David Mathisen is changing the way we think about Hercules |337|

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Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome David Mathisen to Skeptiko. David is the author of Star Myths of the World, Volume One, Two and Three, along with several other books we might talk about. But those Star Myths books I was just alluding to are quite amazing. I mean, here’s a collection of over 2,000 pages of diagrams, illustrations and analysis of the stars, the constellations and the myths surrounding those constellations, and also, just our enduring fascination with the night sky.

David is a graduate of West Point. He also has a Master’s Degree in Literature from Texas A&M and it’s really quite wonderful to have him on. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

David, welcome to Skeptiko.

David Mathisen: Thanks so much, Alex. I’m really looking forward to the conversation as well, and hope that listeners enjoy it.

Alex Tsakiris: So, let me interrupt again, because this is one of those things—so, the logic flow for you, and I think this would be for kind of a lot of people, is Samson is in the Bible, so this is scriptural, it’s wisdom passed down from God.

David Mathisen: And he was a real character.

Alex Tsakiris: He’s a real character, all this stuff, and then you go over and say, “Wait, a minute. Samson is also portrayed in the stars and the constellations.” Moreover, I can go cross-culturally and read about all these people who have gone and looked at these myths, so it’s not just particular to our culture, there’s all these other cultures that have very similar myths. So, this is kind of the sweater thread pulling thing that starts to create problems for harmonizing it all back into the Bible, right? I mean, at a very, very high level, we can get into the details, but at a high level, that’s kind of what’s happening here, right?

David Mathisen: That’s exactly right. I’ll just throw like one detail, the authors of Hamlet’s Mill mentioned the famous weapon that Samson chooses to slay a thousand enemies, you know what that is? The jawbone of an ass—jawbone of a donkey. It’s said in this particular passage in Judges 14 that he reached out his hand and took the jawbone of an ass, that’s the King James version, and slew a thousand of his enemies. Now, that’s a very impractical weapon. You might use it in pinch, but you probably would cast it aside after two or three and pick up one of their swords or something. But it turns out that there is also jawbone weapons in the myths of the Pacific cultures. Maui actually uses the jawbone of his grandmother, at some point. There’s other jawbone weapons and so what they point is that Orion in the sky is right next to Taurus, and Orion’s up right now; it’s the most dazzling constellation. You can see this very v-shaped portion of Taurus that’s called the Hyades. It’s a very bright “v”.

Alex Tsakiris: So, the next step in building our kind of very basic model is let’s jump over to conventional astronomy before we kind of get into your stuff, conventional astronomy, what they had to say about the constellations if you go out and read Wikipedia, if you go and take any Astronomy 101 website from a university like I did when we first started talking. It’s like, “Okay. What are these guys saying?” So, if you go read Wikipedia, here are some of the notes that I have made, in terms of what you’re going to find.

The first thing that you’re going to find, but it’s really the implicit assumption, so you’ve got to be kind of careful and on guard is that materialism is implied. There can be no deep meaning to the constellations because hell, there’s no deep meaning in anything. I mean, the whole universe is meaningless, so of course, there is no meaning in any of that, that’s just a given.

But the other thing that I think is implicit in this that I want you to comment on, and I commend Gordon White in his book Star.Ships who was recently on the show for alerting me to this, is that we have this kind of implicit assumption about progress and about what it means to be ancient and preindustrial and how we progress, and the city predates the cathedral is the assumption. What we now know from archaeology is the opposite of that and that is that people, as soon as they became people as we would understand them, were doing these kind of spiritual things along with kind of looking at the stars and trying to find meaning and trying to connect with the spirit world. They were doing that before they built cities, that’s what all the archaeological evidence tell us.

But, if you go to Wikipedia, or if you go to an Astronomy 101 class, what they say is there were these people, there were hunter gatherers, and then they built up enough resources they could build a city, and then they started writing books, and then they thought about making up stories and myths and stuff like that.

So, two points that I want you to kind of comment on that are implicit in, but you might not catch them, our understanding of the constellations is one, of course, they can’t have any meaning because nothing has any meaning. And two, this is a later invention of civilized people, rather than a very, very early impulse that people had, and impulse might be a bad word based on your research, but do you have any thoughts on those two points?

