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magiciens #1
El retorno de los brujos
En El retorno de los brujos, hay una mezcla entre Alquimia, parapsicología, esoterismo y su relación con el nazismo y las civilizaciones perdidas, destacando las pirámides de Egipto, la Isla de Pascua y los mapas de Piri Reis.
640 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 1960
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July 29, 2008
An all time favorite. Great reading for those interested in the connections between filosofie, religion, spirituality and the past and future of humankind.
Well researched, documented and written by men who know their field. This book got me interested in mysticism and thought me to think outside the box and to feel free to switch from science to pseudo-science and that that was ok. These writers thought me that real intelligence lies in being able to think further than is allowed. Not to be afraid to "believe", not to fear intellectual rejection and snobisme and that real insight is a reward for intellectual flexibility.
Well researched, documented and written by men who know their field. This book got me interested in mysticism and thought me to think outside the box and to feel free to switch from science to pseudo-science and that that was ok. These writers thought me that real intelligence lies in being able to think further than is allowed. Not to be afraid to "believe", not to fear intellectual rejection and snobisme and that real insight is a reward for intellectual flexibility.
July 5, 2012
Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (Stein and Day, 1960)
The Morning of the Magicians, Pauwels and Bergier's Charles Fort-inspired catalogue of absoulte nutterdom circa mid-twentieth-century, has long been forgotten by pretty much everyone. (Given some of the predictions made in this book, many of which had been conclusively disproved within the decade, this is not a surprise.) I read it for the same reason pretty much anyone else who seeks it out these days does—there's a section, actually a single sentence, on page 131 that inspired the 1977 reviatlization of a movie subgenre that has persisted, on and off, to this day—the Nazi Zombie movie. “When he had recovered his speech he declared that he had just seen a phantom array of German soldiers in uniform lying on the bottom of the lake, together with a caravan of chariots and horses in their harness standing upright...”, the authors report. In the DVD extras for the 1977 movie Shock Waves, which kicked the subgenre off again after almost thirty years of dormancy, one of the screenwriters (I think it was John Kent Harrison, but don't quote me) mentions that he got the idea for the movie from this book. Having been a rabid Shock Waves fan since I first saw it in the late seventies, my destiny was pretty much sealed at the moment I heard that. It took me some five years to track down a copy of this book. It then took me another year and a half to read it. And I can guarantee you, since if you've even heard of this book at this point in time you, too, are probably a fan of Nazi Zombie movies, the quote above is the only part of the book you need to read.
After a relatively brief introduction that acquaints us with some of the foundations of Pauwels and Bergier's thinking (and an intro, of course, to the work of Charles Fort), the book is divided into two sections, which had the authors been a bit less flowery could have been entitled “The Past” and “The Future”. The former examines the supernatural/new-agey/totally insane ideas and beliefs behind the Nazi movement, including such wonders as Hollow Earth and the Doctrine of Eternal Ice. (Interestingly, there's not a single mention of the obsessive quest for the Spear of Destiny...) If you're going to read the book, this is the section to read it for; the stuff you will find here is fascinating, in a batshit-crazy sort of way, and it's sobering indeed in today's culture to remember that it is, in fact, possible for a country of people who have no idea what their leaders are actually thinking to be controlled by a handful of wingnuts who have much more of a place in the asylum than in Parliament. The latter is where things get crazy, and to be fair, reading Pauwels and Bergier's catalogue of silliness is really no different than, these days, reading Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave or Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or even those MTV adverts thrown around by environmentaist groups back in the eighties (remember when the rainforests would be denuded altogether by 1985 and the ozone layer would be entirely depleted by 1990?). The difference, for which I have to give Pauwels and Bergier grudging props, is that these guys never offer up any of this stuff, save the stories of what has come before, as documented fact. Pauwels even says, a number of times, that he expects much of the conjecture in the book to be proven wrong as time goes on, but that the authors hope someone will take some of the threads they have gathered and run with them, in a scientific sense.
But this conjures up some questions, the most obvious of which is this: when you have just spent a hundred pages or so making fun of the Nazis for believing the crazy stuff they believed, and then you spend the next hundred pages cataloguing things that are, at base, just as nuts, how can you expect to have any of it taken seriously? **
The Morning of the Magicians, Pauwels and Bergier's Charles Fort-inspired catalogue of absoulte nutterdom circa mid-twentieth-century, has long been forgotten by pretty much everyone. (Given some of the predictions made in this book, many of which had been conclusively disproved within the decade, this is not a surprise.) I read it for the same reason pretty much anyone else who seeks it out these days does—there's a section, actually a single sentence, on page 131 that inspired the 1977 reviatlization of a movie subgenre that has persisted, on and off, to this day—the Nazi Zombie movie. “When he had recovered his speech he declared that he had just seen a phantom array of German soldiers in uniform lying on the bottom of the lake, together with a caravan of chariots and horses in their harness standing upright...”, the authors report. In the DVD extras for the 1977 movie Shock Waves, which kicked the subgenre off again after almost thirty years of dormancy, one of the screenwriters (I think it was John Kent Harrison, but don't quote me) mentions that he got the idea for the movie from this book. Having been a rabid Shock Waves fan since I first saw it in the late seventies, my destiny was pretty much sealed at the moment I heard that. It took me some five years to track down a copy of this book. It then took me another year and a half to read it. And I can guarantee you, since if you've even heard of this book at this point in time you, too, are probably a fan of Nazi Zombie movies, the quote above is the only part of the book you need to read.
After a relatively brief introduction that acquaints us with some of the foundations of Pauwels and Bergier's thinking (and an intro, of course, to the work of Charles Fort), the book is divided into two sections, which had the authors been a bit less flowery could have been entitled “The Past” and “The Future”. The former examines the supernatural/new-agey/totally insane ideas and beliefs behind the Nazi movement, including such wonders as Hollow Earth and the Doctrine of Eternal Ice. (Interestingly, there's not a single mention of the obsessive quest for the Spear of Destiny...) If you're going to read the book, this is the section to read it for; the stuff you will find here is fascinating, in a batshit-crazy sort of way, and it's sobering indeed in today's culture to remember that it is, in fact, possible for a country of people who have no idea what their leaders are actually thinking to be controlled by a handful of wingnuts who have much more of a place in the asylum than in Parliament. The latter is where things get crazy, and to be fair, reading Pauwels and Bergier's catalogue of silliness is really no different than, these days, reading Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave or Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or even those MTV adverts thrown around by environmentaist groups back in the eighties (remember when the rainforests would be denuded altogether by 1985 and the ozone layer would be entirely depleted by 1990?). The difference, for which I have to give Pauwels and Bergier grudging props, is that these guys never offer up any of this stuff, save the stories of what has come before, as documented fact. Pauwels even says, a number of times, that he expects much of the conjecture in the book to be proven wrong as time goes on, but that the authors hope someone will take some of the threads they have gathered and run with them, in a scientific sense.
But this conjures up some questions, the most obvious of which is this: when you have just spent a hundred pages or so making fun of the Nazis for believing the crazy stuff they believed, and then you spend the next hundred pages cataloguing things that are, at base, just as nuts, how can you expect to have any of it taken seriously? **
January 10, 2024
Un saggio del 1960 che è entrato nella storia, anche della fantascienza. Ampi rimandi a fonti storiche, letterarie, dissertazioni filosofiche, matematiche ecc. Contiene addirittura stralci di alcune opere letterarie (ad es. "I nove miliardi di nomi di Dio" di Arthur Clarke, "Un cantico per Leibowitz" di Walter Miller).
La tesi è che la scienza del XX secolo ha intrapreso una strada che porterà a maturare una vera e propria rivoluzione piscologica, un cambiamento di ottica rispetto al positivismo del secolo precedente. Oramai, il fantastico è reale e, invertendo i termini, pure quello che possiamo immaginare può esistere in qualche modo, da qualche parte, in potenza o in atto.
