I had extremely high expectations for this book. Robert Anton Wilson talked it up pretty heavily in Everything is Under Control, and the book is incredibly hard to find (at least without paying through the nose). I picked up a paperback copy on ebay a while back for a semi-reasonable price, after years of having a recurring search open.

I was probably expecting too much. The book is perhaps impressive if you’ve never read a piece of Kennedy conspiracy theory and/or if you’re not familiar with Carroll Quigley’s work. Most of his central thesis is basically a rehash of Quigley’s thesis (though, I should note, I haven’t actually read Tragedy and Hope yet, but I’ve read enough summaries that Oglesby’s thesis does seem pretty much identical). The first half of the book gets incredibly bogged down in JFK assassination theory, which is fine, but I got the sense the book was written for an audience who hasn’t heard all this stuff endlessly elsewhere. The sections didn’t really present me with any new information, so I found it to be a bit of a slog.

The Watergate section was slightly more interesting. Most of his focus there is on the plane crash that killed Dorothy Hunt and on a theory that McCord was a CIA plant in the Nixon inner circle. I knew a fair bit of about the former, but the latter was one I had only heard about in passing. I read a bit about Jim Houghan’s book Secret Agenda, which goes Oglesby one further and not only says that both McCord and Hunt were working to set up Nixon, but that the bugging devices were installed months after the break-in to shore up the story.

I should also point out that Oglesby’s writing is fairly preposterous. He is prone to overly dramatic italicized statements and weird conversational insertions. I can’t remember if he actually followed up a quote from a source with an “Oh, really?” but he certainly did something close.

Some notes:

p.233-234. His description of Sherman Skolnick and his “colleague, companion, and bodyguard”, Alex Bottos, is fantastic. “Skolnick has been confined from birth to a wheelchair. He is intense, loud, overbearing, quick, suspicious, sometime merry, all upper torso and arms, boisterout, gnomic-faced. Bottos is more somber and sepulchral. He says he was at Opalaka in 1960-61 with Hunt on their Bay of Pigs campaign. He carries a pistol and is fond of flashing it. He dresses with old-fashioned nattiness and polishes to a high gloss both his black hair and his black patent leather loafers. [...] They project an ominous, swirling, shadowy atmosphere, Skolnick wheeling and challenging, Bottos in a tailored flak jacket brooding on collapse.” These two sound like they either stepped out of or were the direct inspiration for a Ross Thomas novel.

p.263. Further cementing their aura as fictional characters, Bottos apparently once infiltrated the Lansky mob and joined crew led by Joseph Sarelli that specialized in high-tech, in-flight airplane robberies. My life is clearly even more boring than I realized.

I can’t think of any other writers of non-fiction (aside from the multi-volume biographers, perhaps) whose work really demands to be read sequentially. The Pickett/Price books are more a series of their ongoing research than they are standalone works, so it’s sort of unfortunate that I’ve been reading them mostly in reverse order. This book’s big finish (that all of the Western mystic tradition is, in fact, Johannism) was already covered in the first few chapters of The Sion Revelation, so I wasn’t expecting this book to be especially revelatory.

Honestly, I found the first couple hundred pages to be a little dull. Most of it dealt with things I’d encountered elsewhere: the usual Rennes-le-Chateau stuff, the tradition of sex magick in the Western hermetic tradition, the Templars and their fondness for esoteric architecture, cults of Mary Magdalene in the Languedoc. All pretty standard stuff and lacking in the kind of completely out-of-left-field thinking I expect from these two.

