Secrets & Mysteries of the World

January 31, 2005
Everything from Atlantis to Bigfoot to the Bermuda Triangle is dusted off in this rambling rehash of pop mythology. Browne (Adventures of a Psychic) serves up perfunctory accounts of folktales, New Age origin myths and tabloid sensations, embellishing them with her desultory psychic vibes ("historians say that Stonehenge dates to about 3000 B.C., but I felt when I was there that it was more like 5000 B.C.") and the nattering asides--"Francine said there are forty-four universes"--of her "spirit guide." Influenced by Francine and theorist Erich Van Daniken, who believes astronauts existed in ancient times, Browne ascribes most unexplained phenomena to extraterrestrials from the Andromeda galaxy, who are responsible for the Pyramids (built with "anti-gravity rods"), crop circles (formed by aliens to "get their message across") and the blood-sucking Chupacabra ("a creature from another planet that was put here for research purposes and sometimes runs amok"). Browne is founder of a Gnostic-ish church (she offers a lengthy, Da Vinci Code-like chronicle of Jesus's life, in which he survives crucifixion and settles down with Mary Magdalene in France) and is therefore skeptical of legends associated with Catholicism, like demons, stigmata and the Shroud of Turin, all of which are accorded uncharacteristically rational explanations. With its biased pattern of credulity and debunking, the book amounts to a slapdash tour of the author's own eccentric belief systems. Photos.