Andrew Collins

Temples of Eden

 

In his groundbreaking book FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS (1996), Andrew Collins identified the prime movers behind the Neolithic revolution in Western Asia as those described as Watchers in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, a religious text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. These living beings, referred to as serpents and birdmen, are said to have revealed to human kind the arts and sciences of heaven, and to have taken mortal wives, who bore giant offspring known as Nephilim.


Collins demonstrated that the Watchers are the memory of a shamanic elite who in early Neolithic times promoted the cult of the dead, which focused around the process of excarnation. Here bodies are denuded of their flesh by scavenger birds such as the vulture after being placed on wooden platforms located in isolated charnel areas. Central to early Neolithic beliefs was the idea that the spirit of the vulture accompanied the soul of the dead into the afterlife, and that communication with heaven could be achieved by adopting the mantle of a bird associated with the soul's transmigration during shamanic practices, making sense of the Watchers and Nephilim's description as birdmen in the Book of Enoch and other similar Enochian texts.

It was this priestly elite that Collins proposed was behind the creation of civilisation in the land which became known in Semitic-Hebrew mythology as the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden.


Only after the publication of FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS did Andrew come to hear about the recent discovery in southeast Turkey, identified as the land of Eden, of megalithic stone structures, some of which date back to 9000 BC, when the human race was still recovering from an ice age that had covered large areas of the Northern Hemisphere with ice fields as much as a mile deep for up to 40,000 years. What is more, these remarkable structures - which constitute the oldest stone temples anywhere in the world - were found to display a level of beauty and sophistication unequalled anywhere in the ancient world for thousands of years afterwards. Exquisite sculptures and carvings of birds, serpents and human heads, square-plan cult buildings, with terrazzo floors and astronomical alignments, as well as finely shaped standing stones - the precursors of megalithic structures worldwide - all suggested the presence locally of an advanced culture - moreover, one which had learned its technical skills thousands of years beforehand.

In May 2004, Andrew, in the company of his wife Sue, was finally given permission to visit the megalithic stone temples of southeast Turkey, which are situated close to the ancient cities of Edessa and Harran - the latter being the home to the Sabian star-worshippers, whose living descendants, the angel-worshipping Yezidi tribes still inhabit the region today. Exactly what Andrew discovered on his fascinating tour, and where it took him next, will be revealed for the first time. Yet over and above all this has come unparalleled evidence that those who founded the Neolithic revolution were more technologically advanced than anyone has previously understood.

Andrew Collins was born in 1957. After an uneventful school career, in which he was banned from taking the English O-level exam because of his poor writing ability, he eagerly accepted a position working as an export shipping clerk in London. His childhood interest in the mysteries of life eventually led to him becoming a UFO investigator, whereby he would visit witnesses to strange phenomena and then file reports with national organisations. In 1976 he became a familiar figure in the embryonic punk movement, forming his own band and going to gigs with the likes of novelist and NME writer Tony Parsons and Irish pal Shane McGowan, who went on to form legendary Irish folk-rock band 'The Pogues'. At the same time, Andrew continued to investigate UFO cases, including the now famous Aveley abduction, the first full-blown time-loss UFO experience ever reported on British soil. It brought him into contact with long-term friend and colleague Graham Phillips, who was then working as a parapsychologist studying the psychological profile of witnesses to the paranormal.


Andrew chucked in his guaranteed musical career in favour of becoming a staff writer alongside Phillips on the magazine STRANGE PHENOMENA, the first news-stand publication to unite everything from UFOs to psychic studies, poltergeist phenomena, earth mysteries, folklore, witchcraft and the occult. Then in October 1979, Collins and Phillips became embroiled in a historical drama, which would be remembered as the Green Stone affair - an event that would kick-start the rebirth of psychic questing in the modern era.


Andrew went on to write and publish various books and booklets on psychic questing, local history and the earth mysteries, before scoring immense success with his ground-breaking tome FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS (1996), the culmination of five years' work on the Watchers and Nephilim with the help of his friend and colleague Richard Ward. Since then he has written four more books that challenge the way we view the past: GODS OF EDEN (1998), GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS (2000), TUTANKHAMUN: THE EXODUS CONSPIRACY (2002) and TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GRAIL (2004). Andrew lectures worldwide, and is the organiser of QuestCon, Britain's most popular annual event on revisionist history, forbidden archaeology and ancient mysteries. He lives with his wife Sue in the Essex seaside town of Leigh-on-Sea.


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