The secret history of the world

Author Jonathan Black

What came first mind or matter?

We can also rephrase the question like “did matter create consciousness or it is the other way round?”

Since the dawn of the renaissance there has been a proclivity to represent religion and scientific thinking as total opposites which are always contradictory and if you believe in one you automatically have to discard the other. But if you examine this line of thinking and reasoning it hasn’t been around for a long time ,people have always believed there’s something more to the universe than than atomic and subatomic just randomly knocking each other out until one point they had luck to create the beauty and splendor our eyes behold night and day.

This book tries to put a narrative that is somehow a hybrid between scientific thinking and spirituality(in whatever form it might be) and how that relationship has developed since the dawn the dawn of time up to present day when people are waiting for the manifestation of the Antichrist , the word used for the narrative highlighted in this book is esoteric( intended or to be understood only by only a few people with specialised knowledge) or we can simply rename the book as Mysticism For People In A Hurry.

The book takes you on an interesting journey on how the world as we know it today came today a in both a spiritually and evolutionary which you may or not agree to but opens your understanding to what people believed in and the inspiration from which things like names of planets or days of the wake or the greatest of architecture, poetry and literature we have seen over the course of history. It also talks about the evolution of human consciousness and front liners who have contributed to this evolution likes of Noah, Moses, Pharaohs, Greek demigods, Elijah, Zarathustra, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Pythagoras, Aristotle ,Plato, Alexander the great Jesus Christ, St Paul , Mohamed, St Augustine ,Shakespeare, Newton ….. And so on and so forth

The point being stressed is people who have believed in an idealistic world compared to a materialistic have in most cases achieved spectacular things and have helped humanity evolve as a whole. The book also explores part of the dark side as in what could go wrong when spirituality is used in a bad way and is evidently one of the underlying motives behind the greatest calamities we have seen as a species. In mystery schools and some secret societies being able to communicate with disembodied beings has been their main motive and the passage of information on how effectively this can be done in the absence of organised religion.

The only difficulty I found is sometimes everything in this book sort of summary and before you take hold of the ideas which are being presented the subjected has quite changed and how almost every major historical figure was an initiate and knew this esoteric knowledge which is quite difficult to believe given the scarcity to such claims for some of the people mentioned one of the passages phrases this well “ANYONE WHO CONSIDERS THE CLAIMS of esoteric history is frustrated by the sparse nature of the evidence. Almost by definition the operations of secret societies leave scant traces. If they are successful, they have little to go on yet the claims are very grand indeed: that these societies are representatives of an ancient and universal philosophy, that this is a coherent, consistent philosophy that explains the universe more adequately than any other, and that many if not most of the great men and women of history are guided by it.”

The book end on the ambiguous figure of the Antichrist who is a figure of interest in the religious circles. Is he already here already? Who is he? Some thought it was Barrack Obama or Richard Dawkins ( which seemss a bit funny?) does his appearance signal the Apocalypse?

All in all it was a nice read and you will enjoy it if you especially interested in mythology or wish to explore what are some of the unifying principles of the world’s spiritual movements.

by Chungamu

book suggestions and recommendations are welcome