Beard of the Week XLII: The Pyramidiot

This week's beard belongs to one Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900), who served as Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888. That's not the reason for my interest, however. It's his pioneering work in pyramidology that I found out about today and wanted to bring to your attention. At the center of it all: the "pyramid inch".

One of the books I'm reading right now is Mario Levio's, The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (New York : Broadway Books, 2002). Indeed the book is about the irrational number often denoted by the greek letter phi, and also called "the golden ratio". On page 53 & 54, in a chapter looking at what generally turn out to be crackpot theories about the ancients' use of the golden ratio in building virtually any building that has attracted the attention of mystical fantacists over the past couple hundred years, we encounter one of the more amusing: Mr. Piazzi Smyth. This brief version of the story comes from Levio's book, but there are plenty of other versions that cover the same ground with different words (e.g., the Wikipedia page for Piazzi Smyth).

First up was John Taylor who wrote a book called The Great Pyramid : Why Was It Built and Who Built It? This was well before von Daniken's ideas about aliens doing virtually everything for early people so it was assumed that the Egyptians did build them, but that they were divinely inspired: "Taylor was so convinced that the pyramid contained a variety of dimensions inspired by mathematical truths unknown to the ancient Egyptians that he concluded that its construction was the result of divine intervention."

Our author explains that, at the time, there was a popular theory that the British were the remnants of the "lost tribes of Israel" and Taylor worked out the idea that the cubit, that famous biblical unit of measure, was also the basic unit used in building the pyramids and that the cubit contained 25 "pyramid inches", which were slightly larger than the British inch. You can see where this is going: the obvious deduction, given the lost tribes of Israel thing, is that the British inch was the vestige of the pyramid inch, thus ordained by god.

Taylor's book, we're told, found great favor with Piazzi Smyth, particularly this theory about the "pyramid inch", largely because Piazzi Smyth was bitterly opposed to the introduction of the metric system in Britain. As Levio explains:

His [Piazzi Smyth's] pseudoscientific/theological logic worked something like this: The Great Pyramid was designed in inches; the mathematical properties of the pyramid show that it was constructed by divine inspiration; therefore, the inch is a God-given unit, unlike the centimeter, which was inspired 'by the wildest, most blood-thirsty and most atheistic revolution' (meaning the French Revolution).

Piazzi Smyth, by the way, wrote three very large books on the Great Pyramid in the 1860s. The first was called Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid; the inheritance included, of course, the British inch, which he saw as a cultural and theological heirloom. Most of today's mystical and numerological nonsense about the pyramids had their origins in the works of Taylor and Piazzi Smyth.

Anyway, Levio concludes his consideration of Piazzi Smyth this way:

After reading this text [from The Great pyramid, Its Secrets and Mysteries Revealed), we cannot be too surprised to find out that author Leonard Cottrell chose to entitle the chapter on Charles Piazzi Smythin in his [1956] book The Mountains of Pharaoh "The Great Pyramidiot."

Isn't it surprising how religious crackpots tend to sound the same century after century?

Here's a bit more reading on pyramids and pyramidology:

Posted on July 14, 2008 at 23.04 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Beard of the Week, Books, Curious Stuff

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  1. Written by Evelyn SoD
    on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 10.15
    Permalink

    The Origin of Pyramids …

    During that era noted as the fall of Man … records in ‘parable words’ also give an account of an almost countless number of ‘Giant Pyramid shaped’ Power Facilities which were also falling from their High Celestial places…. Many of these were referred to as Queen Facilities and King Facilities …. Yet there were other Pyramid Hosts given other character titles, which depended on their Design and Functions.

    During the era in which many Ancient and Celestial Pyramids fell from place, the Queen And King Power Facilities showed themselves as Gleaming Colorful Designs of their ‘Exotic and Light Weight Structures’ … Each seemed to just float in mid air in their downward decline and dis-placement.

    Each giant Pyramid Structure contained a Mystic Glowing Eye which was a Field of a specific ‘High-Frequency Accelerated Plasma Energy’… This massive Field of Plasma Energy was sustained of what could be considered as ‘Cold Fusion’… such a powerful mass of energy, roared of it’s great power, as the Pyramid's Eye generated a steady glow of Light. It was these Mystic Eye-lets which were just one of the Pyramid's Power Facilities, which had become contaminated causing a fall in their accelerated marc of Quantum Frequency.

    Such a contamination of the Pyramid’s Eye-let, and all associated Plasma Cores, is that which caused Celestial Colonies and their Worlds to fall from High Celestial places.

    Several falling Pyramid Facilities lowered themselves and their attached Landscape from upper positions to settle richly flourishing soil atop the crust of a then newly evolving surface of Earth.

    Other Facilities with contaminated Power Facilities settled their Mystical Cities, or mobile and flying crafts in hidden areas throughout the planet and other distant places such as Mars and the Moon.

    For a period of time all such driven Ancient Pyramid Structures which had settled atop this planet gradually became visible to the already existing residence of this early evolving rock. Some were seen only temporarily as their gleaming structures and cities passed through visual view of Earth's reality. This is the era when there were Giants in the land, for their Structures were indeed enormous.

    As time past, each fallen Pyramid's Eye-let Field of Accelerated Plasma Energy (which was later referred to as the Spirit Energy), and each their Plasmatomic Reactor’s Mass Core (which were referred to as the Living Flesh) … Each these power Facilities had to under go a purging process ….. Such purging procedures caused works of an inner ‘Electric Furnace’ smelting process, to have a back-up of hot flowing minerals, which in time filled every open area of the Pyramid's inner Hollow Design.

    Also a back-burst of extreme heat caused a Crystallizing of the Eye-let’s Field of accelerated energy …. such a mystic crystallizing gave shape to a center placed mold of the Pyramid’s inner Eye-let, and the central Casing of it’s Automated Control Modules … This crystallized mold was referred to as a Crystal Skull …

    After purging and the solidifying and crystallizing of minerals, many of the Exotic Pyramid which continued in their falling of Quantum frequency deceleration, did vanish from view to set in what is referred to as the first level of the Eighth Universal Plane, which is below a Dividing Firmament of space and time. Some refer to this zone as the first level of Hell or purgatory.

    As Exotic Structures of each Pyramid vanished from the surface of this planet, each left behind a ‘Molded Stone Image’ of the Pyramid Facility's inward Hollow Design … and also left behind the ‘Global Eyelet‘s Crystallized Mold’ with it’s center placed Crystallized Skull’ … But these solidified ‘Mystic Formations of the Skull’ and field of accelerated energy, would have been as the elements of a priceless jewel … For one such Crystallized Global Mold which had formed there inside such a Pyramid's Eye-let, were in it's later discovery, referred to as the Mother Load of diamonds … One such molded image has been referred to as King Solomon’s Mine.

    Before the falling from High Celestial Place, and before contamination of Plasma Energy and Plasmatomic Mass Cores, and before the Crystallizing and solidifying of Elements, each Eyelet of Plasma Energy would periodically weep crystallized precious stones as such stones would seem to appear in mid air of the High Energy Field and drop as tears, to later flow as a river of precious stones … and later to be discovered inner mixed with solidified minerals.

    Messenger for this new UFO era approaching …evelynseedofdavid@gmail.com

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