Perhaps one would forgive Robert Temple for believing that the Dogon had been visited by men from Sirius if their legend specifically stated so. But it does not! Nowhere in his 290-page book does Temple offer one specific statement from the Dogon to substantiate his ancient astronauts claim. The best he does is on page 217, where he reports that the Dogon say: "Po tolo [Sirius B] and Sirius were once where the Sun now is." Of this ambiguous statement, Temple comments: "That seems as good a way as any to describe coming to our solar system from the Sirius system, and leaving those stars for our star, the Sun." But this cannot conceal the fact that the whole Sirius "mystery" is based on Temple's own unwarranted assumption.
The parts of Dogon knowledge that are admittedly both ancient and profound, particularly the story of Nommo and the concept of twinning, are the parts that bear least relation to the true facts about Sirius. The parts that bear at least superficial resemblance to astronomical fact are most likely trimmings added in this century. Indeed, in view of the Dogon fixation with Sirius it would surely be more surprising if they had not grafted on to their existing legend some new astronomical information gained from Europeans, picking what fitted their purpose and ignoring the rest.
Carl Sagan has underlined how easily information gained from Westerners can be absorbed into native culture. He recounts the true case of the physician Carleton Gajdusek in New Guinea, who was approached by a scientific colleague who had found that some local natives believed that a certain disease was transmitted in the form of an invisible spirit that entered the skin of a patient. The native informant had sketched with a stick in the sand a circle outside which, he explained, was black, and inside which was light. Within the circle the informant drew a squiggly line to represent the appearance of these invisible malevolent spirits. How did the natives get such an astounding insight into the transmission of disease by microbes? Years earlier, Gajdusek himself had shown the natives the appearance of a disease-causing germ through his microscope, and the sand drawing was simply the natives' recollection of this deeply impressive sight.
It is all too easy for Westerners to think of African tribes as isolated, uneducated, and ignorant. But the Dogon are not isolated. They live near an overland trade route, as well as close to the banks of the Niger River, an important channel of trade. Any number of travelers could have come into their midst, or Dogon tribesmen could have journeyed to the coast, where they might have met astronomically informed seamen. The Dogon have been in contact with Europeans since at least the late nineteenth century.
Nor are they uneducated and ignorant. Peter and Roland Pesch of the Warner and Swasey Observatory in Ohio have pointed out that French schools have existed in the Dogon area since 1907. Dogon tribesmen wishing to pursue their education have been able to do so in nearby towns. Then there are missionaries, who would naturally be interested in the legends of the natives. Missionaries from the White Fathers made contact with the Dogon in the 1920s. It is tempting to speculate that certain of the more specific details about Sirius B were grafted onto the existing Sirius legend at that time, because it was in the 1920s that astronomers were discovering the true nature of Sirius B as a tiny, super-dense star, and white dwarfs were being accorded the same kind of publicity as attends black holes today. Alas, there is no mention in the missionaries' summary reports of their activities that they discussed Sirius with the Dogon; if more detailed notes were published, these might throw more light on the origin and antiquity of Dogon myths.
The point is that there are any number of channels by which the Dogon could have received Western knowledge long before they were visited by Griaule and Dieterlen. We may never be able to reconstruct the exact route by which the Dogon received their current knowledge, but out of the confusion at least one thing is clear: they were not told by beings from the star Sirius.
References
Harrington, R. S. 1977. Astronomical Journal, 82: 753.
Lindenblad, I. W. 1973. Astronomical Journal, 78: 205.
Pesch, P. and R. Pesch 1977. The Observatory, 97: 26.
Ridpath, Ian 1978. Messages from the Stars. New York: Harper & Row.
Shipman, H. L. 1976. Astrophysical Journal, 206: L67.
