Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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67 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Esoteric Mind Gym, 19 Jun 2008
This is a certainly an unusual book and I found it a very stimulating read. It invites the reader to take part in an imaginative exercise, which involves having an artistic and emotional response to the book's ideas, as well as an intellectual one. In a way, it's an experiment to see if we can approach the same kind of consciousness as our ancestors, when people could be rational and mystical at the same time.
Pythagoras, Copernicus, da Vinci and Newton are some of the better known exemplars of this way of thinking, but the book draws its inspiration much more widely than the usual poster boys.
Comparisons between Lao-Tzu and Heraclitus are illuminated with comments on Confucius and Rudyard Kipling, for example. Creative artists as varied as David Lynch and Botticelli are shown to be nourished by the same ideas - as was P.L. Travers, creator of one the most famous children's magicians of all time: Mary Poppins.
The author explores the significance of certain archetypes and symbols down the ages - and personally I found the writing nimble and light of touch. Yes, it makes connections that are sometimes surprising, but that's the point. Ever wondered exactly what the difference is between Satan and Lucifer? Or why French revolutionaries adopted the Phrygian cap as their headgear of choice? Did you know that St Thomas Aquinas and St Francis of Assissi both claimed to have levitated?
What "The Secret History" never pretends to be is yet another conspiracy theory book, or an academic history. (A fact that seems to upset some of the other reviewers.) It would be better to think of it as an esoteric mind gym.
Sure, it structures itself as a "secret history" of how humanity and human consciousness developed but this is, after all, just a metaphor. The author has created that narrative form as a way to explore the ideas that have fascinated some of the greatest minds in the actual, real, (footnotable) history of the world.
Conspiracy theories close things down; this book is an ambitious, enjoyable attempt to open them up and offer a graspable alternative account of how human consciousness has developed - from the creation of the world through to dadaism and beyond.
Definitely worth a read, if you like ideas and knowledge and can cope with them being taken out of their boxes and shaken round a bit.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
twisted and dangerous, 27 Jan 2009
Essential but definitely not for mainstream readers (nor is this review). The book should carry a big caution, maybe several: major withholdings reduce accuracy to about 50% though it could have been much higher.
Based on my own intensive research since the early 1990s - both objective and experiential - I can confirm that this book offers an amazing amount of accurate information on the esoteric and occult that is not usually made available to us, the masses - and certainly never before like this, as an overview of esoteric history almost since emergence, as opposed to a few intriguing droppings here and there.
The author appears to have been fed info by very knowledgeable people. Unfortunately, whilst those adepts could have made the book about 80% accurate, given the enormous half-truths and the critical information withheld, it is only at a 50% level, which makes it ultimately deeply misleading. (For instance, why no mention of Lemuria, which was harassed by Atlantis?)
The question must arise: why should any of the secret history be made so freely available to the public in this way - at this time? The book also states "In the course of this history Saturn [aka Satan] returns at different times and in different guises to pursue his aim of mummifying humanity and squeezing the life out of it. At the end of this history we will also see that his most decisive intervention, an event long predicted by the secret societies, is expected to take place shortly."
"They" tried with the so-called "Sars epidemic" and then the "bird flu epidemic" which were repeatedly headlined in newspapers and other media - why, when only a few hundred people worldwide died of either? Hardly the predicted pandemics! "They" are trying many different versions: in 2009 Baxter International was caught trying to provide bird flu vaccine contaminated with deadly live bird flu virus to 18 countries: according to medical officials it is "impossible" for this to be an accident.
Had it not been caught by chance, it could have set off the "desired" pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. The latest version is "pig/swine flu"...which broke out 8 weeks later near Baxter's facilities in Mexico City! No pig has suffered this flu so why call it swine flu? And just why are the authorities so desperate to vaccinate everyone despite the damage these vaccines are causing, especially to children? (Those with money and power get their vaccinations from a different company.) Still not convinced? View "The Obama Deception" on youtube.
Those who accept that the book has valuable truths to offer would benefit from knowing that just one of the major "unacknowledged elephants in the room" is the feminine principle: emotions, desire, the Will of God. Although there are brief references in this book to Mother Earth and to goddesses, the secret history is really all about a hidden agenda against the feminine aspect of Creation. Missing, particularly in its spare account of the very beginning of Creation, is the vital truth of the intention to extinguish the emotional realm.
At the beginning of this universe, the Female Force contracted or collapsed. As a result, the feminine, emotional side of Creation has been judged against from the very beginning, with the intention of "doing just fine" without it. The problems in this creation are a result of the banishment of feminine energy yet there is an aspect of the feminine energy which is trying to redeem Mankind
How could this major point be left out of a secret history, when everything that has happened since then flows from it? When you know that, you can begin, by reading between the lines (so to speak), to perceive the diabolical intentions behind this book.
One of the few places where an indication of this murderous purpose is set out clearly is in an early part of the book which refers to Saturn/Satan's attempt to kill the Mother of All Living. (Throughout, the book conflates this original Mother of All Living - the true co-creator - with Isis, calling both "Mother Goddess" but Isis is also known as a serpent goddess, which reveals her links to Satan, who is worshiped by his creations.)
Another caution: cunningly, in the few places where specific esoteric techniques are explained, they are either dangerous or ineffective.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating, 10 Jan 2009
I have been interested to read the wide range of comments about this book which I personally found fascinating.
The Secret History of the World presents a different way of contemplating the world that we live in. Whether you agree or disagree with the author's ideas - and there are so many different ideas, links and connections here that why should you agree with all of them? - the book is about opening your mind to a radically new way of thinking about the mystical history of the world and about our own human consciousness.
It isn't necessary to agree with everything the author writes to find dozens of fascinating avenues to explore. The whole point of a book like this is to be an entertaining read and to raise the consciousness of the reader by presenting ideas that remind us that different civilisations did not regard or understand the world in the same way that we do.
We cannot assume that our thought processes and our attitudes to life are comparable to those of our ancestors who experienced their lives at different times and in different societies throughout the ages and had no knowledge of industry, science or technology as we understand it today.
Everything they believed in was based on the much more limited (in most cases)knowledge that was available to them at the time.
In the past twelve months people everywhere are seeing the collapse of so many organisations and systems in our society that they had assumed were fundamentally stable. The book is very timely because we are entering a new era in our civilisation where we will have no choice but to adjust our thinking about many different things. The Secret History of the World can be used to expand your mind introducing original and mystical concepts which have been common throughout many different civilisations in history and for that reason are worthy of consideration when our present-day globally linked and crowded world is heading towards its own tipping point.
What this book tells us is that things are not necessarily what they seem and that history and science and everything we think we know and understand can be turned on its head and seen from a different angle - if we choose to open our minds to other possibilities.
The concept of the book - a secret mystical history of the world in under 1000 pages - is huge and I do wonder how much material had to be left out. I would love to read more of the research because some of the sections are of necessity rather sketchy. I was also very much aware that so few women featured in it. But secret societies have tended to be for men and run by men.
While I was reading the book I thought of a lot of people who I would want to recommend it to. It is a love it or hate it book, arousing strong feelings in readers. I recommend it to everyone who is not afraid to accept that there is only a very thin veil between the world we think we are familiar with and the unseen and unknown worlds which lie just beyond our everyday thought-processes.
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