Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A great, but flawed book, 18 Jul 1999
By A Customer
This book reminds me of the cowboy who jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions. The authors try to say everything at once. By the time they inserted their twentieth appendix (each such digression full of more digressions in the footnotes), you'd think they would have considered overhauling their framework and integrating everything more smoothly. Sorry. I got tired of trying to hold onto the train of thought in the text while wading through appendices -- 39 in all. Sloppy editing here, too, because some appendices appear without any reference in the text. In revenge on such authors who fill their books with untranslated quotes in German and Latin, some day I am going to write a book full of quotes in Chinese -- in the original archaic characters, or course -- Viet Namese, and Tayal: ima maniq mami qaniy! I am somewhat perplexed by the authors' hostility to psychology and practically deliberate misreading of evolution. It is more intriguing to me to find that the same symbol is valid both psychologically and astrologically. However, the authors insist that theirs is the one and only possible interpretation. Too bad. The book focuses on astronomical events, but gives us only two hard dates, in the final pages. William Sullivan's Secret of the Incas, inspired by Hamlet's Mill, by far surpasses it in every way. If Hamlet's Mill interests you, I urge you to read Secret of the Incas, too. There, I have told you all the bad points about Hamlet's Mill. Were I asked, "Should I read this book?" I would answer unequivocally, imperitively even, Yes, absolutely yes, there's gold in these pages.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dense, fascinating, but hypocritical, 15 Feb 1999
By A Customer
There are quite a small number of books that deal with polar/axial mythology - other good ones include Geoffrey Ashe's 'The Ancient Wisdom' and Joscelyn Godwin's 'Arktos' - and this one definitely ranks with the 'essential' books in this area. The arguments for ancient knowledge of precession are convincing, if scattered, but I am perplexed at the authors' apparent hypocrisy. At the outset, they lambast scholarly 'anti-primitive' biases, saying that classical Greek sources act as an irresistable 'magnet' for mythographers; they also quote at length evidence about the sophistication of the pre-civilized African Dogon tribe. And yet by the end of the book they nominate Plato as 'grand judge and jury' on the authenticity of archaic myth, and never really manage to steer far from the 'Classical Magnet' - only a few thousand years earlier and a little to the east, in Mesopotamia. They seem unable to accept that 'pre-civilized' cultures could have originated complex astronomical myths, despite this being one of their initial arguments! And of course, they are unswervingly reductionist about myth. They reject 'geographical' and 'fertility cult' interpretations as "too simplistic", and then reduce *everything* to the revolving heavens!! All in all, very useful as a source of ideas if you're interested in this area, but it fails as a total argument.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Leaves Much To Be Desired, 12 Jan 1999
By A Customer
If one is looking for documented back-up that the ancients of pre-history were aware of the precession of the equinoxes, and that this knowledge is embedded and encoded in world mythology, Hamlet's Mill does the job. However-- the authors seem to be of the notion that the primary purpose and interpretation of myth is to convey astronomical information. In reality, myths are the residue of ancient mystical teachings and of real events and beings of pre-history. The fairy tales of Europe, the Hindu scriptures, Sufi tales of the mystic east, Greek and Egyptian mythology all are rooted in this ancient essence, to which the authors give short shrift. If one is seeking the truth that lies behind myth--aside from the precession thing- seek elsewhere than in Hamlet's Mill, which takes a very worldly, mundane view.
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