INTERVIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 1980
Psychic archeology and other phenomena
BRANDO CRESPI
by Joan Quinn
BRANDO
CRESPI is a phenomenon.Playboy san of those originai jet-setters COUNT and COUNTESS CRESPI, father of beautiful three-year-old CHLOE, public relations executive for
clients like VERSACE and PRATESI, Brando's passion is his work with the MOBIUS GROUP. An interdiscilplinary consortium of scientists and psychics
devoted to exploring the practical application of psychic functioning, Mobius was founded in Los Angeles in 1977, by STEPHAN SCHWARTZ.
It Is this group that discovered the palace of MARK ANTHONY off the coast of Egypt.
JOAN OUINN: Tell me about the Alexandria project.
BRANDO CRESPI: Well, it was very exciting! And I think it is still one which I am digesting and the public is digesting because it is so complex and so spectacular and so upsetting to what people believe to be reality. The work the Mobius Group did in Egypt was to see if one could apply intuitional functioning to archeology which sounds a little off the wall. but we really believe that intuitive functioning or psychic functioning can be used as an adjunct tool to straight archeological and technological tools. And it worked. We found some pretty extraordinary things. We found the Palace of Mark Anthony; that was later identified by two top Egyptian archeologists. We found what is very probably the Palace of Cleopalra - although there is not a lot left in that area. We found some pretty extraordinary material relaled to the lighthouse to Pharos, which was one of the seven wonders of the classical world. We found a 2-1/2 meter long sphynx, and an enormous pharaonic crown believed to be from a statue of Osiris. The list goes on and on. And we found the Temple of Isis. We found this by combining and overlapping straight technological, investigative tools and by using a team of eleven psychics from Europe, Canada and America.
JO: How do you find the psychics?
BC: Well. they sort of come to us. At the beginning we used people who had already been extensively tested in other labs, like at Slanford Research Institute or NYU, and so on. And right now, as we are about to computerize all our operations. We are using up to 40 psychics and we can see a time in the near future when we will use a lot more.
JO: Did the psychics actually go on the dig after they got the information?
BC: Yes. We brought two psychics with us: a Canadian gentleman called George McMullen and a woman called Hella Hammid who is from Los Angeles.
JO: But what do you do first, do you send the scientific information to the psychics for them to judge?
BC: Yes. What Mobius has developed is a methodology thal makes psychic functioning work. Up to now, when you worked with a psychic. he or she would give you some information which could be precise, but was mostly a lot of wonderful wishy-washy information. And, obviously. some of the information was wrong. So what we've developed is a way of making it work.
JO: How does that work?
BC: It's a little like the way a journalist would interview the witnesses to a hit and run accident. For example, if live out of seven people say that the driver of the car was a woman, you know you have a high probability that it was a woman driving that car. We do the same thing at Mobius, only we send out maps of the areas we're interested in with questions for the psychics. And when the maps come back they are analyzed by a scietific team and we look for areas of agreement. So, for instance, when you have, like in the case of Mark Anthony's Palace, three people pinpointing exactly the same spot on the map, then you know you're up to something.
JO: Did the psychics help you while you were diving?
BC: They were so specific, even before we actually went in the water, that we knew exactly where to dive.
JO: The different psychics matched views?
BC: Yes, absolutely matched. There is no historical data as to what that building looked like. We know the area obviously, because the historian Strabo went there in 24 B.C, and described il. What we did was preliminary work: we've located some areas which ara extraordinary. There ara acres and acres of goodies underneath the water and silt. One of the things we've asked Sadat to do is to turn this into an underwater archeological park and stop the sewage. Because it is so spectacular.
JO: How did you decide to go to Alexandria in the first place?
BC: We decided on Alexandria because it was a fascinating city that not a lot of people know about. People who had read Lawrence Durrell, maybe, but nobody knows that for 1,000 years Alexandria was the center of the civilized world. That's where the Old Testament was compiled, that's where geometry was born, that's where the first university, as we know it, was created. Plus it was a city which had a lot of archeological problems, and a lot of interesting, shall we say, romantic issues connected to it.
JO: There have been digs there, though
BC: There have been extraordinary digs, like Prof. Rodziewicz's. He's a Polish archeologist who has been digging in the area lor 18 years. He dug up all the Roman baths, and so on.
JO: Did they explore the bottom of the sea?
BC: We did some land work which we haven't yet talked about because It will be the subject of various papers and will be presented in the future. But in terms of the water, of underwater archeology, there was only one dive in the lighthouse area in 1962 by a UNESCO team. They made six dives and found the Lighthouse of Pharos, as we know it. So we can't claim that we found the lighthouse. What we have done is filmed a lot of additional material. We have solved a lot of historical questions related to the lighthouse and the Tempie of Isis, and found a lot of material which the UNESCO dive did not find, including the ancient shoreline of Alexandria.
JO: Why haven't there been more underwater dives?
BC: A combination of reasons. The main one being that Egypt is Egypt. If anybody has been there they know what l'm talking about. There are some very practical reasons. For instance, the Eastern Harbor. where we did the major part of our work, is and was a strategic area: there is a military base there which up to 1972 was in the hands of the Russians, And the Russians wouldn't even allow Egyptians on their base.