Il testo è suddiviso in tre parti: la prima dedicata al mondo antico e alchemico (il lavoro dell'alchimista è spiegato benissimo, molto spazio è dedicato anche alla pietra filosofale), alle leggende del soprannaturale, alle civiltà scomparse, all'esoterismo e alle organizzazioni occulte come ad es. i c.d. Rosa Croce. La proposta è proprio questa: studiare, con approccio scientifico moderno, tutti gli sforzi tecnici o "scientifici" dell'umanità nel corso dei secoli, per pensare come gli alchimisti, per intuire soluzioni, per scoprire qualcosa che non sappiamo, per oltrepassare il limite dell'ignoto, per verificare se qualcosa che abbiamo scoperto ai nostri giorni non fosse già stato scoperto in antichità (gli esempi sembrano essere molti, anche a questo riguardo).
La seconda parte è dedicata al dilagare dell'occultismo nel XX, al ritorno in pompa magna dell'irrazionale, dell'antiscientifico, all'influsso dell'esoterismo, anche orientale, nella vita culturale, dapprima, e nelle ideologie politiche, poi. Il nocciolo sta nell'analisi delle tendenze occulte del partito nazista e nei deliri messianici del suo leader. Come il grande apparato scientifico tedesco si è piegato al servizio di tesi che negano le fondamenta della scienza (la teoria del ghiaccio e del fuoco, la teoria della terra concava ecc.).
La terza parte è relativa al tema della parapsicologia. Si offre casistica e chiavi di lettura, sempre per un approccio scientifico in relazione alla possibilità di utilizzare tutte le facoltà inespresse del cervello. Si offre casistica interessante di alcuni geni poco conosciuti al grande pubblico (il matematico indiano prodigio Ramanujan, il guaritore ipnotico Edgar Cayce, lo "scienziato del XXI secolo che è vissuto nel XVII secolo": il mitico Ruggero Boscovich). La dissertazione prosegue e si sviluppa con i c.d. mutanti, vale a dire la possibilità che alcuni soggetti sviluppino tratti "superiori", siano in grado cioè di utilizzare tutte le facoltà cerebrali, in grado di padroneggiare l'intelletto c.d. "infinito", siano già tra noi, come fortunata mutazione, favorita da qualche super-intelligenza o da dal caso (es. dall'incremento della radioattività).
Per quanto possano essere state superate, certe idee e concezioni scientifiche, i temi sono molto interessanti e fecero breccia all'epoca, anche influenzando molti scrittori di fantascienza. Ad esempio, i fratelli Strugatskij ne furono colpiti e i loro romanzi "Lunedì inizia sabato" e "La favola della Trojka" sono una personale traduzione pratica di certa impostazione di quest'opera (la commistione tra magia e scienza). Gli Strugatskij, per il tramite di Ivan Efremov, Intrattennero corrispondenza con gli autori i quali, a loro volta avevano letto "Lunedì inizia sabato" (1964-1965) e li esortarono a proseguire su questa strada, anche in generi diversi dalla satira.
La tesi è che la scienza del XX secolo ha intrapreso una strada che porterà a maturare una vera e propria rivoluzione piscologica, un cambiamento di ottica rispetto al positivismo del secolo precedente. Oramai, il fantastico è reale e, invertendo i termini, pure quello che possiamo immaginare può esistere in qualche modo, da qualche parte, in potenza o in atto.
Il testo è suddiviso in tre parti: la prima dedicata al mondo antico e alchemico (il lavoro dell'alchimista è spiegato benissimo, molto spazio è dedicato anche alla pietra filosofale), alle leggende del soprannaturale, alle civiltà scomparse, all'esoterismo e alle organizzazioni occulte come ad es. i c.d. Rosa Croce. La proposta è proprio questa: studiare, con approccio scientifico moderno, tutti gli sforzi tecnici o "scientifici" dell'umanità nel corso dei secoli, per pensare come gli alchimisti, per intuire soluzioni, per scoprire qualcosa che non sappiamo, per oltrepassare il limite dell'ignoto, per verificare se qualcosa che abbiamo scoperto ai nostri giorni non fosse già stato scoperto in antichità (gli esempi sembrano essere molti, anche a questo riguardo).
La seconda parte è dedicata al dilagare dell'occultismo nel XX, al ritorno in pompa magna dell'irrazionale, dell'antiscientifico, all'influsso dell'esoterismo, anche orientale, nella vita culturale, dapprima, e nelle ideologie politiche, poi. Il nocciolo sta nell'analisi delle tendenze occulte del partito nazista e nei deliri messianici del suo leader. Come il grande apparato scientifico tedesco si è piegato al servizio di tesi che negano le fondamenta della scienza (la teoria del ghiaccio e del fuoco, la teoria della terra concava ecc.).
La terza parte è relativa al tema della parapsicologia. Si offre casistica e chiavi di lettura, sempre per un approccio scientifico in relazione alla possibilità di utilizzare tutte le facoltà inespresse del cervello. Si offre casistica interessante di alcuni geni poco conosciuti al grande pubblico (il matematico indiano prodigio Ramanujan, il guaritore ipnotico Edgar Cayce, lo "scienziato del XXI secolo che è vissuto nel XVII secolo": il mitico Ruggero Boscovich). La dissertazione prosegue e si sviluppa con i c.d. mutanti, vale a dire la possibilità che alcuni soggetti sviluppino tratti "superiori", siano in grado cioè di utilizzare tutte le facoltà cerebrali, in grado di padroneggiare l'intelletto c.d. "infinito", siano già tra noi, come fortunata mutazione, favorita da qualche super-intelligenza o da dal caso (es. dall'incremento della radioattività).
Per quanto possano essere state superate, certe idee e concezioni scientifiche, i temi sono molto interessanti e fecero breccia all'epoca, anche influenzando molti scrittori di fantascienza. Ad esempio, i fratelli Strugatskij ne furono colpiti e i loro romanzi "Lunedì inizia sabato" e "La favola della Trojka" sono una personale traduzione pratica di certa impostazione di quest'opera (la commistione tra magia e scienza). Gli Strugatskij, per il tramite di Ivan Efremov, Intrattennero corrispondenza con gli autori i quali, a loro volta avevano letto "Lunedì inizia sabato" (1964-1965) e li esortarono a proseguire su questa strada, anche in generi diversi dalla satira.
