Conversion experience

“Magicians of the Gods” is a tour de force by controversial explorer Graham Hancock, and is considered a sequel of sorts to his “Fingerprints of the Gods”, published already in 1995. Reading it was like a conversion experience, although strictly speaking I was “converted” to the idea of a Lost Civilization (or, more likely, lost civilizations in the plural) already after reading John Michael Greer´s “Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy”. I used to believe that Hancock was simply a latter day Velikovsky-Däniken combo. I now think that the man is on to something, probably something huge!

The main archaeological discovery since “Fingerprints” which, more or less literally, “changes everything” is the ancient temple complex at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, believed to be about 12,000 years old. At the time, only hunters and gatherers lived in the area – indeed, all humans everywhere were still at the Paleolithic or Mesolithic stages of technological and cultural development. Either hunters and gatherers built enormous temple complexes, or…well, you get the picture. Hancock believes that ancient Göbekli Tepe was built by survivors from “Atlantis” or the Lost Civilization. I happen to agree that something very, very strange is going on here. In fact, if Hancockism (or hyper-diffusionism) ever becomes main stream, it will be because of Göbekli Tepe. In my crystal ball, I see a popular documentary about the site circa 2020…

On most points, Hancock´s ideas are more radical or “fringe” than those of official archaeology. He believes that sites dated by archeologists to within the span of “known” human history are actually considerably older. The book contains discussions about Baalbek, Sacsayhuaman, Tiwanaku, submerged cities off the Indian coast and a pyramid-like structure in Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, the controversial redating of the Sphinx carried out by Robert Schoch is discussed, and Hancock seems to believe that all structures at Giza are either older than Egyptologists want to admit, or based on a master plan from primordial times. A strong point of the book (at least to a “moderate” like myself) is that the fringiest aspects of Hancock´s previous works are played down, such as the notion of “wandering poles” and “crustal replacement”. He even attacks the late Zecheriah Sitchin, calling his works “science fiction novels”. No face-on-Mars either! It´s not entirely clear whether Hancock believes that Atlantis was technologically advanced as in 21th century modern, or whether they looked more akin to other ancient civilizations, albeit with some additional gadgets (perhaps some form of electricity).

The most disturbing aspect of “Magicians of the Gods” is, inevitably, the discussion about the reason behind the Lost Civilization´s disappearance. Why exactly did it go lost? Hancock believes that Earth was struck by a comet at the end of the last Ice Age. The comet impact vaporized large portions of the ice sheets, creating a massive flood which destroyed Atlantis and any other civilizations which may have been in existence. Hancock believes that this global cataclysm turned humanity into a species with amnesia (a Velikovskian notion – really a secular form of Gnosticism). He also believes that the survivors of Atlantis encoded hidden messages about the next apocalypse at Göbekli Tepe and other ancient sites. The time is NOW, more specifically 2012 to 2040, during which the comet will return and once again destroy us all…unless the nations of the Earth can unite and stop the old devil with some modern space technology. I admit I´m not entirely “converted” on this point – Hancock´s interpretation of the Göbekli Tepe stela with the scorpion motif sounds like pure speculation. Note also the tie-in to the failed New Age prophecy of 2012. That being said, the author is probably right that neo-catastrophism deserves a hearing within academe.

If Hancock is right about the Lost Civilization, many ancient mysteries will finally be explained. Why do unconnected cultures all over the world have flood legends? Why is humanity´s original concept of history not “progress” but rather regress from a Golden Age? Why do legends from unconnected cultures talk about a dangerous comet? Why are the Sumerian king lists so ridiculously long, stretching back into pre-history? Why did many ancient civilizations claim to have been founded by culture-heroes from foreign lands, rather than by the natives? What caused the “genetic bottlenecks” our species seems to have gone through? And, ahem, why did Plato place the destruction of Atlantis right at the end of the last Ice Age? I wouldn´t be surprised if the Lost Civilization will be accepted academic dogma in 50 years or so, at which point everyone will say that of course they knew all this all along, Graham Hancock be damned. Perhaps we should take special care to preserve “Magicians of the Gods” to posterity…