David Mathisen: This gets into a deep mystery, okay? People in ancient times would say do not divulge this great mystery. Even Origen, who is kind of an early Christian father, he was anathematized. He was an early Christian, but he did not believe that the Bible should be taken literally, or at least large parts of it he said are absolutely useless. If you try to take them literally, they’re full of deep meaning, but if you take them literally—he said don’t divulge the deep secrets, and I would actually be sensitive to that. I’m like, “Okay, I won’t divulge them.” The problem is these deep secrets have been twisted and used to beat down all these other civilizations; the whole sad history of western civilization imposing its religion on everybody else and going around converting the world. It’s like once you start doing that, you can’t—

Alex Tsakiris: Can I hold you on there? Because maybe I kind of led us astray, a little bit. Here’s the basics, right? Hey, it’s all about the Greeks, and then we studied the Greeks for a while and said, yeah, the Greeks were looking up at the skies, they invented all these myths. Then they found the Babylonians and said, oh gosh, well they kind of had some of the same ones. Oh, they must’ve been first and then the Greeks copied from them. And then we find Chinese, gee, they’re over in China, there must’ve been some contact over there too, because that’s the only way this thing could possibly happen.

What I’m trying to [alert] people to is that we all know there’s these constellations, we all know there’s these myths, but [there is] the way that they’ve been connected conventionally. If someone’s going to school right now — my kids, I have a kid in college and I have three kids in high school — what are they learning about the constellations and these myths and how they relate to archaeology? I mean, they are learning something, but what are they learning and why is it wrong?

David Mathisen: Right. And did sense the question, I was probably taking a very circuitous way to get to it, but in general, if a connection between the myths and the constellation is alleged or acknowledged, a way that is commonly explained away is well, primitive early humans looking at the world around them — awesome forces, thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanoes — [and] had to explain it. They didn’t have science, so they said well, there’s a God in the volcano and he or she is mad right now. And there’s this Sun, and all our Gods will come from the Sun.

And so it’s like these primitive groupings became more and more sophisticated as we moved along and then we got kind of the conventional narrative, like you were saying, this myth of progress. It was early humans, then it was primitive kind of pastoral shepherding stuff. Then [we] settled down in agriculture and then we had cities. Finally, we had time to look at the stars and do science — primitive science — and then it got it better and better, and at the same time, the myths are getting a little bit smoother and smoother, and then finally, we get to things like the New Testament. In the 1800s they would say oh, that’s the pinnacle of everything. They were all kind of groping up this mountain and now we’ve gotten to the top. Even then they were saying yes, but now we even know better than that because now we can start moving beyond that.

Alex Tsakiris: Right.

David Mathisen: That’s kind of the general timeline.

What I was trying to kind of say at the beginning is these myths are so…what I was saying with that part about this is a great mystery and the ancients said don’t divulge it. It is so deep. It is evidence of incredible spiritual sophistication in these myths because I believe—I’ve got a lot of reasons for believing this—that they are being used as an incredible spiritual metaphor, not just a metaphor because actually, the angle of the Sun just all by itself…you would say well, what does the constellation Scorpio have to do with my life? The Sun’s rising in Scorpio right now, that can’t possibly influence me. Stop reading that horoscope because it can’t possibly influence you. Well actually, yes, it can. Even from a scientific perspective, we know that the angle of the Sun in the Autumn, in the Fall, is totally different and a different feeling than the angle of the Sun in the Summer or in the Winter. There’s actually a different length of the shadows and a different feel to the Earth and everything on it and all the animals and plants respond to it in the Fall. That’s a function of the angle that the light is coming in and the angle that we are to the Sun, and where we are on this track around the living room that I just described. You can tell where you are on that track.

Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, but some of that gets kind of problematic doesn’t it, David?

David Mathisen: Okay.

Alex Tsakiris: I mean, we’re circuiting into the Zodiac and astrology, and how it’s been reworked and we have to sort through what part of its bullshit, what part of it isn’t. That the Zodiac signs have changed, [in] that there’s different lengths. I mean, it just gets complicated when we get too far from our spiritual truths that are conveyed through these myths and have been for the longest time, and the easiest way to just flat out see that that’s true is when we start doing good science and saying okay, [let’s investigate] cross-culturally.

And when we start applying, like we said, how the isolationist model breaks down given archaeology and then we throw in Göbekli Tepe and then we say oh, my God, these guys haven’t even considered that. Or when you read Graham Hancock and he does the same thing, hey, forget it. Your whole timescale is just completely blown apart and yet, we go back and look at conventional archaeology science, and astronomy in this case, and they have no response to this. I mean, they’re just kind of flat-footed and they just ignore it.

