Customer Reviews
esoteric history of the world - By: S. W. Dewhurst, 05 Jan 2009 
This is the best bookin the new age/esoteric/occult area that I have ever read. It has been slated, but if u can excuse yourself from dreary reality for long enough to have an imaginative thought, it is an extraordinary book. I have been reading occult come paranormal stuff for about ten years, partly because it was entertaining & partly because I hoped that some of it was true. This book explains & ties together,in a very convincing way, cultural, religious & mythical histories & texts. It is about as exciting & titilating a read as u will findin a book meant for the general public, it is very well written & is believable. If the star rating was out of 100, I would give it 100. If u are turned on by mystery, buy & enjoy this remarkable book!
Absolute rubbish - By: L. Ferguson, 23 Dec 2008 
Despite being a cynical 'materialist' as the author would put it, I do & have always had a love of the occult & the esoteric. It can make for a good read even if one doesn't believe a word of it. I picked this book upin the mistaken belief it was an actual 'History' of secret societies & their beliefs. It isn't. It's a prattling, self-righteous & downright shoddy piece of trash.
To begin with the book is woefully written. The author often seems incapable of writing more than two sequential sentences before darting off to the next fantasy. What few points he has to make are so drawn out & belaboured as to be unreadable.
The sneering contempt for 'science' & 'reason' is baffling. Presumably the author livesin a nice house with internet access & has benefitted from the fruits of medical science. That's what makes his anti-science rhetoric so offensive. He portrays science & reason as the enemies of humanity, as though wiping out smallpox & sending a man to the moon were a complete waste of time. And yet just before he collapses into being a total Luddite he begins to babble about evolution & the possibilities offered by robotics...Confused? I was. Science & reason are always evil to Mr. Black when they oppose his deluded worldview. Whenever there is a snippet of rational thought that backs up what he happens to be rambling on about at the moment then he's happy to use it.
Worst of all though, is the contempt for boring old 'research'. Black seems to feel a mixture of contempt & pity for anyone who would dare to base their view of human history on 'evidence' & 'peer-reviewed' rational ideas. The idea that we should evaluate the world around usin a rational & intelligent matter is ridiculous to the author. Far better to just make a few wild gusses & piece together an incoherent fantasy based on some stuff you heard down the pub from a guy who claims a friend of a friend's father was a Freemason. Thus the book makes outrageous claims about an all incompassing global conspiracy of secret knowledge without backing up a single claim with a footnote or hard evidence. The most insane claims are stated as fact, & the author appears to believe that simply by stating them his claims must be true.
The book is chock full of tired & vapid New Age hokum masquerading as important esoteric knowledge, plenty of 'see with your nose, think with your ears' pseudo-Zen claptrap. The book would be a wonderful pardoy of occultism if the author wasn't so obviously sincere.
Probably worst of all is that the author is the editor of a major publishing imprint, which is depressing; because this book is so awfully written, badly edited & sloppy that it's a disgrace that it made it onto the shelves at all. Patent proof that it's never 'what you know' but 'whom you know.'
I strongly advise people to avoid this piece of garbage like the plague.
extraordinary reactions - By: D&D, 15 Dec 2008 The 'esoteric' material is intriguing, it's an interesting & fun read: rich, multi-layered, surreal. It masterfully ties Eastern & Western philosophies together with human consciousness generally. An engaging & absorbing version of history: the subjective & esoteric aspect, as opposed to the objective version we were taughtin school.
It is clear is that the approved version of history is misleading at best & fraudulent at worst. Not surprising if you understand that history is written from the point of view of the winners, not the losers, of wars & life generally. Here is another version, which may or may not be as inaccurate as conventional history. Yes, he jumps around & doesn't always connect the dots. He tells many stories & legends & ties some together with interesting opinions. It is a new outlook - an upside down, inside out & other-way-round view, as the author himself says.
Very readable, bubbling with fascinating insights, it is scholarship worn lightly. The illustrations help you start to see secret teachings encoded all over the place. For instance, the way that Washington DC has been laid out is a well-known example of certain esoteric societies & their beliefs.
This is the first time I have seen more of us punters review a book here on Amazon.co.uk than on Amazon.com. It's also - as more than one reviewer points out - split down the middle between 5* & 1* reactions - & on both sides of the Atlantic. An extraordinary book, extraordinary reactions - and, also extraordinarily, apparently a different author on each side of the Atlantic, Jonathan Blackin the UK & Mark Boothin the US. I would, at some level, translate this extraordinary-ness to indicate that these reactions reflect the bookin some sense of being half-black & half-white, half-truth & half-lies -in a half-commission & half-omission kind of way.
For the most part I agree with the 5* reviews but then I do not insist on proof of every claim every author makes. (The people most insistent on proofin books like these are the same people who accept "scientific" claims without evidence, even to the extent of accepting say germ theory without having ever seen a single germ for themselves.)
I love coming across different ways to view the world, something the best science fiction provides, for example, as does this exciting book - but I also feel some wariness would be beneficial. As a way of sifting the quality of information providedin this book, the muscletesting method explainedin David R Hawkins' book 'Truth vs. Falsehood: How to Tell the Difference' can be invaluable.
You'll either get this - or you won't - By: Mr. D. C. C. Keating, 27 Oct 2008 This book seems to have a marmite effect on people. Love it or hate it. I'm not going to explain away why I think some people don't understand. Instead, for those that have reason to believein something greater & want to explore our relationship with that dimension - this is the perfect book. There is a wealth of information that the reader can take on & explore should they wish to - but the book standsin its own right & the mind bending thought experiment you beginin the first chapter takes you through a huge arc. By the final chapter, the world truly is upside down.
Distilled drivel - By: Folder Man, 25 Oct 2008 I am also someone who purchased this book with an eye to understanding how belief systems happen & what is attractive about them. I expected a balanced book detailing & referencing these beliefs & how the world was seen by the various believers.
I got nothing like it.
I got a barely concealed rant about the boogeymen scientists & historians who are trying to stop you learning the 'Truth'. And that you should believe this truth because apparently it was believed by every great scientist & historian who ever figuredin (western) History. But they kept it a secret. But they also wrote down amazingly tortuous & tenuous clues if you know how to read them, becauses apparently they can't really keep a secret. Anyone else spot the contradiction(s) there?
It's meant to portray a conspiracy of an elite. It sounds like a delusion.
From there the book tries to convince you of this truth by throwing what feels like random information at you.
Unfortunately the information is blatantly biased, selective, unreferenced, has assumptions stated as fact, has other 'facts' that are verifiably false & makes many other statements that are downright ludicrous.
The author spent 20 years reading various occult texts. I have no doubt that there are words of wisdomin there, but this author missed them & so we have a distillation of some of the worst drivel ever published.
One star is generous. I'm sorry & embarrassed that I spent money on this.
