Pyramid power
Encyclopedia
Pyramid power refers to alleged supernatural
or paranormal
properties of the ancient Egyptian pyramids
and objects of similar shape. With this power, model pyramids are said to preserve foods, sharpen or maintain the sharpneses of razor blades, improve health (some people "were so energized that they could not cope with the dynamo effects they experienced"), function "as a thought-form incubator," trigger sexual urges, and cause other dramatic effects.
Pyramid power is one of many pseudoscientific theories regarding pyramids. Such theories are collectively referred to as pyramidology
.
author Antoine Bovis. Unverifiable stories persist that Bovis stumbled across a paranormal force while standing inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. According to this legend, he saw a garbage can inside the chamber which had been piled with dead animals that had wandered into the structure. Bovis noticed that these small carcasses were not decaying, and inferred that the structure was somehow preserving them.
This popular version is contradicted by an account discovered by Junior Skeptic magazine in which Bovis denies visiting Egypt. In this self-published French-language booklet Bovis off-handedly ascribes the discovery of pyramid power to armchair reasoning and mystical experiments in Europe using a dowsing pendulum:
Despite the legend, the idea that pyramids could preserve food was not a result of a chance discovery made while standing inside the Great Pyramid, but followed from Bovis's previous convictions regarding dowsing:
Inspired by Bovis, in 1949 a Czechoslovakian named Karel Drbal applied for a patent on a "Pharaoh’s shaving device": a model pyramid alleged to maintain the sharpness of razor blades. According to the patent, "The method of maintaining the razor blades and straight razor blades sharp by placing them in the magnetic field in such a way that the sharp edge lies in the direction of the magnetic lines." Drbal alleged that his device would focus "the earth's magnetic field," although he was unclear how this would work or whether it was the device's shape or materials that exerted the effect.
Drbal's contention that razors could be sharpened (or have their sharpness maintained) by alignment with the points of the compass or the Earth's magnetic field was probably not original to him. Junior Skeptic magazine discovered exactly similar claims published decades earlier. In 1933, The Times of London carried letters claiming, "if I oriented my razor blades…N. and S. by the compass…they tend to last considerably longer” and “The idea of keeping razor blades in a magnetic field is not quite new. About the year 1900 I found this out….”
In 1968, paranormal authors Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder visited Czechoslovakia, where they happened across a cardboard pyramid manufactured commercially by Drbal. They met with Drbal, then dedicated a chapter of their popular 1970 book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain to pyramid power. This book introduced to the English-speaking world both the concept of pyramid power and the apocryphal origin story about Antoine Bovis.
. In the 1970s, both authors released books entitled Pyramid Power. This led to a lawsuit by Flanagan against Toth, according to Toth.
However, the term in the context of its current usage first appeared in print in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's 1970 book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. They claim the term was coined by "Czechoslovakian researchers" in the 1960s.
al value of food
s to sharpening knives
by placing them under such a pyramid (aka the "Pat Flanagan Experimental Sensor") overnight.
Volodymyr Krasnoholovets claimed to have replicated some of those claims. He reported that a razor blade
placed in a pyramid "resonator" became smoother and less angular over time.
These claims gained little credibility, even within the alternative science
community.
It has been claimed that, like alchemy
, the concept of "pyramid power" is symbol
ic rather than literal, having to do with psychological
effects and not physical
ones.
It is also believed that "pyramid power" is scalar resonance caused by the geometric shape of the pyramid, and is related to shape energy. The electromagnetic
frequencies are converted by the direct influence of the pyramid shape causing them to harmonize the energy
or orgone
.
It has been said that oxidized coins become shining and new after being placed in the pyramids for several days.
Also, there are claims that water which has been placed inside of the pyramid for some time can be used to accelerate healing of wounds, bringing youth to the skin, making plants grow faster etc.
Flanagan’s book was featured on the cover and in the lyrics of The Alan Parsons Project
album Pyramid. "Pyramania", a song from the album, mocked the idea of pyramid power.
