TEMPUS INVICTUS

Chapter XXIX: Flat World—Graven Images

“It’s A Fraud”—Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18, 1967

Flat-Earther Goes ‘Round With Photo

 

London—The leader of the Flat Earth Society Thursday called Lunar Orbiter’s photograph of the world a fake.

 

“It’s a fraud, a fake, a piece of trickery or deceit,” said Samuel Shenton, 63, the British-based secretary of the International Flat Earth Research Society. “Look at the photograph the satellite supposedly took. Notice those lines across the bottom of the picture. They show it’s a composite, a mock-up.”

But why should the Americans—or anyone else—seek to perpetrate such a deception?

“It’s a Shame”

“It’s all a part of the great global earth conspiracy,” said Shenton, “and it’s a shame.”

“For centuries we have been indoctrinated to believe the earth is round. That it’s a tiny pill bounding through space at 20 miles a second. Our children are being indoctrinated at this moment.”

Shenton and his followers—and he says he’s got them all over the world—believe that the earth is not only flat, but static in space, and that the theory of gravity was advanced to support the spinning earth theory.

“Late in his life,” Shenton said, “Sir Isaac Newton himself denied his own theories of gravitation.”

“What we all want to do today is to wrench our minds away from the so-called upper stratosphere and concentrate on what the earth itself, the strata and the rock formations, teach us.”

Talking to reporters, Shenton answered a few questions raised by round-earthers.

The voyage of Sir Francis Chichester around the world?

“He was just following a zig-zag course ‘round the flat disc of the earth.”

 

Astronauts Just Circling

Astronauts wheeling around the earth in space?

“They’ve only been buzzing around in a flat circle above the flat earth. Why, if they were really out in space they would fly off and never be seen again.”

Shenton said membership in the Flat Earth Society is growing slowly but surely.

“We even have supporters in Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy).” he said. “They think something’s wrong.”

Who are the Cape Kennedy doubters?

“They are free to announce their names,” he said. “I must treat them as confidential.”

 

Copyright, 1967 Los Angeles Times

Reprinted with permission.

 

Well, it’s here at last—what is perhaps the most startling revelation in our modern age of miracles. The earth is not round but really flat, after all, just as it was so believed to be by some of the Ancients for thousands of years! At least, this is the contention of the “Flat Earth Society” whose headquarters are in England and who have been popping into the news for the past several years.

The Society’s founder and president here in an article reprinted in the Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1967, says that we have all been disillusioned. We have been taught wrongly and we are teaching our children falsely; that the earth is round, not flat! He points out, composite photos taken from satellites are faked because they have been patched together (as a composite photo always is, although not at all fake). The founder also goes into some length and detail to point out the fraudulent illusion in other round-earth world aspects. This he does in the face of incontestable and overwhelming evidence that the earth is indeed round—countless thousands of round-the-world journeys, which started at the time of Magellan in the Sixteenth Century, astrophysical evidence such as the round shadow of the earth upon the moon during the eclipse., and other planets in our solar system, etc. This society and its membership does, in fact, point at this great amassment of evidence and, like the farmer who saw the giraffe for the first time, they say, “It ain’t so!” Of course, this presumption is hilariously ridiculous and asinine, even more so when it is conceived that the society membership is convinced in its convictions.

There is, however, an exact parallel situation among the eight hundred odd million people who call themselves Christians, who emphatically state and reinstate ancient archaic and completely false beliefs upon which they have founded their entire religious conduct. Despite overwhelming geological, archeological and anthropological evidence and fact, despite a comparatively advanced and provable electro physical technocracy, despite nuclear physics and established astrophysical sciences, these eight hundred million Christians still firmly believe in their ancient Babylonian god, Jehovah, who, as a bit of hocus-pocus abracadabra, created the heavens and the earth in six days, and finished off the whole coup by making a man out of mud and then a woman out of a rib. Then as a final bit of hilarity, after creating them—man and woman—he became very angry and kicked them out of the Garden of Eden when he saw them acting as such! Now, it is quite apparent that the Christian religion and its tenets are much more ridiculous and asinine than the “Flat Earth Society” and it could be much more hilariously funny if it were not for the great tragedy which involves each one of those Christian adherents. We can only sadly speculate upon the fate and future of any person who absconds with and completely entrusts himself in his future evolution within the coils of these false tenets. While it may be comparatively harmless to believe that the earth is flat, it is self-condemnation and self-destruction to believe in false gods, false means and manners of creation, salvation and all the other religious hokey-pokey. All this terrible tragedy, not only of the Christian religion but other false earth religions, has been presented in preceding Unarius doctrines; also, the alternatives, such as a constructive intelligent and scientific creation and your own personal position in the scale of evolution in this creation.

