Lurking in the shadow of the Guidestones

So far, here at the shield, I have talked about current events, major problems of this fair world and the odd moment or two brought on by social blunders, but I have yet to tackle the more ethereal subjects that assail critical thinking and the scientific method, things like the paranormal, the occult and conspiracy theories. Today I remedy to the latter and will not forget the others as future subject matters.

Not too long ago, I stumbled upon an article in Wired magazine that wrote about a place that seems so surreal, it felt like reading about the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber. The monument in question is called the Georgia Guidestones. While the wiki entry is a good resumé, the Wired article gives a very good intro into the subject and explains in detail the story of the creation of the Guidestones and the mystery it is enshrouded in:

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it's hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.

Called the Georgia Guidestones, the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides" themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite).

It goes on to explain the story of the mysterious R.C. Christian, the envoy with a pseudonym, charged with the task of making sure the Guidestones were built and built according to his “group” specifications.

The precise specifications and text it harbors, pushes at least 2 major theories as to what “group” R.C. Christian was representing when helping in creating the Guidestones.

The first comes from Mark Dice, a Christian conservative, who claims that the stones are of “deep Satanic origin”, a cornerstone (pardon the pun) in Luciferian plot to achieve the New World Order. This specific approach to the Guidestones nature has brought on protest groups and, sadly, the desecration of the monument with spray painted messages that urged the destruction of these “evil” stones. Unfortunate that the way they thought of bringing a warning of eminent destruction, was by destroying things themselves…

On a completely different and more multi-tiered Machiavellian level, the second theory, proposed by Jay Weidner, claims that R.C. Christian was using this name as an homage to the founder of the Rosicrucian and that was exactly who he represented, a remnant group of mystics looking to save the earth. As one plunges into the history of the Rose Croix and its origin, one gets taken for a roller coaster ride of ideas, secret societies and conspiracy theories to no avail.

If one wants to seek the links between the story and the roller coaster, the question at heart here is not if there ever was a Rosicrucian society, but did it really start in the 1300’s with a college of invisibles, a group of medical doctors wanting to aid the less fortunate and the world all around to have a better life, or did imagination, propaganda and the power of the mysterious create an idea out of whole cloth, which became a Masonic shroud of Turin, creating splinter cells like the Golden Dawn or more appropriately the Ancient Mystical Order Rosæ Crucis (AMORC). They did uphold the tenets that the Guidestones , have the resources to create them, seeing how, when most occult societies had died during WWII the AMORC had the privilege to thrive and would have been looking toward darker time in about the 1950’s, 20 years before R.C. Christian came knocking on Joe Fendley`s door, which matches the time frame described in the Wired article.

Yet all of this is built on correlations and assumptions since no hard evidence as surfaced over the last 30 years. Yes it holds more water then the Mark Dice theory, but Weidner`s is still a sinking ship.

So was R.C. Christian the envoy of the knights of the Rose-Croix, a minion of Satan himself, or a *gasp* eccentric philanthropist belonging to a group of the same kind, wanting an instruction manual in case of a cataclysmic emergency? My money, for now, rides on the latter.