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FROM
www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/dogon.html
The Dogon Revisited
Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano
In 1976 Robert Temple published the Sirius Mystery claiming that the extraordinary astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians and the Dogon of Mali(1) was due to visitations from inhabitants of the Sirius system. These claims were dealt with in a article in The Skeptical Inquirer (Ridpath 1978). Since that time, however, the Afrocentrist movement has revived and expanded these claims (Adams 1983a; 1983b; 1990; Van Sertima 1983; Ortiz de Montellano 1991), and they have been naively parroted in more mainline publications (Gebre-Egziabher 1993/1994; Harding 1991). Adams (1990: 60) briefly presents the current claims:
They knew of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, the spiral structure of the Milky Way, where our star system lies. They claimed that billions of stars spiral in space like the circulation of blood in the human body... Perhaps the most remarkable facet of their knowledge is their knowing intricate details of the Sirius star system, which presently can only be detected with powerful telescopes. The Dogon knew of the white dwarf companion star of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. They knew its approximate mass ("it is composed of 'sagala,' an extremely heavy, dense metal such that all the earthly beings combined cannot lift it') its orbital period (50 years) and its axial rotation period (one year). Furthermore, they knew of a third star that orbits Sirius and its planet [sic]. The X-ray telescope aboard the Einstein Orbiting Observatory recently confirmed the existence of the third star. (2) The Dogon with no apparent instrument at their disposal, appear to have known these facts for at least 500 years.
Claims that the Dogon knew these things for at least 700 years (not 500) and that the ancient Egyptians also possessed this knowledge were first made in Adams (1983a) and endorsed by Van Sertima (1983). The sole source this information about Dogon astronomical knowledge is the research of two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen (1950; 1965), and more directly the book by Temple (1976).
Griaule and Dieterlen describe a world renovation ceremony, associated with the bright star Sirius (sigu tolo, "star of Sigui"),(3) called sigui, held by the Dogon every sixty years. According to Griaule and Dieterlen the Dogon also name a companion star, po tolo "Digitaria star" (Sirius B) and describe its density and rotational characteristics. Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know this about a star that cannot be seen without telescopes, and he made no claims about the antiquity of this information or of a connection with ancient Egypt. Temple (1976: 203-227) argues that the Dogon learned all this from amphibious beings from a superior civilization in the Sirius system.(4) Stars are rated on a visibility scale which differs by a factor of 2.5 brightness per unit; the higher the number on the scale, the dimmer the star. Adams (1983b) claims, without any reference, that under optimum conditions people with blue/green eyes can see stars of 6.5 magnitude, but that dark-eyed, dark-skinned people can see up to 8.1. The very bright, Sirius A has a magnitude of -1.47 while Sirius B is 8.7 (Allen 1973: 235). The canonical limit of visibility is 6, although a few exceptional people, with lifelong training, on high mountains and hyperventilating can achieve 7.8 (Schaefer 1995). This maximum human performance is still 2.26 times less than would be needed for naked eye observation of Sirius B. Even if Sirius B were bright enough to be seen, it could not be distinguished by a naked eye because it is too close to Sirius A. The average separation between Sirius A and B is 9.5 seconds of arc (Allen 1973: 240) with a maximum separation of 11 seconds. However, a person with 20/20 vision can only distinguish two points of light that are at least 42 seconds apart, i.e. four times the separation of Sirius A and B (Schaefer 1995).
Adams (1983), based on Temple, argues that the ancient Egyptians had telescopes which enabled them to see Sirius B, "The Russians have recently discovered a crystal lens, perfectly spherical and of great precision, used in ancient Egypt.(5) It is a short and simple step to place one lens in front of another to make a basic telescope, and chances are that it could have happened and many times." This is an example of a type of reasoning described by Mary Lefkowitz (1993), referring to Martin Bernal's claims of massive Egyptian influence on Greece in Black Athena, "because something is possible, it can be considered probable, or even actual si potest esse, est." Adams and Van Sertima are even less cautious and use the following chain of reasoning: if it is conceivable, it is possible, it is probable-- it is true. In fact, it is impossible. Even if the evanescent Egyptian telescope existed, it would not suffice. The glare due to Sirius A requires the use of at least a 5-inch telescope to see Sirius B at its maximum separation; at its closest approach, about half the time, a minimum of a 100-inch telescope is needed (Schaefer 1991, 1995). The first sighting of Sirius B in 1844 required an 18_-inch refractor telescope, the largest in the world at the time (Krupp 1991: 223).