Of course, there are other aspects of “Magicians” which I found more questionable, including a quasi-religious reverence for said magicians and their secret brotherhood . Hancock´s ideas are easy to combine with Theosophy and I believe ARE has promoted them. The idea that the culture-heroes may have been White is likely to appeal to Alt-Right circles, although the Indonesian-Tamil aspect perhaps mitigates this. (Unless, of course, you believe in the Tropical Ur-Heimat of the Aryan race!) I believe that Hancock´s success can at least in part be explained by its character of “revelation”. I already mentioned that Velikovsky´s idea of amnesia sounds like a form of Gnosticism. Some groups hope to find religious or technological secrets left behind by the Atlantids, perhaps in a Hall of Records under the paws of the Sphinx. OK, here is the bad news: what if Atlantis turns out to be just another ancient civilization, ultimately neither better nor worse than Egypt, Greece or Rome? The Hall of Records is just another bunch of cuneiform tablets.

Still, the good news is that Atlantis might have been real, warts and all, and I therefore give this book five stars.

MAGA versus the Neo-Zombies

I'm not a great fan of zombie flicks, but I sort of liked this one. Brad Pitt stars an UN-affiliated special investigator who is caught up in a “zombie” apocalypse of unknown provenance. The first part of the film feels like every other zombie apocalypse you've ever seen: suburbia turns into zombie sprawl, “we have to get to the roof of that abandoned building”, the military mysteriously makes it, etc. Things eventually get more interesting. The finale has suspense, drama and some original twists.

It's interesting to note that the zombies very quickly get de-humanized in this production. In other zombie films, it's a cliché that some grandmother or other loved family member turns into a flesh-eating monster, and we're not supposed to forget that the undead are really “us”. Indeed, this is what makes zombies so scary to many people! In this story, the zombies don't really feel human at all, not even when you see humans “turn”. They remind me more of weird aliens or swarming insects: bizarre, dangerous, incomprehensible…but not really evil in the strict sense. And definitely not “us”.

For whatever reason, I liked this approach better.

The “politically correct” aspects of the film feel forced. Sure, the UN deputy general secretary is African, but the real heroes are all White males (except an Israeli elite soldier – no surprise there), while the poor womyn and girlz sit at home, more worried about their man than the end of the world. Blaaah! It was rather funny to watch the scene where Israel (of all places) opens the Wall to Palestinians, only to be punished for its sudden peacenik conversion by murderous “zombie” invaders (or is it a metaphor for ISIS?). As usual, the US military turns out to be the saviors of the world…

My problem isn't so much with these stereotypes, per se, but that Hollywood thinks they don't show if they tack on some token minorities. Pro-tip: either go all the way *or* stay with the usual tropes. Except for the zombie trope, which was given a necessary overhaul in this flick.

In the end, I give “World War Z” four stars.

Vive Napoleon (the third one)

This is an interesting encyclopedia about France under the “Second Empire”, the rule of Louis Bonaparte as “Emperor Napoleon III” from 1852 to 1870. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte usually gets all the bad rap, and unless I'm mistaken the famous Marx quote about history repeating itself as farce was a reference to the French emperor. The compilers of this volume, by contrast, seem to sympathize with Napoleon III, or at least try to be as objective as possible.

The encyclopedia deals with all aspects of French politics, culture and society during the Second Empire period. Thus, there are entries on authors such as Charles Baudelaire, Alexander Dumas fils, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. There are entries on French scientists, on Darwinism in France and on Positivism. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Henri Tolain and the First International are featured. Various Catholic affairs are also featured: Infallibility, “Syllabus of Errors”, Gallicanism, etc. Louis Bonaparte's literary endeavors are dissected, the contributors having a positive view of “Des Idees Napoleoniennes” and “Histoire de Jules Cesar” (yes, the emperor wrote two books on Julius Caesar).

Obviously, the encyclopedia also deals with the actual policies of the Second Empire: their bumbling attempts at mediation in the U.S. Civil War, the Crimean War, the Mexican intervention, Senegal, “Congress Policy”, etc. And, of course, the rebuilding of Paris! Curiously, there is no entry on Karl Marx' “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, but perhaps that came too early?

