Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Expos of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written and All You Need to Know to Be Truly Free

Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Expos of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written and All You Need to Know to Be Truly Free
Average customer rating:

David Icke is telling the truth.

Best book I've ever read

Balony

IS DAVID ICKE STARTING TO MAKE SENSE?

No room left for cowards...

Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Expos of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written and All You Need to Know to Be Truly Free
David Icke
Manufacturer: David Icke Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Conspiracy Theories | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Controversial Knowledge | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Unexplained Mysteries | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0953881040

Customer Reviews:

David Icke is telling the truth........2007-09-11

the reason it sounds so fantastic is that the average person does not have the information. They live in a fog of network television and canned news media - all of which are owned & controlled by the ones behind the so-called 'conspiracy'.

Do the research. It's no story - it's real.

Best book I've ever read.......2007-09-11

The conclusions in this book about the nature of reality and how it's all an illusion have changed my life for the best. Icke is very thorough and well documented in trying to support his claims. I couldn't put the book down. Five stars.

Balony.......2006-11-25

Hehe, O.K. I bought the book -- it's not the first time I've thrown away money and won't be the last. After skimming through it and reading this guy's life story, which includes "voices" psychics, and god-knows what else, I can say that I refuse to waste my valuable time reading this clap-trap. Let me suggest that everyone thinking about buying this book, read THIS book first you will be doing yourself a lifelong favor.

IS DAVID ICKE STARTING TO MAKE SENSE?.......2006-09-18

It's easy to simply reject someone who says the world is run by manipulative reptilians posing as world leaders; that George Bush, Tony Blair, the British monarch, and many other prominent people are blood-drinking child-abusers who engage in secret rituals unknown to the rest of us. Despite David Icke's seemingly outrageous claims, I found some logic as well as interesting and possibly credible theories in Tales From the Time Loop. In contast to his earlier books, he has shifted his beliefs in a more positive direction. It sounds a lot like he is embracing spirituality and the immortality of the soul. He accepts the existence of the astral world, a place or state with many levels occupied by beings with numerous agendas and understandings of the universe. But he rejects reincarnation as separate lifetimes ("there is no time") or that life in a human body is a journey toward perfection. In Icke's version of reality, there is no karma, no need to make up for evil deeds or mistakes. Everything is an illusion. What is missing in his framework, in my opinion, is purpose. Why does reality exist? Why are we here playing these games?

What about the evil reptilians? Why are they here and what do they want? Icke finally gives us a reason the reptilians must sacrifice humans and drink blood. He says they have a problem remaining in this dimension and they need human DNA to keep from shifting back to their own dimension. They sometimes do shapeshift into reptiles, and he quotes numerous witnesses who have seen them shift. Icke takes pokes at the frenzy of interest in the bloodline of Jesus (theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children). He says the so-called Jesus bloodline is just part of the reptilian bloodline. In a previous book, he claimed there was no historical Jesus, so I don't know what to make of this new belittling of the Jesus bloodline.

But the repitilians seem to fade in importance behind his major thesis, that we are all participating in a Time Loop in which history keeps repeating itself. Everything in the Time Loop (our apparent universe as well as the astral world) vibrates. Only Oneness does not vibrate. David found a parallel to this idea in the movie, The Matrix, which obviously impressed him much more than it impressed me. I found the Matrix movies silly stories thinly built around special effects. Despite his admiration for matrix-buster Neo, Icke criticizes the media for being purveyors of falsehood that serve the Illuminati agenda.

Speaking of history, I do not think David Icke is anti-semitic as some of his critics charge. He is absolutely correct in defending anyone's right to express their point of view, even if it is repugnant and can be proven wrong. David is not a holocaust-denyer, but he does think people have a right to deny the holocaust. If we had an intelligent, educated populace, there would be few takers for theories like "there was no holocaust" that are so contrary to tons of evidence. He also explores an interesting idea about the origin of today's Jewish population. There is some evidence that the Ashkenazi Jews (those who come from Europe) were at least in part related to a non-semitic people called the Khazars who converted to Judaism in 740 AD. They occupied territory that is mostly in modern-day Turkey. The significance of this (according to Icke) is that it refutes the idea that present-day Israel was an ancestral home to its current Jewish inhabitants.

