Product Description

Here for the first time is a complete history of the world, from the beginning of time to the present day, based on the beliefs and writings of the secret societies. From the esoteric account of the evolution of the species to the occult roots of science, from the secrets of the Flood to the esoteric motives behind American foreign policy, here is a narrative history that shows the basic facts of human existence on this planet can be viewed from a very different angle. Everything in this history is upside down, inside out and the other way around.At the heart of "The Secret History of the World" is the belief that we can reach an altered state of consciousness in which we can see things about the way the world works that are hidden from us in our everyday, commonsensical consciousness. This history shows that by using secret techniques, people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and George Washington have worked themselves into this altered state - and been able to access supernatural levels of intelligence. There have been many books on the subject, but, extraordinarily, no-one has really listened to what the secret societies themselves say. The author has been helped in his researches by his friendship with a man who is an initiate of more than one secret society, and in one case an initiate of the highest level.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7713 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
This book will take you on a jaw-dropping journey through the spiritual and mythological history of the world A... A wonderfully controversial read, which challenges the accepted view and spiritual history of human society - Soul and Spirit Magazine

From the Publisher
Review for Secret History of the World:
The powerful narrative drive and cornucopia of startling revelations that form the core of Jonathan Black's new book show us the world not as we have been taught to see it but as it really is - deeply strange and mysterious, filled with secrets and codes, with humanity rightly placed at the heart of a grand cosmic riddle. Nothing of this scale and ambition has been attempted since Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and Black rises to the challenge with style, originality and aplomb - Graham Hancock, author Fingerprints of the Gods

From the Inside Flap
Here for the first time is a complete history of the world, from the beginning of time to the present day, based on the beliefs and writings of the secret societies.
From the esoteric account of the evolution of the species to the occult roots of science, from the secrets of the Flood to the esoteric motives behind American foreign policy, here is a narrative history that shows the basic facts of human existence on this planet can be viewed from a very different angle. Everything in this history is upside down, inside out and the other way around.
At the heart of The Secret History of the World is the belief that we can reach an altered state of consciousness in which we can see things about the way the world works that are hidden from us in our everyday, commonsensical consciousness. This history shows that by using secret techniques, people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and George Washington have worked themselves into this altered stage - and been able to access supernatural levels of intelligence.
There have been many books on the subject, but, extraordinarily, no one has really listened to what the secret societies themselves say. The author has been helped in his researches by his friendship with a man who is an initiate of more than one secret society, and in one case an initiate of the highest level.
By the end of the book the reader will see the world differently. It will be evident that a secret philosophy in encoded in the world around us, in public buildings and monuments, in great art and literature, in the arrangement of the pips in an apple, in the names of the days of the week, even in the very stories we tell our children.

Customer Reviews

Esoteric Mind Gym
This is a certainly an unusual book and I found it a very stimulating read. It invites the reader to take part in an imaginative exercise, which involves having an artistic and emotional response to the book's ideas, as well as an intellectual one. In a way, it's an experiment to see if we can approach the same kind of consciousness as our ancestors, when people could be rational and mystical at the same time.

Pythagoras, Copernicus, da Vinci and Newton are some of the better known exemplars of this way of thinking, but the book draws its inspiration much more widely than the usual poster boys.

Comparisons between Lao-Tzu and Heraclitus are illuminated with comments on Confucius and Rudyard Kipling, for example. Creative artists as varied as David Lynch and Botticelli are shown to be nourished by the same ideas - as was P.L. Travers, creator of one the most famous children's magicians of all time: Mary Poppins.

The author explores the significance of certain archetypes and symbols down the ages - and personally I found the writing nimble and light of touch. Yes, it makes connections that are sometimes surprising, but that's the point. Ever wondered exactly what the difference is between Satan and Lucifer? Or why French revolutionaries adopted the Phrygian cap as their headgear of choice? Did you know that St Thomas Aquinas and St Francis of Assissi both claimed to have levitated?

