Review of The Orion Prophecy

After months of waiting, The Orion Prophecy by Patrick Geryl and Gino Ratinckx was finally published in December 2001, by Adventures Unlimited. Patrick had kindly sent me the manuscript to read, about 3 months before publication, and we corresponded regarding certain aspects of the book. I decided to wait until the final version was published before reviewing the book, and I'm glad I did, because in the final version, the translation from Belgian to English had been tidied up. Also the inclusion of pictures made the text much easier to understand.

Patrick Geryl had been following a fruit and vegetable diet, to improve longevity, and had several pension plans, that were to mature in 2015, and could not be cashed before that year. Then he read The Mayan Prophecies, by Gilbert and Cotterell, (see item 3), which concluded that the Maya had based their Long Count calendar around long-term magnetic cycles of the Sun, and that the world faced a catastrophe in the year 2012. Geryl was so convinced by the book that he cancelled his pension plans, after 20 years of subscriptions, and started his own investigation into the matter, to look for more evidence.

He read other books, including The Path of The Pole by Hapgood; John Anthony West's Serpent in the Sky; and Keepers of Genesis by Hancock and Bauval. These authors provided evidence that, at the end of the last Ice Age, a race of people settled in Egypt following a catastrophe in which their own homeland disappeared (i.e. Atlantis). The Sphinx and pyramids were remnants of those times, about 10,500 years ago, and encoded into them was information about the catastrophe. West and Hancock and Bauval all thought that there was a Hall of Records buried at Giza, which would contain detailed records of the Atlantean civilization and the catastrophe that ended it.

Geryl got an intuitive feeling that the answer was in the Zodiacs of Dendera Temple in Egypt, - that the rectangular zodiac in particular, contains coded information about the catastrophe that ended Atlantis, and how to calculate when the cycle would recur. He enlisted the help of a Belgian astronomer - Gino Ratinckx, who had studied the Dendera Temple and Mayan hieroglyphs. Ratinckx suggested that Geryl read a rare translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, by the Frenchman Albert Slosman, and Geryl was so amazed by what he read, that he forgot all about the Dendera zodiac. This is a shame, since David Pratt has published information (on the internet here ) on the Dendera zodiacs that finds encoded 3 previous world catastrophes - just as Slosman had discovered by decoding the Egyptian Book of the Dead (which should more accurately be called "The Book of Coming Forth by Day"), and John lash has found 2012 encoded in the round zodiac of Dendera (see item 38 ).

Slosman's translation is called Le Livre de l'Au-Dela de la Vie , and The Orion Prophecy includes some extracts, together with the original hieroglyphs. I wanted to compare the translation with that of Wallis Budge, and was at first confused by the fact that Geryl and Ratinckx don't mention which chapter the extracts are from. Patrick supplied me with some photocopied pages from Slosman's book, which identified the chapter as Chapter 17. Another point for anyone wishing to compare the translations, is that Budge lists the manuscript by line number, while Geryl and Ratinckx only provide line numbers for the last of 5 extracts, and these numbers differ from Budge's. For those of you who wish to compare, see note 1. Once you have found the chapter and line in Budge and compared it, you may be surpised to find that the translations are completely different. Since Budge was a respected Egyptologist, and Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, this seems a little odd. However, on page 14-15 of Slosman's book, he gives his own translation of the "premier verset" (verse one), which is the end of line 5 up to line 9. He then compares his translation to four others ²that are all very different, and comments that the others have allowed their Christian cultural bias to infect the translation, and that is why their efforts are "perfectly incomprehensible". It must be said; Slosman's translation - at least, the parts I've seen, does seem to be less awkward, and to make more sense than the others (including Budge). Anyway, if you aren't convinced, you must suspend disbelief awhile longer...

Slosman's translation of Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead implies that the Earth has previously undergone some kind of pole-shift which caused the "sun to rise at a new horizon", and that Osiris, who was represented in the sky by the Orion constellation, had something to do with it. This could have been via an axis shift, crustal displacement, or a change in the direction of rotation. Slosman also gives "an intermediate note" that this event - the Great Cataclysm - happened on July 27th in the year 9792 BC. Gino Ratinckx checked manually, (since his astronomical software didn't go back to 9792 BC), to see if there was any astronomical pattern on 27th July 9792 BC that repeated on 21-22 December 2012 AD. He claims to have found "the positions of Orion and Aldebaran match both data precisely". Not only that, but Gino says (p.28) that the configuration "occurs three times in twelve thousand years! The other date is 3114 BC." This latter year is, of course, the year in which the Mayan long count started. Later in the book, when checked with astronomical software, only 2 matches were found to be correct- 9792 BC and 2012 AD.

