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Authors: Lynn Picknett
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to develop the idea in print (no matter how far he may have taken it privately). And we were also fascinated by the implications of the fact that the CIA have spent so much time and resources on experimenting with shamanic techniques and mind-altering drugs.
The Pyramid Texts suggested to us that the afterlife journey of the king could also describe the astral flight characteristic of shamanism. Excitingly, the latest anthropological research into the phenomenon of shamanism could well provide the key to understanding the mystery of the extraordinarily advanced knowledge of the ancient Egyptians and the secrets of the Heliopolitan religion.
The breakthrough
Shamans are what used to be called medicine men and women, natural-born psychics who are nevertheless highly trained to interpret dreams, heal the sick and guide people through knowledge that comes to them during their ecstatic trances. They are found in what are generally taken to be ‘primitive’ tribal societies, from Siberia to the Amazonian rain forest. These adepts take shamanic ‘flights’ out of the body into the realms normally inaccessible to mankind and return with specific information of great practical use.
In 1995 a remarkable book was published in Switzerland entitled Le serpent cosmique, l’ADN et les origines du savior (The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge) by Swiss anthropologist Jeremy Narby. (It was first published in English in 1998.) It presents the results of Narby’s personal study of Amazonian shamans, and reveals the remarkable scope of the information shamans glean during the ecstatic trances they induce by taking natural hallucinogenic substances, primarily one called ayahuasca. From this research, Narby developed a theory about the origins of that knowledge that - we believe - has enormous significance for an investigation of the mysteries of ancient Egypt.
In the mid-1980s Narby was studying for his doctorate among the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon, working on an environmental project. Like many before him, he soon became fascinated by the astounding botanical knowledge of these so-called ‘primitive’ people, specifically their medicinal use of certain rare plants. He was impressed by the range of plant-derived medicines used by the tribal shamans - ayahuasqueros - and by their effectiveness, especially after they cured a long-standing back problem which European doctors had proved completely incapable of treating. The more he learned, the more intrigued he became about the ways in which the Amazonian natives had developed or acquired this knowledge. The odds against them coming up with even one of these recipes by chance or even by experimentation are simply overwhelming. There are some 80,000 species of plants in the Amazonian rain forest, so to discover an effective remedy using a mixture of just two of them would theoretically require the testing of every possible combination - about 3,700,000,000. It does not end there: many of their medicines involve several plants, and even then such a calculation does not allow for experimentation with the often extremely complex procedures necessary to extract the active ingredients and produce a potent mixture.
One good example of this mysterious medicinal knowledge is ayahuasca itself, a combination of just two plants. The first comes from the leaves of a shrub and contains a hormone naturally secreted in the human brain, dimethyltryptamine, a powerful hallucinogen only discovered by Western science in 1979. If taken orally, though, it is broken down by an enzyme in the stomach and becomes totally ineffective, so the second component of ayahuasca, extracted from a creeper, contains several substances that protect the dimethyltryptamine from that specific enzyme.
In effect, ayahuasca is a designer drug, made to order. It is as if the exact requirements of the mixture were specified in advance, then the correct ingredients chosen to meet the requirements. But
The Pyramid Texts suggested to us that the afterlife journey of the king could also describe the astral flight characteristic of shamanism. Excitingly, the latest anthropological research into the phenomenon of shamanism could well provide the key to understanding the mystery of the extraordinarily advanced knowledge of the ancient Egyptians and the secrets of the Heliopolitan religion.
The breakthrough
Shamans are what used to be called medicine men and women, natural-born psychics who are nevertheless highly trained to interpret dreams, heal the sick and guide people through knowledge that comes to them during their ecstatic trances. They are found in what are generally taken to be ‘primitive’ tribal societies, from Siberia to the Amazonian rain forest. These adepts take shamanic ‘flights’ out of the body into the realms normally inaccessible to mankind and return with specific information of great practical use.
In 1995 a remarkable book was published in Switzerland entitled Le serpent cosmique, l’ADN et les origines du savior (The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge) by Swiss anthropologist Jeremy Narby. (It was first published in English in 1998.) It presents the results of Narby’s personal study of Amazonian shamans, and reveals the remarkable scope of the information shamans glean during the ecstatic trances they induce by taking natural hallucinogenic substances, primarily one called ayahuasca. From this research, Narby developed a theory about the origins of that knowledge that - we believe - has enormous significance for an investigation of the mysteries of ancient Egypt.
In the mid-1980s Narby was studying for his doctorate among the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon, working on an environmental project. Like many before him, he soon became fascinated by the astounding botanical knowledge of these so-called ‘primitive’ people, specifically their medicinal use of certain rare plants. He was impressed by the range of plant-derived medicines used by the tribal shamans - ayahuasqueros - and by their effectiveness, especially after they cured a long-standing back problem which European doctors had proved completely incapable of treating. The more he learned, the more intrigued he became about the ways in which the Amazonian natives had developed or acquired this knowledge. The odds against them coming up with even one of these recipes by chance or even by experimentation are simply overwhelming. There are some 80,000 species of plants in the Amazonian rain forest, so to discover an effective remedy using a mixture of just two of them would theoretically require the testing of every possible combination - about 3,700,000,000. It does not end there: many of their medicines involve several plants, and even then such a calculation does not allow for experimentation with the often extremely complex procedures necessary to extract the active ingredients and produce a potent mixture.
One good example of this mysterious medicinal knowledge is ayahuasca itself, a combination of just two plants. The first comes from the leaves of a shrub and contains a hormone naturally secreted in the human brain, dimethyltryptamine, a powerful hallucinogen only discovered by Western science in 1979. If taken orally, though, it is broken down by an enzyme in the stomach and becomes totally ineffective, so the second component of ayahuasca, extracted from a creeper, contains several substances that protect the dimethyltryptamine from that specific enzyme.
In effect, ayahuasca is a designer drug, made to order. It is as if the exact requirements of the mixture were specified in advance, then the correct ingredients chosen to meet the requirements. But
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