By Philip Gardiner

This is an economic world. It is structured around money and anything that gets in the way of the machine is more often than not moved or eradicated. There is no room for anything to oppose this. Each one of us is in the system whether we like it or not and we believe there is often precious little we can do about it. But how did all this begin? And who was the originator of the system?

In the beginning mankind was mainly nomadic. For a period so long that it staggers the mind we travelled along coastlines, around lakes and traversed river systems. We simply could not travel across land because most of it was covered in trees and vegetation. We did so purely to hunt and collect foodstuffs and then returned to our boats.

This is the way and form mankind evolved his mind over vast periods of time. But how was man able to navigate over the sea? This is an open question and is the subject of much debate. He certainly watched the stars, sun and moon. He placed markers along the way, but he also had an inbuilt homing mechanism – a sense of direction – now mostly lost to us due to the confusion of the modern society and modern mind. There are many scientific test results, which confirm that man does have the ability, probably via his pineal organ, to judge direction intuitively [more on this in the forthcoming DVD Quantum Mind of God]. This ability is due to the electromagnetic energy of the earth and the magnetic connection between it and the pineal organ within the brain in exactly the same way that a bird uses magnetite within its pineal organ to pick up the electromagnetic resonance. In short, mankind had connection to the world around him and this is just one way in which we were more in-tune with our environment. But we were in-tune in other ways too – we were in-tune with our needs and natures larder. We followed herds as they migrated; we knew which plants were safe to eat and we only took what we needed because we simply could not carry an overabundance of produce. All the anthropological evidence reveals that mankind was more peaceful and even lived longer lives than his later descendents who would settle down.

There is evidence from author Crichton Miller, that mankind developed tools for navigation too. Miller found that for thousands of years mankind watched the stars and developed specific tools in the form of circles and crosses to map the planets, stars and constellations and this became a holy writ. Evidence of this is found in stone circles, carvings in ancient caves and religious icons such as the Celtic Cross. Anybody who wishes to understand this ancient knowledge at a deeper level should read Miller’s extraordinary book, The Golden Thread of Time and now his DVD The Cross of Thoth. But the point is, that man needed to navigate, because it was his way of life for eons and today’s static and settled situation is in stark contrast to this natural in-tune order.

Eventually it appears that populations grew and nomadic cultures began to partly settle down. These settlements were probably originally staging posts for extended stays during winter or other such times and eventually the rot set it. Remaining in one location for extended periods brought with it all-manner of problems. Firstly it brought the need to cultivate the land and to store provisions because the animal larder would carry on moving and natural vegetation would carry on and follow the seasons. Secondly it brought disease because of human and animal waste and all kinds of other filth. And thirdly it brought strife in ways that the nomadic smaller groups would not have foreseen. These settlements would be attracting more and more people into one single location – forcing people together for longer and longer periods of time, in cramped and rapidly unnatural environments. Mankind was growing apart from nature and had to learn a whole set of new skills, from building to being more socially oriented. Structures of wood and structures of society brought with them hierarchy and alpha dominance in a different way to the previous nomadic lifestyle. Groups were now bigger and so conflicts between those who would be in dominance would have been more frequent. But it was too late, the old ways were rapidly being forgotten. It is amazing how quickly the skills of the past generation can disappear. For example, today there are people who do not even know how to cook because their lifestyle has simply never called for the skill. We are constantly battling the balance between the income stream and the spending stream and we find very little room for such trivial matters as cooking, let alone time for our children and loved ones. But cooking is only one of the many skills that we are losing due to mass production of ready-made meals and lifestyle habits. In England, and I am sure this is true of many nations, even schools had to be legislated to bring back real cooked food.

Eventually though our new-found settlements had to find ways to deal with their new social problems and the mind of man has a unique tool for the purpose – imagination. Man developed, from within his own imagination, new social structures of tribal leadership and those who had maintained or learned new skills important for the group would become dominant. These were not always the strongest and best fighters or hunters, but more often than not those who knew how to heal and gel the community. We call these people medicine men, shaman and latterly priests. As the Old Testament so eruditely informs us, it was the priesthood who would guide the people and even crown kings. The Royal family of England is still to this day crowned by the Church as a direct result of this same ancient power structure – uniting religion and State.