Eventually, Slosman's even-rarer second book, Le Grand Cataclysme, was tracked down, in which he tells the whole story of the end of Atlantis, and how the Atlanteans had calculated the precise date 200 years before the event. They were able to do this because there had been a previous cataclysm in 21,312 BC, and a third one back in 29,808 BC. Slosman had given various lengths for 8 of the astronomical ages, and Geryl went to work decoding precessional clues. The next step was to try and find The Labyrinth, since Slosman indicated that the Atlanteans built this huge building in order to store all their astronomical and cataclysm-calculating knowledge. Gino followed the lead of Robert Bauval, and laid a sky-map over a map of Egypt, lining up Orion's belt with the 3 Giza pyramids. The temple of Dendera was found to correspond to the star Deneb; Esna temple corresponded to the star Altair; the Hawara area corresponded to the position of the Hyades, and Hawara pyramid corresponded to the star Aldebaran. The Hyades are known to astronomers as...the Labyrinth! What is more, this place is exactly where an explorer called Lespius claimed that the Labyrinth had once been. After visiting Egypt, the pair confirmed that Dendera has an association with Deneb, and also that all the signs reported by Herodotus, who had visited the Labyrinth, showed that Hawara was the location, but that it was not destroyed, but buried right there, beneath the water table, and that Lespius had not dug deep enough! However, it would take a lot of funding to excavate under the water table.

At this point, Geryl and Ratinckx's quest was sounding very similar to that of Nigel Appleby and his Operation Hermes team (see items 26-28). Appleby had also laid a sky-map over a map of Egypt, lining up the belt of Orion with the 3 Giza pyramids, to find the position of the Hall of Records, which would contain a time-capsule of crucial information left by Atlanteans, to prepare us for another catastrophe in 2012. In Appleby's case, the time-capsule corresponded with the position of the star Sirius. There is also another parallel: on p.359 of his book, Hall of the Gods, Appleby refers us to a figure 121 and says,

"you will notice that as Leo and the Sun are rising at the same time, Venus is visible above them, following the same path. In these particular circumstances, Venus's path forms a planetary loop, lasting for just 6 months in any one year, which takes it across the top of the constellation of Orion. This phenomenon only occurs once every 12,500 years, and the next time it will occur happens to be the year 2012."

When Gino got a new astronomical software package, ("Loadstar"), and was able to reconstruct the sky of 9792 BC, Patrick asked him to look for a link between Venus and Orion. Gino found that in both 9792 BC and 2012 AD, Venus makes a "planetary retrograde loop" above Orion, and near Gemini. Gino said that Venus makes the same "movement" "about every 250 years", but "only in 9792 BC and 2012 is the precession the same!" This seems to contradict the earlier conclusion that the position of Orion (and Aldebaran), recur 3 times in 12,000 years (and we can only assume, since it is not explained, that the 3114 BC position was an error due to working it out manually). It also contradicts what Appleby said, and I asked Patrick about it in the following e-mail exchange;

Interesting about the planetary retrograde loop of Venus - Appleby said in Hall of the Gods, (p.359) that this effect occurs every 12,500 years - where it goes across the top of Orion (you said every 11,000 years). Like you, he said it will happen in 2012, but implies it last happened around 10,500 BC, where you say 9792 BC

His reply:

THE RETROGRADE LOOP HAPPENS EVERY 250 YEARS
BUT!!!!!
ONLY IN 9792 AND 2012 IS THE PRECESSION THE SAME! SEE THE TEXT IN OUR BOOK.

APPLEBY GOT THE INFORMATION FROM US (HE MENTIONED US IN HIS FOREWORD)
I DON'T KNOW WHY HE SAID 10.500 BC.