JO: But did the Russians do any type of archeological research?
BC: They have some teams. But Ihe Polish are the ones who have had the most extensive digs in Alexandria. Remember that during Nasser's administration, some archeological work was done but not that much. And I think the entire budget for archeology in Egypt is around $80,000 a year.
JO: So it takes foreigners to come in and gather information.
BC: They're open-minded and willing to have reputable groups go in and do archeology. They're actually quite anxìous for us to come back, do some more work in other areas.
JO: Did you use any submarine-type crafts? .
BC: No, because we were dealing with very shallow waters. For instance, the lighthouse is just about 16 or 18 meters under the surface and the palaces are only about 7 or 8 meters.
JO: What were some of the problems you encountered?
BC: One of the problems we had, as I mentioned before, is that raw sewage from Alexandria comes out right where, we were diving. When you can smell it at 35 feet below the surfafe through your mask, you know it's time to leave!
JO: Are there times when it's easier to go down?
BC: You go early in the morning and it's a little better. When we were diving we started every day around 6 o'clock in the morning and we'd go until 12 or 1 o'clock, and we just kept changing areas, trying to keep one step ahead of the "magheri." .
JO: There are probably lots of other discoveries to be made.
BC: There ara 18 tombs in the Valley of the Kings which haven't been discovered. We know they're there. But tha Egyptians have always relied on international eflorts to raise the meney and to help them with their archeology. They're right, it really is the heritage of all mankind.
JO: Do any other countries usa psychics?
BC: Oh yes, George McMullen who is an extraordinary psychic and friend is a tenth grade drop-out who's continued to call the ptolomies "potemies" and the Byzantines the "Besonines." George has successfully worked for years with a man called Prof. Emerson who was the President of the Canadian Archeological Association. And he's worked in Iraq and he's worked in Egypt with other teams. For instance, you remember the big Mayan head in the tequilla commercial?
JO: Yes.
BC: That was found by a National Geographic / Smithsonian joint expedition in Mexico in 1939. It was found because afler digging for months in the jungle, they were about to give up. Then one of the archeologists, Clarence Weiant, befriended a medicine man, an Indian medicine man, and the Indian said: "Well, if you're really looking for something, I can tell you where it is." He took Weiant. who was open-minded enough to listen to him, into the jungle and he said to him: "Dig here." And that's where they found thal head.
JO: How did you get the money for this project?
BC: The money for the Alexandria project was raised by independent investors who were interested in the whole issue and in doing a film aboul it!
JO: Did they feel it was an investment that eventually would pay off?
BC: I think they felt il was a gamble, a major gamble as all films are, but one which could indeed produce a profit. Other researchers and parapsychologists looked at us in total amazement when they found out we were bringing 16 people to Egypt and we were spending that amount of money.
JO: It did work for you this time. Now what happens? Do you bring the things up and then the Egyptian government takes over from there? Do you think it will turn into an amusement park?
BC: Once you've lived in Alexandria it is difficult to see it as an amusement park. I mean, it is not a place you would go on vacation.
JO: How did you get into this? Aren't you in the P.R. business?
BC: My interests have always been towards the more metaphysical realities.
JO: When did you arrive in LA?
BC: About three and a half years ago, in 1977. And I realized that this was a city with the shortest attantion span in the world. It was a great city to paint in but a terrible city to sell art except if you were flashing lights at people then they would pay attention. My wife was pregnant at the time and I needed money and I began to wonder about how I could integrate this ability I have of dealing with people, my knowledge of media, and a certain taste for esthetics. And out of that came a P.R. and advertising firm. Today it is kind of divided in the middle between fashion, which again is kind of an inheritance from my background, and my work for various companies on the forefront of technology and research.
JO: Do you enjoy living here compared to all the other places you've lived?
BC: I think it's the best city in the world. It's the area that combines high-technology with an awareness that the quality of lile is all important. What we are experiencing here is a marriage between a highly technologlcal society and people who still enjoy hiking in the desert. It's amazing what you can do. Once I spent two years of my life feeling very bored and lazy. I sleep, for instance, about four hours less than I used to sleep. It's just because l'm doing what I want to do.
JO: How will psychics help us today? What about looking forward in order to find resources - we don't have any gas, we don't have any oil, we don't have coal can they find these resources?
BC: Well, Occidental Petroleum, for instance, was started off with a well that was found by a dowser. The Russians have 200 geologists trained as dowsers dowsing Siberia from helicopters. So there are many, and there have been for centuries, real practical uses for psychic functions. Police forces all over the country are using psychics to locale criminals and lost people.
JO: Do you get any resentment from scientists?
BC: Yes, we get a lot of uptightness from the middle of the road scientist. We get a lot 01 excitement and a lot of interest and a lot of support from the scientists who are on the edge of their field. because they have discovered in themselves their own creativity and how it functions. Descartes, father of the whole materialist approach, developed his theories from a vision he had one night. Time after time after time you find that
scientists have reached their discoveries through an intuitive leap. Einstein was a great psychic, you know.