With this new advent of power came many new ways of manipulating the growing masses who were herded into the new imaginative religious structure and given rules in the form of dogma, doctrine and tradition. Now power was from the gods and nobody could argue with such imagined power. The knowledge of navigation, of the stars, of the seasons and of course of the reality of the mind of man became powerful tools in the armoury of the Church. To know the seasons enabled the priest to appear magical and in-touch with god. To know how to read the stars for navigation enabled the tribe to trade and invade. To know the mind of man allowed the priesthood to manipulate and control. All of this was truly a powerful knowledge. This knowledge was passed down within the brotherhoods in symbolism, latterly in texts and certainly in tradition.

Tradition is not simply something we imagine our grandparents had. It is not just something those stuffy looking pompous Englishmen re-enact everyday in Parliament or that wonderfully colourful changing of the guard outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

Our English term tradition comes from Traditio, a Latin word meaning the 'delivery of doctrine' and 'surrender', but more pertinent to us it means 'something handed down.' There is depth here as many will know, for this 'something handed down' is not just the old pocket watch that our ancestors sported in the 19th century and has been passed from one generation to another. No, tradition is also the continuance of something much more profound, much more in-tune with the Da Vinci Code concept of the bloodline.

In the very first usage of the word we find that it was in fact used for the passing on of doctrine and religious dogma - a sacred act itself and something which became symbolic. The word 'sacred' itself comes from Old Latin saceres meaning to bind, restrict, enclose and protect. And this is where much of the truth lies - in symbolism and sacredness, for both are binding and surrendering to something being passed down. The acts of those parliamentarians and the guard at Buckingham Palace are symbolic and sacred acts, representing something other than the physical and literal things we see. The same is true of religious tradition. There is no truth that the taking of the bread and wine at the Eucharist ritual - a tradition seen across the world - actually is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. No, the act is symbolic and solemnly reminds the religious initiate of the fact that he is part of a greater Christian brotherhood; that he is accepting Christ and that His body was broken and blood spilt for us and that he is a continuation of a long line. Whatever ones opinion on that religious act, the fact remains that it is a very powerful tool for reminding the masses of their place in the world via an act that is emotionally strong. This is a manipulating tradition, kept alive to keep the sheep in the fold.

As we can now see, tradition can be a very strong device when allied to emotion and psychologists have discovered that allegorical tales are very often absorbed better than any literal telling.

In this allegorical or symbolic respect there are other words that also relate and of which we should take note. These words now often hold mystery to us, because we have lost the meaning of them, as we have all too often lost the meaning of tradition. Myth, fable, tale, story - all these, and more, are used in the 'traditional' way to pass on hidden or esoteric knowledge from one generation to another. And this is a 'tradition' going back in time for thousands of years - the custom of the storyteller, whose job it was to keep alive the truths of the tribe. From the medicine man and shaman to druid, Brahman and later Catholic priest, we have entrusted our social history and religious emotional beliefs to the wise-man of the tribe or culture. Held within the many myths, fables, tales and stories are a great many truths awaiting the key to unlock them again. And many of these truths are symbolic codes, hiding a secret belief that the contemporary religious authority would have looked down upon.

And I am of the opinion that with a new set of eyes we can ourselves find the keys to unlock these historical conundrums – as Crichton Miller uncovered the navigational truths of the cross and circle. We have to understand our ancestors were able to do this and we have to start by realising that they were humans just like us. They had fears, hopes and struggled to survive and to comprehend their very place in the universe. In the depth of understanding our ancestors discovered that they needed to find a way of passing on the knowledge they had uncovered and they formed tales. Our historical friends were not simple folk as we are led to believe. They had the same brain size as ourselves and in fact in many ways they were better attuned to the thing we now divisively call nature. You see, in our 'modern' materialistic state we forget that we are human beings that have come from and live in the natural universe. We forget, because we create things from within our own imaginations and surround ourselves with them, and hence we today find ourselves in an imaginary world of 'things.' This pc in front of me is formed from the imagination of thousands of individuals. In one respect it is not a natural item, but in another because it was formed from the mind of man then it is the result of that natural human factor - imagination. It is this ability of the mind to create a concept that has spawned stories and tales, myths and fables to explain to each new generation the knowledge of the last. And so what is the key we need to understand these concepts? It is imagination in tune with intuition or our connection to nature.

Tradition is a treasure chest of esoteric secrets awaiting the imagination of some bright spark to find the key and unlock it. If 'tradition' is that thing handed down from one generation to another, then it is our duty to find the key. And today that key lies in the quantum world. For within the all-too peculiar world of quantum physics what we shall discover is the connection through time of our own bloodline, our own thoughts and patterns, passing on through time and connected to the great matrix of the mind of the universe. As we share huge percentages of our DNA with our fellow animals and plants, so too we share a universal quantum connection - we are indeed entangled at the sub-atomic particle level to all reality - not just now, but for all time - and this quantum reality may very well be intelligent.