I then remembered that Adrian Gilbert had referred to the same event in his book, Signs in the Sky (see item 47), but had said that in August 2012, Venus will be "stationary in the hand of Orion". I also remembered that at the Gizagate conference in London in March 1998, I had heard lectures by Nigel Appleby, Adrian Gilbert, and Gino Ratinckx! West and Bauval were also speaking. (See SC magazine number 80 - Sep/Oct 1998 - for summary of the conference). I will have more to say about this later in this review.

When Geryl turned back to Slosman's Le Livre de l'Au-dela , de la Vie, he found that there was a paragraph that was written entirely in red to stress its importance, and in Slosman's commentary, he said that within this paragraph (or just following it) there was a hidden code concerning the 9792 BC catastrophe. Geryl and Ratinckx were astounded to find what seemed to be corroboration for their discovery of the retrograde loop linking 9792 BC to 2012 AD. The passage concerns the "Mathematical Combinations" of the starry vault that were a portent of destruction, following which, "the old Lion turned around". These starry combinations would seem to involve "The Twins" and "Osiris (Orion)". "Life began again after that, under the course of the new Sun....Thus the survivors of the catastrophe coming from heaven, are purified, in order to accomplish the Orders originally passed on by Osiris (Orion)."

To the authors, here was conformation from ancient Egypt that around the time of the catastrophe, in 9792 BC, there was an astronomical phenomenon occurring near Gemini (the Twins) and Orion, and that the survivors' task was to transmit the knowledge down the ages, that when it recurred, so would the catastrophe. The catastrophe, which came from heaven, during the age of Leo, caused the Earth's magnetic poles to reverse, (scientists now warn this is about to happen) and (as the core disconnected from the mantle), crustal slip occurred, accompanied by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. The Sun was reborn from a new horizon, as the Earth came to a stand-still in its axial rotation, and began to rotate in the opposite direction (see item item32). From this point on, the precession of the equinoxes were reversed, so that the equinox sun slowly precessed back out of Leo into Cancer. This was supported by Herodotus when he said "The Sun fell into the sea". Surprisingly, Geryl and Ratinckx forgot to include an even more significant quote from Herodotus, who said, when reporting the wisdom of Egyptian priests, "The sun, however, had within this period of time [341 generations], on four several (sic) occasions, moved from his wonted course, twice rising where he now sets and twice setting where now he rises.'³ Herodotus converts the figure of 341 generations into a period of 11,340 years. This fits their data very well, including the previous catastrophes. If the average age of a generation used by Herodotus was increased by about 1.4 years, from 33.25 to 34.6, it would give a period around the 11,803 year-period of Slosman.

Geryl and Ratinckx go on to conclude that Maurice Cotterell (in The Mayan Prophecies) was right, and that the cataclysm will be caused by a major magnetic reversal on the Sun, that reverses the earth's magnetic poles, and they also (p.152) repeat from The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls (Morton & Thomas p.206); "just before sunset, Central American time, 21-22* December 2012", that "Venus sinks below the western horizon, and at the same time, the Pleiades will rise above the horizon in the east. Symbolically speaking, we will see the death of Venus and the birth of the Pleiades" This, they say, means a new precessional cycle. Morton & Thomas got the whole idea from Adrian Gilbert, (Cotterell's co-author of The Mayan Prophecies,) who based it around his discovery that the Birth of Venus occurred in the same symbolic way, on 12 August 3114 BC, at the start of the current 13-Baktun cycle (see item 35 ). However, John Major Jenkins checked and double-checked Gilbert's claims and found Gilbert had made a mistake. He then interviewed him, but Gilbert had no explanation (click here for the interview). In the same interview, regarding the observation that the complex mathematics and graphs in The Mayan Prophecies do not actually explain the end of the 13-Baktun cycle in 2012, Gilbert's answers were not convincing (see item 3 ) *Morton & Thomas have "21 December 2012"

Apart from the authors' endorsement of The Mayan Prophecies, there are several other points that did not quite add up.The first is the authors' identification of the Amenhemet III pyramid at Hawara with the star Aldebaran. As you can see in this map of the Nile area (from The Complete Pyramids by Mark Lehner, Orion added), when Orion is drawn to scale, with the belt stars aligned to the 3 Giza pyramids, Aldebaran's position ( in the constellation of Taurus), is nowhere near the Hawara area - not even in the same direction.

