disjointed
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I gave up after 100 pages. Very disjointed and rambles all over the place. a big disappointment.
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Twaddle...
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I bought this hoping for an interesting (and un-biased) journey through the exotic realms of non-scientific beliefs.. nothing wrong with a bit of a holiday from Dawkin's real world. I enjoy a bit of a poke around the Da Vinci Code realms of fantasy... but no. The author doesn't want me just to be amused and titillated with tales of Rosicrucians or the Cabal, the Templars or Madame Blatavasky - he wants me to BELIEVE it!
If you have a few pence spare to spend on a book, you would be much better of with "The Quotable Atheist" by Jack Huberman - at least it is supposed to make you laugh (as well as think..)
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A base line for this dispute
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This is not a review, but a reaction to the dichotomy of opinion from someone who knows something about the subject, not from the initiated inside, but as an investigator preparing a law case. I've not read this book yet, I'm writing this to put down an unprejudiced baseline to judge this book against, as most readers' reactions are based on ignorance or naivity - I've been handling the original parchments in the Public Archives of mediaeval claims, some of which which are both unbelievable yet critical in what we now know as science. You can't have hard chemistry without recognising its roots in alchemy, and there are hard original sources which refute our scoffing.
We make a serious mistake to think that our cultural mores are fixed. Between the emergence of European civilisation from the Dark Ages (in fact, now a period of a mere 50 years) and the Anglo-Catholicism of the 1920s (a date chosen arbitrarily, I confess, to stop off before the confusion of modern multiculturalism), there were a number of clear stages of development of our modern mores, beginning with a long period of doctrine, stemming from the split in the early University of Paris between Peter Abelard and his mentor Guillaume de Champeaux, followed by the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Counter-Reformation, and then the Enlightenment. What is clear is that the Abelard split led on the Catholic hand to Champeaux' Victorine order embarking on a 200-year exegesis of the anagogical relationship between God and Man, marked by Hugh of St Victor's study of the Ark of Noah, figurative of the pre-Judaic relationship, followed by Richard of St Victor's Benjamin Minor, figurative of Moses' Covenant, and finally Jan van Ruusbroec's Spritual Tabernacle, figurative of the Christian Confession and the Apocalypse. Ruusbroec inspired Gerardus Groot, who was Thomas à Kempis' mentor, whence flows the entire corpus of the Devotio Moderna which is recognisably modern Roman doctrine. This corpus was the foundation on which Pope Eugene IV developed the idea of Papal Authority and Roman supremacy over other religions, developping a now almost-forgotten chapel in Brussels which was later integrally involved in the successful pursuit of alchemy, the forefather of chemistry - the famous Flamel experiments used a text acquired from the Jewish community of Brussels, destroyed by a pogrom in 1370, and the roots of chemistry in Jan van Helmont's studies of CO and CO2 in the 1630s again lie here, in particular in the 1560 experiment undertaken by Phillip II of Spain which provoked the alchemical furore.
As a side comment to this main thesis, Abelard's dissention led to Master Eckhard, whence the Brethren of the Free Spirit and Protestantism. It has been mooted that there may have been a project in the fourteenth century amongst the Great Orders of the Catholic church to split from the Minor mendicant Orders who had taken control over the Roman curia, which in due course led to this - see the Wikipedia entry on Eckhart. The Inquisition certainly hid a great relic in Brussels (Brussels Region Archaeological Atlas, vol 10.2, p151) which probably was used in the above alchemical works.
This shows that Rome carried out some extremely long-term plans, which were protected by the Inquisition from outside interference. It seems, however, that the Protestant Reformation destroyed some of these, as the future Pope Leo XIII was to be found, as Papal Nuncio in 1844, tearing the van Helmont house apart which was the site of the transmutation of alchemy into hard chemistry, before revalidating the entire history in the 1890s.
That does not, however, substantiate the Rosicrucian/Freemasonic claims to predate the Enlightenment, as they have failed to validate them, they are simply treausre hunters and are riddled with con-men such as Pierre Plantard and Michael of Albany. If the author claims to be publishing data from such sources, then he must be treated with great caution, as such materials tend to be regurgitated second-hand hogwash.
On the third hand, much of what leads us to treat those who are interested in such questions as credulous is itself equally gullible, the consequence of centuries of Inquisition disinformation intended to discredit the curious and protect their plans.
Therefore, if this author, whatever his name may be, suggests that there may be an alchemical root to many of these matters, then he may be right. However, in that, there are several dangers: the modern revalidation of the roots of chemistry is partly driven by Freemasonic interests concerned with maintaining their preeminent position in the precious metals markets - at least one of the big suppliers is almost entirely staffed by masons - and there are also less honourable organisations whose roots lie in the darker mediaeval works of such people as Joan of Ark's lieutenant Gilles de Rais, the original Bluebeard executed at Nantes in 1440 for the murder of at least 80 (and possibly 2500) children in alchemical workings (he misunderstood an allegory in his source texts).
Although much of what he says seems to be predictably repetitive of other works, there are certain aspects which are new, and validated. It might therefore be worth reading this text in the light of the above thoughts - and this I will now do!
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The International Beguiler
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I would never usually write a review, especially a negative one. But I cannot bare to see this books praise outweigh its put downs. It is so poorly written and structured and full of so many untruths and nonsensical, illogical descriptions that any of the more intriguing and interesting sections of the book will be doubted. I have acquired nothing more from this book than an awareness of how easily lead I am into buying something with the word "secret" in the title and a review from Graham Hancock on the back.
I gave the full two stars because I have cut out the illustrations and they will probably be useful someday. The remaining pages I shall burn and dance around.
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A remarkable and comprehensive tour de force of the arcane
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The result of nearly twenty years' research, this book is a remarkable, comprehensive tour de force of the arcane, superbly illustrated with colour and black-and-white plates, some of which have not been seen outside secret societies.
As Jonathan Black points out in his introduction, while modern pundits tend to discredit the Mystery schools, "this book will show that throughout history an astonishing number of famous people have secretly cultivated the esoteric philosophy and mystical states taught in the secret societies". He cites, for example, Bach, Beethoven, Cervantes, Charlemagne, Dante, Goethe, Joan of Arc, Kepler, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Milton, Mozart, Napoleon, Newton, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and George Washington, all of whom held beliefs and who adopted practices that are discredited today.
I have always been fascinated by the Comte de St. Germain. Described by Voltaire as "a man who knows everything and who never dies", he was capable of phenomenal feats, such as the dramatic demonstration witnessed by Cagliostro, mentioned by Black, and who seems to have lived for an indeterminate period. Held by some to be a charlatan, he nonetheless liaised with, and was respected by, many government ministers and royal families in Europe. Monarchs, including Louis XV, entrusted him with secret diplomatic missions.
"The remains of an ancient wisdom lie all around us," concludes Black, "in the names of the days of the week and the months of the year, in the arrangements of the pips in an apple and in the strangeness of mistletoe, in music [and] in the design of many public buildings and statues and in our greatest art and literature . . .
"Science sees idealism as having dominated history up until the seventeenth century when the process of discrediting it began. Science assumes materialism will remain the dominant philosophy until the end of time. In the view of the secret societies, materialism will come to be seen as a mere blip . . ."
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