* Crossposted from BAMA
Hello All!
PREFACE:  In a step out of character for me, I decided that this particular 
post was worthy of being "dumped" here.  I normally don't crosspost messages 
to other echos without the Moderator's permission, so I looked in the mirror, 
took a deep breath, and did it anyway.  Sorry, Jack, I couldn't resist.  (-:O
*** Begin article
From: "Dan Sale" 
Newsgroups: alt.illuminati,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Martian MOON GODS(fwd)
Date: 10 Feb 1997 03:47:16 GMT
(originally by Joe Schembrie
     71732.1225@compuserve.com)
- - - 
TEMPLE OF THE MARTIAN MOON GODS?
About three years ago, I was looking at the back cover of Richard Hoagland's 
book, 'The Monuments of Mars:  A city on the edge of forever.'  It was then 
that I realized something:  there are two faces at Cydonia, and two moons of
Mars!
So what?  So the mystery is solved, and there is (or, at least, was) 
intelligent life on the planet Mars.
To provide the uninitiated with some background, let's begin at the 
beginning.  Back in 1976, NASA sent a space probe called Viking to the planet 
Mars.  It relayed back thousands of photographs of the surface, among them an 
image of a rock formation, about a square mile in size, which resembled a 
human face.  Everyone had a good laugh and it was filed away in the archives 
and forgotten.  Until a few years later, when independent investigators dug 
it out and started examining it in detail.
Several books have since been written about the Face on Mars and the 
surrounding region, which is known as Cydonia, where several other 
seemingly-unusual rock formations have been observed.  The independent 
investigators decry NASA for instigating a conspiracy to keep the truth about 
Cydonia concealed from the general public, while NASA insists that the rocks 
are nothing more than rocks.  That's about where matters stood.  Naturally, 
the failure of the Mars Observer space probe in August 1993 aroused some 
suspicion among the investigators.
This brings us up to my discovery.  To understand what I've done, however, 
you've got to have access to the photographs themselves.  This may require 
some digging, if they are not present as GIFs somewhere.  The photographs can 
be found in the various books that have already been published and are 
readily available in most bookstores, and they can also be obtained directly 
from NASA; ask for frames 035A72, 035A73, and 035A74.
When you look at the photographs, you will notice several rock formations 
which seem to stand out from the general clutter of the Martian terrain.  The 
area of interest is about sixty kilometers long and ten wide, a narrow strip 
that is centered near the Face and runs approximately southwest to northeast.
We'll start at the left end of this strip, and move eastward.
First we come to four small dots.  They look small only at the resolution of 
the photographs; in reality, each dot is a rival to the Great Pyramid of 
Egypt.  The four dots are arranged so that they form the corners of a square.
Surrounding the dots is a group of what appear to be pyramids.  These objects 
are quite large -- over a mile wide in some cases -- but they have straight 
sharp sides, which is unusual for mountains of such magnitude.  Moreover, you
can clearly trace a pentagon around their perimeter.  The center of the 
pentagon is the same center located between the four small dots.
This entire arrangement -- dots, square, pyramids, pentagon -- is called 'The 
Centerpoint' in my analysis.  The significance of the name will become 
evident later, but for now let's continue with our travelogue of the Cydonia 
Complex.
Moving eastward, we come to another rock formation, again about a mile 
square, which has walls of even thickness enclosing a triangular area.  This 
is called 'The Wedge.'
Moving eastward still more, we come to the 'Face' itself.
Finally, after crossing a great distance of more than half the Cydonia 
Complex region, we come to a long, slender rock formation, a couple miles 
long, that looks like a carrot pointing southward.  However, if you compress 
the image on
its vertical axis, it ends up looking like a second face -- this one with two 
definite eyes, a mouth with lips, a chin, and even a nose ridge.  The image 
is sinister-looking and plainly nonhuman, but it is recognizable as a face.  
Thus it is called:  'The Second Face.'
So, what are these objects, and why would intelligent beings build them?  
Previous investigators have suggested that the Martians were visited by 
extraterrestrial beings from another star system, and the Cydonia Complex is 
an attempt of the primitive native society to communicate with their 
sophisticated cosmic visitors.  Why else would they build images turned 
skyward unless they expected them to be seen by beings who dwelt in space?  
As for what actually is to be found in the Cydonia rock formations as a 
message, everything from honoring a great king to an exposition in higher 
dimensional physics has been suggested.
And so the whole matter has become enveloped in a grey cloud of speculation.  
And this is where my explanation comes in.
I said:  Two faces at Cydonia, two moons of Mars.  It's that simple, but what 
does it mean?