This means that the identification of the Labyrinth building with the Hyades (the astronomical Labyrinth) is also wrong. I haven't got a map showing Dendera and Esna's positions in relation to Giza, so I can't comment on those.

I did an internet search on the retrograde loops of Venus, to try and find the facts. I found out that all the planets perform a retrograde loop, when they pass the earth (Mercury & Venus), or when the earth overtakes them (the other planets). The whole thing is covered on a site called AJ's Cosmic Thing, which includes this explanation:

"The simplest familiar analogy to this phenomenon is perhaps that of two vehicles passing one another on a freeway. The vehicle being passed is moving forward relative to a distant object (say a tree some distance from the road) as seen from the other vehicle when at a significant distance. Once the passing vehicle comes close to and overtakes the other vehicle, the passed vehicle will briefly appear to move backwards as against the distant tree. As the passing vehicle moves farther away, the regular apparent relative motion resumes, with the passed vehicle appearing to move forward relative to the tree".

There is also a Cosmic Thinglet (applet) at this site, where you can project the orbit of Venus and some of the other planets, forward at a variety of speeds. It only goes up to 2003 unfortunately, but you can watch as Venus goes through a loop starting on (approximately) Jan 1st 1998 where she reverses direction until 6/7 February 1998, when when she resumes normal rotation. If you keep it running, you will find that the next time Venus stops in her tracks is 2 August 1999, when she loops backward until 12 September 1999, then resumes forward motion. The period between retrograde loops (6 Feb 98 - 12 September 99) is thus 584 days. This 584-day Venus cycle was watched very closely by the Maya - 65 of these 584-day cycles = 1 Venus round (37,960 days), which equals 2 Calendar Rounds; (584 is the average figure, since there are slight variations). The first of these loops had Sagittarius in the background; the second had Leo in the background. The pattern continues, with Venus looping against another part of the zodiac every 584 days. After 5 loops, Venus is back to its starting point, so that the 5 points form a pentagram. 5 x 584 = 2920 days = exactly 8 Mayan Haab cycles (of 365 days each).

As you can see in this diagram, (which is not accurate, but just for illustration purposes), when Venus returns to the its starting point, (at the top of the circle) after 8 years, it is actually slightly further round the zodiac circle (by about 2.4 degrees). It takes 243 years for Venus to return to the exact point where it started, which is 152 of the 584-day cycles (the true average is around 583.92). This is equal to 30.4 pentagrams, or 30 pentagrams plus 2 extra 584 day cycles (or 2 points of a pentagram), bringing it into alignment with the original 5 points. NB This is not a complete revolution of the pentagram, but a 72 degree revolution. It takes more than a multiple of the 8-year pentagram because the constellations have also precessed over 240 years, by about 3 degrees. One complete revolution of the pentagram takes 1199 years. I have checked all these movements on astronomical software - thus, the pattern which starts with a standstill on 14th May 2012 AD, is a repeat of the pattern which started 243 years previously on 12th May 1769 AD, and these are both repeats of the pattern which occurred 1199 years previous to 2012, on 26th April 813 AD. Here are 3 sites where you can download free astronomical software, to check for yourself (thanks to Zyzygyz of Time Wave Zero 2012 for his help on this):

This explains Geryl & Ratinckx's "250-year" Venus retrograde loop cycle, but what about the 11,803-year cycle (between 9792 BC & 2012 AD)? None of the above free software is designed to go back as far as 9792 BC, but the My Stars software can be "forced into it" by entering the date BC 9792/11/25, then running it back & forth till you find it. (The display date will probably show something like" BC 9790/-8/-12 "; but be warned: my computer crashed several times trying this). However, just around here was the exact pattern shown by Geryl & Ratinckx for 9792 BC:

The loop in 2012 was at first thought by the authors of The Orion Prophecy to be the same as the 9792 BC loop, (p.137-138), then they realized that in 2012, the loop appeared to the right of Orion, while in 9792 BC, it had appeared to the left of Orion:

Patrick Geryl had thought this loop was the code they were looking for, but now, he was "starting to doubt it" (p.138), until Gino reassured him that it only happens "about every 250 years", but that precession only matched in 9792 BC and 2012. The authors then concluded that, since the 9792 BC & 2012 loops are "opposites of each other" in 3 ways,⁴ and that "the Earth also starts turning in the OPPOSITE direction after a polar reversal", then this must be a code of OPPOSITES. However, they failed to spot that, since every 8 years, the point of the pentagram returns to a point about 2 degrees away from its position 8 years previously, this means that between 1924 and 2012 there are 12 retrograde loops of Venus above Orion.

