EARTHQUEST NEWS

A Newsletter from Andrew Collins. Vol. 5, No. 1, Summer 2002

 

 

Greetings from Andrew Collins! Just to let you know what is happening this year, and how preparations are coming along for the Questing Conference which is to be held on Saturday, 16 November at the Storrow Hall, Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, London NW2, located opposite the London Zoo, 5 minutes from Camden Tube Station. There will be exclusive presentations from: Robert Bauval, whose book Egypt Decoded: The Star and Sun Temples of Ancient Egypt is published by Century this autumn. He has promised an exclusive lecture based on his very latest findings regarding the archaeo-astronomy of ancient and prehistoric sites of Egypt. David Rohl, whose new book The Lost Testament is also published by Century this October, has agreed to speak about the historical reality of the Exodus and its relationship to ancient Egypt. Graham Phillips, whose new book The Moses Legacy was published in March (see below), will deliver a presentation on the true site of Mount Sinai and the search for the historical Moses. The theme will continue with a dual lecture by myself and Chris Ogilvie-Herald entitled ‘Tutankhamun: the Exodus Conspiracy’, which is also the title of our forthcoming book (see below). We shall ask the question why in 1924 Howard Carter, the finder of the tomb of Tutankhamun, marched into the offices of the British Consul in Cairo and threatened to reveal the contents of papyri documents said to have been found in the tomb which revealed the ‘true account’ of the Exodus from Egypt. Chris will open the lecture, and I will then take the stage to explain the relationship between Moses and the Amarna age of Egyptian history, the events behind the Exodus, the true location of Mount Sinai (which confirms Graham’s research), the origins of the Israelite race and the evidence for Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. I will also demonstrate how the Mosaic religion derives from a form of lunar worship practised by the indigenous peoples of the Seir mountain range in southern Jordan prior to the Amarna age. All this before going on to show exactly what Howard Carter hoped to achieve with his outburst at the British Consulate in Cairo during 1924.

In addition to this, Adrian Gilbert will talk about London as the New Jerusalem, the Royal Society, the rise of the British Israelite movement and its effect on the establishment of Jewish state of Israel in 1948, all material from his new book The New Jerusalem, published in the UK by Bantam Press in May 2002. On top of this Edmund Marriage, the nephew of the late Christian O’Brien, author of The Genius of the Few, will explore the origins of the Garden of Eden and its relationship to the Shining Ones, or Watchers, of ancient Sumeria. At the Questing Conference last year he presented a fringe lecture on this topic. Such was the response that I have asked him to appear on the main stage for the first time. Ian Lawton, whose new book Genesis Unveiled is published in the USA later this year, will open the day with a brand new lecture, while David Elkington, author of the book In the Name of the Gods, to be re-published this year by Century, will return for a further presentation on the subject of sound acoustics and the origins of religion. He will also be conducting a demonstration in an attempt to prove the acoustic effects of smoke, something which should be worthwhile to see.

Tickets for the event are GBP 25 in advance (GBP 26 on the day), with 10 percent discount for block bookings of four or more tickets. order using the credit card hotline* at Atlantis Bookshop, London, on + 44.20.7405.2120.

*Claims for refunds on tickets booked in blocks of four or over, i.e. at the special discount, will incur a 10 percent handling fee on all four tickets, regardless of how many are refunded. No refunds at all within 7 days of the conference. Sorry, no children under the age of five. GBP 1 booking fee per ticket on credit card orders. Allow 14 days for delivery of tickets (7 days within one month of event).

PSYCHIC QUESTING RETURNS

In addition to all this, the Questing Conference goes back to its roots by presenting a series of fringe talks on the subject of psychic questing. Prior to 1998 the event was always billed as the Psychic Questing Conference, since it contained lectures in which the speakers spoke of how their historical work had been inspired originally by intuition, dreams and psychic experiences. However, as the alternative history field became more popular it was necessary for authors such as myself and Graham Phillips to strengthen our cases for an alternative history of the world by excluding any references to psychic work. Thus the whole air of the lectures changed, and I agreed that it might be better to drop the ‘psychic’ element from the conference’s name. I still feel this was the right decision as it allowed us to climb to new heights away from the ‘psychic’ tag, which often gave people the wrong impression of the event.