Starting with chapter thirteen, though, things got much more impressive. At this point, they start mounting a convincing argument that Jesus A)might have been ethnically Jewish, but was religiously Egyptian, following in the Isis and Osiris mystery tradition, B) was a member of a group of an Egyptian-based religious movement led by John the Baptis, C) was the usurper of John’s religious movement, which continued in parallel with the Jesus movement, D) was attempting to fuse Egyptian mysticism with the Judaic traditions and expectation of the Messiah, and E) staged the crucifixion as part of a ritual to emulate the death and rebirth of Osiris. Now, this sort of thing is exactly what I expect from Picknett and Price! They do a nice job connecting lines from the canonical gospels with lines from Egyptian religious texts, as well as showing that elements of Jesus’ purported life story are lifted from the Mandaean texts about John the Baptist (whom they designate as one of a line of leaders of their religion). The only real failing is that they don’t quite explain how Jesus’ movement, if it was based in the Isian mysteries, turned into Christianity quite the way it did. They chalk it up to a personality issue, with Jesus’ Jewish followers (particularly Peter) failing to understand the esoteric nature of his teachings and generally having issues with women. I’m not sure if this entirely undercuts their argument, but it would be nice to get a better idea of how the Isian tradition got taken out of the religion (or at least separated – they speculate that Mary fled to France and started her own Isis-based religion there).

Some notes:

p. 137. I’ve read a fair bit about Gioradno Bruno, but I don’t think I realized he started his own secret society, the Giordanisti, which they cite as one of the main influences on Rosicrucianism. Also, John Dee’s codename was 007? Seriously? Maybe I need to revisit the various conspiracy theories I’ve come across involving Ian Fleming.

p. 207. I should learn more about Georges Monti (aka. Count Israel Monti and Marcus Vella), described here as “one of the most ruthless and powerful figures in twentieth-century secret societies” as well as being “a double agent for both French and German intelligence.” He was a member of the Freemasons, the OTO, the Holy Vehm(!), and the B’nai B’rith (despite being “markedly anti-Semitic”). He also founded the Ordre Alpha-Galates (which came up in the following Picknett/Price book, I believe). Eventually he was poisoned to death. Interesting fella.

p. 285. Lots of evidence here about Jesus being specifically described as an Egyptian. The gospels indicate he didn’t have a Galilean accent, and the Talmud describes him as coming from Egypt (as well as indicating that he was arrested for sorcery). Their research leans heavily on Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician, which apparently places Jesus in context with a tradition of Egyptian magicians (which would also include Simon Magus, whom Pickett & Price later assert was the rightful leader of the Church of John).

p.330-331. Some discussion of the Sabians, a group of Egyptian hermeticists, based in Harran, where the Mandaeans eventually settled. The Sabians were apparently “extremely influential on Moslem mystical sects such as the Sufis.” Given that the Daraul book argues that all of Western mysticism is based on Sufi wisdom, it seems to tie in nicely with the thesis here that all of Western mysticism is based on Mandaean wisdom (since there is some confusion as to whether or not the Sabians and the Mandaeans are the same people). How this all ties into the Levenda theory involving the Jewish Merkavah tradition, I haven’t quite figured out yet.

Apparently, this is supposed to be a collection for young adults, but I’m not sure I could tell the difference between the other collections. I guess there aren’t any sex scenes in these, but it’s not like the rest of her collections are especially bawdy. Anyway, a good enough collection for any age. “The Wrong Grave” didn’t do too much for me, but “The Wizards of Perfil” was very nice (and, I think, the first one of hers I’ve read that was set in a fairly straightforward fantasy setting (aside from the trains)). “Monster” was only okay, as was “The Surfer” (though I should point out that “The Surfer” was the first piece of fiction I’ve read that included a fellow Arango. It’s a common enough name that I’m kind of surprised I hadn’t seen it sooner). “The Constable of Abal” is another fantasy piece and pretty excellent. “Pretty Monsters” is very close to being great, but something about the “werewolf story within a werewolf story within a werewolf story” was perhaps a little much.

While this book doesn’t really do anything that Good Omens didn’t do better, it’s fairly inoffensive and brisk. I couldn’t quite tell whether it was supposed to be read by adults or children. I suppose it doesn’t matter too much; it’s got the same sort of feel as Pratchett, Adams, etc. all of whom I read when I was in junior high. Actually, I’ve found that both Adams and Pratchett read a lot worse as an adult than they did when I was twelve-ish, so maybe I’m being too hard on this book (which fell flat in pretty much exactly the same way). Clearly, I have just lost my sense of whimsy.

I figured reading something from each end of John Shirley’s career would be enough to give him a fair shot, and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be reading much else by him. This one had a lot of hype behind it, though, poking around, it seems like almost all of it is from William Gibson, which is reasonable since he not only lifted a fair bit from the book, but has the same sort of problems with thin, unconvincing characters and plot developments that aren’t particularly well-explained or coherent.