Adams' repeated claims that the Dogon have known about Sirius B for 700 years are equally devoid of evidence. Adams' (1983: 38) sole proof is the following statement given without attribution or citation, "A wooden mask called the kanaga, used by the Dogon to celebrate the Sirius-related Sigui ceremony, is among the archaeological finds that indicate their preoccupation with this star for at least 700 years." Adams' source is actually Griaule and Dieterlen (1950; Temple 1976: 37-38). The kanaga mask represents a crane-like bird, the bustard, and is connected to the Dogon creator god Amma (Griaule 1938: 470). The dating of the sigui ceremony involves a different set of enormous wooden masks that are not worn but kept in protected shelters. These masks were not dated with C14, and their true age is not known. Griaule extrapolated the age of the masks by counting the number of masks in shelters and multiplying by 60 years per mask because a new mask was made for each 60-year sigui ceremony.(4) Most shelters had 3 or 4 masks taking the ceremony back to AD 1720-1760 (Griaule 1938: 242-244; Temple 1976: 38). A single location had 8 masks, the remains of another and 3 piles of dust, which Griaule (1938: 245) interpreted as possibly three further masks. This very shaky hypothetical extrapolation is the sole evidence dating the sigui ceremony to AD 1300, and tells us nothing concerning knowledge of Sirius B, the invisible dwarf star.
In fact, the entire Dogon question may be futile theorizing, because Griaule's original data, on which this whole edifice is built, is very questionable. His methodology with its declared intent to redeem African thought, its formal interviews with a single informant through an interpreter, and the absence of texts in the Dogon language have been criticized for years (Goody: 1967; Douglas 1968; Lettens 1971; Clifford 1983). Even a sympathetic reviewer (Roberts 1987\1988), who believes that Sirius and its two companions are important components of Dogon thought, feels that the actual existence of Sirius B is purely coincidental, "... it is equally clear that the first companion of Sirius (Po Tolo) as recognized by the Dogon is not [sic] the companion (Sirius B) recognized by Western astronomers... The two companion stars that the Dogon recognize are elements of a particular cosmology that would exist even if Sirius B did not. That Sirius has a second companion for Dogon, which has never been discovered or presumed to exist by Western astronomers, should make this point obvious."
Recently, a Belgian anthropologist, Walter van Beek, who has spent 11 years among the Dogon, pointed out that Griaule's data is unique: "Is Sirius a double star? The ethnographic facts are quite straightforward. The Dogon of course, know Sirius as a star [it is after all the brightest star in the sky]... Knowledge of the stars is not important either in daily life or in ritual. The position of the sun and the phases of the moon are more pertinent for Dogon reckoning. No Dogon outside of the circle of Griaule's informants had ever heard of sigu tolo or po tolo... Most important, no one, even within the circle of Griaule informants, had ever heard or understood that Sirius was a double star [or according to Renard Pále,(6) even a triple one, with B and C orbiting A]. Consequently, the purported knowledge of the mass of Sirius B or the orbiting time was absent (van Beek 1991).
Van Beek points out that Griaule's data was developed in long intense sessions with one primary informant, Ambara. In this process, Griaule probably reinterpreted statements from his informant in the light of his own knowledge about Sirius and its heavy companion, which had been much in the news at the time he began his field work. In turn, the Dogon, because Griaule was extremely respected and liked and because the Dogon culture places enormous importance on consensus and in avoiding contradictions, would have accepted his analysis as if it were theirs (van Beek 1991: 152-155). As an example of the process, van Beek points out a Dogon tale which explains the differences between white people and the Dogon, but which, in fact, is taken from the Bible. "Thus the story of the drunken Noah [Genesis 9: 21-27] has found its way into the stories of the se Dogon, who emphatically denied that this was a 'white' story." Traditionalists and Christians unanimously declared it to be Dogon: it belonged to the tem. In many other instances the process was discernible: foreign elements were adopted and in a single generation became "traditional."