May 19, 2008
Reality is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose. -J. B. S. Haldane
Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up! -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Absolutely mind-expanding! In this book, the authors expound a thesis of "fantastic realism" and explore the mind, not in the subconscious or conscious states but in what they believe to be ultraconsciousness. The book is able to cover virtually every topic from atomic energy, to secret societies of alchemists, to the influence of the occult upon Hitler, to parapsychology and consciousness, and finally to the upcoming superman - a mutant capable of astounding intellectual feats. The authors cite numerous previous explorers: Rene Guenon, Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Charles Fort, Gurdjieff, and the work of mathematicians, especially Cantor's theory of the transfinite. Bizarre theories are considered: Horbiger's theory of "eternal ice" (and it's influence on Hitler), Teed's theory that we live on the concave inner surface of a hollow earth, theories to explain the origins of civilization, the work of the alchemists and their possible knowledge of atomic physics, theories regarding mutation of the human species, and theories propounding alternative origins for life on this planet. The authors are able to consider all of this and put it together in a coherent whole, under the idea of "fantastic realism". They dare to ask such questions as: Are we all in a collective conspiracy to hide the truth, is science such a conspiracy? (Do secret societies exist and do they have an influence upon history?) What special knowledge did the ancients possess that we may not possess now? (What role did secret societies play in the origins of Nazism,) and in the "Nazi Black Order?" How were the Nazis able to rise to power and what did such a phenomenon represent amidst our modern world?... What is the historical meaning of the atomic bomb? What does the future promise for our civilization? And, Do supermen live amongst us men, and if so, have they always? Hypotheses are put forth in answer to all these questions. The authors reject a magical worldview and they also reject the narrow confines of scientific positivism. However, they consider it necessary to keep an open mind when examining these phenomena, and they refer to themselves as "barbarians" seeking to search out a scientific explanation to be imposed on the fantastic. The book is simply amazing, and truly life-affirming. You MUST read it! Not just to understand yourself and your world, but also to understand your future. You will never be able to perceive things in the exact same light again. Get this book and discover the mysteries of the world for yourself! :)
Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up! -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Absolutely mind-expanding! In this book, the authors expound a thesis of "fantastic realism" and explore the mind, not in the subconscious or conscious states but in what they believe to be ultraconsciousness. The book is able to cover virtually every topic from atomic energy, to secret societies of alchemists, to the influence of the occult upon Hitler, to parapsychology and consciousness, and finally to the upcoming superman - a mutant capable of astounding intellectual feats. The authors cite numerous previous explorers: Rene Guenon, Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Charles Fort, Gurdjieff, and the work of mathematicians, especially Cantor's theory of the transfinite. Bizarre theories are considered: Horbiger's theory of "eternal ice" (and it's influence on Hitler), Teed's theory that we live on the concave inner surface of a hollow earth, theories to explain the origins of civilization, the work of the alchemists and their possible knowledge of atomic physics, theories regarding mutation of the human species, and theories propounding alternative origins for life on this planet. The authors are able to consider all of this and put it together in a coherent whole, under the idea of "fantastic realism". They dare to ask such questions as: Are we all in a collective conspiracy to hide the truth, is science such a conspiracy? (Do secret societies exist and do they have an influence upon history?) What special knowledge did the ancients possess that we may not possess now? (What role did secret societies play in the origins of Nazism,) and in the "Nazi Black Order?" How were the Nazis able to rise to power and what did such a phenomenon represent amidst our modern world?... What is the historical meaning of the atomic bomb? What does the future promise for our civilization? And, Do supermen live amongst us men, and if so, have they always? Hypotheses are put forth in answer to all these questions. The authors reject a magical worldview and they also reject the narrow confines of scientific positivism. However, they consider it necessary to keep an open mind when examining these phenomena, and they refer to themselves as "barbarians" seeking to search out a scientific explanation to be imposed on the fantastic. The book is simply amazing, and truly life-affirming. You MUST read it! Not just to understand yourself and your world, but also to understand your future. You will never be able to perceive things in the exact same light again. Get this book and discover the mysteries of the world for yourself! :)
November 29, 2020
Summary: It's 2.5 stars for me largely because of the history and research provided. That said, I docked it because the writing style fails to make coherent points and it took a lot of extra effort to keep on point given the digressions.
This was actually suggested to me because of a conversation I was having about the incredibleness of the human mind to manifest thought into reality. I think the person was trying to use this book to tell me I am on a dangerous path associated with conspiracy theories. Problem is, this book is big on references, loose on a real thread of discussion. It reads like an underdeveloped academic that regurgitates lots of names, books, references and quotes but isn't actually going anywhere with it.
On writing style: This is written in 1960 and a lot of people writing at that time had an approach that is no longer used. They would quote lots of scholars with little context surrounding it and provide large citations without then stating why that particular citation. You'll notice this if you listen to boomers talk. They tend to do the same thing. That just doesn't work in 2020 because the audience is far broader and there are just far more people with the same name. As a result of this style, you really have to work to make sure you understood the author's point. In some cases, this technique is simply to just say "A-ha! I've quoted you into submission," at the end of a series of unconnected points. I mean in some cases, I literally had to re-read the entire section or even chapter but with the intention of diagramming out the main idea.
What's Great: The reason it doesn't have 1 star is because it does a fantastic job of providing details on things that are actually quite hard to find. I did not know the history of Golden Dawn and its relationship with other brotherhoods that led to Hitler and the Natzi's. That said. I wish he would have gone into more about these different brotherhoods and why they split. The book has a bit of the wrong mix on this for me personally. But it's hard to get any of this info, so I can't give it less than 2 stars. Additionally, it references several books that must have been quite common at the time. I do think that the science or other theories of these books are probably now dated some 70 years later. That said, if they were common enough in his time, I'd like to read it so I can understand the history of knowledge better.
Preface XXI - 'This book sums up five years of questing, through all the regions of consciousness to the frontiers of science and tradition." This was what he was trying to do and each chapter therefore reads a bit like that stream of consciousness versus any point or driver of what might have started the journey to begin with.
P. 36-38 He talks about Emperor Asoka and his contributions to trying to hold back the use of science in advancing war and the founding of the Nine Unknown Men which sounds a lot like the Agents of Shield from the Marvel comics for lack of a better way to describe it.
P. 77 Around this page, you get something that might be summarized as: Ancient history had knowledge, we have knowledge. Their approach was what we today call alchemy. Ours is science. While I know people think Alchemy is complete nonsense, It doesn't mean their knowledge wasn't valuable. Ok. I'm down with that, but the babbling way this is articulated was so darn hard to read through and keep straight on where he was falling out on it.
p. 115 "Scientific knowledge is not objective. Like civilization, it is a conspiracy. Quantities of facts are rejected because they would upset preconceived ideas. We live under an inquisitional regime where the weapon most frequently employed against nonconformist reality is derision. Under such conditions, then, what can our knowledge amount to?" Here, he's introducing Charles Fort. I feel (hope)like this might be an imperfect translation of what Fort is saying taken out of temporal context. I might need to just read Fort. I think it depends on the type of science and in what way. I'm not convinced it's a conspiracy though nor does he provide any sort of additional support or expansion of this idea before moving from it.
p. 121 He talks about the "intermediateness" of real and not real that we live in (inbetween these two). I'm down with this, but the concept is poorly developed throughout this book. For example, what one might say now in modern times is that many concepts of real and not real are static in nature vs accounting for time. What is true this minute is not true next and we are in a state of motion that is unknowable from this dimension. If he would have said that, I would be down, but he doesn't get that far.
p. 160 "If God is higher than all reality, we shall find God when we know everything that is reality. And if man possesses powers which enable him to understand the whole Universe, God is perhaps the whole Universe, plus something else." This is what always makes me troubled by this approach to thinking about it. If God is everything and you are a part of that everything, then you are a part of God, not separate. Under such a framework, the whole sentence doesn't even make sense. Hence, this idea and concept of truth next is ... to me, under the wrong framework all together.
If you're an atheist it's also the same. It's a bit to me like saying this is a piece of salt in a salt shaker full of salt, which we do not differentiate from. So when I shake it onto my food, what does sweet taste like. It makes no sense as a question. That's how I read this. especially in the context of a forth dimension time.
P. 189 I did not know the Golden Dawn's history. Nice. It was founded in 1887 as an offshoot of the Rosicrucian Society by Robert Wentworth Little and consisted of Freemasons and I did not realize that Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn.
p. 196 He then talks about the Thule Group. I cannot tell from this section precisely how the Golden Dawn, Thule Group and Hitler are related as he says: "The Golden Dawn is not enough to explain the thule Group or the Luminouse Lodge, the Alenenberbe." This is part of why I find this whole chapter disjointed. It reads like a naming exercise and then concludes, since I can name all of these private clubs existing at the same time and they all had secrets it means that they are related to Hitler. Uhm... how precisely? I don't understand. I need another book that doesn't require so much cleverness of association from me, the reader.
p. 228 He talks about the idea that the society in Germany that was created existed there for years and did not exist in the same reality as we do. I'm kinda down with that, but it's unclear whether he means it figuratively, mentally, or if he all out believes these people are aliens from another place. At different times, it's unclear if he means the third option I just listed.
p. 230 He talks about the soul, but then he talks about the psychic powers of it in the weirdest way that I might be too dim to follow. "Men, then, are endowed with a special organ for transmitting the psychic forces needed to preserve the equilibrium of the Cosmos. This is what we call, vaguely, the soul, and all our religions according to this theory, are merely a relic of this forgotten primordial function, namely to play a part in maintaining the equilibrium of the cosmic force." ... but then he goes on to talk about the Nuremberg trials as being not necessary b/c the cosmic force that led these people was not of this world. It's really odd... and this is on p. 234 where he talks about how Hitler believed the Natzis, Jews, and non-whites were not human. Oh man.... it's all so weird. And then...
