Pyramid power refers to the belief that the ancient Egyptian

pyramids A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

and objects of similar shape can confer a variety of benefits. Among these assumed properties are the ability to preserve foods,Bovis, Antoine. (Nice: Bovis, c. 1935). Translation by Jean-Paul Buquet. ''Skeptic.com.'' Retrieved November 24, 2008. sharpen or maintain the sharpness of razor blades,Drbal, Karel. ''Patenti Spis c. 91304.'' (Prague: 1959). improve health, function "as a thought-form incubator", trigger sexual urges, and cause other effects. Such unverified conjectures regarding pyramids are collectively known as

pyramidology Pyramidology (or pyramidism) refers to various religious or pseudoscientific speculations regarding pyramids, most often the Giza pyramid complex and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.Martin Gardner, ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science' ...

. There is no scientific evidence that pyramid power exists.Linse, Pat. (2002). ''Pyramids: The Mystery of Their Origins''. In

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific ...

. ''The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience''. ABC-CLIO. pp. 397-412. "If pyramid power really existed it would be wonderful indeed... But no scientific tests to date have managed to detect it."Neher, Andrew. (2011). ''Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination''. Dover Publications. pp. 262-264. "There is no satisfactory evidence to support the theory of pyramid power. Although the pyramids are impressive structures, their particular construction—their shape and geographical orientation—does not seem to be capable of altering fundamental physical processes."

History

In the 1930s, a French ironmonger and pendulum-

dowsing Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Ge ...

author, Antoine Bovis, developed the idea that small models of pyramids can preserve food. The story persists that Bovis, while standing inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, saw a garbage can inside the chamber piled with dead animals that had wandered into the structure, noticed that these small carcasses were not decaying and inferred that the structure somehow preserved them. However, Bovis never claimed to have visited Egypt. In his self-published French-language booklet Bovis ascribes his discovery to reasoning and experiments in Europe using a dowsing pendulum: In 1949, inspired by Bovis, a Czechoslovakian named Karel Drbal applied for a patent on a "Pharaoh's shaving device", a model pyramid alleged to maintain the sharpness of razor blades. According to the patent (#91,304), "The method of maintaining the razor blades and straight razor blades sharp by placing them in the magnetic field in such a way that the sharp edge lies in the direction of the magnetic lines." Drbal alleged that his device would focus "the earth's magnetic field", although he did not make it clear how this would work, or whether the device's shape or materials exerted the effect. Drbal's contention that razors could be sharpened or have their sharpness maintained by alignment with Earth's magnetic field was not new. In 1933, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' carried letters claiming, "if I oriented my razor blades... N. and S. by the compass... they tend to last considerably longer" and "The idea of keeping razor blades in a magnetic field is not quite new. About the year 1900 I found this out". Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, authors of the paranormal, visited Czechoslovakia in 1968, where they happened upon a cardboard pyramid manufactured commercially by Drbal. They met Drbal, and dedicated a chapter of their popular 1970 book ''Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain'' to pyramid power. This book introduced both the concept of pyramid power and the story about Antoine Bovis to the English-speaking world.

Origin of the term

Debate continues over who coined the term "pyramid power". Author Max Toth has claimed he coined the phrase, as has Patrick Flanagan. Both authors released books entitled ''Pyramid Power'' in the 1970s. According to Toth, this led to a lawsuit by Flanagan against him. However, the term "pyramid power" in its current usage first appeared in print in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder's 1970 book ''Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain''. Ostrander and Schroeder claim that "Czechoslovakian researchers" coined the term in the 1960s.

Popularisation

Flanagan's book was featured on the cover and in the lyrics of

The Alan Parsons Project The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompanie ...

album ''

Pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

''. "Pyramania", a song from the album, mocked the idea of pyramid power. Martin Gardner spoofed pyramid power in his "Mathematical Games" column in the ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

'' issue of June 1974, featuring his recurring fictional characters

Dr. Matrix Irving Joshua Matrix — previously known as Irving Joshua Bush and commonly known as Dr. (I. J.) Matrix — is a fictitious polymath scientist, scholar, cowboy, and entrepreneur who made extraordinary contributions to perpetual motion engineering ...

and Iva Matrix. The conjectures of pyramid power convinced the Onan Family, hotel and condo developers in

Gurnee, Illinois Gurnee ( ) is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Its population was 30,706 as of the 2020 census. It borders the city of Waukegan, and is a popular tourist attraction within the Chicago metropolitan area. Best known for being th ...

