The Secret History of the World

November 5, 2007
Booth, a London publisher who has taught philosophy and theology at Oxford, is not shy about what he expects from readers—he asks that they enter into an “imaginative exercise†and embrace a world in which “the basic facts of history can be interpreted in a way which is almost completely the opposite of the way we normally understand them.†That radical re-interpretation is based on the tenets offered in the “secret teachings†of Rosicrucians, esoteric Freemasonry, Sufism and Kabbalism, among others, with additional references to Eastern religions and Greek and Roman mythology. According to Booth, these teachings inspire the “cosmic mind†that brought into being the material universe. Booth's history incorporates so many disparate philosophies, many of them far, far away from the mainstream, that it lacks all coherence. And his universe is full of bizarre theories, entertaining primarily for their weirdness. For example, he posits that the angels in the ancient Hebrew Book of Enoch “who became sexually attracted to human women are none other than the Gods of Olympus.†It is hard to imagine that readers without Booth's predilections for the metaphysical will find this to be anything more than an earnest curiosity. B&w illus.

October 1, 2007
According to the author, an occultist-wannabe, the Bible's Psalm 19, studied "in conjunction with comparative texts from neighboring cultures, ]describes the marriage of the sun to Venus." No matter that Venus is never mentioned in that Psalm! And the Book of Revelation's account of the opening of the seven seals is "in fact a way of talking about the enlivening of the seven [Hindu] chakras." In Eschenbach's "Parzifal", a jewel dislodged from Lucifer's crown signals "that humanity would increasingly suffer a loss of vision in the Third Eye, the brow chakra." This is a priori history in which all evidence contrary to one's convictions is ignored. Booth pontificates: we live in "a psychosomatic universe," where we can influence the roll of dice if we wish it hard enough; "all biology is astro-biology." Booth claims for his thesis a list of supporters or acolytes starting in Egypt, India, and Greece and ending with FDR and Francis Crick; there is even a nod toward Lenin. This is as silly a book as ever was. Not recommended.David Keymer, Modesto, CA

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