P. 258 He talks about the Hilter being a clairvoyant.
The books referenced in the back are cool. I'd like to read those. I just think this book has too many weird points for me to understand how so many loved it. It's totally possible I just don't get it.
This was actually suggested to me because of a conversation I was having about the incredibleness of the human mind to manifest thought into reality. I think the person was trying to use this book to tell me I am on a dangerous path associated with conspiracy theories. Problem is, this book is big on references, loose on a real thread of discussion. It reads like an underdeveloped academic that regurgitates lots of names, books, references and quotes but isn't actually going anywhere with it.
On writing style: This is written in 1960 and a lot of people writing at that time had an approach that is no longer used. They would quote lots of scholars with little context surrounding it and provide large citations without then stating why that particular citation. You'll notice this if you listen to boomers talk. They tend to do the same thing. That just doesn't work in 2020 because the audience is far broader and there are just far more people with the same name. As a result of this style, you really have to work to make sure you understood the author's point. In some cases, this technique is simply to just say "A-ha! I've quoted you into submission," at the end of a series of unconnected points. I mean in some cases, I literally had to re-read the entire section or even chapter but with the intention of diagramming out the main idea.
What's Great: The reason it doesn't have 1 star is because it does a fantastic job of providing details on things that are actually quite hard to find. I did not know the history of Golden Dawn and its relationship with other brotherhoods that led to Hitler and the Natzi's. That said. I wish he would have gone into more about these different brotherhoods and why they split. The book has a bit of the wrong mix on this for me personally. But it's hard to get any of this info, so I can't give it less than 2 stars. Additionally, it references several books that must have been quite common at the time. I do think that the science or other theories of these books are probably now dated some 70 years later. That said, if they were common enough in his time, I'd like to read it so I can understand the history of knowledge better.
Preface XXI - 'This book sums up five years of questing, through all the regions of consciousness to the frontiers of science and tradition." This was what he was trying to do and each chapter therefore reads a bit like that stream of consciousness versus any point or driver of what might have started the journey to begin with.
P. 36-38 He talks about Emperor Asoka and his contributions to trying to hold back the use of science in advancing war and the founding of the Nine Unknown Men which sounds a lot like the Agents of Shield from the Marvel comics for lack of a better way to describe it.
P. 77 Around this page, you get something that might be summarized as: Ancient history had knowledge, we have knowledge. Their approach was what we today call alchemy. Ours is science. While I know people think Alchemy is complete nonsense, It doesn't mean their knowledge wasn't valuable. Ok. I'm down with that, but the babbling way this is articulated was so darn hard to read through and keep straight on where he was falling out on it.
p. 115 "Scientific knowledge is not objective. Like civilization, it is a conspiracy. Quantities of facts are rejected because they would upset preconceived ideas. We live under an inquisitional regime where the weapon most frequently employed against nonconformist reality is derision. Under such conditions, then, what can our knowledge amount to?" Here, he's introducing Charles Fort. I feel (hope)like this might be an imperfect translation of what Fort is saying taken out of temporal context. I might need to just read Fort. I think it depends on the type of science and in what way. I'm not convinced it's a conspiracy though nor does he provide any sort of additional support or expansion of this idea before moving from it.
p. 121 He talks about the "intermediateness" of real and not real that we live in (inbetween these two). I'm down with this, but the concept is poorly developed throughout this book. For example, what one might say now in modern times is that many concepts of real and not real are static in nature vs accounting for time. What is true this minute is not true next and we are in a state of motion that is unknowable from this dimension. If he would have said that, I would be down, but he doesn't get that far.
p. 160 "If God is higher than all reality, we shall find God when we know everything that is reality. And if man possesses powers which enable him to understand the whole Universe, God is perhaps the whole Universe, plus something else." This is what always makes me troubled by this approach to thinking about it. If God is everything and you are a part of that everything, then you are a part of God, not separate. Under such a framework, the whole sentence doesn't even make sense. Hence, this idea and concept of truth next is ... to me, under the wrong framework all together.
If you're an atheist it's also the same. It's a bit to me like saying this is a piece of salt in a salt shaker full of salt, which we do not differentiate from. So when I shake it onto my food, what does sweet taste like. It makes no sense as a question. That's how I read this. especially in the context of a forth dimension time.
P. 189 I did not know the Golden Dawn's history. Nice. It was founded in 1887 as an offshoot of the Rosicrucian Society by Robert Wentworth Little and consisted of Freemasons and I did not realize that Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn.
p. 196 He then talks about the Thule Group. I cannot tell from this section precisely how the Golden Dawn, Thule Group and Hitler are related as he says: "The Golden Dawn is not enough to explain the thule Group or the Luminouse Lodge, the Alenenberbe." This is part of why I find this whole chapter disjointed. It reads like a naming exercise and then concludes, since I can name all of these private clubs existing at the same time and they all had secrets it means that they are related to Hitler. Uhm... how precisely? I don't understand. I need another book that doesn't require so much cleverness of association from me, the reader.
p. 228 He talks about the idea that the society in Germany that was created existed there for years and did not exist in the same reality as we do. I'm kinda down with that, but it's unclear whether he means it figuratively, mentally, or if he all out believes these people are aliens from another place. At different times, it's unclear if he means the third option I just listed.
p. 230 He talks about the soul, but then he talks about the psychic powers of it in the weirdest way that I might be too dim to follow. "Men, then, are endowed with a special organ for transmitting the psychic forces needed to preserve the equilibrium of the Cosmos. This is what we call, vaguely, the soul, and all our religions according to this theory, are merely a relic of this forgotten primordial function, namely to play a part in maintaining the equilibrium of the cosmic force." ... but then he goes on to talk about the Nuremberg trials as being not necessary b/c the cosmic force that led these people was not of this world. It's really odd... and this is on p. 234 where he talks about how Hitler believed the Natzis, Jews, and non-whites were not human. Oh man.... it's all so weird. And then...
P. 258 He talks about the Hilter being a clairvoyant.
The books referenced in the back are cool. I'd like to read those. I just think this book has too many weird points for me to understand how so many loved it. It's totally possible I just don't get it.
April 22, 2009
A classic of conspiracist lunacy. Influencing everything from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! to The X-Files, this book has left its distinctive mark on just about everything that followed it. Bizarre occult Nazi activities, Blavatsky's Ascended Masters and the secret masonic symbolism of Gothic cathedrals are just a few of the threads tied together in this book's attempt at a unified field theory of hidden trends in Western history. Take it with a grain of salt-- but as an exercise in creating an alternate worldview, this book can be highly entertaining.
September 9, 2010
The Morning of the Magicians (as well as the piece of fantastic pseudo-history garbage The Spear of Destiny) played a major role in promoting the myths in regards to National Socialism being drive by dark Occult forces. The difference between The Morning of the Magicians and The Spear of Destiny is the first book is actually believably readable. Many of the facts regarding science, history, the Occult, and related topics are true but the book is also full of half-truths and absurd mythical claims not backed by any type of sources (aside from making claims like "we gathered thousands of documents on the SS"). The book does not even have a bibliography in the back nor sources cited.
In Julius Evola's intellectual autobiography The Path of Cinnabar, the baron discusses how The Morning of the Magicians, using falsehoods and fantasies, attempted to taint the name of pioneering Radical Traditionalist René Guénon. The authors make the claim that Nazism was "Guénon with tanks." Interestingly enough, The Morning of the Magicians author Louis Pauwels would later became a figure in the French New Right. Co-Author Jacques Bergier was a Russian Jew whose cousin Anatoly was a member of the firing squad that shot Tsar Nicholas II. One can only assume that Mr. Bergier was a little biased when writing The Morning of the Magicians, his butt-love for Albert Einstein is more than obvious.
The Morning of the Magicians is an interesting work as far as entertainment goes but not to be taken seriously.