Pyramid power was the subject of a famous spoof by Martin Gardner
in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American
June 1974, featuring his favorite characters Dr. Matrix
and Iva Matrix.
The theories behind Pyramid Power convinced the Onan Family, hotel and condo developers in Gurnee, Illinois
, to build the "Pyramid House" in 1977.
Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia
built a 4-story replica of the Great Pyramid, alleged by the winery to improve the quality of wine aged within it.
A religion founded in 1975 called Summum
completed in 1979 the construction of a pyramid called the Summum Pyramid
in Salt Lake City, Utah
.
Terry Pratchett
's fantasy novel Pyramids
incorporates many elements of the Pyramid Power theory; in the novel, an industry develops based around pyramids' ability to stop time.
It is common in New Age
magazines to see advertisements for open metal-poled pyramids large enough to meditate
under. The New Age group Share International
, founded by Benjamin Creme
, practices a form of meditation called Transmission Meditation in which they meditate under an open metal-poled tetrahedron
; they believe that by doing so, they are tuning in to cosmic energy radiating from a cosmic entity known as Maitreya
.
was aired on the Discovery Channel
in which a basic test of pyramid power was performed, using pyramids built to the specifications found in pyramid power claims, such as using the location of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza
. Several scenarios were tested - perishables (in this case food and a flower) rotting, and razor blade sharpening, with a test subject and a control subject for each scenario. In all but one case there was no appreciable difference between items in the pyramids and items outside. However, the bisected apple showed promise for pyramid power, as the control half had indeed decayed to a greater extent than the apple-slice placed inside the pyramid. It was theorized that the chopsaw used to cut the apple may have had had a significant microbial content on one side of the blade which could have transplanted bacteria from itself onto one half of the apple that was cut. A second test was conducted, in which three subjects matched to three control groups where tested. In this last test, there was no appreciable difference between items at the macroscopic scale.
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
or paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
properties of the ancient Egyptian pyramids
Egyptian pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found...
and objects of similar shape. With this power, model pyramids are said to preserve foods, sharpen or maintain the sharpneses of razor blades, improve health (some people "were so energized that they could not cope with the dynamo effects they experienced"), function "as a thought-form incubator," trigger sexual urges, and cause other dramatic effects.
Pyramid power is one of many pseudoscientific theories regarding pyramids. Such theories are collectively referred to as pyramidology
Pyramidology
Pyramidology is a term used, sometimes disparagingly, to refer to various pseudoscientific speculations regarding pyramids, most often the Giza Necropolis and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt...
.
History
The idea that small models of pyramids can preserve food was developed in the 1930s by French hardware store owner and pendulum dowsingDowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth radiation , without the use of scientific apparatus...
author Antoine Bovis. Unverifiable stories persist that Bovis stumbled across a paranormal force while standing inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. According to this legend, he saw a garbage can inside the chamber which had been piled with dead animals that had wandered into the structure. Bovis noticed that these small carcasses were not decaying, and inferred that the structure was somehow preserving them.
This popular version is contradicted by an account discovered by Junior Skeptic magazine in which Bovis denies visiting Egypt. In this self-published French-language booklet Bovis off-handedly ascribes the discovery of pyramid power to armchair reasoning and mystical experiments in Europe using a dowsing pendulum:
I have supposed that Egyptians were already very good dowsers and had oriented their pyramid by means of rod and pendulum. Being unable to go there to experiment and verify the radiations of the Keops Pyramid, I have built with cardboard some pyramids that you can see now, and I was astonished when, having built a regular pyramid and oriented it, I found the positive at the East, the negative at the West, and at the North and the South, dual-positive and dual-negative.
Despite the legend, the idea that pyramids could preserve food was not a result of a chance discovery made while standing inside the Great Pyramid, but followed from Bovis's previous convictions regarding dowsing:
A new supposition: since with the help of our positive 2000° magnetic plates we can mummify small animals, could the pyramid have the same property? I tried, and as you can observe with the small fish and the little piece of meat still hanging, I succeeded totally.
