The Serius Lie

The Sirius Lie

Extract of a Lecture for the Turn of the Millennium

by Filip Coppins


Scientists learn that
the Dogon do not possess secret knowledge
about
the star Sirius and its companions. What some consider to be
the best evidence for extraterrestrial beings coming from Sirius is
therefore dealt a devastating blow.
In 1976, two major books on extra-terrestrial visitation were
published:



Zecharia Sitchin’s The Twelfth Planet and
Robert
Temple's The Sirius Mystery. Of the two, the latter became by
far more famous and even attained the status of a semi-scientific
work, as many were impressed with the scientific-looking train of
logic of the book. Temple stated that the Dogon, a tribe in Africa,
possessed extraordinary knowledge on the star system Sirius, the
brightest star in the sky, the star which became the marker of an
important ancient Egyptian calendar, the star which according to
some is at the centre of beliefs held by the Freemasons, the star
which according to some is where the forefathers of the human race
might have come from.


Temple claimed that the Dogon possessed knowledge on Sirius B and
Sirius C, companion stars to Sirius that are, however, invisible to
the naked eye. How did the Dogon know about their existence? Temple
referred to legends of a mythical creature Oannes, who might have
been an extraterrestrial being descending on Earth from the stars,
to bring wisdom to our forefathers. In 1998, Temple republished the
book with the subtitle “new scientific evidence of alien contact
5,000 years ago”. The books glory came crashing down earlier
this summer, when Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince published
The Stargate Conspiracy.



That book stated that Temple had been highly influenced in his thinking by his mentor, Arthur M. Young. Young was
a fervent believer in “the Council of Nine”, a group of channelled
entities that claim they are the nine creator gods of ancient Egypt.
“The Nine” are part of the UFO and New Age and many claim to be in
contact with them. “The Nine” also claim to be extraterrestrial
beings, from the star Sirius. In 1952, Young was one of the nine
people present during the “first contact” with the Council, where
contact was initiated by

Andrija Puharich, the man who brought the
Israeli spoon bender and presumed psychic Uri Geller to America.



It was Young who gave Temple in 1965 a French article on the secret
star lore of the Dogon, an article written by Griaule and
Dieterlen.
In 1966, Temple, at the impressionable age of 21, became Secretary
of of Young’s Foundation for the Study of Consciousness. In
1967, Temple began work on what would eventually become The Sirius
Mystery. As Picknett and Prince have been able to show,
Temple's arguments are often based on erroneous readings of
encyclopedic entries and misrepresentations of ancient Egyptian
mythology.



They conclude that Temple very much wanted to please his mentor. It is, however, a fact that the end result is indeed a book
that would have pleased Young and his beliefs in extraterrestrial
beings from Sirius very much, whether or not this was the intention
of Temple. Though Temple's work is now therefore definitely
challenged, the core of the mystery remained intact. At the centre
of this enigma is the work of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen,
two French anthropologists, who wrote down the secret knowledge on
“Sirius B” and “Sirius C” in their book

The Pale Fox. But now, in
another recent publication,

Ancient Mysteries, by Peter James and
Nick Thorpe, this “mystery” is also uncloaked, as a hoax or a lie,
perpetrated by Griaule.


To recapitulate, Griaule was initiated in the secret mysteries of
the male Dogon, who allegedly told him the secrets of Sirius
invisible companions. Sirius (sigu tolo in their language) had two
star companions. This was revealed in an article that was published
by Griaule and Dieterlen in the French language in 1950.


In the 1930s, when their research occurred, Sirius B was known to
have existed, even though it was only photographed in 1970. There
was little if no possibility that the Dogon had learned this
knowledge from Westerners that had visited them prior to Griaule and
Dieterlen. Griaule and Dieterlen published their findings on the
Sirius companions without any reference or comment on how
extra-ordinary the Dogon knowledge was. It would be others,
particularly Temple in the sixties and seventies, who would zoom in
on that aspect.



