christianity, few know how vague and murky the actual history of the faith really is, or that Christianity contains many parallels to the beliefs and practices of ancient Egypt. Meanwhile, Science divorced from its African roots proceeds ever forward heedlessly, in so doing making life ever easier for some as it destroys the environment for everyone. Scientists, for the most part, pay scant attention to the systematic poisoning of the planet. Instead they are each intensely focused on a specific issue in a certain topic in a particular branch of the “rational” scientific enterprise, which seen as a whole is anything but rational.
So we see that the struggle to restore African science and philosophy to its rightful place, which is being waged by scholars both Black and white, is essential not just for the psychological well-being of the African but for the survival of the planet.