David Mathisen: No, absolutely. So, I would say I am open to the possibility that the relationship of where Jupiter is to Earth could have—look, if I’m in a classroom, like you said your kids are in high school, right? I’ve got two sons in high school. Here in California, we’ve got the ugliest high school buildings imaginable. I don’t know how they are where you are, but most of them are these atrocities with low ceilings. The desks — often, the chair is attached to the desk —  so you have to sit in it a certain way, you can’t even turn your chair around. Don’t tell me that doesn’t have an effect versus I’m in a beautiful classical building with high ceilings, arches or whatever. The shape of your room has a vibrational…I mean, the shape of the glass that you drink whiskey out of makes a difference. You’ve got to drink this one out of an old-fashioned [glass], and you drink that one out of a highball glass, or you drink this wine out of this kind of glass. So I’m open to the possibility of Feng Shui. The shape of my environment may have some kind of vibrational effect on me. I think the Egyptians were very tuned into that if you look at the kind of temples and buildings they were creating, and Schwaller de Lubicz and John Anthony West get into a lot of that stuff, and I’m open to that possibility.

But laying that aside, I believe it also works [as] a metaphor. I believe this works on these many levels, which shows the sophistication of whoever gave this ancient system the humanity. It’s incredibly, incredibly spiritually deep, yet…

Alex Tsakiris: And that’s what I want you to focus on because I’m open to all that stuff too, and this is the path that Skeptiko has followed, until you can really get there—if you want to get there and not sound like a total new angle, you have to square off against the conventional paradigm that exists and explain why and how that conventional paradigm is just ridiculous.

So, in Skeptiko, the conventional paradigm of consciousness is that you are biological robot in a meaningless universe. When you tear that apart, everyone agrees, well, that’s just absurd. I mean, it isn’t even worth talking about it’s so silly, it’s so stupid. I think you’ve done the same thing here, in that if somebody just stumbles into his or her Astronomy 101 class and they this nonsense about the constellations and about these myths…I mean, you tear that apart. You blow that up in a lot of amazing ways. But the other stuff then that layers on top of that astrology, the Bible and all that stuff is really, really interesting, and I understand why that’s really, really juicy, but I also want to give people the sense of just how the emperor has no clothes here, in terms of Astronomy 101.

David Mathisen: You’re absolutely right. It’s like doing Jiu Jitsu, if you want to pin an opponent to the mat, you have to make the right moves. And I’m happy to get into the debate and proceed through what can be proven because I agree, Skeptiko—I really was excited to come on this because you have a certain angle that you come at things, and you just expressed it and it’s fantastic.

So, what I can show demonstrably, and I believe convincingly to the point that I changed my whole world view, right? I was literalist Christian and it is a major change of paradigm that impacts everything in your world view to realize you know what? You know that word you’re using? I do not think it means what you think it means. You know that Bible you’re reading? It is full of amazing truth and beauty, but it’s not literal. And not only that, it is using the same system, demonstrably the same system that the Greeks are using, that the Polynesians are using, that they’re using in North America and it’s even in the most ancient myths that we have, so the most ancient texts.

Now, you mentioned Göbekli Tepe, there’s no extensive texts, no texts at all, as far as I know, from Göbekli Tepe yet, they may find some, but we have the pyramid texts in ancient Egypt from 2400 BC; 2400 BC, that’s 4,400 years ago. We have these cuneiform tablets from Babylon, which weren’t even discovered and translated until the 1800s, 2100, sometimes 2300 BC. Very ancient and they’re already using this system. The Gilgamesh series is already using this system. The pyramid texts are already referring to Isis and Osiris and Seth, and those myths are based on this same system, and I can demonstrate that.

And so one of the objections that you’ve kind of alluded to that you’ll find on Wikipedia, or one of the objections that are supposed debunking of this is oh, these constellations in this form, they weren’t even set up until about 1000 BC, at the earliest, maybe 700 BC, really.

Alex Tsakiris: The date keeps changing, you’ll notice, depending on where you read.

David Mathisen: That’s right, but I can show you that it’s being used in the Gilgamesh series, and I can even show you from Babylonian and Sumerian cylinder seals that have a figure of a human with a lion on one side and a bull on the other side or whatever, I’ve shown some of this on my blog, that are clearly constellational to the constellations that we’re using. And I’ve done extensive diagraming of some of the Gilgamesh events in the Gilgamesh myth that can be shown. Okay, at this point, Enkidu sleeps with this woman and then all the animals that he used to hang out with run away from him, that’s celestial, and I can show you. Here’s the woman, here she is spreading her clothes on the ground. The myth explains that she spreads her clothes on the ground, there’s the constellation right next to it and here’s Enkidu. And then she offers him bread and wine. Oh, isn’t that interesting? Bread and wine, where have I heard that before? This constellation is associated with this star that’s associated with wheat.