To quote Ancient Mysteries:

“While Temple, following Griaule, assumes that to polo is the invisible star Sirius B, the Dogon themselves, as reported by Griaule, say something quite
different.”

To quote the Dogon:

“When Digitaria (to polo) is close to Sirius, the latter becomes brighter; when it is at its most
distant from Sirius, Digitaria gives off a twinkling effect,
suggesting several stars to the observer.”

James and Thorpe wonder as anyone reading this should do whether to polo is
therefore an ordinary star near Sirius, not an invisible companion,
as Griaule and Temple suggest. The biggest challenge to Griaule,
however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. He points out
that Griaule and Dieterlen stand alone in the world in their claims
on the secrets of the Dogon. No other anthropologist supports their
opinion or claims.


In 1991, Van Beek led a team of anthropologists who declared that
they could find absolutely no trace of the detailed Sirius lore
reported by the French anthropologists. James and Thorpe understate
the problem when they say that “this is very worrying”.


Griaule had stated that about fifteen percent of the Dogon tribe
knew about this secret knowledge, but Van Beek could, in a decade of
research with the Dogon, find not a single trace of this knowledge.
Van Beek was initially keen to find evidence for Griaules
claims, but had to admit that there may have been a major problem
with Griaules claims. Even more worrying is Griaules
background. Though an anthropologist, Griaule was interested in
astronomy, which he had studied in Paris.



As James and Thorpe point out, he took star maps along with him on his field trips as a way of
prompting his informants to divulge their knowledge of the stars. Griaule himself was aware of the discovery of
Sirius B and it is
quite likely that he over interpreted the Dogon responses to his
questions. In the 1920s, before Griaule went to the Dogon, there
were also unconfirmed sightings of Sirius C. Was Griaule told by his
informants what he wanted to believe? It seems, alas, that the truth
is even worse, at least for Griaules reputation.


Van Beek actually spoke to the original informants of Griaule, who
stated:

“though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius], they disagree completely with each other as
to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that
should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus
that through a different position appears as sigu tolo. All agree,
however, that they learned about the star from Griaule.”

So whatever knowledge they possessed, it was knowledge coming from Griaule, not knowledge native to the Dogon tribe. Van Beek also
discovered that the Dogon are of course aware of the brightest star
in the sky, which they do not, however, call sigu tolo, as Griaule
claimed, but dana tolo.



To quote James and Thorpe:

“As for Sirius B, only Griaules informants had ever heard of it.”

With this, the Dogon mystery comes to a crashing halt. The Sirius
Mystery influenced more than twenty years of thinking about our
possible ancestry from “forefathers” who have come from the stars.
In 1996, Temple was quick to point out the new speculation in
scientific circles on the possible existence of Sirius C, which made
the claims by Griaule even more spectacular and accurate.



But Temple was apparently not aware of Van Beeks recent research. With
this new research of both Van Beek and the authors of Ancient
Mysteries, we uncover how Griaule himself was responsible for the
creation of a modern myth, which, in retrospect, has created such an
industry and almost religious belief that the scope and intensity
can hardly be fathomed. Nigel Appleby, in his withdrawn publication
Hall of the Gods, which was, according to Appleby himself,
tremendously influenced by Temple's book, Appleby spoke about
how Temple believed that present-day authorities were apparently
unwilling to set aside the blinkers of orthodoxy or were unable to
admit the validity of anything that lies outside their field or
offers a challenge to its status quo.



He further wondered whether
there was also a modern arrogance that could not countenance the
possible scientific superiority of earlier civilizations. It seems,
alas, that Griaule, a scientist, wanted to give earlier
civilizations more knowledge than they actually possessed. And
various popular authors and readers have since been led into a
modern mythology, the “Age of the Dark Sirius Companion

This subject came up while I was in chat, and this is my response. This is why it is sometimes importante to 'research' a bit further back than two years ago.