Inspired by Bovis, in 1949 a Czechoslovakian named Karel Drbal applied for a patent on a "Pharaoh’s shaving device": a model pyramid alleged to maintain the sharpness of razor blades. According to the patent, "The method of maintaining the razor blades and straight razor blades sharp by placing them in the magnetic field in such a way that the sharp edge lies in the direction of the magnetic lines." Drbal alleged that his device would focus "the earth's magnetic field," although he was unclear how this would work or whether it was the device's shape or materials that exerted the effect.
Drbal's contention that razors could be sharpened (or have their sharpness maintained) by alignment with the points of the compass or the Earth's magnetic field was probably not original to him. Junior Skeptic magazine discovered exactly similar claims published decades earlier. In 1933, The Times of London carried letters claiming, "if I oriented my razor blades…N. and S. by the compass…they tend to last considerably longer” and “The idea of keeping razor blades in a magnetic field is not quite new. About the year 1900 I found this out….”
In 1968, paranormal authors Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder visited Czechoslovakia, where they happened across a cardboard pyramid manufactured commercially by Drbal. They met with Drbal, then dedicated a chapter of their popular 1970 book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain to pyramid power. This book introduced to the English-speaking world both the concept of pyramid power and the apocryphal origin story about Antoine Bovis.
Origin of term
There is debate over who coined the term "pyramid power." Author Max Toth has claimed he coined the phrase, as has Patrick FlanaganPatrick Flanagan
Gillis Patrick Flanagan is an American inventor.-Childhood:As a teenager Flanagan invented a device he called a Neurophone which he claimed transmitted sound via the nervous system to the brain. This earned him a profile in Life magazine, which called him a "unique, mature and inquisitive scientist"...
. In the 1970s, both authors released books entitled Pyramid Power. This led to a lawsuit by Flanagan against Toth, according to Toth.
However, the term in the context of its current usage first appeared in print in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's 1970 book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. They claim the term was coined by "Czechoslovakian researchers" in the 1960s.
Claims
According to Flanagan, pyramids with the exact relative dimensions of Egyptian pyramids act as "an effective resonator of randomly polarized microwave signals which can be converted into electrical energy." Flanagan's claims range from enhancing the nutritionNutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
al value of food
Food
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
s to sharpening knives
Knife
A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...
by placing them under such a pyramid (aka the "Pat Flanagan Experimental Sensor") overnight.
Volodymyr Krasnoholovets claimed to have replicated some of those claims. He reported that a razor blade
Razor blade
Razor blade may refer to* A razor* The Razor Blade, a 1920s racing car* Razor blade steel, a type of steel originally designed specifically for razor blades...
placed in a pyramid "resonator" became smoother and less angular over time.
These claims gained little credibility, even within the alternative science
Fringe science
Fringe science is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline....
community.
It has been claimed that, like alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
, the concept of "pyramid power" is symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic rather than literal, having to do with psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
effects and not physical
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
ones.
It is also believed that "pyramid power" is scalar resonance caused by the geometric shape of the pyramid, and is related to shape energy. The electromagnetic
Electromagnetic radiation
Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy that exhibits wave-like behavior as it travels through space...
frequencies are converted by the direct influence of the pyramid shape causing them to harmonize the energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
or orgone
Orgone
Orgone energy is a theory originally proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich. Reich, originally part of Sigmund Freud's Vienna circle, extrapolated the Freudian concept of libido first as a biophysical and later as a universal life force...
.
It has been said that oxidized coins become shining and new after being placed in the pyramids for several days.
Also, there are claims that water which has been placed inside of the pyramid for some time can be used to accelerate healing of wounds, bringing youth to the skin, making plants grow faster etc.
Impact
The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of singer Eric Woolfson and keyboardist Alan Parsons surrounded by a varying number of session musicians....
album Pyramid. "Pyramania", a song from the album, mocked the idea of pyramid power.