Yet I now feel it is the right time to reintroduce certain elements of questing back into the conference, which is why I have asked some of the country’s leading exponents of psychic questing to give presentations which might help people better understand this important subject. They are Richard Ward, who last year talked on the reality of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos; Paul Weston, who lives in Glastonbury and is currently writing an autobiographical work entitled Avalonian Aeon, which is set to become the most comprehensive book ever on the history and meaning of psychic questing, and Caroline Wise, the owner of Atlantis Bookshop, who has had much experience in this area. I have also invited leading fantasy writer Storm Constantine to give a talk on self development and establishing your own questing group. In 2001, she combined her talents with fantasy legend Michael Moorcock and co-wrote a book entitled Silverheart. Her work is admired by the likes of Neil Gaiman, the creator of the Sandman comic series, and American writer Poppy Z. Brite. Not only does Storm run a magical group in her home town of Stafford, but she also offers courses in magical and pagan tuition (for more information go to www.stormconstantine.com). I shall also deliver a short lecture on the nature of psychic questing, explaining how the process works and why you need it in your life.

Since there is a good chance that many of you might not have heard of psychic questing before, I will try to provide a brief definition. If found in the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘psychic questing’ would be listed as ‘using intuitively inspired thoughts and information for creative purposes, be it the exploration of history, the search for hidden artefacts or simply the quest for enlightenment’. It can begin with a strange dream, a visionary experience or an overwhelming compulsion which prompts the person to embark on a sequence of discovery. This often involves uncovering confirmatory facts, visiting sites and places revealed only through intuition and communicating with perceived external forces and influences through either meditational practices or magical processes. Often this takes the form of contact with a so-called genius loci, ‘spirit of the place’, or site guardian, which provides information in order that the quest might continue on to the next level. However, psychic questing does not have to involve outside exploration. It can simply revolve around archive research or just further magical or psychic experiments which all help the quester to gain a better idea of what they need to know. There is no question that, to one degree or another, intuitively inspired information has influenced the construction of every book I have ever written. I might reveal some of these leads during my own fringe talk at the Questing Conference in November.

In Tibetan Buddhism psychic questing is known as the Terma (‘hidden treasure) tradition, and whole books have been written on the processes involved and past great achievements in this field. Those monks who become involved in Terma hunting are known as Tertons (‘treasure finders’). However, similar methods of discovery have been used for thousands of years by enlightened individuals all over the world. There are many recorded instances of holy men or women being inspired to find hidden relics (e.g. Joan of Arc), occultists using necromancy to find buried treasure (e.g. John Dee and Edward Kelly) and psychics being brought in to uncover archaeological remains (e.g. Frederick Bligh-Bond).

I am accredited with having coined the term psychic questing in the 1980s, following the publication of my earlier books such as The Sword and the Stone (1982), The Black Alchemist (1988), The Seventh Sword (1992) and The Second Coming (1993), and the journal Earthquest News. While other key books on the subject include Graham Phillips’ classics The Green Stone (1984) and The Eye of Fire (1988), Bega and The Sacred Ring by Alex Langstone (1992) and The Sun and the Moon: The Hill and the Well by Michael Smith (1997). All of these books are non-fiction, but read like supernatural thrillers.

The modern revival in psychic questing began in October 1979 with the discovery by Graham Phillips and I of a short steel ceremonial sword of Georgian design, bearing the inscription ‘Meonia fore Marye’. It was found behind the dry-stone foundations of a footbridge at a place called Knight’s Pool in the English county of Worcestershire As the weapon also bore a monogram at the base of the hand-guard which resembled the personal insignia of Mary Queen of Scots, we concluded that the sword was cast originally in the late eighteenth century by supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty of British kings. However, the example in our possession was, we felt, a copy cast during late Victorian times, very possibly for use in pseudo-masonic ceremonies.

