"To watch the lowering of human behavior and achievement through the later parts of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age is literally like watching a light go out. Certainly, there were wise men, and their colleagues doubtlessly kept some of The Knowledge alive, but the whole society was no longer informed by the wisdom and visionary knowledge possessed by the shamans. Society no longer had a direct channel to supernormal knowledge; priests had to be used as intermediaries - priests who had themselves lost the understanding of how to activate the outer mechanisms to present their inner visions."
- Paul Devereux, Earthlights
This manuscript began as research into secret societies but, as I followed the threads of conjecture I found myself tracing a labyrinthine path which leads from New Age cult practices, back through the secret rites of Freemasonry and the Knights Templar, past the luminous legend of the Holy Grail, to the dark tombs of ancient Egypt and, beyond, to the dawn of civilization itself. From the threads emerged a consistent skein of evidence that underground streams wind their way beneath recorded history - hidden traditions of beliefs and practices which flow right into the present, shaping not only the world around us, but who we are and what we think and do. If this premise is true, just how potent are these secret traditions today and are the practitioners of the arcane arts still in operation? |