Alex Tsakiris: So, now you’re getting into what you’re calling the system or we could say other times you say is the language of the myths that is reflected in the constellations. When I say reflected, and then we get into that, which is first and all that stuff, which you do. Awesome job. It’s a very important point, I don’t want to diminish it, but how do we give people a simple idea? Like you did before, an excellent thing with the jawbone and you said look, that’s clearly a constellation. I mean, it’s repeatedly referenced in this constellation. It doesn’t really fit the story, except that it’s in the constellation.

You do a lot of Hercules, so maybe we could break down Hercules and who is Hercules? And then what do we know about Hercules in the myths? And then what do we see in the stars, or the other way around, what do we see in the stars and then what do we know about the myth? Either way.

David Mathisen: Right. Great. So just really quickly, the metaphor of the language is really, I think, a good way of understanding it because the Bible and all the other myths, I believe, are speaking the language, I’m convinced, are speaking the language of celestial metaphor. But, if nobody speaks that language anymore, then the person who’s trying to interpret—they’re coming to us trying to tell us something, and we’ve got this interpreter saying oh, he said this. It’s like a visitor from another country and you don’t speak their language. That interpreter can tell you oh, [what] he said about the meal that you just served him. He doesn’t like it. And he could have been praising the meal and you have no idea. They’re deliberately or ignorantly, misinterpreting it. They’re like, I think he said this, so I’m going to say this is what he said.

Alex Tsakiris: He said it reminds me of Hercules and you’re like, I don’t know what that means. What do you mean, it reminds him of Hercules?

David Mathisen: But if you could speak the language yourself, then you could just turn to that myth and ask it, “What do you want to tell me about my life?” And if you learn this language, then you will be able to, I believe, interpret the myths much better than if you don’t speak the language, that’s just self-evident.

There have been people that have talked about this before. Astrotheology is—popular culture has learned about it through movies like Zeitgeist and things like that. Or you mentioned there’s an astronomer who has written about some of these myths; great work, but a lot of times, the level of grammar that they’re using stays basically—I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but it’s like they’re at, “See Spot run.” They haven’t unfleshed all of the—if you just notice that Jesus seems to be connected to the Sun, because of 12 disciples, if you just stick to the Sun and the Moon, that’s like the most basic grammar, “See Spot run,” kind of elementary school texts. If you want to really get into the precise details of what they’re trying to tell you, you have to be able to connect it to the specific constellation, such as the constellation Hercules, such as the constellation Virgo, such as all the constellations of the Zodiac because where they are on the wheel has significance in this code that they’re trying to convey to us.

So, Hercules is almost always the most powerful figure in any—I’m talking about the constellation Hercules.

Alex Tsakiris: So, if I hear a story and I start hearing these elements, then I should start looking for Hercules, right? What are the elements?

David Mathisen: You have to know the constellations. I sent you a series of images, maybe we’ll be able to stick those up in a YouTube video at the right points.

Alex Tsakiris: Sure. Sure.

David Mathisen: If it’s not too much work, otherwise, we can just refer to them.

So, in those images, I’ve got a comparison if the way that you usually see the constellations like in Wikipedia, or even on an iPhone app. These iPhone apps are great for finding a constellation, but the outlines are horrendous.

Alex Tsakiris: Right. You look at it and you go, “That’s just completely bogus.”

David Mathisen: That doesn’t look like Hercules, right?

Alex Tsakiris: Yeah.

David Mathisen: Now H.A. Rey, who is the author, along with his wife, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s of the Curious George series, also wrote these fantastic books that has this great system of outlining the constellation. I sent you an image, one shows a comparison of the Wikipedia way or the conventional way, and H. A. Rey from 1952, which is so much better. H. A. Rey either knew the ancient system or he was so genius that the way he outlined it matches up with the ancient system.

I have a little caption on image one. I have Standard Constellation Outline Examples. Not very helpful for finding them in the sky, and not very helpful for figuring out investigating the ancient myths. Same constellations outlined for H. A. Rey, very helpful for locating them in the sky and very helpful for investigating the star myths because for instance, as you said with Hercules, we can actually find ancient Greek vases and it’s like they’re using H. A. Rey’s system or H. A. Rey is using their system.

Alex Tsakiris: So now, you’re going all over the world and you’re saying across the world, in all these different time frames, we have the same part of the sky relating to the same myths and these characters having similar qualities.

David Mathisen: Literally, the same thing. Loki’s little dance to make Skadi—she’s very angry because someone has killed her father, who is a Jotun, Thor has killed her father and she’s mad and not going to be appeased until someone gives her a new husband out of the Gods of the Aesir. And then someone has to make her smile and then Loki does this obscene dance that makes her smile.