In Julius Evola's intellectual autobiography The Path of Cinnabar, the baron discusses how The Morning of the Magicians, using falsehoods and fantasies, attempted to taint the name of pioneering Radical Traditionalist René Guénon. The authors make the claim that Nazism was "Guénon with tanks." Interestingly enough, The Morning of the Magicians author Louis Pauwels would later became a figure in the French New Right. Co-Author Jacques Bergier was a Russian Jew whose cousin Anatoly was a member of the firing squad that shot Tsar Nicholas II. One can only assume that Mr. Bergier was a little biased when writing The Morning of the Magicians, his butt-love for Albert Einstein is more than obvious.
The Morning of the Magicians is an interesting work as far as entertainment goes but not to be taken seriously.
January 10, 2016
Aliens ruled the world in antiquity, alchemy pre-dated the discoveries of nuclear physics, extrasensory perception and pre-cognition explains how writers or other people could make, for the time, fantastic statements that at some later time in the future “came true”, National Socialism was based on occult mysticism and black magic etc. etc. So what is the supporting evidence for all this? Religious mythologies and artwork that are interpreted, it can be argued to fit the bill, old texts making unsupported claims, claims of personal experiences, meeting a strange unknown alchemic master for instance, quotes without any mention where it is taken from or any reference...
Probably the worst piece of trash I have ever read, von Däniken are a completely sensible writer with meticulous references in comparison. Over half a million copies sold and an excellent rating on Goodreads. It seems as long as you bash those horrible Natzis all critical thinking goes out the window.
Probably the worst piece of trash I have ever read, von Däniken are a completely sensible writer with meticulous references in comparison. Over half a million copies sold and an excellent rating on Goodreads. It seems as long as you bash those horrible Natzis all critical thinking goes out the window.
July 29, 2019
Seguro que más de uno habréis oído de civilizaciones desaparecidas con tecnología avanzada en su tiempo y ahora desaparecida o alquimistas asegurando haber encontrado la piedra filosofal o la conexión de los nazis con tecnología extraterrestre, pues bueno el culpable en gran medida de algunas de esas teorías y muchas más es este libro escrito por Louis Pauwels con la ayuda de Jackes bergier en el año 1960. El libro se divide en 3 partes y aunque las temáticas son muy variadas como ahora comentaré, la idea que sobrevuela sobre todos los capítulos a modo de interconexión es de que existe un conocimiento superior, lejos del aprendizaje normal que todos podemos tener y que pasa desapercibido a la gran mayoría de la sociedad, ya que este conocimiento está en ocasiones perdido, ignorado o guardado otras veces según dicen los autores por sociedades secretas que ellos van dando a conocer a lo largo del libro. La primera parte del libro trata los avances científicos de épocas pasadas, la alquimia y las civilizaciones desaparecidas. La segunda parte trata sobre el esoterismo nazi y una mezcla de diversas teorías ocultistas y organizaciones secretas y la 3 parte trata sobre la parapsicología. Cabe destacar la gran cantidad de información que a veces tienen ciertos capítulos que llega por momentos a saturar o por lo menos a mí teniendo que hacer una relectura para aclarar conceptos, además por sus páginas van pasando personajes que pudieron ser conocidos gracias a este libro como Charles Fort, Fulcanelli, Lovecraft, Gurdjieff entre otros que en aquella época eran totalmente desconocidos. Los autores buscan en el lector con este libro la apertura de mente, lo que ellos denominan realismo fantástico quitar ese velo de sentido común o de teorías establecidas que todos tenemos para llegar un paso más allá, que la realidad puede ser mucho más compleja. Un libro de referencia para aquel que le gusten estas temáticas
February 24, 2020
There was a tremendous amount of research done for this book.
It mentions a number of geniuses over the past 2000 years. Other words for geniuses are intellectual mutants, paranormals, the gifted, clairvoyants, ultra-humans, and savants.
The author talks about individuals who have been great mathematicians, others who have had a perfect recall for virtually everything, and people that can come up with new and revolutionary mathematical ideas.
They have also done numerous complex studies over the years.
The author believes that these type of people could have found cures for various diseases many years before the cures were actually discovered.
The author admits, near the end of the book, that it is very infrequent that joy, love, and liberty, go along with the scientific method.
It mentions a number of geniuses over the past 2000 years. Other words for geniuses are intellectual mutants, paranormals, the gifted, clairvoyants, ultra-humans, and savants.
The author talks about individuals who have been great mathematicians, others who have had a perfect recall for virtually everything, and people that can come up with new and revolutionary mathematical ideas.
They have also done numerous complex studies over the years.
The author believes that these type of people could have found cures for various diseases many years before the cures were actually discovered.
The author admits, near the end of the book, that it is very infrequent that joy, love, and liberty, go along with the scientific method.
September 12, 2022
Ensalada de teorías conspiranoicas, desde la tierra cóncava, el misticismo de los nazis, la filosofía de Gurdief, la historia de los alquimistas o el futuro de los humanos mutantes... Si esta es "tu mierda", este es tu libro.
October 3, 2017
I had mostly just thought to give The Morning of the Magicians a one-star rating and move on. Most of the book is profoundly stupid, and often in factual error. (Piri Reis was NOT a 19th-century admiral, but a 16th-century one thus could have presented the US with anything. And radio waves and gamma rays are both forms of light, so, yeah, you can compare them. Plus, computers are binary - the nigh definition of binary, even - and human-style intelligence is analog. Stuff like that.)
However, inside the brutal stupidity that is most of the book are two interesting parts.
First, Pauwels suggests that a being of superhuman intelligence wouldn't need to hide. Neither would an organization of such intelligences. What they said to each other would be incomprehensible to ordinary humans, much in the same way that dogs don't understand what humans say. It would simply be lost on us.
Additionally, they would have no desire to brag about their accomplishments or explain their thoughts to us - for the same reason, we don't try to teach our dogs algebra. We simply could not understand anything meaningful they had to say.
As a sci-fi writer, that's interesting.
Second, and a broader audience can appreciate this, I found the author's description of Nazi mysticism utterly chilling. Hitler as a medium for dark, subterranean powers, Himmler as a high priest, Nazism as an alien society focused on global war and mass murder as part of a magic ritual to create the ubermensch is one of the best horror stories written. I found it to be honestly terrifying.
So, how do I rate this book? About eighty percent of it is altogether stupid. Between outright errors and ludicrous overstatements, it layers on this banal vision of possibilities that is quite frankly the origin story of the X-Men - that nuclear waste created by atomic explosions is creating mutants with strange powers. Combined with a long section on alchemy, it's very much like the Marvel Universe - where magicians, psychics, and mutants fight Nazi evildoers and dark powers. But presented as non-fiction? It is to laugh. Plus, when not talking about Nazi mysticism, Pauwels repeats himself ad nauseum.
On the other hand, damn, that part about Hitler and Himmler is smoking hot horror goodness. It got to me.
So, I give it 2 out of 5 stars. If you want to read the juicy parts, go straight to the sections with the Nazis, and then stop.
However, inside the brutal stupidity that is most of the book are two interesting parts.
First, Pauwels suggests that a being of superhuman intelligence wouldn't need to hide. Neither would an organization of such intelligences. What they said to each other would be incomprehensible to ordinary humans, much in the same way that dogs don't understand what humans say. It would simply be lost on us.
Additionally, they would have no desire to brag about their accomplishments or explain their thoughts to us - for the same reason, we don't try to teach our dogs algebra. We simply could not understand anything meaningful they had to say.
As a sci-fi writer, that's interesting.
Second, and a broader audience can appreciate this, I found the author's description of Nazi mysticism utterly chilling. Hitler as a medium for dark, subterranean powers, Himmler as a high priest, Nazism as an alien society focused on global war and mass murder as part of a magic ritual to create the ubermensch is one of the best horror stories written. I found it to be honestly terrifying.