But as the book progresses, Icke sounds more like many New Agers in proclaiming that human consciousness will shift into higher gear and can defeat the Illuminati. He gained some new insights, he says, while taking a psychoactive drug, ayahuasca, in Brazil. This was his first foray into mind-altering drugs and he tells us he received a great deal of information from a voice in his head. I believe him (this is not an uncommon experience) but I recognize that we do not know the origin of these voices. They may originate within ourselves, or they may come from spiritual entities outside ourselves. In either case, we cannot be sure what they tell us contains any actual truth.

Why bother reading Tales From the Time Loop or any of David Icke's books? I don't know if there are any actual Illuminati plotting to take over the world, but I do know the world is full of evil, with its endless wars, unrelenting poverty and destructive competition for precious natural resources. Icke's critics can be pretty hard on him, but I think his message deserves a hearing. I want to live in a world where David Icke can say and write what he believes and where I am free to say and write what I think of what he believes.

No room left for cowards..........2006-09-07

This is a great and challenging book, not for the faint of heart. David Icke presents a vision of the world which is radically different from the one which we are spoonfed from cradle to grave. Think of the courage it takes to get up on the world stage and bring forth this kind of information. People who pan Icke (and others in the truth movement) are nothing more than staid cowards, unwilling to integrate and adapt...worst of all, unwilling to listen and think these things through. Bottom line: read this book and pass it on to friends; time is running short and our freedoms are eroding before our eyes. It's time to wake up and rise to our true and magnificent human potential...and Icke is here to help on us our way.

Average customer rating:

Infatuated and Infatuating
...delicate shadow play...
Written on your mind forever
A really good read
A secret code only visible in certain lights...

Written on the Body
Jeanette Winterson
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Winterson, Jeanette)
The Passion
Sexing the Cherry (Winterson, Jeanette)
Lighthousekeeping
Art & Lies

ASIN: 0679744479
Release Date: 1994-02-01

Book Description

The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.

Customer Reviews:

Infatuated and Infatuating.......2007-08-16

This is barely a novel in the traditional sense.
The first-person narrator sounds at first like a man
then later, like a woman. He/she has no particular
characteristics of her/his own.
The plot is also barely there. Narrator is having an
affair with one woman, meets another, falls in love.
Lover leaves husband. Narrator learns that lover has
cancer and that only Estranged Husband can cure her.
(No surprise in an English novel, the semi-vile Husband
just happens to be Jewish.)
Narrator leaves lover, regrets her decision, goes looking
for her. Hero on a quest theme music. The End.

This lack of plot and person(ality) makes it easier
for her (we have to end up thinking of the narrator
as 'her')to observe the world without being particularly touched
by it. It also clears the way for some observations
about a deeply felt love that seems to spring up,
seize her by the throat and carry her off. Our narrator
barely acts, but she keeps a very sharp eye on that
which acts on her.

It is that eye, plus the poignancy of her analysis of what
she sees that makes this such a remarkable book. Love
and Loss are often partners-it's easy to imagine their
names painted on an office door-but in this book, they
are dancing partners. Love and Loss are the Fred and Ginger
that tease out the reader's recollections of the universal
feelings of being in love and take us quickly to our very
particular memories.

It's a pity that this book is printed in such an unattractive
paperback edition-it would make a perfect gift bound in leather,
no dust jacket and with a little pocket to hold a rose.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the novel bang BANG. ISBN 9781601640005

...delicate shadow play..........2006-09-19

Jeanette Wintersen has long been an adventurous writer, always willing to play with forms and conventions, and after reading a great number of them, WRITTEN ON THE BODY is still my favorite.

This is an exquisite novel - an independent-minded sensualist seduces a classically beautiful woman, a woman married to a rather stodgy medical researcher. As the two embark upon their affair, our narrator flashes back upon past exploits and misadventures, gradually conjuring a sort of personal metaphysics of passion along the way. We are not told the gender of our narrator, though a few stray clues (in either direction) do crop up on occasion.