All in all, probably an indispensable reference if you are an advanced history student specializing in this period of French history. Only drawback for deplorable Anglophones: the authors sometimes use/quote French expressions without translating them!

Wild caldera

“Wild Yellowstone” is a two-part documentary about animal life in the Yellowstone National Park. It's fascinating, and the area really does look like another planet! During the winter, even large waterfalls freeze to ice in Yellowstone, and the animals have to seek shelter near the hot springs (which can kill you if you get too close). The animals are all the usual ones: bears, the famed Yellowstone wolves, foxes, coyotes, ravens etc. If you like cuddlier creatures, I suppose otters and beavers might do. The “message” of the documentary seems to be that life in Yellowstone is hard, even during the summer, and we get more than our fair share of hunts, fights and other conflicts. If you like Bernd Heinrich's books, I suppose this could be for you (although the books are probably gorier still). My main objection to “Wild Yellowstone” is that the special effects made with the latest high tech cameras get annoying after a while! Still, I think five stars is the only option here…

Paradise lost

John Martin Leahy (1886-1967) is a relatively unknown science fiction writer. The three stories published here are “The Living Death” (published in “Science and Invention” 1924-25), “In Amundsen's Tent” (published in “Weird Tales” 1928) and “Drome” (originally in “Weird Tales” 1927). The latter story was also published as a book, with some additional material, in 1952. That's the version reprinted here. The additions connect “Drome” to the two previous tales.

I don't think the stories are particularly interesting. They are dragging, and “The Living Death” is constantly interrupted by scientific or pseudo-scientific expositions (a bit like a bad Verne novel), although I suppose this could be because it was published in a popular science magazine. Still, I would consider “The Living Death” to be the best of the three stories. “Drome” feels even more dragging, despite all the monsters introduced by the author at critical junctions in the storyline.

What makes the stories intriguing is their lost world mythos. “The Living Death” and “In Amundsen's Tent” is about the discovery of a lost and quasi-subterranean civilization in Antarctica, threatened by winged monsters. “Drome” is about the discovery of a subterranean civilization inside Mount Rainier, also threatened by a wide assortment of, you guessed it, winged monsters. Presumably, “Drome” is freely based on the tales about Mount Shasta being part of Lemuria. The Golden City of Drome turns out to be ruled by a queen. A Lemurian-Atlantean priestess, perhaps? Also, both lands are likened to paradise. The mythos is never explained in full, however. The publisher of this volume is also into crypto-zoology, and seems to believe in Forteana at some level, which may explain why they brought out this edition of John Martin Leahy's magna opera.

Everything is different after Qumran

I actually read this book in a Swedish translation, probably during my high school days. Originally a German work, it argues that Jesus (whom the author insists on calling Rabbi J) had been a member of the Essene monastic community at Qumran, together with John the Baptist. Jesus and his disciples were probably Zealots, calling for some kind of Messianic action against Rome. Why else would the Romans have executed Rabbi J by crucifixion, the punishment reserved for political rebels?

The author, a journalist and rogue theology student, believes that a comparison between the Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that whoever wrote the former were under Essene influence. Paul was the real founder of Christianity as we know it, and the Pauline influence explains why the anti-Roman and Qumranite tendencies in the Gospels are played down, although they are still visible to the discerning eye. It's not clear whether Lehmann is an atheist – he seems sympathetic towards Judaism and is said to have stayed in India for a time. Perhaps he likes Rabbi J, who was the Son of God only in a figurative sense, preached opposition to Rome, and claimed to be Messiah of the Jews only (or a Jewish sub-group only). The book weaves together two strands of alt-thinking popular back in 1971: Jesus as revolutionary, and Dead Sea Scrolls as final revealers of The Truth About Christianity.