Pyramid power was the subject of a famous spoof by Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
June 1974, featuring his favorite characters Dr. Matrix
Irving Joshua Matrix
Irving Joshua Matrix , born Irving Joshua Bush and commonly known as Dr. Matrix, was a fictitious polymath scientist, scholar, and entrepreneur who made extraordinary contributions to perpetual motion engineering, Biblical cryptography and numerology, pyramid power, pentagonal meditation,...
and Iva Matrix.
The theories behind Pyramid Power convinced the Onan Family, hotel and condo developers in Gurnee, Illinois
Gurnee, Illinois
Gurnee is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 28,834 at the 2000 census, and estimated to be 30,772 in 2005. The village borders the city of Waukegan and is considered a part of the Chicago metropolitan area. Gurnee is perhaps best known for being the location of...
, to build the "Pyramid House" in 1977.
Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia
Kelowna, British Columbia
Kelowna is a city on Okanagan Lake in the Okanagan Valley, in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada. Its name derives from a Okanagan language term for "grizzly bear"...
built a 4-story replica of the Great Pyramid, alleged by the winery to improve the quality of wine aged within it.
A religion founded in 1975 called Summum
Summum
Summum is a religion and philosophy that began in 1975 as a result of Claude "Corky" Nowell's claimed encounter with beings he described as "Summa Individuals"...
completed in 1979 the construction of a pyramid called the Summum Pyramid
Summum Pyramid
The Summum Pyramid is a sanctuary and temple used by the organization of Summum for instruction in the Summum philosophy. It is located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was built during 1977 to 1979. The pyramid is 40 feet long at the base, 26 feet high, and is oriented towards True North of the Earth...
in Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
.
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...
's fantasy novel Pyramids
Pyramids (Discworld)
Pyramids is the BSFA winning seventh Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, published in 1989.-Plot summary:The main character of Pyramids is Teppic, prince of the tiny kingdom of Djelibeybi. Djelibeybi is the Discworld counterpart to Ancient Egypt....
incorporates many elements of the Pyramid Power theory; in the novel, an industry develops based around pyramids' ability to stop time.
It is common in New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
magazines to see advertisements for open metal-poled pyramids large enough to meditate
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
under. The New Age group Share International
Share International
Share International Foundation is a spiritual movement founded by Benjamin Creme with its main offices in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Los Angeles...
, founded by Benjamin Creme
Benjamin Creme
Benjamin Creme is a Scottish artist, author, esotericist, and editor of Share International magazine, a monthly non-profit magazine and website....
, practices a form of meditation called Transmission Meditation in which they meditate under an open metal-poled tetrahedron
Tetrahedron
In geometry, a tetrahedron is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. A regular tetrahedron is one in which the four triangles are regular, or "equilateral", and is one of the Platonic solids...
; they believe that by doing so, they are tuning in to cosmic energy radiating from a cosmic entity known as Maitreya
Maitreya (Theosophy)
Maitreya or Lord Maitreya is described in Theosophical literature of the late 19th-century and subsequent periods as an advanced spiritual entity and high-ranking member of a hidden Spiritual Hierarchy, the so-called Masters of the Ancient Wisdom...
.
MythBusters
In 2005, an episode of MythBustersMythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
was aired on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
in which a basic test of pyramid power was performed, using pyramids built to the specifications found in pyramid power claims, such as using the location of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is now El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact...
. Several scenarios were tested - perishables (in this case food and a flower) rotting, and razor blade sharpening, with a test subject and a control subject for each scenario. In all but one case there was no appreciable difference between items in the pyramids and items outside. However, the bisected apple showed promise for pyramid power, as the control half had indeed decayed to a greater extent than the apple-slice placed inside the pyramid. It was theorized that the chopsaw used to cut the apple may have had had a significant microbial content on one side of the blade which could have transplanted bacteria from itself onto one half of the apple that was cut. A second test was conducted, in which three subjects matched to three control groups where tested. In this last test, there was no appreciable difference between items at the macroscopic scale.
External links
- Loxton, Daniel: Pyramid Power Skeptic (Altadena, CA), 22-JUN-05 - original research that details on origins, makers and backgrounds
- Videos that Expand More on the Effects of Pyramids