The discovery of the ‘Meonia Sword’, as it became known, was followed just days later by the retrieval of a seventeenth-century brass casket in which was found a small cabochon stone in green agate. This was located by Graham at a spot on the River Avon, not far from Knights Pool, known as the Swan’s Neck, so named because it resembles a gigantic swan reclining into the landscape (as seen from nearby Bredon Hill (Bride’s Hill)). Since we believed that the swan was a secret code-name for Mary Queen of Scots, Graham and I became convinced that the ‘Green Stone’, or ‘Meonia Stone’, had once been in a finger ring worn by Mary Queen of Scots. After her death, it passed into the hands of Robert Catesby, the leader of the so-called Gunpowder Plotters, who with his co-conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, was caught attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 4 November 1605, hence the British tradition of Guy Fawkes’ Night. Thereafter the stone was concealed in the Worcestershire landscape by Humphrey Packington of Harvington Hall, a Catholic sympathiser, where we later found that a legend concerning the existence of the stone had lingered through to the last century.

Gradually, over the years, an intriguing story emerged to explain the origins of the Meonia Sword and its accompanying stone. Through psychic work and historical research Graham and I developed a mystical lineage, known as ‘the Heritage’, which began with the fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten and ended with the revival of ancient Egypt in occult circles during the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. Over the years many more artefacts were to appear under mysterious circumstances, including six more swords, all identical to the first. The seven swords were brought together for the first time in August 1992. It is a story told in part within my book The Seventh Sword, and in Graham’s book The Green Stone. I have since gone on to work with a number of what I refer to as ‘direct information’ psychics, while at the same time I have attempted to develop, or at least recognise, my own capabilities in this respect.

So a decision has been made to dust off the subject of psychic questing and allow it to take a back-room place at this year’s Questing Conference. It will not so much be the results of questing activities that will be discussed, but its practical application and methodology. However, it must be stressed that these fringe talks will run concurrent with the main events in the Storrow Hall, and seating will be very limited indeed.

TUTANKHAMUN: THE EXODUS CONSPIRACY

I should say something more about the book I have written with Chris Ogilvie-Herald entitled Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy. For Chris it is the culmination of five years research into the background behind the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, which took place 80 years ago. He approached me with the idea of writing a tell-all story as a follow-up to his own highly successful book Giza: The Truth, co-authored with Ian Lawton. I felt the whole idea appealing, and quickly became fascinated by Carter’s claim that papyri documents found in the tomb revealed the ‘true account’ of the Exodus from Egypt. In the knowledge that there was a great amount of circumstantial evidence to suggest that papyri really were found in the tomb (it is mentioned extensively in early reports of the discovery), and knowing that there is compelling evidence to link Tutankhamun’s age with the biblical Exodus, we set to work. Virgin Books made us an offer for the book, and it is now set for publication this September in both the UK and USA. It is likely to be highly controversial (for instance, the cover shows the golden mask of Tutankhamun overlaid on a blazing Star of David, while the cover blurb says the book calls into question Israel’s right to Palestine!)

More significant is the finding made by myself that all the evidence for the true location of Mount Sinai, also known as Horeb or the Mountain of Yahweh, leads to one place – Petra in Jordan. After exhaustively studying clues from the Bible, the works of Flavius Josephus, ancient Egyptian texts and the writings of early Christian writers, it becomes clear that the mountain was not originally located in the Sinai peninsular as has always been assumed. All the evidence leads to the Seir/Shara mountain range in southern Jordan (east of modern Israel, north of the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba). Here Yahweh would seem to have been the local deity of semi-nomadic peoples known as the Shasu, who saw him as god of the mountains and god of the moon (sin/sira). Having established these facts, I came across the work of a brilliant Danish scholar named Ditlef Nielsen who in 1928 wrote a book entitled The Site of the Biblical Mount Sinai – A Claim for Petra. He likewise concluded that the worship of Yahweh was originally a lunar religion, and on this basis travelled to Petra to explore the city’s most sacred place al-Madhbah, the High Place. This is a rock-carved lunar sanctuary situated on the summit of Jebel al-Madhbah, located on the Attuf ridge, west of the rock-cut necropolis. On its approach path, which meanders its way up the slope of the mountain, are two enormous obelisks, 30 metres apart, and over 6 metres in height (although originally they are thought to have been around 9 metres tall!). What’s so amazing about these pillars is that they are carved out of the solid rock, meaning that the entire mountain side had to be levelled in order to create them. Unquestionably, they act as the gateway to the exposed summit of the mountain, which is known as al-Madhbah.