There’s an obscene dance that makes a goddess smile in Japan in Kojiki, Amaterasu, an obscene dance. There’s an obscene dance that makes a woman smile in the Greek myths, it’s connected with the Demeter and Persephone story, when Persephone is abducted by Hades and then she doesn’t come back except for a certain part of the year to make Spring and Summertime, and then she goes back to Hades. The mother, Demeter, or Ceres has to be made to laugh and there’s this obscene dance that goes on and makes her smile.

There’s even a figure in the Bible who smiles. Leaders familiar with Bible stories may be saying, “Oh yeah, what was that about it?” The woman who smiled and then she said, “No, I didn’t smile.” And God said, “Yes, you did. You smiled.” That was Sarah when she was told you’re going to have a child. Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai, you’re 80, but you’re going to have a child and she kind of giggles and laughs, “Are you kidding me?” She’s behind the tent door. She smiles. And God said, “You smiled. I didn’t smile. Yes, you did.”

It’s the same pattern. It’s the same constellations. It’s Virgo, in this case, who smiles. Virgo is located right underneath Bootes, who’s doing the obscene dance.

Anyway, back to the chariot.

Alex Tsakiris: Before we go back to the chariot, because we’ve kind of just hit on one of the main points here. I mean, the main point, along with the fact that there is this language, which you just laid out, I think, in very convincing terms. People already have to be going, “Hey, wait a minute. That is pretty compelling that these different cultures that didn’t have any contact in these ancient periods did have this same language. Something is going on here.”

But then the second thing that you’re saying, and we can get into this because it gets into — are they ancient aliens that are coming down doing this? Is it some kind of connection with some spiritual higher power that’s doing this? The how is kind of the next question that’s got to be bubbling up for everybody.

But, before we can even get to the how, I think it’s important because one of the hooks for me is it’s a spiritual message that is being conveyed in these myths, a deep spiritual message that a lot of us can resonate with because it talks about the self and connection with our higher self. Fill in some of the details there of the spiritual message that is behind these myths.

David Mathisen: Right. So, I would say that for Skeptiko purposes — what I can demonstrably… prove may be too strong of a word — but is pretty closely proven to my satisfaction. I’ve looked at hundreds of these, as you mentioned, I’ve written thousands of pages and I’ve had to leave out thousands of pages simply because you can’t have a 1,700 page book, so I cut it down to 700. But, the amount of evidence is simply overwhelming that the myths are connected to the stars with a very specific system with a worldwide system, so that brings up the how, which we’ll set aside for a second.

The why, I can’t prove the why, but I can tell you that I’ve had to wrestle very hard with the why for the past several years and I have, I believe, some very satisfying suggestions for the why. I would allege that’s what the Bible is telling you to do too, until someone came along and said, “No. No. No, this is all literal.” It’s like I’ve used the metaphor so many times, people may be getting tired of it, but it’s a great metaphor, I think. It’s like in the Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel-san something that he can’t grasp, karate, without learning it a certain way, wax on, wax off. And all of a sudden someone came along and said, oh no, there’s no karate here, it’s just about waxing the car. Don’t get any higher ideas. And we’re just going to take it literally and forget about its higher meaning.

I am not the first person to say the Bible is esoteric, but I am able to show with these constellations, when you can see that everything in the Bible is based on the constellations, you cannot say—well, you can still allege that it’s all literal, but it becomes very, very hard to do so, especially when you realize, wait, a minute, over here in Greece, we’ve got a foot washing scene in the Odyssey. A foot washing scene where Odysseus’ nurse, Eurykleia, washes his feet. Remember, there’s a foot washing scene in the Bible. Now, which one of those two is literal? Oh, just the one in the Bible? Is there a real Odysseus? No. No. No, he’s a mythical character. How do you know he’s a mythical character? Well, he fought a cyclops, so of course, he’s mythical. Okay, but Jesus is a literal character with a foot washing scene. There so much in the Odyssey that parallels the Bible.

Anyway—

Alex Tsakiris: Hold on now, because we’re going to move now into the Skeptiko portion of the show, if we haven’t been there already.

Let’s say you’re right, and I believe you are right, there is this language; could it be that then this language was well understood and then used as a vehicle so that at some point, the story makers were no longer accessing the same original information, if we […]?