Maybe I’m being a little hard (on Shirley, not Gibson). It’s not entirely bad, and it’s always hard to go back and visit a vision of the future from thirty years ago, but the attempts at gritty futurism just don’t work at all. One of the central premises of the book is that the internet is going to cause the dissolution of cities, which really doesn’t seem to be happening, but I’m not going to knock Shirley for thinking that it would. I think my real problem is the “we’re in the future, and this one character’s psychic, and then the avatar of the city shows up, and then we’re fighting vigilantes and mobsters, and then our protagonist is dead and becomes a time traveling ghost” pacing of the story, which feels less like a natural progression of events and more like someone just throwing out ideas.

I love the movie, and I’ve always meant to read the book, so grabbed it when I saw it at the library. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it was nearly impossible to separate from the film, particularly since the physical descriptions of Newton could pretty much be of David Bowie. There’s a bit more explanation of what’s actually going on – I never entirely realized, watching the film, what exactly Newton is doing on Earth, but I’m not sure I actually care – and there’s definitely less of a plunge into hedonism in the book, which I think works better, though I can see how simply having a clinically depressed, drunken alien would make for a less interesting movie.

I read a lot of really dubious “science” books, but this one managed to be even more unconvincing than most. Like Talbot’s The Holographic Universe (whose thesis Laszlo rejects early on, but ends up using bits of), he feels that the best way to support his thesis is to present some phenomenon (telepathy, remote viewing, psychic healing, near death experiences, etc.) that isn’t really widely accepted and then show how his thesis can explain the phenomenon. That seems like a pretty dubious way to prove one’s thesis.

Anyway, Laszlo’s theory here is that the quantum vacuum is synonymous with the Akashic field, which (according to Laszlo) explains nonlocality. The same field also guide evolution both on a biological and universe-wide scale. Like I said, I’m not sure I really buy anything he’s arguing here, which is a pretty bad sign as I can believe almost any sort of insane scientific theory.

Couple bits of interest, though. Like Wilber’s A Theory of Everything, Laszlo tries to make an assumption that the brain’s activity is just coincidental with consciousness. I can almost understand the argument they’re trying to make, but it’s not helped by Laszlo’s insistence on falling back on the creationist “the brain is too complex to just evolve accidentally” argument.

The other bit is completely accidental, but, in discussing our universe as a subset of a metaverse, I felt an impressive sense of existentialist vertigo when realizing that any greater reality (either a Judeo-Christian heaven or a higher dimension containing us) doesn’t actually get us any closer to “why is there something instead of nothing.”

Someone recommended this to me at some point, though I have no idea who or when. Anyway, it was on the shelf at the library and figured it was worth giving it a shot. I’m not sure I entirely got into it – the rotating narrators just made me strongly dislike all the characters (except, I suppose, the two non-American characters) – but it was still fairly well done and effective (particularly since we’re talking about making a man-eating plant scary, which is never easy).

Totally entertaining, but, after Cold Skin, I do wonder a fair bit about Pinol’s apparent fascination with albino, humanoid beast women. I totally get not wanting to get pigeonholed as a horror writer, so moving away from the simple, but effective, horror writing of Cold Skin and going for the self-reflexive genre commentary/pastiche, but a good chunk of this book is essentially a retelling of Cold Skin, but set in the jungle.

Which would be fine, if it weren’t for his apparent desire to sleep with the beast women of his own creation. I suppose he’s aware of this, since the protagonist here questions whether he can properly fall in love with one of his own creations, but it still seems a little odd to air out this particular piece of self-analysis in one’s fiction.

I feel like I didn’t entirely understand the point of this book until the final third, but, once I got what Levenda was going for, it was pretty interesting. The first third of the book is about the Merkavah tradition of Jewish mysticism, about which I knew absolutely nothing (which is somewhat frustrating, since Levenda assumes a fair degree of familiarity with the writings). He then feels a need to go into a length digression in an attempt to assert that the star-based tradition of mystical ascension to heaven is not only not unique to Judaism (as he cites similar traditions in Egypt and Babylon), but can be found in India, China, and Africa as well.