Of course, the author isn't completely wrong. Scholars have also pointed out parallels between the NT and the Dead Sea Scrolls, although I think the idea today is that both reflect a common religious milieu, or turmoil, rather than Christianity literally emerging from within the Essene community. One similarity was that both groups used the Jewish apocryphon known as the Book of Enoch. It's also common to argue that Jesus was more “Jewish” than the later Church. Still, like all theories postulating that Paul changed the original message of Jesus, Lehmann can't explain why Paul would join the Christian movement in the first place if he didn't really believe it. The idea isn't impossible, but surely other options than “Paul stole the Jesus Movement” are also on the table?

That being said, “Rabbi J” is nevertheless a relatively good introduction to the Essene-Zealot speculations concerning Jesus, and I therefore give it four stars.

Elsie versus Hutchings

I've seen an earlier version of this book ("Historical Dictionary of Albania"), published in 1996 and written by an entirely different author, Raymond Hutchings. In 2004, series editor Jon Woronoff decided to replace Hutchings with Robert Elsie for the new edition. It's not clear why.

I haven't seen the Elsie editions (there are several now), but judging by the preview, there are some important differences between Hutchings and Elsie. The former was strongly pro-Albanian and anti-Serb, and sounded opinionated in general (not necessarily a bad thing). Elsie sounds more “objective”. I noticed that Hutchings emphasizes the pro-Communist factions of the Bektashi, a heterodox Muslim order in Albania, while Elsie emphasizes the anti-Communist ones. In general, Elsie's entries are longer. Also, his editions mention the 1997 unrest in Albania, triggered by the collapse of pyramid schemes. Hutchings wrote before this central event in post-Communist Albanian history had taken place.

Woronoff points out in a preface to the 2004 edition that very few Westerners have specialist knowledge of Albania, and that it was difficult to find somebody suitable to write a historical dictionary like this! Hutchings' old edition doesn't seem to be available from Amazon at the present time, but if you can, procuring both may not be such a bad idea…

Active measures

“Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government” is a book arguing that the administration of Franklin D Roosevelt was too soft on the Soviet Union, the Chinese Maoists and Communism in general. The authors are two Cold War veterans. Or were – both passed away shortly after the book was published in 2012. Medford Stanton Evans was an associate of William Buckley and a chair of the American Conservative Union (ACU), a group opposing any détente with the Soviet bloc. Herbert Romerstein was an ex-Communist who eventually became an investigator for the anti-Communist HUAC and counter-propaganda specialist in the Reagan administration.

While I happen to support FDR's New Deal policies, and also the war time alliance with the Soviet Union, I long suspected that his administration went too far in accommodating Soviet Stalinist demands, in contrast to Winston Churchill. This book confirms the impression. It seems FDR's administration was teeming with Soviet spies, Communist “fellow travelers” and even actual CPUSA members. The issue is still a contentious one. I assume Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss are near-universally seen as Soviet “assets” today, while other people pinpointed as “Reds” by the authors were exonerated by the proper authorities. The authors believe that the Soviet spy web went all the way up to Harry Hopkins, a close advisor to FDR himself. And while the authors never accuse Roosevelt or Henry Morgenthau (the powerful Secretary of the Treasury) of being Soviet agents sensu stricto, they do believe they were surrounded by such people and more than willing to be duped. The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was another conduit of “Red” influence (yes, the book is written in a somewhat annoying 50's jargon). Evans and Romerstein believe that Communist infiltration influenced United States policy at critical junctions, leading to the loss of Poland, Yugoslavia and (most crucially) China. If left completely unchecked, it would have destroyed post-war Germany as well, creating the conditions for a further Soviet advance in Europe. Their main sources include the testimony of turned Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers and the so-called Venona transcripts.

One problem with the book is that it lacks an extensive background chapter. It does contain one chapter about Raymond Robins, Armand Hammer and the US-Soviet collaboration during the 1920's. I think this, and the continuing US-Soviet relation during the 1930's, is the crux of the matter. For whatever reason, the United States (after a short pro-White detour under Wilson) decided to cooperate economically with the Soviets, the first “five year plans” of Stalin essentially being “made in the USA” as detailed in Anthony Sutton's study “Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1930-1945”. This decision, presumably taken on economic or geopolitical grounds, would later create openings for the domestic Communists during their “popular front” period (or rather periods in the plural). Competition between the ascending United States and the declining British Empire created others. Without this background, the only “explanation” possible for the “Red penetration” is a kind of conspiracy theory. Evans and Romerstein may complain all they like about “pro-Red” liberals, but how do they explain cooperation on the level of the American bourgeoisie, that supposed bulwark of the “free world”? This also explains the turn-around circa 1948, when President Harry S Truman broke with the Soviet Union and started the Cold War Evans and Romerstein supports. The US and the USSR were now the only superpowers, and turned out to be incompatible…