David Mathisen: Yeah, great. I am definitely familiar with Joseph Atwill’s work and address it in The Undying Stars and I respect what he has discovered. I believe he has discovered something real and something important, but I don’t agree with all the conclusions that he makes. I believe he’s discovered a PSYOP, that is correct. Josephus was involved, so the conclusions that he draws is that oh, the Gospel is just a vanity piece.

Alex Tsakiris: Right. Right. No, he goes too far.

David Mathisen: A political—no, I don’t think it is. I think the so-called New Testament is as ancient as the so-called Old Testament. Could it be clothed in the language of Roman Times? Absolutely, it was clothed in the language of Roman Times. I mean, when we read our New Testament, those characters are running around in Roman Times where we’re being told this is happening in the time of the Governor Pilate and Tiberius is the Caesar and this is happening at the Sea of Galilea, etc., etc., etc. So, the ancient myths by someone who is very familiar with them, very immersed in this tradition, which Joe Cephas by his own admission was, could be dressed up in Roman times.

Alex Tsakiris: Skeptiko question number two that popped up for me, and you’ve alluded to this a couple times and I just can’t quite get where you’re coming from. Are the stars, the constellations, a visual teaching aid or is there some kind of interactive relationship between actually some kind of energy in the stars and the stories?

I’m a very ancient—I’m either an E.T. or I’m a spirit being, or whatever the hell, we’re going to touch that one next, but I’m this and I’m going to try and convey this message to you, and as you just alluded to, I need a metaphor and you don’t have much, so I can say hey, if you forget what I’m saying, just look up there. See that thing there that looks like that? Well, that’s what I’m kind of talking about. Here’s the story, it’ll play out all the time and you don’t have a written language, so is the best I can give you, how about that? Is that what’s going on or is there something more?

David Mathisen: My experience in study and thinking and meditating about this suggests that the answer is yes to both questions. But primarily, I’m most comfortable saying, it is a spiritual teaching aid. The stars are visible, but they are talking about the invisible realm, but the invisible realm is real. In other words, is there a Goddess Athena? Yes, there may be. To understand her particular characteristics, the myths appear to match her up with a specific constellation, that constellation has specific characteristics that point to this particular aspect of the invisible realm. But the constellations are not them, you can’t see them, that’s the invisible realm. Maybe you can see them in some vision when you’re in non-ordinary reality. Notice I didn’t say it’s not reality, it’s just not ordinary reality, where you’re having a vision, but the stars are a representation to point you to the invisible realm because I cannot show you the invisible realm. I can’t show you karate, I can show you this car, now wax it and then you’ll know karate; you’ll know it.

Alex Tsakiris: And when you want to pass this story along to your grandchildren, it’s going to be helpful for you to be able to say hey, look up there in the sky. You see that? Now, let me tell you the story, so it’s a vehicle that works, in terms of passing along the oral tradition.

David Mathisen: It’s an incredible vehicle. It works on so many levels, and in fact, when you do look out into the night sky, you are gazing into the infinite realm. When I look at the night sky, I’m looking into infinity. Period. No astrophysicist that I know of will probably dispute, and maybe some will, I don’t know, but it’s infinite and it works on all these levels, all these spiritual, deep levels, so it’s a perfect metaphor. Whoever came up with it, it’s like beyond Mr. Miyagi. Where did it come from, we can talk about, but it is, I believe, a visible teaching aid for the invisible realm that is real. Now, people can say hey, I don’t buy the invisible realm. Okay, you don’t have to, but I believe that’s what these ancient myths are talking about.

Alex Tsakiris: I disagree. I think you have to; I think if you don’t, then you get into kind of the modern apologetics, twisting things back. You’ve got to make that leap to kind of make this stuff work.

David Mathisen: Well, I’m saying that’s what they were trying to say.

Alex Tsakiris: Oh, I’m agreeing with you. I’m agreeing with you.

David Mathisen: But I think there’s plenty of evidence that it’s true. I mean, there’s evidence that you have a higher self. I mean, the military has used psychics to find downed helicopters in other continents; how are they doing this?

Alex Tsakiris: No question. I mean, if you’re stuck in the biological robot [debate], that’s another PSYOP that we can talk about for another time.

So, we’ve built up to maybe this is kind of one of the big questions also that I’m sure is on people’s minds, the who question; we keep alluding to it. What do you think about the ancient aliens idea as it applies to this? And then what do you think about the ascended masters thinking as it relates to this? The Akashic records, as it relates to this? Any thoughts on any of those things?

David Mathisen: Certainly, I definitely have thoughts on it, as I’m sure everyone else does.