It might be argued that the knowledge given to Griaule was very secret and known only to a few, including Ambara. Van Beek points out that "neither the myths nor the song texts--though they are sacred-- are secret. In fact, the tem [collective knowledge] is public knowledge." Van Beek argues, given the fact that he cannot find traces of these data, that "The question is then, how secret secrets can be and yet be part and parcel of a culture. As shared meaning is a crucial aspect of any definition of culture, a secret not shared is not cultural, while one shared by very few is by definition marginal... Thus, if the secrets revealed to Griaule are part of Dogon culture, one should be able to retrace them to some extent." Jacky Boujou, an anthropologist with 10 years experience with the Dogon, is in complete agreement with van Beek, "I am struck by the degree to which van Beek's analyses coincide with those I have gradually arrived at... The third period is represented by the Renard Pále,(7) which remains altogether strange and entirely unverifiable in the field, whatever Dogon region investigated." And also, "I would underline the obvious desire of the Dogon for collective harmony and consensus that is striking to the participant observer (Boujou 1991)." Another anthropologist with fieldwork among the Dogon, Paul Lane, agrees, "Many of van Beek's substantive claims come to me as no surprise. Thus, for instance, although the objectives of my research in the Sanga region in the early 1980s were quite different, along with van Beek I found little evidence for the complex but nonetheless allegedly unified symbolic ordering of daily life described by Griaule (Lane 1991)."
Sagan (1980: 81-87) and Brecher (1979: 110) have proposed that the information about the discovery of Sirius B and its characteristics were told to the Dogon by another European prior to Griaule's fieldwork. Although derided by Van Sertima (1983: 13) and Adams (1983: 37) this explanation, or the one given by van Beek, are plausible and do not require extraterrestrials or mythical telescopes.
Adams does not provide any explanation for Dogon knowledge although one is current among the Afrocentric circles in which he runs.(8) Frances Welsing (1987, 1991), as well as Adams (1987, 1988), argue that melanin has the ability to pick up all kinds of energy frequencies. Welsing (1987) further claims that the Dogon by virtue of their melanin are able to pick up vibrations from Sirius B just as if they possessed infra-red telescopes.(9) Welsing also claims that melanin gives ancient Egyptians and other Blacks extra-sensory perception, psi and the ability to foretell the future. This explanation of an extraordinary claim is also not supported by any evidence (Ortiz de Montellano 1993).
NOTES
The Dogon live in near Bandiagara, about 300 kilometers south of Timbuktu, Mali in West Africa (Ridpath 1978).
The paper cited as evidence for this (Chlebowski, Halpern, and Steiner 1981) does not claim that the X-ray emitting dwarf 9' south of sirius is a third companion. This star is, actually 37 times farther from the Earth (325 light years) than is Sirius (8.7 light years). Linden blad (1973) deliberately searched for a third component in the Sirius system and found none.
The bright star sirius is also referred to as "Sirius A", with its dense companion being "Sirius B." The sigui ceremony deals with Sirius A, which everyone agrees is known to the dogon. It is, after all, the brightest star in the sky. It is also known as the "Dog Star."
These space travelers were very ill-informed; Jupiter has sixteen moons, not four, as they supposedly told the Dogon (Brecher 1979).
A sphere would be useless as a lens because the focal length would be extremely short, and because the image produced would be greatly distorted by spherical and chromatic aberration (Muirden 1969: 6-7). In order to focus light adequately the lens should be either concave or convex. The sole evidence for this Russian (why always the Russians?) discovery is a citation to a journalist Peter Tompkins (1978: 219). The academic credibility and accuracy of Tompkins can be judged by his co-authorship with Christopher Bird (1973) of a book which claims that plants can speak to people. In turn, Tompkins' sole evidence for the Russian discovery is a reference with no page number to an Italian publication ("Peter Kolosimo in Terra Senza Tempo ) published in Milan in 1969") that is not listed in the bibliography to Tompkins book. The claim can be found in the translated version (Kolosimo 1973: 3). In the book Kolosimo, who is even less critical than Von Dänniken, claims that both Atlantis and Lemuria existed and were the possible sources for this advanced technology. He also postulates that visitors from outer space have visited earth. The Egyptian telescopes, accepted so easily by Van Sertima and Harding, turn out to be quite evanescent.