Even though scholars date al-Madhbah no earlier than 200 BC, I became convinced that I had found a very strong candidate for the location of Mount Sinai as described in the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers. However, at the time I was also aware that Graham Phillips was writing a book which focused on the true location of Mount Sinai, which he too believed was somewhere in south Jordan. When I described the site I had found shortly before the publication of his book The Moses Legacy (Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002), he said ‘That’s it. That’s the place I say is the true site of the Mountain of God, even though I began the book believing it was somewhere else altogether.’ This was an extraordinary revelation to me – we had both independently come to the same conclusions regarding the location of the original Mountain of Yahweh. It was an extraordinary realisation, one which convinced us that al-Madhbah was indeed a very important site in the origins of the Israelite religion. I really believe that Graham has got it right, and he was not even aware that Ditlef Nielsen came to similar conclusions as early as 1928. Indeed, Ditlef Nielsen wrote a book in German entitled Die altarbische Mondreligion und die mosaische ueberlieferung, published in Germany in 1902. It features several pictures of Petra’s al-Madhbah in a chapter on Mount Sinai. However, at the time he had not been there himself and so could not say for certain whether or not this was the right place.

All I can say is that Petra is about to become a very important place. Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy heavily features the area around the rock-city, which Graham believes was also the original Beth-el, or ‘House of God’, visited not only by Moses and the Israelites, but also by Abraham and Jacob. More than this, he sees it as the original site of the Garden of Eden, a theory which seems at first to contradict my own findings on the matter. Since I have not yet had a chance to read Graham’s book, I am unaware how he comes to these conclusions. However, I am warming to the idea that Jacob visited Petra, as I have found that there is a tradition that Jacob came to Petra in order to sort out his differences with Esau, or Edom, his elder twin-brother, who gave his name to this region in biblical times. Moreover, the ‘ladder’ which Jacob dreamed he saw angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth has also been compared with the rock-cut path leading up to Petra’s al-Madhbah, which Graham was unaware of when writing his book.

 

TOUR OF PETRA

It is my intention to conduct a tour of Petra and southern Jordan next spring. Among the sites we would like to visit include the rock city itself, al-Madhbah, Ain Musa (the Spring of Moses), Little Petra, Wadi Rum, and various temple sites. I know the political climate out in the Middle East might not bode well for a tour in this region, but I can assure you that Jordan is the safest country in the Middle East. Moreover, they love the British as it was T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) who in the First World War helped the Arab tribal alliance purge the Trans-Jordan of Turkish rule. His cause also features, briefly, in the upcoming book, which gives a full history of the events leading up to the establishment of the modern Jewish state of Israel in 1948 and its relevance to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

If you would be interested in learning more about next year’s proposed tour to Petra please log your name with us by sending an email with the subject as ‘Petra Tour’ or write to me at PO Box 3242, Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 1UZ, UK). Sending an email will involve no commitment whatsoever, for the moment we just want an idea of exactly how many people might be interested in coming along. Don’t worry if you live outside of the UK as we shall make arrangements for flights from points of departure in any part of the world. More on this subject in the next newsletter, which will be ready in September.

ROBIN HOOD - FACT OR FICTION

Graham Phillips has just been filmed for the British Channel Four television series Fact or Fiction. The series is hosted by actor Tony Robinson whose hit television series Time Team has already been running for many years. Graham will be appearing in an episode on Robin Hood, which should be shown in the UK in the Autumn. Graham’s discovery of an historical Robin Hood (see his book Robin Hood - The Man Behind the Myth). and his links with the Warwickshire village of Loxley are being televised for the first time. It will be interesting to see the response, not only from the academic world but also from the local villagers who until now have been sceptical of the legend. For pictures of Graham with Tony Robinson go to Graham’s new website at www.grahamphillips.net where you will also find details of his latest research work on the nineteenth-century British eccentric William Beckford, who might well have inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula story! In addition to this, the site has an archive section, which includes a full review of his work on the Mountain of God (complete with pictures of me and Sue on al-Madhbah), and a useful bibliography of Graham’s book output to date.