I would say once again, all I can definitively show is that these things appear to be worldwide, a very advanced spiritual system, and all cultures revere whoever gave these to them, whether it was the Gods or the Spirits or the Shaman of Old who were able to go to the spirit realm and bring back the knowledge. I am not dogmatic as to where it came from. I think it is possible to explain it without ancient aliens, and I think that a lot of what ancient alien advocates lean on is the myths and taking them literally. And I’m saying, wait a minute, I can show you that’s not literal right here. The Annunaki, you want me to show you what I think that is? It’s not literal.

So, I believe that Göbekli Tepe shows very ancient advanced activity going on, so much more ancient, that could possibly explain why we’re already seeing this system apparently in full flower, at the time of the earliest Egyptian text, earliest Mesopotamian text. This system is already in place, so it’s got to be very ancient. It’s possible that everyone who goes through the spirit realm comes back with some version of this. You know, maybe the use of sacred plants, you go to the other realm and you get taught hey, this is the way to explain this stuff and that explains why it’s all around the world. Or maybe there is a very ancient advanced human culture or cultures thousands and thousands of years before the Egyptians, like Göbekli Tepe time and earlier.

And remember Plato talks about Atlantis and his dating, as Robert Schoch has shown, lines right up with Göbekli Tepe and maybe that ancient civilization, not Egyptian, long, long before the Egyptians, was wiped out by a disaster, catastrophe, solar flares, cosmic war. Maybe they blew each other up. Maybe whoever blew the atmosphere off Mars took care of that civilization too. Who knows, but maybe we have remnants of that scattered and the survivors carried it to all points of the world.

I don’t know, so I’m not going to be dogmatic about it, although I would say you don’t need ancient aliens to explain this. I think it’s just as likely that ancient people able to cross to the other side came up with this system, you know, men and women of great spiritual depth and very ancient path came up with this system or received this system from the other side somehow.

Alex Tsakiris: Right. And we don’t even know to what extent that’s an either/or proposition, right?

David Mathisen: Sure. I don’t think we can be dogmatic about it. I certainly don’t see any way to prove, at this point.

Alex Tsakiris: Are some of the E.T.s somehow in these extended consciousness realms that we’re crossing over into, and what is the hierarchy there?

David Mathisen: Also, a great point.

Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, we can’t even pretend to have an intelligent idea about that. One last question here, David, before I let you go.

Implicit in what you’re saying is this kind of tutelage between a higher being—again we’ll […] whether E.T. or spiritual or whatever—and not very advanced being, I mean, we can fill in that story with all kinds of ideas, but have you thought about that? I mean, this is the story of the Planet of the Apes that you like to use, only it’s a different story. It’s somebody who knows a lot trying to teach something to somebody who doesn’t know crap, that’s implied in what you’re saying and the implications for that, I think, go beyond—you have to go through all the steps that you went through to get to that point, but then at the end of the day you’re going well, wait a minute, that really does fit more to an ancient aliens kind of scenario. Not only is it advanced knowledge, but it’s an advanced knowledge that realizes that they have to dumb it down in a very particular way in order to communicate it to their audience.

What is that saying about the relationship between that early audience? Because we do see layers that are added onto it afterwards, but in some of these cultures, it’s more or less primitive, if you will, and then in some other cultures, it’s very highly elaborated and developed. I mean, the story in the Bible […] is extremely elaborate, and from a literary standpoint, is pure genius. And not to demean other cultures, but in other cultures that are without a written language, it’s a much simpler story.

David Mathisen: Right.

Alex Tsakiris: So, what do you make of that? What does that say about it?

David Mathisen: Yeah, I would say that they’re probably all extremely spiritually sophisticated. It’s like you’ve got a rush of people going to the Amazon to get in touch because there is something missing in our extremely technically and literate [society]…

Alex Tsakiris: Right.

David Mathisen: Right. We don’t want to demean those other cultures because actually, they’re incredibly spiritually, sophisticated and have plenty to teach. It’s like you can learn a thing or two from those primitive cultures.

Alex Tsakiris: No question, but the story that you’re painting is a bunch of people around the campfire and there’s somebody who’s really wise and they’re saying look, you guys don’t have any clue on any of this. And you’re going to forget about it when I’m gone, but look up in the stars and here’s the story that you should tell your grandkids.

David Mathisen: Right.

Alex Tsakiris: Now, I’ve got to go. Goodbye.

David Mathisen: It’s an extremely […] question. The first part of that question—I kind of dealt with the sidetrack part of it by saying hey, look, they’re all spiritually sophisticated and we both acknowledge that, but the question is, how did this get started?