See Griaule and Dieterlen 1965.
This book (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965) represents the third and final period of Griaule and Dieterlen's writing on the Sirius myth among the Dogon.
A number of Afrocentrists, whom I have labeled as melanists, propose that melanin has extraordinary properties, which, in turn, make black people biologically superior in intellect, morals, and spirituality to white people (Ortiz de Montellano 1993). Hunter Adams is a melanist, and may well believe that melanin is the source of Dogon knowledge since even his exaggerated claims of visual acuity for "dark-eyed" people are not enough to see Sirius B.
Even this far-fetched claim is not applicable to Sirius B. sirius B is too hot (22,000 degrees Kelvin). Most of its radiation is emitted in the far ultraviolet, and little is emitted in the infrared (Seeds 1988, 137, 195).
References:
Adams, H. H. 1983a. "African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question." In I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 27-46. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
-----1983b. "New Light on the Dogon and Sirius." In I. Van Sertima,ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 47-49. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
-----1987. "Lecture 1st Melanin Conference. San Francisco, Sept. 16-18, 1987. Broadcast "African-American World View" WDTR 90.9 FM Detroit Public School's Radio, September 25, 1990.
-----1988. "Lecture 2nd melanin conference New York, 1988. Broadcast on "African American World View," WDTR 90.9 FM Detroit Public School's Radio, October 2.
-----1990 [1987]. "African and African-American contributions to Science and Technology." In African-American Baseline Essays. Portland, OR: Multnomah School District.
Allen, C. W. 1973. Astrophysical Quantities. 3rd. ed. London: Athlone Press.
Boujou, J. 1991. "Comment," Current Anthropology 12: 159.
Brecher, K. 1979. "Sirius Enigmas," In K. Brecher and M. Feirtag, eds., Astronomy of the Ancients. 91-115. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chlebowski, T., J. P. Halpern, and J. E. Steiner. 1981. "Discovery of a New X-ray Emitting Dwarf Nova 1e 0643.0-1648." The Astrophysical Journal 247: L35-L38.
Clifford, J. 1983. "Power and Dialogue in Ethnography; Marcel Griaule's Initiation," In G. Stocking, ed. Observers Observed. 121-156. Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press.
Douglas, M. 1968. "Dogon Culture: Profane and Arcane." Africa 38: 16-24. Gebre-Egziabher, S. 1993/1994. "Africans' Contributions to Science: A Culture of Excellence." Equity Coalition (University of Michigan School of Education) 3 (#2): 30-31.
Goody, J. 1967. "Review of M. Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmeli: an Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas" American Anthropologist 69: 239-241.
Griaule, M. 1938. Masques Dogon. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.
Griaule, M. and G. Dieterlen. 1950. "Un systeme soudanais de Sirius," Journal de la Societe des Africanistes 20: 273-294
-----1965. Le renard pále. vol.1, fasc.1, Le mythe cosmogonique: La creation du monde. Paris: Musée de l'Homme (Travaux et Memoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie).
Harding, S. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? 223-224. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.
Kolosimo, P. 1973. Timeless Earth. P. Stevenson, trans. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books Inc.
Krupp, E. C. 1991. Beyond the Blue Horizon. Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Lane, P. 1991. "Comment," Current Anthropology 12: 162.
Lefkowitz, M. R. 1993. "Ethnocentric History from Aristobulus to Bernal." Academic Questions. 6(2): 12-20.
Lettens, D. 1971. Mystagogie et mystification: Evaluation de l'oeuvre de Marcel Griaule. Bujumbara: Presses Lavigerie.
Muirden, J. 1969. Astronomy for Amateurs. London: Cassell.
Ortiz de Montellano, B. R. 1991. "Multicultural Pseudoscience: Spreading Scientific Illiteracy Among Minorities. I." Skeptical Inquirer 16(1): 46-50.
-----1993. "Afrocentricity, Melanin and Pseudoscience." Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36: 33-58.
