Chariots of the Gods
Memories of the Future
Source entries are currently shown in Spanish; English-first entries arrive with the next cataloguing pass.
Se abre anunciando el precio de leerla —«It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it.» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 12»— y enuncia su tesis en una sola frase: «The past teemed with unknown gods who visited the primeval earth in manned spaceships.» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 12».
Lo que reclama para sí es una afirmación, no una prueba: dice que sus antepasados recibieron visitas «even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came», y acota su programa a «It is my aim to try to provide proof of this assertion» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 13». La disciplina competente, para ella, es el laboratorio: «Modern laboratories must take over the work of archaeological research.» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 12».
Su relación con el esoterismo occidental es de sucesión y de despedida, no de pertenencia: «Occultists can put out their lamps, alchemists destroy their crucibles, secret brotherhoods take off their cowls» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 110», y de las agrupaciones ufológicas dice que «only blur our view of reality» «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 126».
La edición trae, veintisiete años después, la retractación de su propio autor sobre el mapa de Piri Reis, Elefantina, Tiahuanaco y el jade de Tikal «Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · p. 7». Va impresa antes del cuerpo, la firma él y por eso está en esta ficha junto a lo que retracta.
47 claims · 3 sources · 1 attribution
Attribution
recorded, never asserted«Däniken — Chariots of the Gods (1968; prólogo del autor de 1995) · pp. 13, 11»
The chain of the work
the processed witness, in emeraldClaims
47 entries — the work's own voice, with its locator«It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it.» — apertura de la Introducción.
«The past teemed with unknown gods who visited the primeval earth in manned spaceships.» — la tesis, enunciada como hecho del pasado.
«There is something inconsistent about our religion. A feature common to every religion is that it promises help and salvation to mankind. The primitive gods gave such promises, too. Why didn't they keep them?» — el argumento religioso, en forma de pregunta.
«Knowledge that was hidden in the libraries of secret societies is being rediscovered.» — sitúa el saber de las sociedades secretas como algo que la época recupera, no como magisterio vigente.
«Modern laboratories must take over the work of archaeological research.» — adjudica la competencia al laboratorio y no a la hermenéutica.
«scholars will call it nonsense and put it on the index» — anticipa el rechazo académico y lo atribuye al prejuicio institucional.
«I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came.» — reclama la visita y se abstiene sobre la identidad del visitante.
«I nevertheless proclaim that these ‘strangers’ annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.» — la intervención sobre la especie, enunciada con verbo de proclamación.
«This assertion is revolutionary. It shatters the base on which a mental edifice that seemed to be so perfect was constructed. It is my aim to try to provide proof of this assertion.» — el «try» es del propio autor y acota lo que promete.
«a theory that is not proved any more than the other interpretations are» — así presenta su explicación del abandono de las ciudades mayas.
«Why does God speak in the plural? Why does he say ‘us,’ not ‘me,’ why ‘our,’ and not ‘my’?» — sobre Génesis 1:26.
«Once again we have the sons of God, who interbreed with human beings. Here, too, we have the first mention of giants.» — sobre Génesis 6.
«‘Giants’ haunt the pages of almost all ancient books. So they must have existed.» — el argumento por difusión, tal cual lo formula.
«Had the countdown already begun and did the ‘angels’ know about it?» — sobre el aviso a Lot en Sodoma.
«Let us imagine for a moment that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed according to plan, i.e., deliberately, by a nuclear explosion.» — lo introduce como ejercicio de imaginación, no como dato.
«Ezekiel gives precise details of the landing of this vehicle.» — tras citar Ezequiel 1 entero.
«Then why does this almighty God have to come hurtling up from a particular direction? Cannot he be anywhere he wants without all this noise and fuss?» — el argumento contra la lectura teológica del pasaje.
«Ezekiel says that each wheel was in the middle of another one. An optical illusion!»
«Undoubtedly the Ark was electrically charged! If we reconstruct it today according to the instructions handed down by Moses, an electric conductor of several hundred volts is produced.» — sobre el Arca de la Alianza.
«the loudspeaker—perhaps even a kind of set for communication between Moses and the spaceship—was perfect.» — De ahí lee la muerte de Uzá: «He fell dead on the spot, as if struck by lightning.»
«No mortal comes to the mountain where the gods dwell. He who looks the gods in the face must die.» — cita la tabla V de Gilgamesh junto a Éxodo 33:20-23.
«Or does the whole account in Exodus come from the Epic of» — la frase cruza el corte de página y cierra en la siguiente: «Gilgamesh? Even that is possible. After all, Moses is supposed to have been brought up in the Egyptian royal household.»
«Once again several hitherto unknown texts mention heavenly chariots, sons of heaven, wheels, and the smoke which the flying apparitions emitted.» — sobre los textos de Qumrán.
«Eve looked up to heaven and saw a chariot of light traveling there; it was drawn by four shining eagles.» — cita el Apocalipsis de Moisés, cap. 33.
«Does not this seriously pose the question whether the human race is not an act of deliberate ‘breeding’ by unknown beings from outer space?» — la tesis central del libro, formulada como pregunta.
«Behind the being I saw a chariot which had wheels of fire» — cita del Enoc, contrastado con los Libros de Abraham y de Moisés.
«Seen from the air, the clear-cut impression that the 37-mile-long plain of Nazca made on me was that of an airfield!» — lo presenta como impresión propia, en primera persona.
«It tells of a golden spaceship that came from the stars; in it came a woman, whose name was Oryana, to fulfill the task of becoming the Great Mother of the earth. Oryana had only four fingers» — la leyenda de Tiahuanaco tal como la refiere.
«Some 2,000 years before our era the Sumerians began to record the glorious past of their people. Today we still do not know where this people came from.»