We first need to understand that Mars does have two moons, known as Phobos 
and Deimos, which are apparently small captured asteroids that possess 
near-circular, approximately-equatorial orbits over the planet.  Although
quite small in comparison to our Moon, the moons of Mars orbit close enough 
to the surface and move rapidly enough that they are easily the most 
prominent objects in the night sky of Mars.
What if there were once intelligent Martians, and they had a primitive 
civilization, and they looked up to the sky and saw their moons?  How would 
they react to the sight?
Being members of a highly technological society, we forget. But in ancient 
times here on Earth, most civilizations responded to the vista of the sky by 
worshipping the objects that appeared above them.  The Egyptians worshipped 
the Sun and the stars, the Sumerians worshipped the Moon, and the Greeks and 
Romans worshipped the planets.  In these mythologies, the various celestial 
objects were thought to be superior beings: gods.
What if the Martians did the same?  What if they chose their moons to worship 
as the guardian gods of their civilization? What if some great ecological 
disaster befell their planet -- which we plainly see is now uninhabitable -- 
and they responded not with scientific endeavor but with a vain attempt to 
attract the attention of their guardian gods, the moons of Mars?
If so, the Cydonia Complex would then be a temple built in honor of the 
Martian moon gods, Phobos and Deimos.
But that's only the beginning.  Being good naked eye astronomers, the Martian 
moon god cult priests would correctly perceive that their planet was a sphere 
in space, and that the moons orbited it.  Using surveyor-triangulation 
methods, they could determine the distances out to the moons.  Given this 
level of technical knowledge, the Martians would be inclined to give the 
Cydonia Complex some alignments with the Martian moon system itself.  Thus, 
the Cydonia Complex could well be a stylized schematic diagram of the Martian 
moon system.
This is what we see in the choice of objects.  What is the Centerpoint, with 
its four dots arranged in a square?  It is a familiar 'cross-hairs,' as found 
on a schematic diagram here on Earth, placed as the center of a circle; the
Centerpoint would therefore represent the center of Mars -- the center of the 
orbits of the two moons and of the surface curvature of the planet itself.
And what of the surface curvature of the planet?  That is where the Wedge 
comes in.  Its curved eastern side is meant to symbolize the radius of Mars.
And then we come to the two faces.  The first Face, obviously, must be 
Phobos, the inner moon of Mars, while the Second Face represents Deimos, the 
outermost moon.  They are faces because the Martians thought of the moons as 
the abodes of living, intelligent beings, like themselves but in possession 
of supernatural powers.
So much for the descriptive attributes.  There are mathematical ones as well. 
 If you measure out from the Centerpoint to the curved eastern side of the 
Wedge and to the centers of the two faces, you find that their distances are 
proportionate to the distances of the Martian moon system -- to the radius of 
Mars, the radius of the orbit of Phobos, and the radius of the orbit of 
Deimos.  Not only is the Cydonia Complex a schematic diagram of the Martian 
moon system, it is drawn to scale!
My analysis shows that there are two other geometric relationships between 
the Cydonia Complex and the Martian moon system, and by evaluating 
measurement tolerances with respect to fulfillment of the hypothesis, it is 
possible to
generate an objective probability calculation.  In particular, the latitude 
of the Complex and the slope of its objects with respect to the latitude 
parallel also are related to the Martian moon system.  The probability 
calculation is extremely high that the Cydonia Complex is the product of 
intelligent design.
It's one thing for a single rock on an entire planet to look like a face.  
That sort of thing can happen by accident, and no one is really surprised if 
it does.  But it is quite another thing for a collection of several rocks to 
resemble a complex schematic diagram of the very moon system which orbits 
overhead, especially when the detail is so great.  That sort of thing denies 
the possibility of chance.
The implications of all this transcend the current popular concept of 
reality.  I encourage you to get hold of the photographs, and take a ruler, 
protractor, calculator, and book on popular astronomy, and verify the 
measurements yourself.  You may be very intrigued by what you find!
In the course of writing a book, I have been researching this matter 
extensively.  Therefore, if you have any questions or comments, please 
address them to:
     Joe Schembrie
     71732.1225@compuserve.com
*** End article
Moderator's Note:  It is quite by accident that I came across this message in 
my archives, but the timing seems appropriate.  At this point in time and 
since I have not done what the author recommends, I have all along considered 
the "Mars Face" to be nothing more than a Rorschach test, but viewers of it 
are going to see what they want to, limited only by their imagination and 
their desire to see something not necessarily there.
Regards,
Roger
BAMA Echo Moderator
Roger.Nelson@f7.n3828.z1.fidonet.org 
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