Tradition may have hidden this peculiar knowledge in symbolism and sacred texts and called it God. It is time to understand tradition afresh and to understand the sacred nature of humanity and consciousness. For in so doing we shall see all-manner of things hidden there by our ancestors and be better able to understand ourselves. It is not a bad thing to realise that we are in fact directly linked via genetics and maybe even quantum physics to the mind of the first man and woman.

These incredible and intuitive ‘traditions’ then, emerged from early man and his understanding of the world around him and how he survived. But all was not well in mankind’s early settled Eden’s and differences of opinion would often arise between settled groups or tribes and not least of these differences was jealousy. This distinctly negative element of the human mind would involve jealousy over land, produce, mates and of course the still relevant modern problem of jealousy over holy sites. However, trade also played a big part in the greater mix and so tribes grew steadily more and more wealthy in terms of possessions as each area had its own special supply of salt, gold, animals, plants and even access routes to the more distant lands. This was the birth of our modern system many thousands of years ago – built upon an unnatural desire to remain in one location and yet also built upon the natural desire to be the best – one of the strongest evolutionary drives.

Settlements became trading posts for vast quantities of goods and demarcation of roles emerged with blacksmiths, farmers, potters and all-manner of other roles. Trading went on like this for millennia, with the priesthood often controlling the process and growing in power themselves as their own communities prospered. They would take a percentage of the produce and offer it to the gods in-order to maintain the weather and good fortune of the tribe. The greatest of gods – the sun – would be worshipped and aided in its journey to reappear the following day. It was the giver of life and the destroyer. It mirrored the duality in the mind of man himself and so we were formed in his likeness. We were solar beings, formed and given life by the power of the golden orb and nothing became more important than ensuring its daily and yearly cycles. The priests of this great power were the alpha males, the medicine men or shaman of earlier times. It was they who gave authority to the king or pharaoh who himself must be the son of the sun on earth. He was the marketing tool of the priesthood and history is awash with the violent downfalls of the solar king when he stepped out of line and upset the priesthood.

Markets emerged near or even in Temples and bustled with people and produce of the wider world. Social commerce also emerged as priesthoods shared or traded knowledge with other cultures and soon belief systems across vast continents had little to set them apart. Much of this knowledge or tradition was very important and of value to the community and involved knowledge of astrology and astronomy to enable them to predict the seasons and for navigation. As the power base of trade grew, so the ability to navigate became extremely important and as the majority of the population had forgotten how to do this, it emerged as a special knowledge guarded closely by the elite.

Control of the trading markets, both of the land upon which it was carried out and the navigation required to operate it, grew so powerful over time that the priesthood would do almost anything to maintain control. This is why much religious literature is awash with rules and regulations for trade and commerce. The system of trading eventually needed organising differently because of lies. It all began because of deceit and it remains pretty much the same today. At the market a thing called a promise emerged whereby a man trading a goat for a pig would promise to bring his goat the following market day only to fail in his promise. The priesthood or leader who controlled the process realised that some new system was needed to come into play and so created money – from the word monere, meaning “to warn.”

This new money was very cleverly based upon the gods themselves adding incredible weight and fear to the promise. Gold was manifestly the solar divinity – the sun. And silver was the lunar deity – a mirror of the sun. Handing over a symbolic representation of the gods was a powerful promise and the gods would know if you reneged on your promise. The Church itself backed the promise and so became the bank. Power was well and truly in the hands of the few and the rest of us simply had no choice but to conform. This situation is almost unchanged and today many banks are at least still partly owned by various Churches – not least of which is the Catholic Church.

Our lives are still and more so than ever run by money and we have no choice but to live in the world of commerce. Everyday we hand over our images of the solar deities, which are no longer even real gold but instead are promises of gold. There are more promises of gold in the world than there is gold and so the system, created because of lies and deceit, is itself a total lie. But it is the system we live in and individually we must make our own decisions on how to do so.


Philip Gardiner is the best selling author of Secrets of the Serpents, Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon’s Temple Revealed and the forthcoming The Ark, The Shroud and Mary. He has several DVD’s out including Secrets of the Serpent and regularly speaks around the world. In June he will speak in Sydney at the Metaphysical and Scientific Symposium and in November he will appear at lectures in Arizona. On October 13th he will speak to gatherings in Paris marking the 700th Templar downfall anniversary. With Michael Bourne he is currently producing a UFO documentary as well as helping to steer Real2can.com. His website is www.gardinersworld.com