So, how do I rate this book? About eighty percent of it is altogether stupid. Between outright errors and ludicrous overstatements, it layers on this banal vision of possibilities that is quite frankly the origin story of the X-Men - that nuclear waste created by atomic explosions is creating mutants with strange powers. Combined with a long section on alchemy, it's very much like the Marvel Universe - where magicians, psychics, and mutants fight Nazi evildoers and dark powers. But presented as non-fiction? It is to laugh. Plus, when not talking about Nazi mysticism, Pauwels repeats himself ad nauseum.
On the other hand, damn, that part about Hitler and Himmler is smoking hot horror goodness. It got to me.
So, I give it 2 out of 5 stars. If you want to read the juicy parts, go straight to the sections with the Nazis, and then stop.
January 13, 2014
I first read this book in its first American paperback English translation. It introduced me to many things that have since become "mainstream," the connections of Nazi Germany to occultism, the writings of the American collector of unexplained events, Charles Fort, the deeper concepts behind Alchemy, and the precepts of Fantastic Realism in general..."Only the Fantastic is real." It was an eye-opener of a book, and rereading it now, it still is. If you have any interest in the fantastic or the hidden history of the world, give it a try. I think you'll enjoy it.
April 14, 2008
God knows how to classify this popular melange of rumor, history and invention about the weird, the sinister and the occult. I read it as a teenager and was immensely entertained by its tales of Nazi pseudoscience, secret societies and age-old conspiracies. Now, having read so much of this stuff, I'd be more likely to recognize the sources and, so, be less impressed.
January 22, 2014
One of my all-time favorites. One of the deepest, most intelligent books ever written on ancient mysteries and paranormal phenomena. I've read it some three times I guess and I'm sure I'll read it again in the future
October 8, 2020
No, we do not use 10% of the brain, we use 100% percent of it. The brain is just like an engine of a car... we don't use only 10% of the engine when going slow and 100% when going at max speed. The engine works 100% at all time, only that its parts are working faster at faster speed. If one part breaks, the brain, as the car engine, will work badly or not work at all.
Moreover, it is romantic to think of the unknown past as a golden age and secret societies that posses secret advanced knowledge. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), things do not work that way. In order to acquire advance knowledge in any scientific field you need time, energy, a lots of human resources and TOOLS.. lots of tools... produced not by the scientific field you are studying, but by others. Astronomers and biologists use microscopes and telescopes developed by opticians, doctors use knives and clothes developed by blacksmiths and tailors, and so on... Our world was built on interdependency, not on isolated islands of knowledge mastered by a few people. But the root problem is different: anyone who idealizes the past (or the future) has a problem with the present.
Moreover, it is romantic to think of the unknown past as a golden age and secret societies that posses secret advanced knowledge. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), things do not work that way. In order to acquire advance knowledge in any scientific field you need time, energy, a lots of human resources and TOOLS.. lots of tools... produced not by the scientific field you are studying, but by others. Astronomers and biologists use microscopes and telescopes developed by opticians, doctors use knives and clothes developed by blacksmiths and tailors, and so on... Our world was built on interdependency, not on isolated islands of knowledge mastered by a few people. But the root problem is different: anyone who idealizes the past (or the future) has a problem with the present.
December 27, 2012
Spero che in futuro qualcuno riesca a scrivere di nuovo un libro come questo, ovvero un libro che candidamente - barbaramente, direbbero gli autori - propugni un nuovo modo di pensare e quindi di agire, perché un'idea che non diventa parola non è una buona idea e una parola che non diventa azione non è una buona parola. E perché nonostante siano passati più di cinquant'anni, la tenaglia di una logica binaria e tutti i pregiudizi figli di visioni dualistiche fossilizzate (razionalismo vs. spiritualismo sopra tutte) continuano a modellare la vita umana. Qualcuno ha rinunciato a capire, magari sventolando la bandiera di un nichilismo d'accatto, qualcun altro insegue un utile distacco sulle orme di filosofie orientali altrettanto d'accatto. Molti continuano semplicemente a non porsi domande che non siano di ordine pratico e a tenersi per buone le certezze tramandate. Riusciamo ancora a dare un senso a una frase come questa: "Più capisco, più amo, perché tutto ciò che è capito è bene"? Forse. E a questa: "Se l'epoca che noi viviamo è dura, abbiamo tanto più il dovere di amarla, di penetrarla con il nostro amore, fino a quando non avremo spostato le pesanti masse di materia che nascondono la luce che risplende dall'altra parte"? Questa è più tosta da mandare giù. Lo fu anche per Pauwels: suo padre, socialista di stampo romantico, l'aveva sottolineata in un libro. Per tutta una vita il figlio volle allontanarsene, salvo poi ritornarci con ardore. Eh, la saggezza dei padri. Il futuro è cominciato da un'eternità.
August 18, 2010
This is about the historical, enthusiastic study by Louis Powels and Jacques Bergier, which created an avalanche of similar studies and researches. It was written in 60’, an era of important and revolutionary changes in the institutions and the way of life. One can feel in the book the bitter taste of postwar nihilism and at the same time an unparallel necessity and tendency for renewal and progress. The writers combined knowledge and information from various fields as of science as of other religious and spiritual traditions. This combination of heterogeneous knowledges, others valid and others controversial, established the “réalisme fantastique” as unusual but familiar nowadays way of thinking, where inside the vivid and original style, the first person narrative and other narrative texts are included. The balance of writers in strange fields of knowledge drove them to make known unknown at that time authors as were Arthur Machen and Charles Fort. Essentially they created a movement and not only a way of thinking, which found huge impact on people who were seeking outlets in a time of great questioning of the possibility for proper social use of the scientific achievements. This questioning took the form of search of alternative world theories presented and discussed extensively in this innovative, pleasant and interesting work, under the guise of journalism.
July 14, 2017
Mi dispiace dare due stelle data la mole documentale e lo sforzo degli autori di raccogliere tutti i dati letterari, storici, scientifici, etc etc ma il libro è oggi oggettivamente un reperto fuori tempo massimo, verosimile nei dubbi che poneva (o meglio nel lasciare aperta la porta alla possibilità di una realtà diversa) nella prima metà del secolo ma non oggi. Un grave errore è semmai la decisione della Mondadori di pubblicare una nuova edizione nel 2014 senza prendersi la briga di una profonda revisione almeno per rimuovere (o contestualizzare con note a margine) le affermazioni oggi non più accettabili. Non si può ad esempio leggere ancora della teoria dell'atomo con elettroni che occupano gli orbitali raffigurati come gli anelli di Saturno oppure sollevare i dubbi sulla costruzione delle piramidi quando oggi (rispetto a 60 anni fa) le conoscenze sui metodi di costruzione egizi ha eliminato le fantasiose ipotesi della necessità di tecniche fantascientifiche.
Insomma peccato perché era corretta l'impostazione di non dare nulla per scontato usando come esempio le affermazioni dei fisici di fine '800 che ritenevano la fisica finita ... peccato che dopo pochi anni sia arrivata la relatività, la fisica quantistica e altro a rivoluzionare il pensiero e la consapevolezza di quello che c'era ancora da capire.
Insomma peccato perché era corretta l'impostazione di non dare nulla per scontato usando come esempio le affermazioni dei fisici di fine '800 che ritenevano la fisica finita ... peccato che dopo pochi anni sia arrivata la relatività, la fisica quantistica e altro a rivoluzionare il pensiero e la consapevolezza di quello che c'era ancora da capire.