In anyone else's hands this would be quite a gimmick, and it could have led to some miserable bog of overly tumescent verbiage (the kind I'm typing out at this very moment); but Wintersen is a master at handling language, and her technical skill and wit turn this into a most playful game of intrigues: no one enters, or gets entered, though a urinal does get blown up, and an ex named Bathsheba is occasionally reflected upon. Characters alternatively embody and discard the cliches and stereotypes of both genders, more or less at will.

Wintersen's delicate narrative, all shadow play, does gradually gather a certain force in spite of it's shimmery textures: I read this in one sitting, dazzled at many levels. Very highly recommended.

-David Alston

Written on your mind forever.......2006-05-25

I just finished reading this book yesterday and I feel haunted! If there has to be a review on this book, it has to be in superlatives. I don't think anyone can NOT like this book.

It's a narration by a lover, who, no matter how much you try till the end, you can't guess the name and gender of! The extent of his love for his 'Louise', leaves you breathless.

Please don't pick up this book if you have important things to do. They'll all be left unattended. Calling it a page turner would be putting it mildly. The language is full of awesome metaphors. Each beautiful metaphor you read - on love and life, you'd want to jot down somewhere, to be able to read again and relish.

Throughout the book, I found myself reading phrases and lines again and again, and not getting enough! The author is a magician with the language. Not one line she says is not worth falling in love with.

The only flaw in the whole book that I found was - that it has an end. I have never read a better book. I don't think my review is doing justice to this book. I don't think any, ever will.

A really good read.......2006-04-06

First I got captured by the poetic language. Then to my suprise I noticed I was regularly laughing out loud! This novel is delightful and compelling, although you may feel it becomes just a little long-winded from the moment when the narrator retreats.
I also want to add that I don't really understand why so many readers think it is impossible to find out the sex of the narrator. I thought the affair with Inge and the hilarious semtex attacks on the men's urinals were evidence enough for her being a woman... But I must admit the author definitely plays with preconceived ideas of gender. This, however, adds to the book's value and makes sure it remains in your mind for some time after putting it down.
For me this was a very good book that perhaps could have been brilliant. I'll definitely read more of Winterson's work.

A secret code only visible in certain lights..........2005-11-10

"Cheating is easy. There's no swank to infidelity. To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there is nothing there."

So says Winterson's Narrator at one point in the story about his/her transgressions when it comes to his/her married lovers. This is an attitude that is not carried into completion in the book, as it later becomes very obvious that infidelity is infinitely difficult...when you find the right woman.

But I jump aside of myself, let me start from the beginning, and talk about Winterson's Hero/heroine.

The Narrator in the story is a nameless, genderless character, but when it comes to emotional morality this character knows exactly what is right vs. what is wrong. However, that does not stop him/her from being unethical, and having few qualms about it. This is proven in the way he/she continues to become entangled in these attractions and relationships with involved or married people. Whether this is something the narrator is aware of is uncertain, but it makes for a wonderful foundation to this tremendous story of love and loss.

After numerous failed relationships the narrator becomes involved with a married woman named Louise. Louise is a stunning Titian beauty married to a man who is, quite literally, married to his work. He needs her for little, as he gets most of his sexual gratification elsewhere, so when she decides to become involved with the Narrator it is of little surprise that she informs her husband of this. Whether she initially became involved in the affair just to get back at her husband is unsure, but it backfires when Louise and the Narrator fall into a deep, passionate love for one another and her husband becomes annoyed with it. How he gets his revenge is poignant and brilliant... he informs the Narrator that Louise is dying from leukemia and that he can help to stretch out her time to live, if the Narrator agrees to never interfere in their life again.