, to build the "Pyramid House" in 1977. Summerhill Pyramid Winery in

Kelowna, British Columbia Kelowna ( ) is a city on Okanagan Lake in the Okanagan Valley in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada. It serves as the head office of the Regional District of Central Okanagan. The name Kelowna derives from the Okanagan word ''ki� ...

built a four-story replica of the Great Pyramid, alleged by the winery to improve the quality of wine aged within it. A religion founded in 1975, called Summum, completed the construction of a pyramid called the

Summum Pyramid Summum is a religion and philosophy that began in 1975 as a result of American citizen Claude "Corky" Nowell's claimed encounter with beings he described as "Summa Individuals". According to Nowell, these beings presented him with concepts r ...

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

in 1979. Pyramid power was used by the

Toronto Maple Leafs The Toronto Maple Leafs (officially the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club and often referred to as the Leafs) are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Div ...

and their coach

Red Kelly Leonard Patrick "Red" Kelly (July 9, 1927 – May 2, 2019) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player and coach. He was also a Liberal Member of Parliament for the Toronto-area riding of York West from 1962 to 1965, during which time he also ...

during the 1975–76 quarter-final series, to counter the

Philadelphia Flyers The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional ice hockey team based in Philadelphia. The Flyers compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home games in Wells ...

' use of

Kate Smith Kathryn Elizabeth Smith (May 1, 1907 – June 17, 1986) was an American contralto. Referred to as The First Lady of Radio, Smith is well known for her renditions of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" & "When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain". ...

's rendering of "

God Bless America "God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin during World War I in 1918 and revised by him in the run up to World War II in 1938. The later version was notably recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature s ...

". Kelly hung a plastic model of a

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

in the team's clubhouse after a pair of away defeats at the start of the series, and each player took turns standing under it for exactly four minutes. The Maple Leafs managed to win all three of their home matches before losing the series' decisive game seven.

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his ''Discworld'' series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first nov ...

's fantasy novel ''

Pyramids A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

'' incorporates elements of the conjecture when an industry develops around pyramids' ability to stop time. It is common in

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...

magazines to see advertisements for open metal-poled pyramids large enough to

meditate Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...

under. The New Age group

Share International Share International Foundation is a non-profit religious organization founded by Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) with its main offices in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Berkeley, California.J. Gordon Melton, Melton J. Gordon, Gale Research Inc, Jerome ...

, founded by

Benjamin Creme Benjamin Creme (5 December 1922 − 24 October 2016) was a Scottish artist, author, esotericist, and editor of ''Share International'' magazine. He asserted that the second coming, prophesied by many religions, would come in the form of ''Mai ...

, practices a form of meditation called 'Transmission Meditation' using an open metal-poled

tetrahedron In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the o ...

, which according to their beliefs tunes into the cosmic energy of

Maitreya Maitreya (Sanskrit: ) or Metteyya (Pali: ), also Maitreya Buddha or Metteyya Buddha, is regarded as the future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. As the 5th and final Buddha of the current kalpa, Maitreya's teachings will be aimed at ...

and other spiritual masters.

Skepticism

The neurologist and skeptic

Terence Hines Terence Hines (born 22 March 1951) is a professor of psychology at Pace University, New York, and adjunct professor of neurology at the New York Medical College; he is also a science writer. Hines has a BA from Duke University, and an MA and P ...

has written that pyramid power is a

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...

and tests have failed to provide any evidence for its claims: In 2005, an episode of ''

MythBusters ''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internatio ...

'' was aired on the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

in which a basic test of pyramid power was performed, using pyramids built to the specifications found in pyramid power claims, reflecting the location of the King's Chamber in the

Great Pyramid of Giza The Great Pyramid of Giza is the biggest Egyptian pyramid and the tomb of Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu. Built in the early 26th century BC during a period of around 27 years, the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, ...

. Several claims were tested, concerning food rotting, a flower rotting and a razor blade going dull. With control protocols in place, there was no significant difference between items in pyramids and items outside.

References

External links

* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313222718/http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5408709/Pyramid-power.html , date=March 13, 2012 Pyramid Power: original research that details on origins, makers and backgrounds.
Pyramidiocy
–

Skeptic's Dictionary ''The Skeptic's Dictionary'' is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book. The skepdic.com site was launched in 1994 and the book was published in 2003 wi ...

Forteana New Age Paranormal terminology Pseudoscience Pyramidology