Daniel-san needed the Mr. Miyagi and I do believe if you look in most cultures, and probably all cultures, it’s kind of passed down in a master to disciple type of thing. Like, it’ll be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke or Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi or whatever. It is passed down that way. You’re saying how did one person—I can’t take credit for all this stuff. I have had times where it’s like I went to bed not knowing it, I was thinking about it, I woke up in the morning and while I was taking a shower I realized I had the answer; where did that come from?

Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, but that would answer things on a different level because the gnosis kind of thing and how things pop up, but for me…

David Mathisen: How did it get started?

Alex Tsakiris: And specifically, as it relates to a particular orientation to the stars, that to me, sounds more human, if you will. That sounds more like an Atlantis kind of thing. We have to restart civilization. Either more human or more E.T.-like or something like that. Okay, let’s stop in the spaceship. We’ll fly over here to this group of people. Let’s tell them the story. Now, let’s get back in the spaceship and fly over here, tell them the story, and they’ll always point up at the stars and stuff like that.

Because if I’m just God and I’m just kind of telling you to love everybody, well that, we know, it pops up in people’s dreams in a bunch of different ways and they have these near-death experiences, but people that are having near-death experiences are coming back and saying oh, they told me about that particular star and those three stars connect to create a foot and stuff like that, do you know what I mean?

David Mathisen: Well, it’s a very interesting question that you ask. I just want to say I enjoy your show and this conversation, in particular, because you’re coming at me with questions that are your expertise or you’re good at asking different questions than I get asked. Every human being is difference, of course, so I appreciate this question.

I would say that look, whether we pause it an ancient human civilization that evolved—you know, maybe by the time we got to Göbekli Tepe, maybe it had already evolved for 10,000 years or 10,000,000 years, I don’t know.

Alex Tsakiris: Right.

David Mathisen: Or, if it came from ancient aliens, where did they get it? Presumably, they evolved somewhere, right? So it’s like we’ve got two choices, either it’s from the spirit world right off the bat or some culture evolved to some incredibly advanced level and figured it out, right? Because if the aliens brought it, where’d they get it? Well, the aliens might say well, we’ve been on Planet Zeta Reticuli for 250,000,000 years and after 200,000,000 years, we finally evolved to a level where we figured it out. Okay, so it evolved or did you get it from the spirit world?

Alex Tsakiris: Right.

David Mathisen: Now, maybe they’re not mutually exclusive. Maybe they evolved to a certain degree where then you can say hey, this plant, that’ll get me in contact with the spirit world, or this mushroom.

Alex Tsakiris: No, I’m with you on all that. And I don’t know if this is a leap or something you’ve thought about a lot, but what you specifically have kind of revealed here, I think, that has to be dealt with is the vehicle for telling the spiritual story is the stars, so the question I have is why that vehicle? We know there are other vehicles, right? So we know the plant is a vehicle; the psychedelic experience, that’s a vehicle; the shamanic journey, that’s a vehicle, maybe it’s the same, but you’re saying here’s another vehicle. Why was that vehicle chosen that — okay, look up at the stars and I’m going to tell you a story about that; why that?

David Mathisen: That’s a great question and I certainly don’t mean to close the door on the alien possibility, I just don’t think it’s necessary, but certainly, I’m open to it. But I think the stars are a perfect vehicle and it could be because there’s aliens involved, I’m not denying that as a possibility.

I think it’s like Herman Melville, we’re struggling to figure out how am I going to wrestle with these deepest, biggest questions? I mean, his other works are fantastic, but of course, he’s known for Moby Dick and he said, “I need a bigger canvas. I need a bigger canvas. What’s the biggest canvas I can find? I know, the ocean.” And then Moby Dick is one metaphor after another. He used the biggest, most majestic, most awe inspiring, most terrifying, most also mundane and tedious life at sea. It was a canvas big enough for him to put in all these things that he’s wrestling with in Moby Dick. Well, I’ve got a canvas even bigger than that, it’s over your head. It’s the ocean or the stars and it is the biggest canvas, the most majestic, awesome mechanisms. We didn’t even talk about procession, it’s just awe inspiring. It puts us in our place and it conveys to us the awe in the power of the invisible realm and it’s infinite. It’s the infinite realm. It’s the realm of the Gods, so it is a perfect canvas.

But your question has at the back of it, a very interesting additional corridor that goes down maybe forever and we never get that answer, but who, why, how? I don’t know, somebody very advanced, either humans in touch with the spirit world or aliens in touch with the spirit world, advanced aliens, advanced humans. I don’t know, but I can tell you, the evidence is there that this system exists, it’s worldwide, it’s amazing — it’s profound and it’s ancient.

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