CUBA AND ATLANTIS

Now what about Atlantis, you might say. Last summer it was announced that an underwater exploration company, with offices in Canada, named Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) had discovered an underwater city at a depth of 700/800 metres beneath the Yucatan Channel, just 5 kilometres off Cuba’s Guanahacabibes Peninsula. Deep-sea sonar scans had revealed a criss-cross of linear and rectilinear features, dissected by what appeared to be a straight ‘road’-like structure, covering an estimated area of 7.7 miles. This prompted a considerable amount of speculation in the international media. Obviously, the find was immediately linked with the ‘big A’, Atlantis, which I had proposed in my book Gateway to Atlantis (Headline, Carroll and Graf, 2000) was intimately connected with the prehistory of the Caribbean, and in particular its largest island – Cuba. Thus a line of communication was opened between myself and the discoverers of the undersea structures, Russian-born oceanographer Paulina Zelitsky and her husband Paul Weinzweig. I sent them a copy of my book, which they had not seen. It was read through quite thoroughly on its arrival in Cuba, and both Paul and Paulina were impressed with the wealth of evidence I present to connect Atlantis with Cuba and the Caribbean in general.

At the time no form of on-site exploration of the underwater features had occurred. This was not to take place until July 2001 when ADC’s research vessel, the ‘Ulises’, returned from a port in Central America, where it had been undergoing a refit in dry dock. When all was ready, Paulina Zelitsky and her joint Canadian and Cuban research team anchored over the site of the structural features and carefully lowered overboard their remote operated video (ROV). It can travel to a depth of 1,000 metres and be steered to record anything within its limited field of view. Through a mutual contact in London I waited patiently to hear of the results of the initial on-site survey. If all went well and artificial structures were detected, Paul and Paulina were to use the code-words ‘Plato Lives’; a certain amount of cloak and dagger antics being felt necessary over the telephone from Cuba. A few more days passed until on Monday, 23 July when in a shop in my home town of Leigh-on-Sea my contact phoned to say: ‘Plato lives’. Obviously, there was a certain amount of reserved elation and, perhaps prematurely as it now turns out, I felt moved to write the following words in my diary:

‘Today I have received the most wonderful confirmation of the discovery of a sunken city off the west coast of Cuba. As the remote camera of the ‘Ulises’ reached the sea bottom at a depth of 700 metres, it saw for the first time firm evidence of linear and rectilinear monuments constructed by an unknown race in some forgotten epoch. Huge rectangular structures as well as cyclopean walls 16 metres high can be seen emerging out of the sand, telling us firmly that we shall need now to rewrite history.

‘I feel like Howard Carter on the day he uncovered the first steps leading down to the tomb of Tutankhamun. Yet what lies in deep water off Cuba is potentially even more incredible that anything discovered in Egypt. We shall never find a neon sign poking out of the shifting sands proclaiming ‘Welcome to Atlantis’. However, the sheer presence of stone structures at such an incredible depth, over half a mile beneath the surface, means that this extensive city, stretching for thousands of metres, becomes instantly the most likely candidate for Plato’s lost Atlantis.

‘It is extraordinarily rewarding to know that of all the thousands of books written on Atlantis only one, the most recent, has ever proposed that Cuba was the flagship of Plato’s lost kingdom, and that is GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS. I am so glad that I abandoned any preconceived notions of where Atlantis ought to be, and stuck rigidly to my own intuition and logic. The trail of clues left behind by Plato led me directly to Cuba, where three years later the greatest archaeological discovery of all time is unfolding before my eyes. I feel a monumental sense of achievement for everyone involved in these extraordinary discoveries. The next year is set to be a very exciting one indeed; I look forward to it with bated breath.’

A few days later I was at Highclere, the seat of the Carnarvon family in Hampshire, and having just met the future 8th Earl (as now is), I received notice that my contact in London had obtained an edited 14-minute segment of video footage of the underwater features. I was asked to view it that evening, and so just hours later I became one of the first people in the world to see the evidence of Cuba’s perceived underwater kingdom. As the camera lens plunged downwards I waited with high expectation. It penetrated the murky water which became darker and darker until you could see nothing other than what seemed like a perpetual snowstorm. This effect was caused by fast-flowing organic debris passing through the Yucatan Channel. So close was it to the ROV that it was being bleached out by the camera’s spotlight, giving the impression of a perpetual snow fall. Suddenly, out of the darkness, the ROV picked out vague rocky shapes, including a well-worn linear feature, which, if not a wall, could easily have been part of a natural gully or geological fault.

