Why It's Important to Study Ancient Prophecy | Graham Hancock

You paid careful attention to prophecy and, you know, a lot of modern scientists, they dismiss prophecy completely. And I'm curious to know, like, what is the importance of looking into prophecy? Well, again, this is also an area where my work is misrepresented by others. Let us call these fringe subjects, like telepathy, telekinesis, for example, psi powers. I've devoted very little of my work, actually, to these issues. I think if you were to go through all the thousands of pages I've written, you'd be lucky if you'd find 40 which cover those topics. But where I do cover them, it's with this notion, when looking for a missing chapter in our past, we should not be looking for ourselves. That would be a waste of time and effort. We should assume that what we're looking for, the haunting feeling I have that there's something there, that there's something missing, whatever it is, it's not us. We need to look for something different. And that's why I refuse to close my mind completely to traditions that have come down to us from the past that speak of priests levitating large blocks in the air using chanting, for example, speak of magicians performing certain extraordinary tricks, for example. We shouldn't ignore those completely. And amongst those is prophecy, the notion. Prophecy, of course, in a materialist, reductionist, western science frame of reference is impossible. It's impossible. We cannot know the future. We can make informed guesses about how the future might turn out, but we can't prophesy the future. We can't have a revelation about what the future will be. That's the view of mainstream science. Well, I'm not sure that's necessarily correct. Like I say, I share with Rupert Sheldrake the view that consciousness is not local to the brain, that the brain is a receiver of consciousness rather than a generator of consciousness to use that model. And if that's the case, if that model is right, rather the mainstream model is the generator model. But if it's a receiver of consciousness, then it is possible that the consciousness field is much larger than we imagine and that that information might come in. We don't really understand time and space that well. So while it's never been a main focus of my work, I really doubt if more than 40 pages could be found, probably less on these kinds of subjects in my books. It's not a subject that I've closed my mind to completely. Well, you've read Thoth Prophecy a few times, and the first time I heard you read it, I really... That particular vision of the future is so resonant with how we are today, with how the world is today. You did an illustrated version of that. Yeah, it deeply moved me. Yeah, it is deeply moving, it deeply moves me. And it's the hermetic lament, really, that's what it is. Is it a prophecy of future times? If you were to think about it, it could be almost any future times. I mean, consider what the world went through in the 20th century. Consider what the world went through in the Middle Ages, in all the horrors that were perpetrated then. I think it's speaking to the human condition, that we go through these cycles where we imagine ourselves elevated to the highest possible level, and then we make some terrible mistakes and we plunge down to the absolute end, the abyss, and in that process, there's a cleansing. And out of that emerges a new prospect for the future. I think that's what the hermetic lament is touching upon, and that's why that resonates so much for me. But is it the prophecy of a specific time in the future? Eerily, the kind of world that's depicted in that amazing piece of poetry does feel like the world we live in today. It really does. Yeah. Maybe people in the Middle Ages would have felt the same if they'd known the prophecy. Yeah, there was a line in there. With the Second World War, that felt like the end of the world to many people. Yeah, I distinctly remember there was a line in there that said that there will come a time when death will be preferred to life. I see that all the time when you see factory farming or you see the people cutting down the Amazon. We live in that time. It feels like it's directed at us. That's as close as I'll get to being spooky on it. It feels like it's directed to us. It feels that way to me. That's why I read it. It also feels like a wake-up call. Not a gloom-and-doom warning, but a wake-up call. This doesn't have to happen. Prefer life more than death. That's the message that comes out of it. Glorify in this beautiful gift that the universe has given us. Repay what we were given by the universe. The way human beings are behaving now. There's constant mutual negativity. There's constant attacks and destruction. The absolute failure to recognize human beings from another ethnic or religious group as actually being human at all. This is a terrible, terrible problem that the world is facing today. We are a species that can absolutely bring about our own destruction. We are capable of doing it. We don't need a comet coming in at 60,000 miles an hour. We can do it all ourselves. We've got enough feckless leaders with their hands on nuclear buttons now around the world. Leaders with the mentality of enraged teenagers. Nevertheless, have the capacity to end human civilization. It's up to us. Do we accept that kind of thing in the future? Are we just going to be passive pawns in this game that may mean no future for humanity? Are we going to trust our leaders? Is their behavior trustworthy? I look at a bunch of macho teenagers, really. That's what the leadership of the world feels like right now. Utter failure of leadership on every continent. Maybe we give them all ayahuasca. The trouble is they would never do that. I've often jokingly suggested that a dozen sessions with ayahuasca would be helpful to any politician. Help to clarify why they're doing what they're doing, why they say what they say. Make them confront their own dark side. Make them take responsibility for their actions and behavior. There are some people who are so thick-headed that even mother ayahuasca can't get through to them, so I don't know. It is clear to me that we, when I say we as a civilization, I mean the whole technological civilization of the world is really one civilization now. There's different levels of wealth, but there really is one global civilization. We have major choices in front of us. At the moment, there is too much sheep behavior. We all have these big brains, but too few people are thinking for themselves and putting truth to power, speaking truth to power. There's too little of that happening. At the same time, we're saddled with a gang of completely irresponsible leaders. We have been trained into following the leader, into accepting leadership. I'm not sure how much longer we need leaders. I'm not sure how much longer leaders are going to serve the human species and how much longer they're actually going to act as agents for the destruction of the human species. I hope that those who have their hands on the red button right now are going to see that this climate of hatred that is being spread in the world is not helpful. I hope very much that that will be the case, but I'm not confident. Does our modern civilization mirror a past civilization that maybe before Atlantis, before they got wiped out? Again, we talked about the hermetic lament of Tarth's prophecy and now, of course, Plato's Atlantis. What's fundamental in that story for me at this level of discourse is his notion that Atlantis, whatever it was, was once a beautiful civilization that honored and nurtured spirit, was kind and generous, but that it became corrupt. The corruption crept in little by little, and it became arrogant, and it became cruel, and it began to impose its power upon others all around the world, and in a ringing phrase, that it ceased to wear its prosperity with moderation. In other words, it became conceited, arrogant, overproud, and that was why the universe struck Atlantis down in Plato's story. And if there's any civilization that ticks all those boxes today, it's ours. It's the technological civilization that unfortunately is running the world today. I'm not against technology. Technology does wonderful things. It just needs to open up. We need to honor our spiritual part, and we need to realize that there's more than one way of doing that, that the mainstream monotheistic faiths may be one way, but they're not the only way. We need much more tolerance all around the world in every way for the differences and the similarities between human beings. I guess I'll just ask the simple question. Are you optimistic about the future? I have to be, because I have nine grandchildren. I have to be. And I see the joy in their eyes, and the way that they're embracing the world, and just how wonderful the world is. This is the eyes of a child. Everything is new. It's so exciting. There's so much energy goes into it, into the appreciation and the love of that. I have to be optimistic for the future. I have to be optimistic that those who are presently misleading the world will turn a corner and will start to emphasize the shared qualities that all human beings have, rather than our differences. Well, I think you've played a great part in creating an optimism for the future. I can say for myself, these theories or these scientific ideas that we're just machines with no free will, and we're just mechanical parts, and then you come in and say, we're actually part of this greater thing, this great tradition, and this universal culture, and you can be part of it, and you can explore it. You can go to these sites, and touch it, and learn for yourself. It's very inspiring. Good. Well, I'm glad if I've been helpful.