The Secret History of the World, Jonathan Black
I’m honestly not sure why I have this book — some people have reviewed it as a serious synthesis of all that secret societies have believed, so possibly I ended up with it hoping to read something about that and understand secret societies a little more. Whether the book works for that is arguable: to my mind it mixes together esoteric beliefs more or less at random. The author admits in the first chapter that he’s chosen the societies he thinks had the right idea pretty arbitrarily: “I have also made cavalier judgements as to which schools of thought and which secret societies draw on authentic tradition” — what, in other words your “history” is based on the gut feeling of a single person, you, the author? Hmmm!
It isn’t really a history, though, but a sort of textbook promising to combine all these ancient ideas and show the truth. It handwaves at quantum effects briefly as being part of it, but mostly states that scientists just won’t believe in it anyway. It’s easy enough to read, but just… profoundly wrong and bad scholarship on every subject I know anything about. Hardly inspires confidence, even if it didn’t raise your eyebrows within the first page.
And now I really want a book that actually delves into the why and wherefores of the history of secret societies…
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