Then came a view of what was certainly an enormous block of well-worn stone, light-coloured in appearance. The camera could view it only at a distance of two metres or less, making it frustratingly difficult to get a full picture of what was being examined here. Slowly, the ROV surveyed every ‘side’ of the block, which was roughly rectangular in appearance and some 10 feet (3 metres) in length. Then suddenly the 14-minute video sequence was over, leaving me deeply frustrated, and slightly disappointed at what I had seen. I asked for the whole thing to be played again, after which it was re-run several more times. After around the tenth viewing, I started wondering whether my inherent scepticism was getting the better of me, and that what I could see was better evidence of artificial structures than perhaps I was willing to give it credit. Yet then I remembered the sonar images I had seen earlier that evening which were much more impressive. As a consequence, I now felt slightly better about the whole business. If only the ‘Ulises’ had better ROVs, a submersible even, like the ones used in the recent underwater BBC series ‘The Blue Planet’, featuring David Attenborough, then perhaps we would be able to gain a much better understanding of the peculiar structures lying in over half a mile of water, close to the south-west tip of Cuba.

I had to leave the matter there, since I was plunged headlong into the writing of Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy. Then came a public announcement in December to the effect that Paul Weinzweig and Paulina Zelitsky had detected carved hieroglyphs and symbols on the aforementioned stone block whilst examining the video evidence. They included a cross composed of two ovals overlaying each other at right angles. Although I have not been given the opportunity to watch the video footage again in order to freeze frame the point where the apparent ‘hieroglyphs and pictographs’ appear, I noticed no such carvings during my earlier viewings. American radio broadcaster, journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, who has been in regular contact with Paul and Paulina since last summer, now sees the inscribed cross device as evidence that the ‘hieroglyphs and pictographs’ are related to the Linear ‘C’ script used by a Minoan culture known as the Luwian some 4,000 years ago. Moreover, she feels that the carved symbols are connected with the prehistoric culture responsible for the profusion of prehistoric art found in the caves of Cuba, in particular Cueva # 1 in the Punta el Este complex on the Island of Youth.

In articles written on the subject by Linda which appear on her website (www.earthfiles.com), she uses a JPEG image of Paulina standing in front of the main target-like petroglyph found within Cueva # 1. As regular readers will know, this is the very cave featured in my own book Gateway to Atlantis. I speculate that its petroglyphs, unquestionably several thousand years old, resonate the memory of a cometary impact which devastated the Bahamas and Caribbean at the end of the last Ice Age. Time will tell whether the carved ‘hieroglyphs and pictographs’ picked out of the surface of the stone block videoed by ADC in July 2001 are merely natural fractures in the rock or artificial carvings.

In my opinion there is a real chance that at least some of Cuba’s enormous cluster of underwater structures might well turn out to be artificial in construction. The ‘Ulises’ was back on site in March this year, and as a result of this a press release was put out by ADC through London-based news agency Reuters which stated that one of Cuba’s leading geologists, Dr Manuel Iturralde of CITMA has announced that in his opinion the structures cannot be natural. This is a major boost, although it has to be said that this particular geologist works alongside the ADC team, which is desperately in need of funds to finance further operations. Although National Geographic were in negotiations with ADC over exclusivity rights to the story, nothing has come of these talks, leaving the Canadian research team open to new offers. So if you have a few million dollars stashed away somewhere which you might like to invest in the exploration of a possible underwater city, get in touch. In the meantime, we await further developments in this fascinating saga and in the meantime will treat any speculations regarding what exactly has been found with a certain amount of caution (I have just been tipped off that ADC will be making further announcements regarding the discoveries in June). I shall be talking about the subject of Cuba’s underwater discoveries and the current situation regarding the historical reality of the Giza Hall of Records at the Edgar Cayce Foundation-ARE Conference in Norfolk, Virginia, between 15 and 18 August 2002. Hope to see some of you there.