So, while we may chuckle at the “Flat Earth Society” let us always give compassionate concern for the poor benighted Christian, for in the aspect of religion, the earth is indeed one of the many elemental spawning grounds for many and diverse creatures; and in this elemental evolution from these spawning grounds, there may emerge the first rudimentary configuration of what is to be an intelligent being; and which, as they so spawn in their native habitat, have so classified themselves upon this earth world as Homosapiens—the last in a long line of creatures who have evolved from primitive beginnings, to a point where they can turn their eyes to the skies and the world about them and begin to wonder about creation. And perhaps in such a primitive state, we could excuse their false gods and religions, their graven images and say, “Wait, let us see”.

So it has been, we have waited; and as the many centuries have passed, so now this primitive man stands on the threshold. In one hand he holds the false graven images of his religions which he has carried with him from out his primitive past, and in the other hand he holds a great sparkling jewel—a jewel of Truth—and from its many facets it reflects a multitude of scientific facts and aspects compounded from the sciences of his present time—a jewel given to man by those who travel in the Inner Worlds, in the in-between lives, by the inhabitants of those who travel, through reincarnation, back to this world from the Halls of the Seven Celestial Planes.

So, hope travels hand in hand with the future, and always in the scale of evolution there is the immortal promise of everlasting life to those who can aspire and who can meet the challenge, and who can rise above the murk and mire, the stupidity and ignorance, the bigotry and the idolatries of religious systems which are an everlasting heritage of these material worlds. It should also be noted that even as Christians who have compounded their theosophy from the Bible, they are, in their numerous denominations, individually and collectively, committing the world’s greatest hypocrisies and bigotries. There are more than ten thousand Christian denominations or sects and each one, large or small, believes implicitly that his individual membership will be the only “chosen ones” saved to inhabit the future “City of Jerusalem”. This, in itself, is a great enigma and quite puzzling, as all Christian sects and denominations worship the same god and “savior” and, in general, all principles and expressionary elements are exactly parallel and the same. Yet, in their individual contentions of salvation, they commit the greatest bigotry, not only to other Christians but to all other peoples of the world in general. And at this point, it would be well to note that all beliefs and expressionary elements within the framework of Christianity are exactly opposite and contrary to the preachment and doctrines of Jesus whom they worship as the “Son” and “Savior” even though His Mission on earth was to prove the falseness of the Israeli god, Jehovah, who is universally acclaimed the Father of Jesus throughout the Christian religion.

It is also quite obvious, even within the Christian testaments that Jesus very strongly admonished all those who would listen, against indulging themselves in any of the idolatrous practices of worship universally exercised by Christians. This admonition was most clearly defined by Jesus when he said, “Do not pray as does the heathen, in public places and on street corners, neither in temples and synagogues, but retire ye into the closet of thine own self that ye may be rewarded openly.”

Jesus also clearly indicated that the proposition of attaining immortality must be done by finding the “Kingdom Within”, also clearly defining a proper evolutionary course for any individual dedicated to the proposition of salvation. It was within these precepts as they were expressed and taught by Jesus that we find Christianity’s great hypocrisy, and it is difficult to understand and believe that two quite obviously contradictory and opposing doctrines posed by the old Jehovan testament and the evolutionary approach to immortality, as was posed by Jesus, would exist or be tolerated. We can only say that somehow within the mystical shroud of religion, these two opposing doctrines became merged and then again, through differences in interpretations and quarrelsome attitudes, separated themselves through two thousand years of history into the numerous sects and denominations which now exist, and there again to express, just as they always have since the beginning, their greatest bigotry—that they, and they alone as individuals, a sect or a denomination, are the true believers, and only they will be saved.

The entire basic beginning of Christianity is also, in another way, completely repugnant as it begins with mob violence and the murder of its “Savior”, which was later followed through the pages of history with wars, massacres, millions of persons sacrificed at the burning stake, the rack and the wheel. Even those religious malcontents, expurgated by the Church of England, as pilgrims, became part of our American history and from the first, set up within their own colonies, one of the most bigotrous of all religious expressionisms. Yes, they were burning little old ladies at the stake as witches almost to the turn of the twentieth century. There is no doubt that as of the past, more human misery, death and destruction has been caused by the expressionists and proponents of Christianity than any other faction in history. And the situation today is very much the same, whether it is Jews or Mohammedans, Christians against the Communists of Asia, as they are now dying on the battlefields of the Sinai desert, or side by side in swamps and rice paddies of Viet Nam.