Ridpath, I. 1978. "Investigating the Sirius Mystery," The Skeptical Inquirer Fall: 56-62.
Roberts, A. E. 1987/1988."The Serious Business of Dogon Cosmology," Archaeoastronomy 10: 148-153.
Sagan, C. 1980. Broca's Brain. New York: Ballantine Books.
Schaefer, B. E. 1991. "Glare and Celestial Visibility." Publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 103: 645-660.
Schaefer, B. E. (Physics Department, Yale University). 1995. Personal Communication, 5/18.
Seeds. M. E. 1988. Foundations of Astronomy. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Temple, R. G. 1976. The Sirius Mystery. London: Sidwick and Jackson.
Tompkins, P. 1978. Secrets of the Pyramids. New York: Harper.
Tompkins, P. and C. Bird. 1973. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper.
van Beek, W. E. A. 1991. "Dogon Restudies. A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule," Current Anthropology 12: 139-167.
Van Sertima, I. 1983. "The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview." In I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 7-26. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
Welsing, F. C. 1987. "Lecture 1st Melanin Conference, San Francisco, September 16-17, 1987." Broadcast "African-American World View" WDTR 90.9 Detroit Public School's Radio, September 5 and 12, 1989.
-----1991. The Isis Papers. Chicago: Third World Press.
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Robert Temple replies to his critics:
FROM
www.lunaranomalies.com/temple.htm
The Sirius Mystery Second Edition Chapter I: The Sirius Mystery Today
By Robert Temple (C) 1997
How could the ancient and secret traditions of an African tribe contain highly precise astrophysical information about invisible stars in the Sirius star system? Some of it has only been discovered very recently by modern scientists, half a century after it was recorded by anthropologists studying the tribe.
The situation regarding The Sirius Mystery has changed completely since the initial edition of the book was published in 1976.1 At that time the Dogon tribal tradition insisted upon the existence of a third star in the system of Sirius which modern astronomers could not confirm. Some critics said this proved the hypothesis of the book to be false. If the Earth had been visited by intelligent beings from the system of the star Sirius in the distant past, and they had left behind all this precise information about their star system, the fact that they described the existence of a third star, a Sirius C, whose existence could not be confirmed by modern astronomy rendered the whole account untrustworthy. However, the existence of Sirius C has now been confirmed after all.
The basis of science is that you put forward a hypothesis containing a prediction, and you them seek to verify or refute that prediction. If the prediction is confirmed, the hypothesis is considered to be verified. The hypothesis of The Sirius Mystery has now been verified in a dramatic fashion. In1976 and in the years immediately following I predicted on numerous occasions that the existence of a small red dwarf star would be verified in the Sirius system, to be called Sirius C according to the standard naming schemes of astronomy (there already being an A and a B). This has now happened. In 1995 the French astronomers Daniel Benest and J. L. Duvent published the results of years of study in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics stating that a small red dwarf star, Sirius C, seems to exist in the system of the star Sirius.2 They have detected a perturbation which cannot be explained by any other means.
This Verification is a highly specific astrophysical prediction which has now been confirmed. It is not as if I had predicted that, say, a comet would approach Earth in 1997. There are many comets, and one might approach Earth at any time. But when one predicts that a star will be discovered in a specific star system and that it will be a specific type of star, and when this indeed happens twenty years later, that is rewarding. What is the hypothesis, then, which has been so startlingly confirmed in the best traditions of science?
It is that our planet has at some time in the past been visited by intelligent beings from the system of the star Sirius. This suggestion is no longer considered as astounding as it was in 1976. After all, The Sirius Mystery generated enormous discussion around the world, and has done so continuously since its appearance. Many years have passed and public opinion has undergone a sea change. This book seems to have founded a genre of books, and there are several bearing the names of Sirius or Orion in their titles. In the 1970s it was the 'New Agers' who were the first to adopt the sentiments of The Sirius Mystery, and my phrase 'cosmic trigger' even became the title of one of several books discussing such issues at great length. (See Bibliography for Robert Anton Wilson.) I was recently surprised to learn that the Internet has many web sites discussing The Sirius Mystery, and there seems to be a whole Sirius Industry out there in cyberspace somewhere. A fiend recently asked me: 'Don't you ever use a search engine to look up "Sirius", "Dogon", etc.?' I have to admit I don't. Although I do use the Internet, I don't have time to consult websites discussing my own work -- I leave that to others -- but I am glad to learn that the interest is so large, and I just hope that they've got all the information correct.