NEW ATLANTIS DOCUMENTARY

For your interest, I shall be appearing as a guest on a new television documentary entitled ‘Lost City of Atlantis’ premiering on Discovery’s Travel Channel on July 15th (time not yet to be announced) If you miss it, don’t worry, the programmes from the series ‘World of Mysteries’, are likely to be repeated several times, often several times in the same day (?!). For those who don’t receive Discovery Travel (like me), it will hopefully find its way on to a terrestrial channel.

AMERICAN BOOKS AVAILABLE

My books From the Ashes of Angels and Gods of Eden have now been published in the United States by Bear and Company (available by clicking here or they can be purchased through the Andrew Collins website by clicking here. ). BTW, I didn’t write those other books under the name Andrew Collins, honest!). They are a small company by comparison to Random House, but they push every book they publish, and already I have appeared on several syndicated radio shows including Whitley Strieber’s ‘Dreamland’ show, which goes out to 22 states. I was interviewed by him for nearly four hours on every subject possible from the origins of angels to contacting your future-self through meditational practices!

In January 2002 I was also asked to appear on ‘Dan Akroyd’s Out There’, a television show put together in New York by the film actor, who was also the inspiration behind the Ghostbuster movies. Since there is a similar programme hosted by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters II, I felt it would great to appear in the real thing. Yet unfortunately I was unable to make the journey to the Big Apple as I was in full flight with the Tutankhamun book and could not have afforded the time off. That’s the problem with being a full-time author. You have to spend most of the year cooped up in your home, stuck in front of the key-boards with dozens of opened books and photocopied articles littering your desk. Oh well, there is always next time! If they invite me back!

HEART OF THE ROSE

‘Heart of the Rose’ is an expression that might be familiar to readers of Graham’s and my questing books. Not only is it the title of one of Edward Burne-Jones wonderful pictures, but it was also the title given repeatedly in psychic information for the mystical centre of England, which I concluded was a place called White Leafed Oak in the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire. Yet it is also now to be the title of rock opera by Graham Russell, the British singer-songwriter with US rock band Air Supply. They had a couple of chart hits in the UK during the 1980s with songs such as ‘All Out of Love’. Graham and his wife Jodi have been good friends with Graham Phillips for many years, and have taken part in a number of psychic quests which inspired the writing of ‘Heart of the Rose’. The production centres around the tale of Robin Hood and Maid Marian and previews for the first time in Las Vegas during October. It will run for a month and, depending on its popularity, it will then return for a second season for anything up to one year.

Aside from the title sing, there is also one entitled ‘The Fool’s Song’ which Graham Russell wrote last year about Graham Phillips and the search for the Green Stone. Graham Phillips and Jodi are putting together a book on the subject to be entitled ‘Echoes of Time’, which will outline the history behind the Robin Hood story, and also describe the amazing results of their psychic quests. A CD to accompany the show is already available, and having heard some of the songs I recommend anyone that is interested to log on to the ‘Heart of the Rose’ website (which, although still under construction, currently includes an excerpt from the title song and the artwork for the CD cover by Jodi Russell).

THE WEBSITE

We want to apologise for Eden – the Andrew Collins website not being updated during the early months of 2002. This was due to the fact that I was working constantly on the new book, and once that was finished my then partner (now wife!) Sue and I went off to Petra in Jordan to check out the sites mentioned in the new book. We came back and I started work on some chapter re-writes and just one week later my father died suddenly, following a massive heart attack, plunging my whole life into chaos. I then got married, and have been on honeymoon in Las Vegas, where Sue and I had to abandon our hired Dodge truck when it got stuck in sand within a wash close to Badger Springs in the Nevada Desert, near to the mysterious Area 51, and some 14 miles from the nearest road. We then spent the next seven hours trying to re-trace our steps in temperatures of 90 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. My feet are still in pain two weeks later! Regardless of this, our desert experiences might well now inspire a new book which will feature Las Vegas (let’s see what comments the publishers can offer on this one!). Things are getting back to normal, but there is an awful lot of catching up to do. Details of the conference will be going up soon, but please be patient.

Over the coming weeks the website is being completely revamped in readiness for the forthcoming Questing Conference. Navigation should be a lot more simple as well.

Will be in touch again soon.

Best wishes, ANDREW COLLINS