If the Great Sphinx of Egypt were to magically come to life and appoint a human being as its spokesman, it would likely choose John Anthony West.

As the impetus behind the Emmy Award-winning NBC television documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx (narrated by Charlton Heston), West has become famous world wide for his contention, supported for the first time by on-site geological research, that the Sphinx is more than 7,000 years old.

The Eclectic Viewpoint is delighted that West will make his first public address in Dallas on September 16, no doubt satisfying the intense curiosity of many people who learned of his work through hearing the fascinating presentation by Graham Hancock in June.

West goes well beyond identifying the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza as Atlantean-derived artifacts. His unique contribution lies in explaining the secrets of the sacred science employed by ancient Egyptian engineers in producing both the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza. That science utilized those monuments not as tombs, but as sites for initiatory ritual. Clearly, says West, there is more to those colossal structures than meets the casual eye.

West should know. It was he who arranged for state of the art sonic tests of the earth beneath the Great Sphinx — similar to tests used by petroleum geologists — that discovered the presence of a large cubic chamber only a few feet beneath that monument's "paws."

It was West, too, who convinced Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, Ph.D., to examine the weathering of the Sphinx's sandstone. Much to his own surprise, Schoch discovered clear evidence that the Sphinx was eroded by rain that could have fallen only before the period 5,000 - 6,000 B.C.

At the heart of the Egyptian sacred science, West contends, lies a profound knowledge of harmony and proportion, designed to awaken slumbering humanity into awareness of our divine inheritance. How so? Art, he says, is the medium for that transcendence. The ancient Egyptian builders designed their structures to affect the human head and heart in profound ways, through the precise geometric relationships encoded in the features of the ancient monuments themselves.

Nor is John Anthony West content to present this information for the purposes of skewering the arrogance of skeptics or impressing popular audiences. His aim is to provide time-tested knowledge that will be of practical use in the art, architecture and religious life of our own civilization as it evolves beyond the crises of the current age.

"Whatever that civilization may be, it is my hope that it will be based upon a return to ancient principles we find articulated in the sacred science of the Egyptians," he says.

Drawing on a wealth of color slides accumulated over more than 30 years of continual research, West will illustrate his presentation with little-known images of the Temple of Luxor, also known as "The Temple of Man" for its incorporation of the proportions of the human body and other sacred ratios in its structure.

West is no armchair Egyptologist. He is, like Gaston Maspero and other great archaeological pioneers, an explorer, adventurer and iconoclast. Above all, he is a writer in the best sense of the word, having long supported himself penning stories, novels, screenplays and the still in print The Case for Astrology. Gifted with a wickedly sharp wit, he revels in the rhetoric of satire and is most himself when poking fun at the panjandrums of modern, materialist civilization — the priests of what he calls the "Church of Progress."

Drawing on his travels and his immersion in the writings of the late great R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, father of the symbolist school of Egyptological studies, West has also authored Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. That book has the distinction of being the first comprehensive overview of Egyptian religious thought and science directed to the general reader, unfettered by the dull materialism of academic orthodoxy.

Since first becoming fascinated with Egypt in the mid 1960s, John Anthony West has gained intimate familiarity with the monuments that line the Nile, and has summarized that knowledge in his panoramic new book, The Traveller's Key to Ancient Egypt. But most of all, through scores of public lectures over the years, he has gained skill in making understandable the basics of the sacred science of initiation which those monuments embody.

There is much at stake in restoring our knowledge of ancient Egypt. All the world is waiting to know if the fabled Great Hall of Records of Atlantean civilization lies beneath the paws of the Sphinx, or perhaps at the end of the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Moreover, did the precursors to the Egyptians possess a science of immortality that they passed on through a secret, oral tradition?

If anyone is capable of putting these questions in their full and proper context, it is John Anthony West, and he doesn't pull his punches. His presentation is sure to be electrifying, and not to be missed.

After his lecture, Mr. West will be available to sign copies of his books which will be on sale in the lobby.

— Ed Conroy