And, while we’re talking about Africa, I should point out that buying into Temple’s writings on the Dogon without any skepticism makes me fairly likely to question the material I’m writing (however, asserting that the Dogon story is, in fact, deliberately falsified in order to create a general belief in extraterrestrials so that you can lay groundwork for a one world government may not make me question you any less, but I will be much more entertained). Quite a lot of Levenda’s writing here seems fairly well-researched, but I’m always a little dubious to entirely buy what Levenda says. If you’re not familiar with the guy, this article is fairly fascinating.

Anyway, back to this book. After the lengthy and kind of pointless bits on China and India, it becomes fairly clear that the whole book is a refutation of Scholem’s assertion that the absorption of the Kabbalah by non-Jewish Western occultists is a perversion with no connection to the actual history of Jewish mysticism. Levenda argues fairly convincingly that the Merkavah tradition showed up in Western occult mysticism well before it was supposed to have become known to non-Jewish sources. He traces a line from German Jewish Freemasonry to the Golden Dawn and, from there, to the various Crowley-inspired groups.

Anyway, fairly interesting, though would have been better without the middle chunk. Some notes:

p. 51. Lots of talk here about the writers of the Qumran documents being Zadokites (or, as they’re known to every Sunday School attendee, Sadducees), which is an interesting comparison to the Lash book, which refers to the same group as Zaddikites. I know there’s not really a difference in the written name Zadok and the term Tzadik, but it’s much less insane to assume that the Zadokites were followers of the high priest (the line of Zadok) than to assume they are attempt to become Tzadikim. Anyway, it’s interesting to read two books in relatively short succession with very different biases against the same group of people.

p. 73. It drives me a little nuts that Levenda doesn’t ever actually explain much about the merkavah texts, but here, at least, he lets us know the names of the seven heavens. For future reference, they are ‘Shamayyim (heaven), Shemei ha-Shamayyim (heaven of heavens), Zevul (meaning undetermined), Araphel (darkness), Shehakim (the skies), and Aravot, with the last heaven named the “Throne of Glory.”‘

p. 74. Not specific to this page, but sounds like the works of Gershom Scholem are pretty critical for understanding of Kabbalah, merkavah, Frankism, etc.

p. 83. Some talk here about the writings of Abu Yazid al-Bistami, the first Islamic mystic to come up with (or at least document) a celestial ascent method. It’s interesting that it features first a descent (which, confusingly, seems to take place from God’s point of view? It seems to start with the divine essence, then work through the emanations of God’s nature, world beyond form, imagination, spiritual perception, forms, then nature/material world) followed by an ascent to the Divine. The interesting bit is the integration of Jewish and Christian figures into the stages of the ascent. Instead of meeting angels along the way, one meets Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and, finally, Muhammad. I don’t usually think of Islam working quite so hard to justify itself as a successor to or fulfillment of Judaism in the way that Christianity does (particularly in Matthew). Another interesting point here is that the figures met are not external figures but “prophets of one’s own being.”

p. 169. Totally off-handed mention of Jacob Frank, Sabbateanism, and the Doenmeh, as though we’re supposed to know who they are. He will explain this in another chapter, but I kind of get the feeling this book makes more sense if you’ve already read it.

p. 184. Lots here on the Asiatic Brethren (or, more formally, the Knights of St. John the Evangelist for Asia in Europe), a Jewish Masonic order founded in 1777, that Levenda speculates was founded by Frankist/Sabbatean elements (and would be the means by which merkavah thinking made its way to the Golden Dawn/OTO/A∴A∴)

p. 188. Another Scholem reference, this time to Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, which is apparently written out of hostility to the appropriation of the Kabbalah by non-Jewish mystics like Levi, Crowley, etc.

p. 197. I’ve never actually read The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, but sounds bizarre and worth actually slogging through at some point.

p. 199. Nicholas Flamel apparently gets name-dropped in Harry Potter, and I’m pretty sure he was mentioned in Foucault’s Pendulum. I should probably do more research.

p. 209. Whole chapter here on the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, which Levenda positions as the secret German lodge of which the Golden Dawn asserted they were a chapter.