What happens in the remainder of the book is so heartbreaking I cannot even convey it properly. The Narrator declines into a bout of depression so severe it makes the reader ache for him/her. The depths of longing, the proclamations of love and worship of the lost Louise, and the self deprecation at allowing her husband to have the final say are so dramatic that they are practically Shakespearean in execution. One has not felt this amount of chaos and pathos since Romeo first beheld Juliet and realized she was the daughter of his enemy. We are with the narrator for every second of his/her heartbreak, every painful moment and decision he/she makes as a result of his/her grief becomes our pain, our grief, our wish for release. The pain of watching someone die from cancer is hard enough, the pain of watching someone you love with every core of you being die from cancer is death ten times over... and Winterson's character makes us feel as if it is our loss of love that is at stake... not his/hers.

It's almost needless to say that I loved this book, but I will say it again. I loved this book. I can't say that enough. Winterson's work is always wonderful; her skillful usage of classical stories and metaphors is something I relish. (In this case she spoke much of Caliban from "The Tempest", which I was quite happy about.) However, with this book Winterson did two things that I did not expect. One was that she made me feel as if I was the Narrator, and that was an utterly powerful literary experience... the second thing was that she made me feel as if reading any other writer's work that was not her own would be a waste of time. I regret that it took me as long as it did to discover this book. Rest assured, it will never leave my bookshelves now.

"Articulacy of fingers, the language of the deaf and dumb, signing on the body longing. Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message onto my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your Morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter it's pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut. Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I don't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book."

Average customer rating:

Art on the human skin
Reads like a medical journal

Written on the Body

Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community
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In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification

ASIN: 0691057230

Book Description

Despite the social sciences' growing fascination with tattooing--and the immense popularity of tattoos themselves--the practice has not left much of a historical record. And, until very recently, there was no good context for writing a serious history of tattooing in the West. This collection exposes, for the first time, the richness of the tattoo's European and American history from antiquity to the present day. In the process, it rescues tattoos from their stereotypical and sensationalized association with criminality.

The tattoo has long hovered in a space between the cosmetic and the punitive. Throughout its history, the status of the tattoo has been complicated by its dual association with slavery and penal practices on the one hand and exotic or forbidden sexuality on the other. The tattoo appears often as an involuntary stigma, sometimes as a self-imposed marker of identity, and occasionally as a beautiful corporal decoration.

This volume analyzes the tattoo's fluctuating, often uncomfortable position from multiple angles. Individual chapters explore fascinating segments of its history--from the metaphorical meanings of tattooing in Celtic society to the class-related commodification of the body in Victorian Britain, from tattooed entertainers in Germany to tattooing and piercing as self-expression in the contemporary United States. But they also accumulate to form an expansive, textured view of permanent bodily modification in the West.

By combining empirical history, powerful cultural analysis, and a highly readable style, this volume both draws on and propels the ongoing effort to write a meaningful cultural history of the body. The contributors, representing several disciplines, have all conducted extensive original research into the Western tattoo. Together, they have produced an unrivalled account of its history. They are, in addition to the editor, Clare Anderson, Susan Benson, James Bradley, Ian Duffield, Juliet Fleming, Alan Govenar, Harriet Guest, Mark Gustafson, C. P. Jones, Charles MacQuarrie, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Stephan Oettermann, Jennipher A. Rosecrans, and Abby Schrader.

Customer Reviews:

Art on the human skin.......2006-02-28

Anyone interested in a serious understanding of the cultural importance of tattooing in the West would benefit from reading this book. (Caplan is now a distinguished professor of history at Oxford University.) If you're looking for something superficial and sensational, look elsewhere. This book offers much richness between its covers.

Reads like a medical journal.......2003-07-15

I can't discourage this book enough. It takes the interesting world of tattooing and makes it into a bland history lesson that doesnt even emphasize the more interesting aspects of its past. Tattooing is one subject that is generally vey interesting no matter how you study it but this book manages to make it boring. At times it gets so far off the subject you wonder why you dont just read a real history book instead. Very bland and reads like a medical journal.