April 22, 2019
nonostante mi piaccia considerarmi un razionalista (più o meno) ogni tanto non mi dispiace buttarmi nel gran mare dell'esoterismo: la passione avuta da ragazzino per martin mystere ha lasciato qualche segno, temo...qui siamo abbastanza vicini alla mentalità da complottista moderno, a cui manca giusto l'ossessione recente per la fisica quantistica (ma forse era troppo presto, nonostante qualche accenno spunti) per essere perfetto. ed è meglio non parlare delle varie tesi storiche e scientifiche smentite nel corso degli anni.
eppure lo spirito dei due autori non è del tutto da disprezzare: si vede una sincera passione per la scienza, e una voglia di indagare senza porsi alcun limite ed inoltre la curiosità per la fantascienza me li rende davvero simpatici.
ed infine lo studio sulle influenze dell'esoterismo su hitler e il nazismo mi ha messo ancora una volta voglia di leggere qualche testo più serio sul tema (giorgio galli se non erro ha scritto sull'argomento): al momento però mi è rimasto qualche strano dubbio sulle similitudini tra i deliri di hanns horbiger in voga all'epoca e quelli di quell'aleksandr dugin idolo dell'alt-right contemporanea. casualità? forse pauwels e bergier vi avrebbero dedicato qualche capitolo...
eppure lo spirito dei due autori non è del tutto da disprezzare: si vede una sincera passione per la scienza, e una voglia di indagare senza porsi alcun limite ed inoltre la curiosità per la fantascienza me li rende davvero simpatici.
ed infine lo studio sulle influenze dell'esoterismo su hitler e il nazismo mi ha messo ancora una volta voglia di leggere qualche testo più serio sul tema (giorgio galli se non erro ha scritto sull'argomento): al momento però mi è rimasto qualche strano dubbio sulle similitudini tra i deliri di hanns horbiger in voga all'epoca e quelli di quell'aleksandr dugin idolo dell'alt-right contemporanea. casualità? forse pauwels e bergier vi avrebbero dedicato qualche capitolo...
May 26, 2014
Il n’est pas dit enfin que la constitution de cet être
collectif soit le terme ultime de l’évolution. L’esprit de la
Terre, l’âme du vivant n’ont pas fini d’émerger. Les
pessimistes, devant les grands bouleversements visibles
que produit cette secrète émergence, disent qu’il faut au
moins tenter de « sauver l’homme ». Mais cet homme n’est
pas à sauver, il est à changer. L’homme de la psychologie
classique et des philosophies en cours est déjà dépassé,
condamné à l’inadaptation. Mutation ou non, c’est un autre
homme que celui-ci qu’il convient d’entrevoir pour ajuster le
phénomène humain au destin en marche. Dès lors, il n’est
question ni de pessimisme, ni d’optimisme : il est question
d’amour.
collectif soit le terme ultime de l’évolution. L’esprit de la
Terre, l’âme du vivant n’ont pas fini d’émerger. Les
pessimistes, devant les grands bouleversements visibles
que produit cette secrète émergence, disent qu’il faut au
moins tenter de « sauver l’homme ». Mais cet homme n’est
pas à sauver, il est à changer. L’homme de la psychologie
classique et des philosophies en cours est déjà dépassé,
condamné à l’inadaptation. Mutation ou non, c’est un autre
homme que celui-ci qu’il convient d’entrevoir pour ajuster le
phénomène humain au destin en marche. Dès lors, il n’est
question ni de pessimisme, ni d’optimisme : il est question
d’amour.
August 31, 2007
Weird book. Completely bogus, vaguely or maybe pre-New Age story-telling about supposedly true events in the paranormal/mystical world we live in. Incas encountering UFOs bearing nuclear weapons... basically a reflection on marginal science that was surely influenced by the psychedelic era. All the same, it's kind of an interesting, "creative" read even if you you have to take it with a heaping pile of salt.
I found this book in my mom's library. For her, I'm told, books like this were more than enough to satisfy the "mind-bending" experiences her peers were finding through drugs.
Books are my family's anti-drug.
I found this book in my mom's library. For her, I'm told, books like this were more than enough to satisfy the "mind-bending" experiences her peers were finding through drugs.
Books are my family's anti-drug.
August 16, 2020
El primer libro que me abrió la cabeza, que me enseñó a pensar en lo imposible. No por su exactitud científica, que no la tiene, ni por su precisión en los datos, que pueden ser discutibles. Pero sí es incuestionable su premisa inicial: nunca digas no antes de investigar, nunca des nada por imposible antes de estudiarlo, nunca digas imposible antes de intentarlo. Un libro para leer sin prejuicios, entretenido y lleno de asombros. Un libro que marcó una época.
March 27, 2016
I Cannot find a way to describe this book. It's just AMAZING. The insight on human mysteries, old new and some beyond our our understanding of time as we know it is incredibly exposed in this book. The only way I can describe this book based on it's prose and the revelation with in it's pages is something similar to Shakespeare detailing the works of Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
January 11, 2019
Bit of a scatter-shot delivery of concepts, but overall pretty interesting. The sections detailing the occult beliefs of the third Reich were downright chilling. The overall thrust of the book seemed to be that quite a few different Fortean phenomenon could be explained by the evolution of man into mutant; new creatures with inexplicable abilities living amongst the human race.
March 25, 2020
amo amo amo esse livro <3
November 23, 2021
In the late Seventies I became friends with an Algerian student who was studying architecture at Leeds Poly. One Christmas, my friend decided that, over the holiday period, he would visit an uncle who lived in the Saharan town of Ghardaïa; and he asked me if I would like to go with him. I jumped at the chance because, although I had been to Algeria before, I had only spent a very short time in the Valley of the Mzab, of which Ghardaïa was the chief town; and had not had enough time to explore it, let alone the other four towns built on the hills above the wadi. So, I handed in my notice at work, packed my rucksack and went by Magic Bus to Dover, threw up all over the ferry to Zebrugge, bussed it to Lyons, thence by train to Marseilles and boat (thirty hours on the Zeralda) to Algiers; where my friend, having gone ahead by plane, was staying with his parents awaiting my arrival.
We travelled then by bus into the desert, sharing the experience, immortalised by Simone de Beauvoir, of the view of Ghardaïa, with its pastel-coloured buildings, as a beautifully constructed Cubist painting! We spent the next two weeks as guests of the uncle. My friend himself was working on a study of the local architecture, so I followed him on his field trips, or explored on my own when he was researching and writing.
One day I came upon a French language bookshop near the market-place, where I picked up a respectable looking paperback entitled Le Matin des Magiciens - but looks can be deceptive. The sober presentation of the book in its Gallimard edition gave no hint of the farrago of occult history, scientific enigmas and badly researched speculation that lay within. It was a sort of non-fiction version of The Illuminatus! Trilogy – that great excursion into conspiracy theories – except that much of it was actually more or less fiction, as I would later discover. At the time, however, I lapped it up: especially the middle section, entitled evocatively Quelques Années Dans l’Ailleurs Absolu (‘A Few Years in the Absolute Elsewhere’), in which the authors (the journalist Louis Pauwels and the alchemist Jacques Bergier) suggested that the birth of the Third Reich was the product of an unholy marriage between occultism and alternative science.
By day, my friend and I conducted a Grand Tour of the Mozabite Pentapolis (the five towns built on hills above the Valley of the Mzab); at night, after supper, I read to him great chunks of Le Matin, in which we encountered some of the intellectual byways of Western Europe: byways which would lead to a very dark cul-de-sac. By contrast, the Mozabite ‘elsewhere’ I was discovering felt like an oasis of light.
Looking back, I can forgive Pauwels and Bergier for the many falsehoods and inaccuracies that litter their book because, at the time I first read it, it opened up my imagination to vistas of lost worlds and alternative histories that would inspire me for many years to come; but...caveat lector! Their tales of giants ruling the Earth under an alien moon or of the Lord of the Earth in the subterranean Kingdom of Agharti struck me at the time as sufficiently plausible for me to later devote some effort into discovering what, if any, was the truth behind such notions – and my research would in fact lead me into areas of esoteric study that would prove far more fruitful than such historical conspiracy theories, which always turn out to be so depressingly literalistic.
The last word on Le Matin should, I think, go to Jeffrey J. Kripal who, in his book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, writes: “Read literally, the book is perfectly outrageous. Read fantastically, that is, as an act of imagination in touch with some deeper stream of physical and cultural reality, the book is perfectly prescient.”