The basic ideology which causes the most violent hatreds in the nations and races of mankind are the religious ideologies in which they believe and which separates them as ethnic cultures and gives rise to man’s greatest bigotry!

In the consensus of a Creative Intelligence, that Intelligence which through law, order and harmony, created galaxies, universes, and solar systems, and all compounded fractions and elements of an inter-dimensional cosmos, there are none of these infractions and no idolatries, no bigotries. It is in his scale of evolution that man has arrived at a point where he becomes partially selective according to the emotional content of numerous psychic pressures which surround him in his everyday life. The pressures and conformities of his society usually mold him in all his attitudes and reactions; and in his fears and insecurities, he condemns or tries to destroy all that lies beyond the immediate periphery of his individual world, composed of his familiar objects and understandable aspects. And it is from the rim of this periphery that each man finds his greatest challenge.

Beyond is the Infinite Cosmos with life sustained infinitely, according to the ability to understand and live in any one of an infinite variety of ways. It was all this and much more which was pointed out by Jesus when He said, “In my Father’s house are many Mansions.” How asinine then, how completely bigotrous is man on this particular planet who, until quite recently, believed he was quite alone in this interdimensional cosmos. He believes that he, and he alone, (particularly as a Christian, as a sect), would be “saved”! How great is the society of man when it is extended into hundreds of billions of earth world planets revolving about unseen suns, each person, each nation, each race on all of these and many other worlds living within the circumscribed confines of a narrow bigotrous life. And how small does this society become, if it is equated upon the individual consensus of life as it is so lived by any person on any planet.

(According to present-day astrophysicist’s findings and calculations, they now recognize or acknowledge 640 billion planets in our galaxy which could be inhabited, based on extremely conservative estimates of two per hundred probables; figures subject to change without notice.) And so it becomes apparent right at this point that no individual consensus, no religious segment of this great society is rightful unto itself, nor will any man achieve immortality from any consensus so compounded from numerous religious beliefs and systems. Only within the basic principles of creation as they are compounded and expressed in certain scientific precepts, only when man begins to live creatively according to these precepts will man begin to achieve the long sought immortality, for within the framework of these scientific principles will man be able to creatively regenerate from life to life in his evolution and thus, begin to find the Kingdom of Heaven which is within, as it was so intended to be understood by the Man of Galilee, not as an intercession, but as an individual proposition whereby each individual, through development, attains a higher way of life through his evolution.

Finally, to cap the climax, so to speak, on all this great Christian bigotry, there is absolutely and completely no foundation for his Christianity! His chief reigning god, whether defined as Jehovah or the Supreme Being, is nonexistent and the Bible upon which he compounds and bases his religion is apocryphal and was compounded after the crucifixion from legends and stories which had been circulated from generation to generation by the Israelites and other people of the mid-Eastern world. There were no written records or diaries and there is nothing, save a few historical ruins which are purported to be sites wherein certain biblical episodes were supposed to have transpired, to support this entire legendary compound. Anthropological history also traces the origin of Jehovah to a most ancient Babylonian city where he presided as a pagan god in a pagan society, which indulged this pagan god with human sacrifice.

“Immaculate conception” also comes from this time as it was practiced by the priesthood of that temple in preparing maidens for marriage, where they were first married to Jawa or Jehovah “by proxy” through a priest who also “in proxy” culminated this marriage in the sexual rite! How completely blasphemous does the Christian religion then become to any person who can see it as it really is, as it was founded upon ancient superstitions and pagan rites, how it has expressed itself through the thousands of years in hatred and violence, even as it does today, how it has defrauded almost countless millions of people and led them into the blind alley of intercession. And with this immoral intercession, an equally immoral confessional has “relieved” all these believers from their personal moral responsibilities and goaded them into living lives filled with acts of thievery, lying, deceit and even murder, each perpetrator believing his sin would be forgiven in confessional or that he would be “saved” through intercession!; he belonged to a sect or denomination and the “blood of Jesus” had already washed away his sins even before they were committed!

So lives the Christian religion, so revolting, so blasphemous, hypocritical and bigotrous that it is beyond the means of any adequate denunciations or invectives, yet enigmatically and in its greatest bigotry, it is held up as the highest virtue, the epitome of expressionary elements of society!