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What's Written on the Body
Peter Pereira
Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Second Person: Poems (Stahlecker Series Selection)
Saying the World
Other Fugitives And Other Strangers
Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006
The Human Line

ASIN: 1556592523

Book Description

"It's rare in contemporary poetry to find a book as boldly celebratory as Peter Pereira's new collection."-Chase Twichell

In What's Written on the Body, physician Peter Pereira explores the body, medicine, wordplay, gardening, family, and domestic gay life, often drawing from his experience as a community clinic doctor in Seattle.

An avid Scrabble player, anagrammer, and cruciverbalist, Pereira opens the collection with a delightful selection of wordplay poems, as a counterpoint to poems recounting the day-to-day practice of a family physician, from suturing a wound in the ER to extracting an eraser from a child's nose.

From "Body Talk":

Do you hear how the scalp claps?
How the heart contains the earth, yet
is also a hater? How saliva
is lava, while testicles sit elect
for their slice test . . .

Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle, where he cares for an urban, underserved population of immigrants, refugees, housing project residents, and the elderly. His first book won the Hayden Carruth Award, and his individual poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Poetry, USA Weekend, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Written on a Body
Severo Sarduy
Manufacturer: Lumen Books/Sites Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0930829115

Crop Circles, Gods and Their Secrets: History of Mankind, Written in the Grain

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Crop Circles, Gods and Their Secrets: History of Mankind, Written in the Grain
Robert J. Boerman
Manufacturer: Adventures Unlimited Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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General | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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Astrology | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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Secrets in the Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles
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Vital Signs: A Complete Guide to the Crop Circle Mystery and Why It is Not a Hoax
The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles: Scientific Research and Urban Legends
The Language of Crop Circles

ASIN: 1931882258

Book Description

A Dutch crop circle researcher decodes recent crop circles applying ancient Sumerian and numerology. In this engaging, well-illustrated book, both scientific and historical, the author links two separate crop circles, both near Alton Barnes in England, each containing an old Hebrew inscription and a Double Helix. They yield the name of the 'maker', his message, important facts and the summary of human history. This information finally cracks the crop circle code, which communicates the true history of mankind and the return of the 12th Planet. Read who the gods were and how they are still here to prepare us for the coming dimensional transformation in 2012. Chapters include:

* The Seven Seals of Atlantis

* Planet X: Nibiru

* The Cross

* Symbol of Nibiru

* Genetic Manipulation

* The Sexagesimal System of Numbers

* Is the Great Pyramid Older than 10,450 BC?

* 12 Strands of DNA?

* 52: The Game of Thoth

* Tellurium

* Gematrian Numbers

* A Return of the Gods in 2012?

Book Description

This study of ancient astrology attempts to explain why zodiac mosaics appear in Israeli synagogues. More broadly, it explains how and why Hellenic Jews used astrology. This volume explores origins of synagogue mosaics and provides useful information concerning astrology around the world.

Customer Reviews:

The book is a poor introduction to the Zodiac Mosaics........2004-06-23

The book consists mainly of booklists, and if that is what you are after, it is the book for you. The star given is mainly for the booklist, because the author is clearly not very well versed in his subject.

Simple names are missing in the lists, and conclusions often fails to be correct because the author is guessing - and from lack of correct background information, he is not very good at it. - Some statements are simply wrong.

The author admits not to know much about the Chinese Zodiac - the correct term would have been that he knows even less about the Chinese Zodiac.

Very pictures are shown of the mosaics, you can get better ones from searching the web in fact. The few pictures shown are in black and white and not tecnical adequate for a book boasting of showing the mosaics. The few drawings do not make up for the actual lack of Mosaics.

I recieved a copy of the book in a black cloth binding, and there may be a discrepancy in the book shown and the book I got, but I doubt it.

Becoming a CLASSIC resource!.......2003-01-12

Published only a few years ago, and still in print, this work has already become THE classic resource for the history of astrology especially as it pertains to Jewish faith and practices. Dr. Ness is the ultimate expert in this field and his study is essential.

A masterful study of ZODIAC mosaics and their meaning!.......2002-12-05

Dr. Ness has provided us with the most complete resource for the study of zodiac mosaics in Synagogues and of the history of astrology in general. This book is a must have for all Jewish scholors and astrologers alike!

