Hollow Earth Documentary
Kaskuser Kiss
As theories go, the idea that the Earth is hollow does not garner a lot of respect. For most people, the hollow Earth is probably a close second to the "Earth is flat" theory on that big list of "crackpot" ideas. Nevertheless, as long as there have been people able to sit around a campfire, tales of a mysterious inner world have been part of mankind's heritage.
Unlike the flat Earth, the hollow Earth has not disappeared into that great dustbin of quaint and old-fashioned myths of our ancestors. No longer does anyone have stories to tell of angels taking them up on-high to view the flat Earth, but even into this modern age of spaceflight and personal computers, there are still claims of personal encounters with the lands and people of the inner world.
Part of the hollow Earth mystique is that many ancient civilizations have similar creation legends that involve mankind birthing from the subterranean realm. Some of these myths even seem to suggest that people first came to the surface world via a great opening located somewhere in the northern polar regions.
My picture is made upon old illustrations in Marshall B. Gardner's book "A Journey to the Earth's Interior" from 1920. Diagram showing the earth as a hollow sphere with its polar openings and central sun. The letters at top and bottom of diagram indicate the various steps of an imaginary journey through the planet's interior. At the point marked "D" we catch our first glimpse of the corona of the central sun; at the point marked "E" we can see the central sun in its entirety.
And we can work with the hollow earth stories as with any other stories we have. We can inquire into them. We can recognize them as part of our world of images. We can find their content right here now, and not (only) out there.
Or since the Earth is a sphere and contains everything we are familiar with, all life and what life depends on, it can have to do with our wholeness as humans. The wholeness of our body-psyche which is a whole world in itself. Whatever I see out there in the world mirrors qualities and dynamics right here.
The theory that the earth is hollow sounds, well, nuts. Justen Faull, producer/director of the new film 'Hollow Earth Chronicles: Episode 1 - The Dark Chambers,' explains that belief in a hollow earth is behind a lot of New Age mysticism.
Word of the earth containing a subterranean environment in which people, animals, gods or deities can or do reside is as old as humanity itself. The concept exists in folklore and religions across the world. It is, after all, where Hell and Hades are - theoretically - located.
British geophysicist Edmond Halley was the first academic in the west to go on record to suggest that the world may, in fact, be hollow. In 1692 he floated the idea that the Earth might well consist of a hollow shell around 500 miles thick, that then has two inner concentric shells and an empty inner core.
Ludvig Holberg's 1741 book Niels Klim's Underground Travels is the first novel to mention the notion. Then there are other older works like Giacomo Casanova's 1788 Icosamron, Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery by Captain Adam Seaborn (1820), Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and George Sand's 1864 Laura, Voyage dans le Cristal.
'Suspended in the center (sic) of that hollow is an interior sun that is divided by day and night sides. The other part of the Hollow Earth theory is that near the North and South pole are substantial openings that lead into the interior.
Could there be some substance to the tales of yore, of the hints through ancient maps and mythology? Dan Weiss reveals the transcripts of private conversations with the shadowy head of a secretive sect devoted to some of the most fabled mysteries: the hollow earth, the Holy Grail and the Holy Lance that pierced the breast of Christ. Ritter Von X confirms the documented evidence that even Hitler and his henchmen were convinced that an entrance to the hollow earth existed.
If the transcribed interviews were all this book contained, that would be value enough for the inquisitive reader. But Dan has also gifted us an account of his lifelong search for truth in many forms: spiritual truths, political truths and verities squelched by those in authority. His coming of age begins in Vietnam, as a naive and idealistic volunteer soldier in the nation's battle against encroaching communism. His experience sets him on a course that changes his life. The reader of this searingly honest book inhabits the restless mind of Danny Weiss, an Explorer Extraordinaire whose passion for the purest answers to eternal questions illuminates every page. Danny takes us on a sidecar ride through his life-warts and all-to arrive at a more perfect understanding of what an uncompromising search for personal revelation looks like.
The desire for polar and Antarctic space to be indeterminate and undiscovered, for something beyond human understanding to be hiding underneath or within the ice, is a common underlying feature to Antarctic conspiracies.
It may not be the location of the entrance to a hollow earth, but it is, in fact, hallow(ed). The only continent with no history of human habitation, the vast ice fields of Antarctica have formed a blank slate onto which humanity can project itself: all of itself, from the heroic, imperial superego to the conspiratorial id. It has attracted pilgrims and truth-seekers, scientists and artists, writers and soldiers.
But of course, there are people at this moment trying to comprehend it more fully and objectively. Way out on the ice, at the remote Dome C location on the Antarctic Plateau, scientists are beginning a project to retrieve ice core samples that are over one million years old. It will take them five years to retrieve the oldest samples which lie miles down, against the bedrock of the continent, but scientists will begin to analyze samples right away, seeking evidence of atmospheric shifts in the distant past, which can then be used to predict those that are coming in the near future.
Over the coming months, Long Now will continue to roll out more of this new website. This site is designed to work better across devices, and hopefully makes it easier to discover what Long Now is all about.
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