Positions of 12 Venus loops at 8-year intervals above Orion, between 1924 and 2012

This has all been checked on the free software mentioned above. Every 243 years, the loops recur in exactly these same 12 positions over another 88-year period (1681-1769). As a result, the "opposite" status of the 9792 BC loop position and the 2012 loop position becomes much less obvious. Scroll up to the 9792 BC loop, above, and then back to this selection of 12 loops, to decide which is "opposite" to the 9792 BC one. All of them have the same 3 opposite criteria ⁴as the 2012 loop. I would say that the 1980 loop is the best candidate for opposite, ( 9792 BC: 2nd standstill above hand of Orion, 1980: first standstill above hand of Orion) while the 1924 loop is the best match (which is what authors were originally searching for p.137-138) to the 9792 BC loop, since these both stand still in Gemini and loop back towards the hand of Orion.

a)...the 11,803-year period is wrong, and it should be a period of the same length as that between 9792 BC and 1980 AD (or 1924), but obviously not this particular period itself, since the world did not end in 1980 (or 1924). Therefore it should be a period of 11,715 (or 11,771) years (don't forget there was no "year zero", if you're working this out!), and that, presuming that the 2012 AD pattern is the warning sign, the original catastrophe must have been in 9704 (or 9648)BC. We are not told how Slosman got the year 9792 BC, so cannot speculate further... except, maybe it should be 11,520 years, since that is the period between the catastrophe in 21,312 BC and 9792 BC; and 11,520 = 7200 x 584, or 7200 Venus cycles. However, there was no Venus loop in 21,312 BC, so the authors say...so maybe that's wrong too.

This means that not only is Appleby's conclusion erroneous as he was connecting it with 10,500 BC, but also Adrian Gilbert's, since the position of Venus as "stationary in the hand of Orion" was more accurate in 1924.

Since we have now determined that the 11,803-year period is wrong, it makes most of the mathematics in the book superfluous. However, on p.135, Geryl says, "I'm begging you on hands and knees to review my calculations and maybe find other connections", so let's have a look: (skip this paragraph if big decimals make you giddy)

On p.129, Geryl admits that he made an error in calculating the period between the 9792 BC catastrophe and the one which follows it. He forgot about the fact that there is no "year zero" in the Gregorian calendar, since the year following the theoretical birth of Christ was 1 AD and the year previous to it was 1 BC. So one year always has to be taken off the calculation from minus to plus numbers. As a result, he initially calculated 11,804 years for the cycle length, and went on to play with the figure to see what he came up with. He claims that this helped him to solve the riddle, even though it was the wrong number. On p.130 he divides 11,804 by 117, which he got from The Mayan Prophecies (p.296-297), "because it was known and used by the Maya to obtain large numbers". The result is 100.8888888888. He then divided by 36 and 52 "because they were known by the Maya and old Egyptians", to get the numbers 327.88888888 and 227. He then subtracted 100.888888888 from 327.88888888 and got 227 (despite there being 10 eights after the first 100.8etc and 9 after the second, and eight after 327.8etc. - probably just a "misprint"). He then started to "multiply the number of days in a year, following the two calendars" (i.e. 11,804 multiplied by 365.25; 365; and 360 - Julian year, Haabs & Tuns). He got 3 numbers as a result - 4,311,411; 4,308,460; and 4,249,440. He then divided these 3 numbers by 227 to get 18,993; 18,980; 18,720. Then he couldn't believe his eyes, when he recognised the ""holy" numbers of the Maya" - 18,980 and 18,720.

18,980 is the number of days in a Calendar Round of 52 Haabs (52 x 365 = 18,980). Geryl probably takes 18,720 as a holy number because there are 1,872,000 days in the 13-Baktun cycle, and 18,720 is a harmonic of this number.