Many of my pleas in 1976 have been answered: for instance, a young man read the appendix about Proclus and decided to do his Ph.D. about him, and has now published a very extensive book on the subject of Proclus (see Postscript to my Appendix II). Another man read my book in 1977 while traveling in Egypt and decided to undertake his own researches relating to the subject: his name is Robert Bauval, and his articles and his book The Orion Mystery have explored some fascinating possibilities about the Sirius cult and the Egyptian pyramids. He contacted me several times and when we finally met, he urged me strongly to revise and reprint this book. I took his suggestion seriously, as you can see.
Since the original publication of The Sirius Mystery was a whole generation ago, few will recall the amazing excitement generated by its appearance. No book quite like that had ever been published before. But I had to apologize constantly for talking about little green men, and some close friends dropped me entirely and never spoke to me again because extraterrestrials at that time were not deemed socially acceptable, not any discussion of them. For instance, an older woman with whom I had had what I thought was a close friendship for years, turned her back on me completely after publication of The Sirius Mystery, and mutual friends said it was because I had published something about spacemen, which she thought was simply an appalling thing to do. A number of British scholars whom I knew used to ridicule the fact that I had discussed something as lowbrow as spacemen, and I was therefore clearly not a respectable person.
But the critical reception of The Sirius Mystery in the British press in its first year was universally ecstatic. It got favorable lead reviews on the day of publication in The Times and the Telegraph, and then a seemingly endless mass of reviews in nearly every newspaper and magazine in Britain -- all favorable. No one was more surprised than my publisher, who had dragged his feet for about three years after delivery of the manuscript before the book came out. (My advance for the book was lb500, if you want to know, and no royalties were due for three or four years after delivery because of publication delays.) But the book then went on to become a worldwide best seller, even in such unexpected places as the former Yugoslavia. The country where it was most appreciated was Germany, where it was on the bestseller list for more than six months. Soon after initial publication, the book was favorably reviewed in a lead review by a professor of astronomy for Nature magazine. Later it was reviewed in Time Magazine. It was featured on a Horizon programme on BBC Television (also a Nova programme on PBS in the USA). The British astronomical community, which is not an arrogant community, seemed relatively unshocked by my book. This was possibly because a number of leading astronomers knew me, and I had 'done the right thing' by first airing the subject matter in The Observatory, published by the Royal Greenwich Observatory.3 This had gained the personal support and backing of Professor William McCrea, who as a President of the Royal Astronomical Society, Gold Medal winner, and one of the nicest people in England, commanded universal respect and affection amongst his colleagues. So much was I accepted as part of the background radiation, albeit a rather aberrant part of it, that some good-humoured joking about me appeared in The Observatory. I was thrilled when a spoof appeared in their joke issue of October, 1977,4 as I enjoy anything of that kind. In Germany some of the cartoons about the Sirius Mystery appeared in the newspapers, and that delighted me too. A newspaper cartoonist in America spoofed the Sirius Mystery, and Faith Hubley, an Oscar-winning film animator, did some charming fey animated films inspired by it (only generally inspired, so no income alas). I remember going to see her in New York and holding her three Oscars all at once -- how many people have three Oscars on view in their sitting rooms? I certainly met a lot of interesting characters through the Sirius Mystery. But others I avoided. For instance, the late Timothy Leary was very keen for me to join him in California for some joint grooving on the subject of Sirius, after he got out of prison, but the idea of such a thing was so repellant to me that it still makes me shudder. There is nothing I hate quite so much as drugs and the drug-culture.
