‘Book report: titles coming this fall’

     
Inner Traditions/Bear & Co., “one of the largest and oldest publishing houses in the world devoted exclusively to the subjects of spirituality, the occult, ancient mysteries, new science, holistic health, and natural medicine,” will release a number of titles in those subjects later this year, including several of interest to Magpie readers. I’ll highlight a few very subjectively.

American Freemasonry: Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future, the latest from Alain de Keghel of the Grand Orient of France, is due in September. (I had the pleasure of meeting him at Masonic Hall a few years ago.) The man knows his business, and with forwards by Art de Hoyos and Margaret Jacob, this sounds like a winner I look forward to reading. From the publicity:

American Freemasonry: Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future explores the American Masonic system and its strengths and failings.

• Examines the history of Freemasonry in the United States from the colonial era and the Revolutionary War to the rise of the Scottish branch onward.
• Investigates the racial split in American Freemasonry between black lodges and white and how, unlike French lodges, women are ineligible to become Masons in the United States.
• Reveals the factors that have resulted in shrinking Masonic enrollment in America and explores the revitalization work done by the Grand Lodge of California.

Freemasonry bears the imprint of the society in which it exists, and Freemasonry in North America is no exception. While keeping close ties to French lodges until 1913, American Freemasonry was also deeply influenced by the experiences of many early American political leaders, leading to distinctive differences from European lodges.

Offering an unobstructed view of the American system and its strengths and failings, Alain de Keghel, an elder of the Grand Orient de France and, since 1999, a lifetime member of the Scottish Rite Research Society (Southern Jurisdiction), examines the history of Freemasonry in the United States from the colonial era to the Revolutionary War to the rise of the Scottish branch onward. He reveals the special relationship between the French Masonic hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, including French Freemasonry’s role in the American Revolution. He also explores Franklin’s Masonic membership, including how he was Elder of the lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris.

The author investigates the racial split in American Freemasonry between black lodges and white and how, unlike French lodges, women are ineligible to become Masons in the U.S. He examines how American Freemasonry has remained deeply religious across the centuries and forbids discussion of religious or social issues in its lodges, unlike some branches of French Freemasonry, which removed belief in God as a prerequisite for membership in 1877 and whose lodges operate in some respects as philosophical debating societies. Revealing the factors that have resulted in shrinking Masonic enrollment in America, the author explores the revitalization work done by the Grand Lodge of California and sounds the call to make Freemasonry and its principles relevant to America once again.


Coming in December will be another hefty study (704 pages!) on one Aleister Crowley by the great Tobias Churton. I cannot say Crowley is a subject that interests me—I admit to carrying a prejudice that I can’t quite articulate and probably won’t shed—but Crowley’s story as rendered by Churton entices even the reluctant reader. Read the publisher’s synopsis, and see if you can resist:

Aleister Crowley in America: Art, Espionage, and Sex Magick in the New World is an exploration of Crowley’s relationship with the United States.

• Details Crowley’s travels, passions, literary and artistic endeavors, sex magick, and psychedelic experimentation.
• Investigates Crowley’s undercover intelligence adventures that actively promoted U.S. involvement in WW I.
• Includes an abundance of previously unpublished letters and diaries.

Occultist, magician, poet, painter, and writer Aleister Crowley’s three sojourns in America sealed both his notoriety and his lasting influence. Using previously unpublished diaries and letters, Tobias Churton traces Crowley’s extensive travels through America and his quest to implant a new magical and spiritual consciousness in the United States, while working to undermine Germany’s propaganda campaign to keep the United States out of World War I.

Masterfully recreating turn-of-the-century America in all its startling strangeness, Churton explains how Crowley arrived in New York amid dramatic circumstances in 1900. After other travels, in 1914 Crowley returned to the U.S. and stayed for five years: turbulent years that changed him, the world, and the face of occultism forever. Diving deeply into Crowley’s five-year stay, we meet artists, writers, spies, and government agents as we uncover Crowley’s complex work for British and U.S. intelligence agencies. Exploring Crowley’s involvement with the birth of the Greenwich Village radical art scene, we discover his relations with writers Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser and artists John Butler Yeats, Leon Engers Kennedy, and Robert Winthrop Chanler while living and lecturing on now-vanished “Genius Row.” We experience his love affairs and share Crowley’s hard times in New Orleans and his return to health, magical dynamism, and the most colorful sex life in America. We examine his controversial political stunts, his role in the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania, his making of the “Elixir of Life” in 1915, his psychedelic experimentation, his prolific literary achievements, and his run-in with Detroit Freemasonry. We also witness Crowley’s influence on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and rocket fuel genius Jack Parsons. We learn why J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t let Crowley back in the country and why the FBI raided Crowley’s organization in LA.

Offering a 20th century history of the occult movement in the United States, Churton shows how Crowley’s U.S. visits laid the groundwork for the establishment of his syncretic “religion” of Thelema and the now flourishing OTO, as well as how Crowley’s final wish was to have his ashes scattered in the Hamptons.