What "The Secret History" never pretends to be is yet another conspiracy theory book, or an academic history. (A fact that seems to upset some of the other reviewers.) It would be better to think of it as an esoteric mind gym.

Sure, it structures itself as a "secret history" of how humanity and human consciousness developed but this is, after all, just a metaphor. The author has created that narrative form as a way to explore the ideas that have fascinated some of the greatest minds in the actual, real, (footnotable) history of the world.

Conspiracy theories close things down; this book is an ambitious, enjoyable attempt to open them up and offer a graspable alternative account of how human consciousness has developed - from the creation of the world through to dadaism and beyond.

Definitely worth a read, if you like ideas and knowledge and can cope with them being taken out of their boxes and shaken round a bit.

fascinating
I have been interested to read the wide range of comments about this book which I personally found fascinating.

The Secret History of the World presents a different way of contemplating the world that we live in. Whether you agree or disagree with the author's ideas - and there are so many different ideas, links and connections here that why should you agree with all of them? - the book is about opening your mind to a radically new way of thinking about the mystical history of the world and about our own human consciousness.

It isn't necessary to agree with everything the author writes to find dozens of fascinating avenues to explore. The whole point of a book like this is to be an entertaining read and to raise the consciousness of the reader by presenting ideas that remind us that different civilisations did not regard or understand the world in the same way that we do.

We cannot assume that our thought processes and our attitudes to life are comparable to those of our ancestors who experienced their lives at different times and in different societies throughout the ages and had no knowledge of industry, science or technology as we understand it today.
Everything they believed in was based on the much more limited (in most cases)knowledge that was available to them at the time.

In the past twelve months people everywhere are seeing the collapse of so many organisations and systems in our society that they had assumed were fundamentally stable. The book is very timely because we are entering a new era in our civilisation where we will have no choice but to adjust our thinking about many different things. The Secret History of the World can be used to expand your mind introducing original and mystical concepts which have been common throughout many different civilisations in history and for that reason are worthy of consideration when our present-day globally linked and crowded world is heading towards its own tipping point.

What this book tells us is that things are not necessarily what they seem and that history and science and everything we think we know and understand can be turned on its head and seen from a different angle - if we choose to open our minds to other possibilities.

The concept of the book - a secret mystical history of the world in under 1000 pages - is huge and I do wonder how much material had to be left out. I would love to read more of the research because some of the sections are of necessity rather sketchy. I was also very much aware that so few women featured in it. But secret societies have tended to be for men and run by men.

While I was reading the book I thought of a lot of people who I would want to recommend it to. It is a love it or hate it book, arousing strong feelings in readers. I recommend it to everyone who is not afraid to accept that there is only a very thin veil between the world we think we are familiar with and the unseen and unknown worlds which lie just beyond our everyday thought-processes.

erudite but hugely readable
I am rather flummoxed by a few of the negative reviews of this book and do wonder whether some readers simply expected a book on entirely different subject matter - for example the reader who complained that it didn't mention the big crime families...this is a book about esoteric beliefs, not a book on conspiracy theories, although naturally the two occasionally coincide.
I am also puzzled by the assertion that the author's pen-name is a 'red flag' (to a conspiracy, maybe?!)since his identity is clearly outlined on the book jacket and, indeed, in the Amazon summary of contents.
Oh well. I thought it was great. I would never normally pick up something like this but fancied something different, that delved a bit deeper into the facts beneath the Da Vinci Code fiction, perhaps. That's exactly what this does. It is obviously the product of committed research,and occasionally one does need to stop and re-read if not familiar with this stuff, but I found it, overall, highly readable and enjoyable. He is very good, I think, at making difficult concepts understandable.
I guess this was always going to be a controversial book, given that people who are very into the subject matter tend to disagree with each-other as a matter of course about the true nature and origin of things that are, by definition, obscure or obscured!