However, ANY number could have been used in place of 11,804, even 11,803 (we'll take 18,980 as an example, but this is true of all 3 calculations), because he originally got the number 227 by dividing 11,804 by 52. Then he multiplied the same number by 365, to get 4,308,460. He then divided the second result by the first to get 18,980. We can do the same thing with any number, such as 104 for example: 104 divided by 52 = 2. 104 x 365 = 37,960. 37,960 divided by 2 = 18,980. That's a simple example, but it will work with any number! Here is a similar problem:

The numbers are developed further, until the conclusion is reached that the Maya and Egyptians predicted the same day for the end of the world.

On p.235-6, Geryl says that if he sees a decimal with repeating numbers, he takes it as a clue, and his calculations involve up to 10 decimal places (after the point), subtracting certain numbers "without knowing why" (p.131), or multiplying and dividing "purely out of curiosity" (p.133) any numbers used by the Maya or Egyptians. I pointed out to Patrick that the Maya did not use a decimal point (and that is why they used so many calendars as cross-checks, and counted long cycles to get extra accuracy using whole numbers):

I'M VERY SORRY BUT YOU CAN ONLY DECODE THE DRESDEN CODEX WITH OUR NUMBERING
SYSTEM!
=> SO THEY KNEW IT AND USED IT
EVERY MATHEMATICIAN WILL SEE THAT MY DECODING IS VERY, VERY RIGHT

It's time to name that mathematician! There are many more examples of this number-play, and Geryl himself, comes up with the term "esoteric numerology" (p.182), to describe these kind of machinations, even going as far as to say, (p.237), "If this is not a brilliant game, I am insane" (!) but thank Osiris, I don't have to go through them all because we have now shown that the cycle is not 11,803 years, unless the retrograde loops have nothing to do with it, and even if they don't, the maths needs to be completely re-done.

p.184: "Finding the precession requires the knowledge of two points in a year when days and nights were equal"

Sorry, not true: Precession can just as easily, if not more easily, be measured from the Winter Solstice as Jenkins has shown the Maya did, (see item 5) or from the Summer Solstice, as Gilbert has suggested the Egyptians did (see item 47).

p.133-134: By a logic impossible to follow, Geryl concludes that "each year the earth is 3.33333 seconds behind, compared with the year before".

p.110: Having found, with a GPS meter, that the Dendera Zodiac, the axis of the Dendera Temple, and the Temple at Esna all showed a deviation of 5 degrees to the East, the authors were unsurprised to find that the Great Pyramid and its 2 companions, were all aligned 5 degrees East of North.

Mark Lehner was director of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, and in his book, The Complete Pyramids, p.108 &109, he gives the Great pyramid's deviation from North as 3 minutes and 6 seconds of arc. This is about 0.05 degrees, not 5.00 degrees! - More trouble with decimal points. This is even worse than Wilkie and Jones in their book Giza-Genesis - (see Whats New 29 ). The Great Pyramid has always been a marvel of precision, and famous for its accurate alignment to North. Either the GPS meter needs destroying or a visit to the optician may be in order.

The most crucial passage is given by the authors in the French translation of Slosman, and in the English version of the Belgian authors. On p148, the following announcement is made, regarding this translation:

"Anyone who can prove that we have incorrectly translated Slosman's work can have our royalties from this book."

Directly after this, on p.149-150, the French text is given, from line "161 to 167", (= Budge Ch. 17 line 126-132), followed by 2 paragraphs of Slosman's Commentary. The English translation of the verses can be found between pages 140 -145, while the English translation of Slosman's 2-paragraph commentary is on page 141-142. I'm afraid I've got some bad news for our authors...

In line 164, the words "...DES IMPORTANTES COMBINAISONS D'EN HAUT..." is translated as "...of the higher Important Orders..." Obviously, the word "Orders" here, is a mis-translation of the word "Combinaisons". "Commandements" has been translated as "Orders" 3 times; "Combinaisons" as "Combinations", once.⁵

If that's not enough to secure me the cash prize, brace yourselves for the 2 original French paragraphs (sorry - can't do the accents on this keyboard):

"Revenons plutot a l'explication de ce verset tres important qui merite que l'on s'y arrete du point de vue astronomique avec la Constellation du Lion. Car manifestement il s'agit d'une explication concernant le plus important changement dans les configurations astrales de notre ciel. Et elle vient apres un paragraphe ecrit presqu'entierement en rouge qui montre l'extreme importance du texte, tout en cachant la fin de l'alinea non pas pour en amoindrir la portee, mais plutot par une crainte instinctive d'en decrire les effets!

