-THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD AS LAID DOWN BY THE SECRET SOC By Mark Booth

Booth, a London publisher who has taught philosophy and theology at Oxford, is not shy about what he expects from readers—he asks that they enter into an imaginative exercise and embrace a world in which the basic facts of history can be interpreted in a way which is almost completely the opposite of the way we normally understand them. That radical re-interpretation is based on the tenets offered in the secret teachings of Rosicrucians, esoteric Freemasonry, Sufism and Kabbalism, among others, with additional references to Eastern religions and Greek and Roman mythology. According to Booth, these teachings inspire the cosmic mind that brought into being the material universe. Booth's history incorporates so many disparate philosophies, many of them far, far away from the mainstream, that it lacks all coherence. And his universe is full of bizarre theories, entertaining primarily for their weirdness. For example, he posits that the angels in the ancient Hebrew Book of Enoch who became sexually attracted to human women are none other than the Gods of Olympus. It is hard to imagine that readers without Booth's predilections for the metaphysical will find this to be anything more than an earnest curiosity. B&w illus. (Jan.)
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The great thing about a well-crafted conspiracy theory is that it finds clues everywhere. It can make for a blend of delicious intrigue and disconcerting paranoia. It can also debunk any attempts to debunk it, usually with the trump card, "That's what They want you to think."

Mark Booth's new book, The Secret History of the World as Laid Down by the Secret Societies, tackles the greatest granddaddy of all conspiracy theories: Life as We Know It (or don't know it, as the case may be). "[T]he basic facts of history can be interpreted in a way which is almost completely opposite of the way we normally understand them," he says.

Just as physicists struggle to find an elusive grand unified theory that unites all the forces of the universe, Booth's book could serve as a grand unified theory of all the world's mythologies and religions. Every one of them has a piece or two of the big puzzle. Some of those puzzle pieces are actively suppressed, others are secretly encoded, others are "dumbed down." And yet it's also everywhere around us, plain to see if only a person knows what to look for. The codes are hidden in art, architecture, iconography, and even our money.
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Booth's narrative starts with, literally, The Beginning and includes ancient mythology, Eastern mysticism, philosophy, and organized religion. For good measure, he throws in alchemy, the occult, mystical-sexuality, and a variety of conspiracy theories.

"There was remarkable unanimity among the initiate priests of the ancient world. Their secret teachings are encoded in the sacred texts of the world's great religions," Booth writes, even contending that "a secret history of creation is encoded in Genesis."

Booth gives fair warning early on that his text will be controversial. "Conventionally minded Christians may wish to stop reading now," he warns by Chapter Three. Indeed, the book challenges nearly every precept of Christianity, but what's particularly fascinating about Booth's research is his contention that the Catholic Church itself has been in on the ruse. The Church promotes "radical monotheism" as a way to hide deep truths, such as the Church's "astrological origins."

Booth spends the first part of the book establishing the philosophy and theology that underlies the secret history. The world used to be a mind-before-matter kind of place. He then shifts gears to tell the history's historiography—that is, the history of the history. He explains how the secret history was taught by and influenced by the Mystery Schools of the ancients, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and Catholic occultists. He also explains the various infighting that has gone on between various Secret Societies, drawing parallels to the same way sects within Islam or Christianity bicker with one another.

Booth assumes informed readers know what these Secret Societies are (or at least know of their existence), so he never bothers to offer even a brief explanation of each group until their proper appearance in the historical narrative, making his early references confusing.

People who do know what the Societies are and have picked up Booth's book for a kiss-and-tell account of their secret rites and objectives will find themselves disappointed. Perhaps Booth avoids that approach to avoid the appearance of sensationalism, but in doing so he misses part of the point: People want to read about Secret Societies because they want in on the secret. On this score, Booth disappoints.

The cast of Booth's secret history is nothing less than all-star: Christopher Columbus, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Wagner, Teddy Roosevelt, and even Adolf Hitler. The people Booth implicates reads like a who's-who of historical geniuses and movers and shakers.

At times, Booth could use a little direction himself. His narrative jumps around a lot, and the jumps don't always make sense. For instance, he tells of an effort by the Freemasons to erect obelisks in September of 1878 in preparation for "a war-torn age that would soon be dawning." But then Booth jumps backwards for a hundred years and never ties up the story of the Masonic obelisks. Such jumps, while not common, add unnecessary confusion to a tale confusing enough on its own.

Still, Booth tries to make The Secret History of the World accessible to the average reader without sacrificing his own scholarly integrity. He draws on a wide, eclectic variety of resources, including alternative translations, ancient texts, and insider information from modern-day secret societies. At times, he writes with the voice of an impartial scholar; however, at other times, Booth writes with the voice of a believer trying to convert his reader.

That inconsistency proves to be one of the book's greatest weaknesses because a reader can never quite tell what agenda Booth might be trying to forward. As a work of scholarship, the book has plenty in it to pique the curiosity of any open-minded reader. As an argument in favor of esoteric thought, the book has plenty in it to uncomfortably challenge—and scare off—a good portion of its potential readers. However, Booth's prose never quite transports readers there, never sweeps them into the worlds of the Secret Societies. The Secret History of the World proves to be intellectually interesting but emotionally unfulfilling. For a conspiracy theory about everything, it could've given more.

(January, 2008)

What if history---or what we have come to know as history---has all along been written by the wrong people? What if everything we've been told is the wrong part of the story? In this groundbreaking new work, Mark Booth embarks on an enthralling intellectual tour of our world's secret histories, producing nothing short of an alternate history of the past 3,000 years.

415 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 25 cm.
Inhalt: In the beginning --
A short walk in the ancient woods --
The Garden of Eden --
Lucifer, the light of the world --
The gods who loved women --
The assassination of the Green King --
The age of demi-gods and heroes --
The Sphinx and the timelock --
The neolithic Alexander the Great --
The way of the wizard --
Getting to grips with matter --
The descent into darkness --
Reason--and how to rise above it --
The mysteries of Greece and Rome --
The sun god returns --
The tyranny of the fathers --
The age of Islam --
The wise demon of the Templars --
Fools for love --
The green one behind the worlds --
The Rosicrucian age --
Occult Catholicism --
The occult roots of science --
The age of Freemasonry --
The mystical-sexual revolution --
The illuminati and the rise of unreason --
The mystic death of humanity --
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

mark booth