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Nine threads appeared on the floor
A drug hunt at Edgewood
Andrija Puharich had spent years building a séance room, and the Army had pulled him away to Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, where the military tested hypnosis, LSD, and mescaline on soldiers. His orders were to find a drug that enhanced extrasensory perception. Six months earlier, a voice speaking through the Indian philosopher D. G. Vinod had named itself the Great Ennead, nine ancient Egyptian gods who turned out to be alien minds on a spacecraft watching Earth.
The night of the full moon
On June 27, 1953, Puharich went back to his mansion on leave and gathered nine people under a full moon, one for each of the Nine. Eight were wealthy and connected. Puharich took the ninth chair himself, and Vinod sat in the middle. At midnight the Nine returned and announced that the people at the table had been chosen to transform human civilization, answering to something much older and more powerful than any religion or government.
The threads
Then the threads appeared, one for each person at the table, identical to the sacred thread Hindu Brahmins receive at initiation. The nine people picked them up and accepted the assignment. Vinod returned to India, and the Nine went quiet.
Why did the Army test drugs on soldiers?
The Army Chemical Corps ran experiments at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland on thousands of soldier volunteers, using substances that included LSD and nerve agents. One goal was an incapacitating agent that could disable enemy troops without killing them. Another was a drug that could loosen a prisoner's tongue during interrogation. The volunteer program ran from 1948 to 1975.
How is the Hindu sacred thread given?
In the upanayana ceremony, traditionally a boy's initiation into study, a priest drapes a cotton cord called the yajnopavita over his left shoulder and across his chest. The cord is made of several cotton strands twisted together and tied with a knot. The ceremony traditionally marks the start of a boy's formal study of the Vedas.
Why did Heliopolis worship nine gods?
Priests at Heliopolis, a sun-worshipping city near modern Cairo, taught that the world began when the god Atum rose from the waters of chaos. Atum produced Shu and Tefnut, who produced Geb and Nut, whose children were Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Together with Atum, that makes nine gods, and Ennead is the Greek word for a group of nine. The earliest written record of the family is in the Pyramid Texts, carved inside royal pyramids around 2300 BCE.
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