Lors du Grand Cataclysme, survenu le 27 juillet 9792 avant Christ, donc dans ce que nous appelons pour les natifs "en Lion" ou le Soleil durant son periple annuel y sejourne 30 jours environ. Mais le Soleil avancait aussi precessionnellement (durant plus de 2000 ans) devant la constellation du Lion, la Terre bascule sur son axe. Et, comme l'ecrivait Herodote "le Soleil tomba dans la mer". Ceci n'etant qu'une apparence puisque notre astre du jour est "fixe". Ce fut donc notre globe qui se retourna sur lui-meme et fit apparaitre depuis ce jour memorable le Soleil reculant dans l'Espace . Ce qu'il continue de faire encore aujour-d'hui."

The parts in bold red have been totally ignored in the English translation. That constitutes gross mis-translation. Here's the English translation as given by Geryl & Rattinckx:

"This is undoubted(ly) the most important explanation concerning the changing of the star-world in the sky. And this comes after a paragraph almost entirely written in red to stress its importance. The code is hidden in the end of the paragraph, so the full significance of the effects blows you in the face!

The Great cataclysm happened on 27th of July, 9792 BC. This was the age of the Lion and the earth turned on its axis. And as Herodotus wrote, "The Sun fell into the sea". This is because the earth started turning the other way around, which she still does to this today."

Blue = should have been included; green = should have been omitted. This should be enough to release a few Euros.

I had high hopes that this book might shed some new light on the 2012 Mayan end-point, but when the most fascinating part turned out to be a mistake, (the retrograde loops of Venus "code"), and the next most interesting item - the discovery (by overlaying sky maps onto a map of Egypt) that the "astronomical Labyrinth" (the Hyades) corresponds to the already known position of the Labyrinth building - also turned out to be wrong; that only left a French translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (or Chapter 17 of it, anyway), that has been partly translated into English (by a Belgian), and may contain codes about a catastrophe.

On the plus side, the book gives us access to part of a rare translation of Chapter 17 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, encoding 3 catastrophes, (for which, as I said above, David Pratt has found corroboration in the Dendera zodiac). On the negative side, there is alot of misinformation in the book, but at least it does not add much to any anxiety we might have about the World ending soon.

When we're ready for another brilliant game, Geryl promises us (p.171), that when we read his "unbelievably accurate" decoding of the Dresden codex, in his next book, that we "will be almost shocked to death". I look forward to it.

When I reviewed the Orion prophecy, the three astronomical software programs I used, (all freeware or shareware), would not go back as far as 9792 BC (one of them almost did it, but kept crashing the computer & giving nonsense readings).

I recently tried the same thing on a program called Skyglobe. If that sounds familiar, that's because its the one used by Cotterell, Gilbert, Hancock and Bauval in their investigations of ancient Egyptian skies. Well, Skyglobe will reproduce any sky configuration visible from any from any of 120 cites on Earth, between 30,000 BC and 30,000 AD!

Skyglobe shows the 2012 loop exactly as described by Geryl and Rattinckx, when set to show the sky from a Cairo vantage point between May 14th 2012 and June 26th 2012 (the two standstill points in the loop of Venus. However, the 9792 BC loop is not at all the same as that shown in the Orion Prophecy. Skyglobe shows the loop in the Orion Prophecy to be one that occurred 96 years later, in 9696 BC.

In fact, the Venus retrograde loop of 9792 BC as shown on Skyglobe, has an exact match in the year 1609 AD! The exact match for the 2012 AD loop, actually happened in 9389 BC, (starting on 12 February), I found after much searching with Skyglobe. Check it for yourself if you don’t believe me:

1.Orion Prophecy p.25: Book of the Dead Ch. 17, lines 5-9 (Budge 1999 edition, p.376); Orion Prophecy p.25-26: Book of the Dead Ch. 17 lines 25-30; Orion Prophecy p.139-141: Book of the Dead Ch.17, lines 121-130; Orion Prophecy p.145: Book of the Dead Ch.17, lines 131-132; Orion Prophecy p.149-150: Book of the Dead Ch.17, lines126-132 (=Slosman's lines 161-167).