My own interest in Knights Templar, both the medieval and neo varieties, is kaput, but I might check out Freddy Silva’s First Templar Nation: How Eleven Knights Created a New Country and a Refuge for the Grail, coming in November. From the publicity:

First Templar Nation overturns the long-established historical narrative about the origins and purpose of the Knights Templar.

• Explains how and why the Templars created Europe’s first nation-state, Portugal, with one of their own as king.
• Reveals the Portuguese roots of key founding members, their relationship with the Order of Sion, the Templars’ devotion to Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist, and the meaning and exact location of the Grail.
• Provides evidence of Templar holy sites and hidden chambers throughout Portugal.
• Includes over 700 references, many from new and rare sources.

Conventional history claims that nine men formed a brotherhood called the Knights Templar in Jerusalem in 1118 to provide protection for pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Overturning this long-established historical narrative, Freddy Silva shows that the Order of the Temple existed a decade earlier on the opposite side of Europe, that the protection of pilgrims was entrusted to a separate organization, and that, in league with the Cistercian monks and the equally mysterious Order of Sion, the Templars executed one of history’s most daring and covert plans: the creation of Europe’s first nation-state, Portugal, with one of their own as king.

Including over 700 references, many from new and rare sources, Silva reveals Portugal, not Jerusalem, as the first Templar stronghold. He shows how there were eleven founding members and how the first king of Portugal, a secret Templar, was related to Bernard de Clairvaux, head of the Cistercians. The author explains the Templars’ motivation to create a country far from the grasp of Rome, where they could conduct their living resurrection initiation—whose candidates were declared “risen from the dead”—a secret for which the Church silenced millions and which the Templars protected to the death.

Placing the intrepid Knights in a previously unknown time and place, Silva’s historical narrative reveals the Portuguese roots of key founding members, their relationship with the Order of Sion, the Templars’ unshakeable devotion to Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist, and how they protected a holy bloodline in Portugal. He also provides evidence of secret Templar holy sites, initiation chambers, and hidden passageways throughout Portugal, often coinciding with pagan and Neolithic temples, and explains how their most important site forms a perfect triangle with the Abbey of Mont Sion in Jerusalem and the Osirion temple in Egypt. The author also reappraises the meaning of the Grail and reveals its exact location, hidden in plain sight to this very day.

Freddy Silva is a leading researcher of alternative history, ancient knowledge, sacred sites, and the interaction between temples and consciousness. He has appeared on Discovery Channel, BBC, and Coast to Coast AM radio. He is the author of five books and lives in Portland, Maine.


The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge by John Chambers, due next February, recounts “Newton’s heretical, yet equation-incisive, writings on theology, spirituality, alchemy, and prophecy, written in secret alongside his Principia Mathematica.” From the publicity (mention of the Flood brings to mind Antediluvian Freemasonry):

The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton shows how Newton’s brilliance extended far beyond math and science into alchemy, spirituality, prophecy, and the search for lost continents such as Atlantis.

• Explains how he was seeking to rediscover the one true religion that existed prior to the Flood of Noah, when science and spirituality were one.
• Examines Newton’s alternate timeline of prehistory and his study of prophecy through the Book of Revelations, including his prediction of Apocalypse in the year 2060.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is still regarded by the world as the greatest scientist who ever lived. He invented calculus, discovered the binomial theorem, explained the rainbow, built the first reflecting telescope, and explained the force of gravity. In his famous masterpiece, Principia Mathematica, he described the mechanics of the physical universe with unimagined precision, proving the cosmos was put together according to laws. The perfection of these laws implied a perfect legislator. To Newton, they were proof that God existed.

At the same time Newton was writing Principia Mathematica, he was writing a twin volume that he might have called, had it been completed, Principia Theologia—Principles of Theology. This other masterpiece of Newton, kept secret because of the heresies it contained, consists of thousands of essays providing equation-incisive answers to the spiritual questions that have plagued mankind through the ages. Examining Newton’s secret writings, John Chambers shows how his brilliance extended into alchemy, spirituality, the search for lost continents such as Atlantis, and a quest to uncover the “corrupted texts” that were rife in the Bibles of his time. Although he was a devout Christian, Newton’s work on the Bible was focused not on restoring the original Jewish and Christian texts but on rediscovering the one true religion that existed prior to the Flood of Noah, when science and spirituality were one.

The author shows that a single thread runs through Newton’s metaphysical explorations: He is attempting to chart the descent of man’s soul from perfection to the present day. The author also examines Newton’s alternate timeline of ancient history and his study of prophecy through the Book of Revelation, including his prediction of an Apocalypse in the year 2060 followed by a radically transformed world. He shows that Newton’s great hope was that these writings would provide a moral compass for humanity as it embarked upon the great enterprise that became our technological world.

John Chambers is the author of Victor Hugo’s Conversations with the Spirit World and The Secret Life of Genius. He has contributed essays to Forbidden Religion: Suppressed Heresies of the West. He lives in Redding, California.


Gotta go. Ranger game.