An interesting question is how all this ties-in with the present situation. The Democrats (ludicrously) claim that Trump is colluding with the Russians, essentially stealing the entire Cold War rhetoric of the McCarthyite-Reaganite right (minus the “Red” designation, but I'm sure they could have appropriated that too, red now being the GOP party color!). Meanwhile, Islamists and no-longer-so-Red China seems to have a lot of “friends in high places”…

New revelations may await us behind the next corner.

I'm not saying it was the government, but it was the government

I admit I was somewhat skeptical when I read John Michael Greer's “The UFO Phenomenon”, which argues that many UFOs are secret military craft (not controversial in itself) *and* that the US government promotes belief in UFOs and aliens as a way to cover up the fact. This sounds like a farfetched conspiracy of a kind the gargantuan bureaucratic colossus known as the federal administration simply isn't fit to pull off. Right?

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

Besides, it wasn't the government bureaucratic apparat. It was the military's spook community, a very different animal altogether. Greer knew this, of course, and now I'm wiser, too.

“Project Beta” by Greg Bishop tells the bizarre but mostly true story of Paul Bennewitz, a true believer in UFOs, aliens and alien-government conspiracies and his interaction with a host of military-related intelligence agencies. Bennewitz, who lived and worked literally door-to-door (or rather fence-to-fence) with the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, believed that hostile aliens from outer space had infiltrated the area surrounding the base, perhaps with the help of human turncoats. The aliens abducted people, mutilated cattle and prepared an alien invasion of planet Earth. Usually, the authorities would have regarded Bennewitz as a harmless crank and thought nothing more of it. However, there were some problems. First, Bennewitz was a competent businessman and inventor who provided the military itself with various gadgets. Second, the problem of cattle mutilations was real and had gotten the attention of a Congressman at federal level. Third, Bennewitz had photographed “UFOs” flying around inside the military parameters, and partially decoded mysterious signals sent from somewhere inside the base area. At this time, the UFO research community was heavily infiltrated by agents working for a number of US agencies, but also by KGB assets. Both groups suspected - rightly, as it would turn out – that the harmless cranks of ufology might inadvertently have come across information about top secret Cold War defense projects.

This was definitely the case with Bennewitz. His photos really did show secret experiments with stealth planes, laser beams etc. The decoded signals were, of course, also highly classified. Under “normal” conditions, a man like Bennewitz could presumably be arrested (or even made to quietly disappear), but air force intelligence (AFOSI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) wanted to know exactly how much he knew and how. They hired another ufologist, Bill Moore, to spy on Bennewitz, while also contacting Bennewitz directly, pretending to be concerned about the “alien invasion” while feeding him disinformation of a highly advanced nature. Moore was also fed disinformation (and perhaps a few tidbits of real info) in return for his work as a mole. The military actually transmitted phony “alien messages” to Bennewitz' TV, showing “alien” faces, pictures from the alien “home planet”, etc. In reality, these were scrambled versions of old science fiction flicks! His communication devices were manipulated to pick up “alien transmissions” in badly garbled English, really random phrases spewed out by a computer at the Kirtland base. Bennewitz was also given guided tours of a restricted area around Dulce, at safe distance from the Kirtland military base where the real action was going on. A number of cloak-and-dagger burglaries into Bennewitz' home made most of the *real* evidence disappear. The unfortunate ufologist eventually became clinically paranoid and ended up in a mental asylum…