But the sad part of the aftermath of The Sirius Mystery was the extreme and virulent hostility towards me by certain security agencies, most notably the American ones. Since I am myself an American by origin, I found this insulting and distressing. On several occasions I was targeted in ways so extreme that they seemed hysterical beyond all belief. I am certain that false information was entered into my security files to blacken my reputation. I was blackballed even in some organizations which seem to me so harmless that I still can't understand it. To give an example, I was co-editing a magazine at one time and decided to join the Foreign Press Association in London so that I could have lunch there and get a press pass. I was told I needed two members to recommend me, and was given the names of two American journalists in London who should be happy to do so. So I asked Bonnie Angelo of Time-Life, and she was delighted. (I later wrote for her London bureau for several years and did British science reporting for Discover magazine.) I then went to another man who was equally friendly and he said he would, and signed my form. That particular man, whom I do not wish to identify, had certain connections in Washington, if you take my meaning. A few hours later, Catherine Postlethwaite, the Secretary of the FPA, told me she had a hysterical phone call from a man insisting that he wanted to use his blackball against me and stop me from joining the FPA. She was completely astonished and said to him he had just signed my form and now on the same day he was trying to blackball me, and how could he possibly explain that? He refused to explain, but was relentlessly insistent. She and the Council took the view in the end that the man was acting unreasonably, for whatever motives, and they overruled his blackball. But I recognized a pattern of behavior which has assailed me on many occasions. There was another time, for instance, when I had commenced what was meant to be a profitable association with a man I knew to make several series of corporate videos, with me as writer and co-producer and his company providing the finance and facilities. We made one video and suddenly everything stopped mysteriously. After some time he told me: 'I really wanted to do these projects with you, but I can't, and even though I am not supposed to tell you, I felt that I owed you an explanation. The fact is that I have had the CIA from America on the phone to me practically every day for the past three weeks harassing me and telling me I must not work with you, and as much as I like you, my life isn't worth living with this kind of continual pressure and interruption of my work every day by hysterical American officials. So that is the reason, and the only reason, why I am withdrawing from our projects together.' I thanked him for being so honest with me.
Several other people were as well. Indeed, one old fellow I was friendly with, a retired Brigadier Shelford Bidwell, actually told me that he had been asked to read The Sirius Mystery and write a thorough report on it for the British security services. He had found it rather difficult because it was not his kind of subject! He hadn't meant to tell me this, but he slipped up when chatting over tea and said by way of being pleasant how interesting The Sirius Mystery was. When I expressed astonishment that he had read something so far from all his other interests, he first said that he had read every word meticulously, as if that explained everything. When I protested that this was quite unbelievable, he had to explain why he had done so. He was so sheepish and embarrassed that I spared him further questioning so that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life with a security breach on his conscience. Another old friend, whom I had known when he was a policeman in a panda car and who is now a famous police commissioner, said he had been approached by MI5 to do a security report on me. He had found it disturbing that there was such suspicion attached to me, and he couldn't explain it, since he wasn't given an explanation himself. He tried to tell them there was nothing at all suspicious about me and that he knew me well, and he wrote up everything he could find about me trying to demonstrate that I was harmless. But they didn't seem to want to be told that and were obviously unsatisfied, which disturbed him even more.
This prosecution went on for more than fifteen years. It cost me income, career opportunities, advancements, and friends. I often wonder about it, especially the frenzied aspects of it. Why were so many people in high places foaming at the mouth in such an uncontrollable manner? Just what was it that I had done? I have never known.
There were two employees of NASA who made attacks on me which I thought went far beyond mere critical disagreement. This was all the more distressing to me because I had been friends for some years with a delightful man, Captain Robert Freitag of the US Navy, who was Deputy Director of the Advanced Programs department of NASA's Office of Space Flight. Bob Freitag and I met through Arthur C. Clarke and when he came to London, Bob and I would often meet for dinner, as we were both very keen on good food and I would try to find something unusual, such as a Hungarian restaurant. On a visit to Washington I called in to see Bob Freitag and he said he had a very bright fellow who worked for him called Jesco von Puttkamer, whom he wanted me to meet. He called him in and I told both of them about The Sirius Mystery.