What would continue to trouble me, though, was Pauwels and Bergier’s excursion into the Elsewhere of Nazi occultism, provoking me with the suspicion that they had perceived a dangerous crack in the consensus reality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, a crack between the worlds through which the West would fall if it was not healed – and that the established Left alternative solution to the crisis, Marxism and materialistic science, was not an alternative at all but, in reality, more of the same medicine that had poisoned the world to begin with.
I would explore these ideas decades later, in my first published book, Gawain and the Grail Quest: Healing the Waste Land in Our Time (2012), in which I present the Holy Grail as an imaginative symbol of healing – but that’s another story!
There is more on esotericism and religious symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (Incorporating the Twenty Third Letter).
We travelled then by bus into the desert, sharing the experience, immortalised by Simone de Beauvoir, of the view of Ghardaïa, with its pastel-coloured buildings, as a beautifully constructed Cubist painting! We spent the next two weeks as guests of the uncle. My friend himself was working on a study of the local architecture, so I followed him on his field trips, or explored on my own when he was researching and writing.
One day I came upon a French language bookshop near the market-place, where I picked up a respectable looking paperback entitled Le Matin des Magiciens - but looks can be deceptive. The sober presentation of the book in its Gallimard edition gave no hint of the farrago of occult history, scientific enigmas and badly researched speculation that lay within. It was a sort of non-fiction version of The Illuminatus! Trilogy – that great excursion into conspiracy theories – except that much of it was actually more or less fiction, as I would later discover. At the time, however, I lapped it up: especially the middle section, entitled evocatively Quelques Années Dans l’Ailleurs Absolu (‘A Few Years in the Absolute Elsewhere’), in which the authors (the journalist Louis Pauwels and the alchemist Jacques Bergier) suggested that the birth of the Third Reich was the product of an unholy marriage between occultism and alternative science.
By day, my friend and I conducted a Grand Tour of the Mozabite Pentapolis (the five towns built on hills above the Valley of the Mzab); at night, after supper, I read to him great chunks of Le Matin, in which we encountered some of the intellectual byways of Western Europe: byways which would lead to a very dark cul-de-sac. By contrast, the Mozabite ‘elsewhere’ I was discovering felt like an oasis of light.
Looking back, I can forgive Pauwels and Bergier for the many falsehoods and inaccuracies that litter their book because, at the time I first read it, it opened up my imagination to vistas of lost worlds and alternative histories that would inspire me for many years to come; but...caveat lector! Their tales of giants ruling the Earth under an alien moon or of the Lord of the Earth in the subterranean Kingdom of Agharti struck me at the time as sufficiently plausible for me to later devote some effort into discovering what, if any, was the truth behind such notions – and my research would in fact lead me into areas of esoteric study that would prove far more fruitful than such historical conspiracy theories, which always turn out to be so depressingly literalistic.
The last word on Le Matin should, I think, go to Jeffrey J. Kripal who, in his book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, writes: “Read literally, the book is perfectly outrageous. Read fantastically, that is, as an act of imagination in touch with some deeper stream of physical and cultural reality, the book is perfectly prescient.”
What would continue to trouble me, though, was Pauwels and Bergier’s excursion into the Elsewhere of Nazi occultism, provoking me with the suspicion that they had perceived a dangerous crack in the consensus reality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, a crack between the worlds through which the West would fall if it was not healed – and that the established Left alternative solution to the crisis, Marxism and materialistic science, was not an alternative at all but, in reality, more of the same medicine that had poisoned the world to begin with.
I would explore these ideas decades later, in my first published book, Gawain and the Grail Quest: Healing the Waste Land in Our Time (2012), in which I present the Holy Grail as an imaginative symbol of healing – but that’s another story!
There is more on esotericism and religious symbolism in my Goodreads blog: Myth Dancing (Incorporating the Twenty Third Letter).
April 2, 2020
It's a thick book that deep-dives into the incomprehensible, and is seeming self-aware of its own incomprehensibility. The central idea that runs throughout is one of the super-human and if they exist, how we as people might become super-human, how many have already existed throughout time, and did they influence/control Hitler to action and so forth.
A lot of the supernatural "truths" and "facts" mentioned, that lead the author to think science and modern thought should be more inclusive of the fantastic, seem to me to be more like coincidences, second-hand stories, and myths. I did read a cited short story called S.S. by M.P. Shiel, written in the 1800s, that was one of the many examples of shadows of the future from the past. Similar to the SS in Nazi Germany, the story is about a secret society that assassinates people with defective genes before they can pass them on—the idea being that all the strong genes were lost in the war and weaker ones should not be allowed to proliferate (eugenics). The story was as this book claimed. The secret society was called The Society of Sparta (S.S.), which, although the same acronym to the Nazi's SS, demonstrates that the idea of eugenics was around long before Hitler or M.P. Shiel and was something the Spartans did to eradicate weakness. The rest is probably coincidence, or maybe Hitler actually read M.P. Shiel, who knows.
I think the author would be excited by the advances in modern internet tech, as a future that echoes his ideas of the sharing of minds all around the globe to create a wealth of knowledge and answers. Although not psychic, it's close enough. It also shows, that in 1960 it was a lot easier to have fantastic ideas and not have the computer nearby to shoot them down, maybe that's why this book was as popular as it was. Saying that, a person who thinks and reasons this hard is no one to be scoffed at, even if the book did drag on. You just got to be on the same trip, man.
A lot of the supernatural "truths" and "facts" mentioned, that lead the author to think science and modern thought should be more inclusive of the fantastic, seem to me to be more like coincidences, second-hand stories, and myths. I did read a cited short story called S.S. by M.P. Shiel, written in the 1800s, that was one of the many examples of shadows of the future from the past. Similar to the SS in Nazi Germany, the story is about a secret society that assassinates people with defective genes before they can pass them on—the idea being that all the strong genes were lost in the war and weaker ones should not be allowed to proliferate (eugenics). The story was as this book claimed. The secret society was called The Society of Sparta (S.S.), which, although the same acronym to the Nazi's SS, demonstrates that the idea of eugenics was around long before Hitler or M.P. Shiel and was something the Spartans did to eradicate weakness. The rest is probably coincidence, or maybe Hitler actually read M.P. Shiel, who knows.
I think the author would be excited by the advances in modern internet tech, as a future that echoes his ideas of the sharing of minds all around the globe to create a wealth of knowledge and answers. Although not psychic, it's close enough. It also shows, that in 1960 it was a lot easier to have fantastic ideas and not have the computer nearby to shoot them down, maybe that's why this book was as popular as it was. Saying that, a person who thinks and reasons this hard is no one to be scoffed at, even if the book did drag on. You just got to be on the same trip, man.
March 24, 2022
mostly interesting for apparently being the point of origin for almost every 60s/70s countercultural pseudo scientific/historical idea you can think of, including ancient astronauts, hollow earths, nazi occultism, ESP, alchemy, rosicrucians, etc. Occasionally quite fun to read when they're blatantly just making things up wholesale or quoting fictional writers like borges to make points about nonficiibal topics, but there's also a lot of irritating 60s stuff about the potentialities of the mind that makes me want to fall asleep. there's a short section on charles fort that is a genuinely nice tribute to him and his thought, but it mostly just made me want to read fort himself again instead of these guys.
June 19, 2017
This was just not my cup of tea. Perhaps it is that I am not destined to become an 'Awakened man'. Or is it that this poor review is really camouflage to ensure that I am not identified as a superior 'mutant'
There was some nice illustrations, anecdotes providing a form of validation of men having super consciousness (Ramanujan, Cayce, Boscovitch). I will probably look into these guys further, so this was a positive.
The book also touched on a few of the ancient civilisations. 'Tiahuanaco' in Bolivian sounds out of this world (pretty much what the writer was intending) and is now on my ever growing bucket list of places to visit.
There was some nice illustrations, anecdotes providing a form of validation of men having super consciousness (Ramanujan, Cayce, Boscovitch). I will probably look into these guys further, so this was a positive.
The book also touched on a few of the ancient civilisations. 'Tiahuanaco' in Bolivian sounds out of this world (pretty much what the writer was intending) and is now on my ever growing bucket list of places to visit.
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