Much of the disinformation fed to Bennewitz and Moore to cover up the (man-made) secrets at Kirtland have become standard UFO lore and then found its way into broader pop culture, most notably the supposed existence of “Majestic-12”, a secret government cabal that knows “the truth” about the impending alien invasion. In this way, the NSA, AFOSI and other spooks seeded much of the conspiracy theories enthusiasts in the UFO research community assume are sensational “disclosures” of government secrets. The real truth (including the existence of the Stealth bomber) remained under wraps, until such time the US government and military saw fit to disclose it for real. Thus, the government follows a two-pronged strategy: on the one hand, deny and perhaps ridicule all UFO observations (or simply refuse to comment). On the other hand, promote belief in extraterrestrial craft and exotic conspiracies to lure ufologists off the track, while making them even easier to ridicule (see prong one). Which makes me wonder how much UFO belief today is really intelligence service disinfo? The so-called Phoenix Lights comes to mind here, including the peculiar gyrations of Arizona governor Fife Symington over the issue. Of course it's military craft.

“Project Beta” is an interesting read about a seemingly unrealistic conspiracy theory which happens to be true. Ironically, it will remain a fringe-of-the-fringe belief for another generation or so. I can hear both skeptics and true believers laughing derisively at this review. Another win for the Deep State, right there.

Fantastic beasts and where to find them

This is an interesting, entertaining but also very peculiar book written by John Warms with illustrations by Jarmo Sinisalo. The work is published by Chad Arment's press Coachwhip Publications. Warms is a Christian creationist and crypto-zoologist residing in the Canadian province of Manitoba. His book is a collection of Native American (American Indian) lore about monsters supposedly lurking in the Manitoban outback: lake monsters, boss snakes, thunderbirds, giant beavers the size of a black bear, and the ubiquitous Bigfoot (née Sasquatch).

The problems start when we realize that Warms, ahem, believe all this folklore stories to be literally true! Now, I'm willing to buy that *some* unknown animals may have survived in the Canadian wilderness (I know I wouldn't!), but “Strange Creatures Seldom Seen” stretches my credulity to the breaking point. How likely is it that at least seven different species of *huge* and unknown lake monsters live *in the same lake*? Or that frogs the size of bears could possibly be real at all? Or that some eagles are so enormous that they can catch and fly away with an entire adult moose? Or that some moose live underwater? Or that mermaids are real and look like White Canadian girls, only with a fish tail? The Bigfoot stories are also wild, with some squatches being of an impossible size, others being very human-like in appearance, and most being mortal to a hunter's bullet, yet somehow, their pelts never show up in our museums… The author claims to have discovered the tunnels of the giant beavers and the nests of thunderbirds, but admits that at least one of the nests might be man-made, ironically as a tribute to said thunderbirds.

There is very little cultural context to these anecdotes. Questions a skeptical reader would like to have answered include: How common is recreational lying among these Native groups? Is story-telling an activity that shouldn't be taken absolutely literally? Are there similarities between these stories and others which are more obviously supernatural or spiritual in character? Is alcohol part of the picture? Don't get me wrong, the anecdotes are interesting in their own right, and I particularly enjoyed the Sasquatch chapter, but after reading late 19th century reports about dragons in populous regions of Sweden, which simply can't be true, I think some skepticism is in order if somebody claims that literally dozens of unknown species of large beasts live in modern Canada!

That being said, I happen to think that at least some reports of this kind could be paranormal in nature, and hence “real” in some sense, although not in the flesh-and-blood way most crypto-zoologists would prefer. The Bigfoot stories have certain “classical” paranormal traits, with the creature making the witnesses sick or strangely distraught, the witness sensing a nasty odor before the encounter, etc. I already remarked on the impossible size of some Bigfoots. It's interesting to note that the Natives sometimes refer to it as a Wendigo or as the guardian of all living creatures, implying that the “ape” is really a spirit-being of some kind. How many of the other fabulous beasts described by the author and illustrated by his Finnish associate are really “ghosts” of one kind or another, is of course an interesting question…

In a weird kind of way, “Strange Creatures Seldom Seen” represents both the best and the worst of crypto-zoology, at the same time. For such a forte, five stars is the only possibly option. And yes, if the author ever finds a giant beaver, or disproves Darwinian evolution, I will be the first to acknowledge it.