A Serious Look at Astrology.......1999-12-02

When I found this book, I knew nothing about the serious study or history of astrology. I was amazed to learn a great deal from this study. Dr. Ness presents an engaging, readable, and often humorous look at astrology and Jewish synagogue mosaics. The illustrations are useful and the annotated bibliography is a great resource!

Chinese Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia (Asian Religions and Cultures)

Average customer rating:

Excellent treatment of a neglected area

Chinese Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia (Asian Religions and Cultures)
Michel Strickmann
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0804743355
Release Date: 2005-04-13

Book Description

Focusing on oracular texts, Chinese Poetry and Prophecy examines the role of divination in Chinese culture, particularly in religious practice. Drawing on a dazzling array of ancient and modern sources, the author establishes the oracular sequence of important but obscure works in his celebrated engaging style.

This is the second posthumous work of Michel Strickmann to be to be edited by Bernard Faure for publication by Stanford University Press.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent treatment of a neglected area.......2006-08-16

All of us who lived in the Chinese world in the old days have seen fortune-telling. The commonest method is to shake some slips of wood in a tube till one works its way up and stands out (a rather uncanny process to watch, but caused by natural physical forces). The number on this slip is keyed to a cryptic verse, which is interpreted by the fortuneteller. In my days in Hong Kong and Taiwan long ago, every temple had this as a routine service, and many other more or less religious venues practiced it.
Yet, until now, no one gave it the attention it deserves. The late Michel Strickmann here provides a wonderful study (sadly shortened by his untimely death). He not only traces the origin of such fortune-telling into the remote past--we still have a set of oracle verses from the 5th century--but also traces it all over east Asia and theorizes that it spread across Central Asia in the Middle Ages and influenced fortune-telling in the western world. He presents some evidence for this--alas, he died before he could assemble more. This remains a fascinating and intriguing idea; I hope someone will pick up the ball and follow up with further research.
Since this is a posthumous book (worthily edited by Bernard Faure), it has many rough edges. I thoroughly enjoy them. The off-the-wall remarks, personal asides, and irrelevant digressions that would be red-penciled by the author or his editor in a final draft are all present. Strickmann's exciting and wide-ranging intellect guarantees that these are worthwhile. One notable example is his frequent praise of Joseph Needham. Needham-bashing has become a major, and shameful, industry in China studies lately. Needham was often wrong; so is every other visionary pioneer. He should get due credit for his contributions and have his work quietly updated--as Strickmann does.
On the other hand, some errors creep in that would have been caught in a final version. Strickmann was a historian, not an ethnographer, and he did not always know contemporary reality. Thus on page 94 he discusses burning charms and ingesting the ash in tea as if it were a long-past process; it is still universal (or was a few years ago, at least). He goes on to say that waste paper with writing on it is respectfully burned; this was once the rule but is no longer so. More serious, on page 75 he rather vaguely tars those who explain oracles as consoling and psychotherapeutic with charges of "childish psychologizing of many social pseudoscientists." Some of the individuals he is talking about are MD's and/or have full psychological training. Strickmann's evidence against them is that many oracles are negative--they tell you all the bad things that happen. If he had actually watched real consultations (as I have, often) he would know that the oracle-interpreter tells the client how to avoid these bad fates. More to the point, the oracles are always cryptic, and the interpreter relates them to the seeker's own life and situation. ("Hmm, it says the dragon flies up and down...this means you should be nice to your sister-in-law.") Many interpreters are fine lay psychotherapists, and do a wonderful job of counseling. Some are not. But seeing oracle interpretation as folk counseling is hardly pseudoscience!
This said, the present book is wonderful, delightful, and rich. Above all, it reminds us that even the most apparently trivial things (oracles were often condemned as foolish even by the people who consulted them!) can be profoundly revealing on many levels. We need many more studies of such small-scale, ever-present, daily matters.

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Written On The Body
Jeanette Winterson
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0224035878

Average customer rating:

Written in the Stars
Michel Gauquelin
Manufacturer: Aquarian Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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