«Thus the ten original kings ruled for a total of 456,000 years.» — la lista real sumeria, leída al pie de la letra.
«Vimanas, i.e., flying machines, navigated at great heights with the aid of quicksilver and a great propulsive wind.» — sobre el Ramayana.
«in what is perhaps the first account of the dropping of an H-bomb, it says that Gurkha loosed a single projectile on the triple city from a mighty Vimana.» — sobre el Mahabharata.
«Agrest considers it possible that the terrace is the remains of a gigantic airfield.» — la lectura de Baalbek la adjudica al profesor Agrest, no a sí mismo.
«the old god of creation, Viracocha, was an ancient and elemental divinity» — así presenta la divinidad preincaica.
«Never before had they heard of gigantic white men who came from somewhere in the sky.» — lo que, según refiere, oyeron los conquistadores en las sagas de Viracocha.
«In 1935 a stone relief that very probably represents the god Kukumatz (in Yucatán, Kukulkán) was found in Palenque (Old Kingdom).» — grafía «Kukumatz» tal cual: ver Notas de carga.
«What does the stone relief of the rocket-driving god at Palenque mean?»
«It is not our fault that the stone relief from Palenque exists. It is not our fault that Admiral Piri Reis did not burn his ancient maps.» — cierre del libro, en serie de anáforas.
«Occultists can put out their lamps, alchemists destroy their crucibles, secret brotherhoods take off their cowls. It will no longer be possible to offer man the nonsense that» — la frase sigue «has been purveyed to him so brilliantly for thousands of years»: declara caduca a la familia ocultista y alquímica, no se inscribe en ella.
«It is depressing what many people—and sometimes whole occult societies—make out of their ostensible observations. They only blur our view of reality.» — objeción interna a las agrupaciones ufológicas de corte ocultista.
«‘The coasts of both North and South America are drawn with precision.’ This statement was wrong; actually, the contours of North and South America are only faintly visible.» — retracta lo que había escrito sobre el mapa de Piri Reis; en la misma página mantiene que el mapa muestra las costas de la Antártida.
«This information was completely wrong.» — sobre haber escrito que la isla de Elefantina recibió su nombre por tener, vista desde el aire, forma de elefante.
«Total poppycock! The Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco got its name only during the last century.» — retracta la identificación entre el «Sundoor» de Gilgamesh y el de Tiahuanaco.
«It was a false miracle that I transmitted. The jade came from Central America.» — retracta el collar de jade de la pirámide de Tikal, que había dado por procedente de China.
«It is the right of all beginners to be so free, trusting and not so self-critical as their elders.» — así explica el origen de esos errores.
«But these refutations amounted to no more than contrary opinion. It got even worse when some theses that I had never said or written were ‘refuted.’» — distingue entre los errores que admite y las objeciones que no acepta.
«In 1969 it was renamed Chariots of the Gods by my British publisher, Souvenir Press.» — el título con que la obra circula no es del autor, y él lo dice.
About the work
14 entries — what the apparatus and scholarship say about it«This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.» — boilerplate de Berkley en la página legal, no declaración del autor ni caracterización de la obra. Se consigna como dato de la edición.
Cadena editorial impresa en la página legal: «Copyright © 1999 by Erich von Däniken. Copyright © 1968 by Econ-Verlag GMBH. English translation © 1969 by Michael Heron and Souvenir Press.» El pie de imprenta enumera Putnam (feb. 1970), Putnam/Berkley Medallion (abr. 1977), Berkley mass market (sept. 1980) y Berkley trade paperback (enero 1999), que es la nuestra.
«I have in front of me a young Swiss who wrote a totally mad book. But—the guy is not mad.» — voz de Thomas von Randow, editor de ciencia de *Die Zeit*, al teléfono con Econ; la reproduce el prólogo.
El prólogo nombra a Erwin Barth von Wehrenalp, jefe de Econ, como quien acepta el manuscrito ya rechazado por su propia casa.
El prólogo va firmado, localizado y fechado: «Erich von Däniken Beatenberg, Switzerland June 1995».
«Were the Gods Astronauts?» — libro del profesor Ernst von Khuon que reúne artículos de diecisiete científicos, «Some of the articles were strongly critical, some favorable», según lo refiere el prólogo.
Herbert Wilhelmy, geógrafo formado en Kiel, Stuttgart y «Tuebingen», autor de *The World of the Maya*, es el objetor nombrado del prólogo; el reproche es de bibliografía: citar en 1981 y en la revisión de 1989 solo obras de 1968 y 1969.
Johannes Fiebag es quien compila las réplicas en *Ancient Skies* nº 6/1991, y de su interpolación sale el argumento del cráter de Chicxulub.
«The Ancient Astronaut Society (AAS) was founded in the United States in 1973 by Chicago attorney Gene M. Phillips as a non-profit organization to deal with my themes.» — dato institucional dado por el propio prólogo; añade «There are now 10,000 members worldwide».
El prólogo cita en apoyo a Dr. Luis Navia (New York Institute of Technology) y a Dr. Dileep Kumar Kanjilal (Sanskrit College, Calcuta). Son voces de terceros citados por el autor, no del autor.
«Above: A view of the plain showing that the markings (Inca roads, say the archaeologists) lead nowhere.» — pie de foto del inserto fotográfico: texto de la edición, no del cuerpo.
«Heindel, M., Die Weltanschaung der Rosenkreuzer» — único vínculo bibliográfico de la obra con el corpus rosacruz, y está solo en la lista: no lo cita en el cuerpo. Grafía «Weltanschaung» tal cual.
Invoca a Velikovsky, *Worlds in Collision*, para la formación de Venus — coexiste con él sin suscribir el catastrofismo como marco.
Invoca a Edgar Cayce como caso de transmisión mental — coexiste con él sin suscribir la clarividencia como marco.