2. They are by P.Pierret, M. Lepage-Renouf, E. Amelineau, and Vicomte Emmanuel de Rouge,

3. Herodotus, The Histories, translated by G. Rawlinson, Everyman's Library, 1992, p. 194

4. Firstly (p.151): " in 9792 BC Venus made its circle above Orion AFTER the cataclysm. In 2012, Venus will make it BEFORE the cataclysm. Secondly (p.151): "In 2012, Venus will turn to the right above Orion, and in 9792 BC, it turned to the left above Orion. Thirdly (p.151): "in 2012, Venus will reach its furthest point at the 30th of June and then turn back to Orion. At that moment, Venus will be between Orion and the Pleiades. In 9792 BC, Venus reached its furthest point at the 25th of December, and then turned back toward Orion."..."The OPPOSITE turnings are very close to the days of the cataclysm." In other words, 30th June (2012 loop date) is close (ish) to 27th July, when the cataclysm supposedly occurred in 9792BC; 25th December (9792 BC loop date) is close to 21st December, when the next cataclysm will supposedly happen.

5. In line 162, the original French says "...SES IMPORTANTS COMMANDEMENTS..." which is translated by Geryl & Rattinckx as "its important orders". In line 163, the words "...les importants commandements..." are translated as "...the important orders...". In line 165 the words "...l'importance des Commanements..." is translated as "...the importance of the orders...". In line 161, the words "...DES COMBINAISONS MATHEMATIQUES..." are translated as "...the Mathematical Combinations..." No argument here;

"I have send you my defintive answer to your remarks concerning the Venus-Orion code for 2012.

"I had seen on the computer simulation that Venus makes its retrograde movement slightly to the right-hand side above Orion. But, was that true? Wasn’t the screen giving an unclear image? I therefore decided to go to Urania, a star observatory and planetarium near my home. On an "open day" they simulated planetary movements, and I asked them to plot the movement of Venus in 2012. It was projected on an immense screen on which you could clearly see the circle-shaped movement. Some adjustments relating to the angle of the earth in relation to Venus were made, in such a way that Betelgeuse and Bellatrix came to lie aligned beneath Venus. The outcome was sensational!"

"In 2012 Venus will stand still exactly above Betelgeuse, a red super giant, and will make its retrograde loop. But this is not all. Venus also stands still above Bellatrix after which it will continue its loop! This means therefore that Venus will make an exact circle-shaped movement above the most important and highest stars of Orion, among which is found Betelgeuse! You cannot imagine a more spectacular code than this one! By this and other reasons am I so convinced of the fact that 2012 is the date of the next cataclysm."

So, if the software ("Loadstar"), showing the 2012 loop of Venus to the right of Orion is inaccurate, it is quite amazing that the independent software package, SkyGlobe, shows the exact same configuration for 2012 (see 2003 update, above). If both these packages have got the 2012 configuration wrong, and Venus will actually reach standstill in its loop above Betelgeuse, thus matching the pattern that Geryl and Rattinckx found for 9792 BC, then this means the modern software packages can't even predict the position of Venus just a decade from the event, so surely their configuration for the pattern in 9792 BC is far more unreliable than the pattern they predicted for 2012! In order to prove his point, Mr. Geryl needs to get the observatory to show him the pattern for 9792 BC. The need for this confirmation for the 9792 position is heightened by the 2003 update above, in which we found that SkyGlobe disagreed with the pattern for 9792 BC, and found that the SkyGlobe version of the 9792 BC pattern actually matched the pattern for 1609 AD!

The Venus Transit of 2012, which happens during the loop, may well be significant (it is already covered in several places on this site) and the Venus retrograde loop may also be significant (see 2012 & crop circles page), but as for any evidence that there was a catastrophe in 9792 BC, and that Atlanteans encoded the pattern of Venus looping over Orion as a warning of a repeat catastrophe in 2012; the evidence is still absent.