The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey

I’ve been so reluctant to review this book, for no other reason than the fear of what some of my Christian friends will think of me. “Oh, Darryl, we knew this would happen. You rejected your faith in Christ; you’ve been busy learning how to move objects with your mind; it was only a matter of time before this happened.” Now just HOLD ON A MINUTE. Let’s make a few things clear. Firstly, The Satanic Bible is not some ancient occult text, as might be feared by uninformed Christians; it is merely a book written in the 1960s by one Anton LaVey who founded his own particular branch of Satanism called the Church of Satan. Secondly, it strikes me that if we want to be critical of something, we ought to first know something about what we’re criticising, by reading what it’s all about from the source itself, rather than blindly accepting the second-hand criticisms of our church leaders. Thirdly, my motivation in reading this book was not an interest in joining Satanism, but in helping myself to learn about whether Satanism really takes place at high levels of society and government, as other research I’ve been doing suggests.

The Satanic Bible was a surprising read, to say the least. Initially, the book is concerned with replacing the moral guidelines of conventional religion with alternative ones. Religion, says LaVey, has traditionally been based on abstinence, whereas Satanism is a religion of indulgence. He tells the story of how, as an organ player at a carnival in his youth, he would see men coming to the stripshows, then on Sunday morning at the church, these same men would get right with God, only to return to the stripshow the following week, in a never-ending cycle of hypocrisy. According to Satanism, “man’s carnal nature will out,” therefore LaVey sought to invent a religion based on man’s carnal needs, rather than in futile opposition to them. Satanic morality presents some recognisable Christian principles, with slight modifications, such as “Do unto others as they do unto you”; “Kindness to those who deserve it, rather than love wasted on ingrates.” Some of the principles made a kind of sense to me; others I felt very uncomfortable with, such as “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.” At times, LaVey has a way with words – an ability to state his case succinctly, smashing through false, pretentious counter-arguments with amazing brevity – and often with a dash of humour. For instance, consider the importance the Christian Church places on confession of sin. Here’s what LaVey had to say:

When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes that it is natural to make a mistake – and if he is truly sorry about what he has done, he will learn from it and take care not to do the same thing again. If he is not honestly sorry about what he has done, and knows he will do the same thing over and over, he has no business confessing and asking forgiveness in the first place. But this is exactly what happens. People confess their sins so that they can clear their consciences and be free to go out and sin again, usually the same sin.

Perhaps the most surprising finding in The Satanic Bible is the assertion that LaVeyan Satanists do not worship Satan. To them, Satan is no more real as a being than the tooth fairy. Instead, the word Satan is used to personify what LaVey vaguely calls a dark force of nature. Satanic ritual is largely a form of “psychodrama” – another vague term not strictly defined, but which I understand refers to the use of ritual to stimulate emotion. And emotion is where the real power lies. This is where my ears really perked up, because this is by no means the first time I’ve heard the idea that emotion is the “fuel” in a magical working; I came across the same idea in my research of telekinesis. Others who talk about “the power of intention” are acknowledging the very same, for what is intention but the emotion of strong desire.

It is stated that, contrary to popular belief, Satanists do not sacrifice babies, other humans, or even animals; children and animals are viewed as the highest form of life. The “magic” behind such ritual sacrifices is not in the blood itself but in the harvesting of the adrenal and bio-electrical energy expended in the death throes of the sacrifice. This certainly sheds new light on the prevalence of sacrifice in the religions of the ancient world – Judaism (from which our Christianity emerged) no exception. Perhaps all those ancient cultures were not as dim-witted and primitive as we commonly believe. The Satanist, however, shuns sacrifice, knowing that there are easier ways to generate the necessary emotional energy, from oneself.

Learning a thing or two about the “science” of magic was fascinating to me, especially in relation to my ongoing interest in telekinesis. I learned telekinesis without any guidebook, purely by attempting it again and again, taking careful note of what worked and what didn’t. I came to the understanding that successful telekinesis depended on first creating a strong mental image of what I wanted to occur and pouring strong desire into that image; then clearing the mind of all thought and letting it happen. Imagine my alarm when I read the five principles of Satanic magic: (a) desire, (b) timing, (c) imagery, (d) direction, (e) the balancing factor. We can forget (b) and (e), because they relate only to magic performed on a person, e.g. what time are they are most susceptible to influence, and the necessity of being realistic in your expectations. But (a), (c) and (d) correspond nicely to my own telekinesis technique. Telekinesis works because you employ desire with (mental) imagery, then direction, which is the letting go. Perhaps those elements are rather obvious, but it strikes me that the same underlying “science” is behind both telekinesis and magical ritual. After all, visualing a “psi wheel” spinning and causing it to spin for real is not so different from sticking pins in a doll with someone’s photo attached to it and manifesting an actual curse in their life.

Does all of this make me want to quit my telekinesis experiments? No. Because after all, we use our imaginations and our desires all the time in life. It’s just that few of us ever realise that we are constantly attracting experiences to ourselves through those very desires. In fact, having this understanding only makes me aware that we might well be psychically attacking others without realising it, merely by brooding over unresolved hurts. In this sense, we are all magicians, whether we realise it or not. And what is magic? The most memorable statement in the book for me was “Everything that is now considered science was once considered magic.”

Satanic magic, however, takes one giant step further, into even more mysterious territory, and this is where the original claim about Satan being merely a “dark force of nature”, rather than an actual entity, starts to fall apart for me. If Satanic ritual is merely psychodrama designed to stimulate emotion, why does The Satanic Bible state strict guidelines, such as the placing of the image of Baphomet (a goat-headed entity representing Satan) on a particular wall. Why the strict regulations about candles? The list goes on. Most telling of all are the “Enochian Keys.” These are strange passages of unknown origin, written in a language called Enochian. Each Key serves a different purpose, and it is said to be dangerous to recite these things recklessly. It strikes me that if I am required to make certain sounds with my lips, then something is there to hear and interpret those sounds as words, certainly something more personal than a force of nature. And it is this, more than anything else, that urges me to keep my distance from Satanism. For I would ask, “At what cost do I invoke help from another dimension?”

I think this may be a dangerous book, particularly in the hands of the young and naive. It is capable of seducing you with a moral viewpoint that is more realistic, and at times more attractive, than that of traditional religion. My personal morality comes not from organised religion, but from my intuitive understanding that we are all one. So, the furtherance of my own ego (which Satanism champions) is tempered with the understanding that I am everyone, and whatever I do to another, I do to myself. If I did not have this understanding, Satanic morality may well have had more impact on me than it did: “If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other” is not a principle that resonates with me, although I can see why it might to some ears. Another danger I perceived: the view that there is no actual Satan could give one a false sense of security about ploughing ahead recklessly into Satanic magic. An impersonal force of nature doesn’t hold the same sense of threat as an extra-dimensional entity waiting for an opportunity to gain entry into your life. The latter scenario seems far more likely to me than the former.

Finally, what of my original motivation for reading this book? Did it shed any light on whether Satanism (or a similar occult philosophy) takes place at high levels of government? Well, there was a brief anecdote about Benjamin Franklin’s involvement in the Hellfire Club secret society, and an assertion that all truly successful people are adherents of Satanic philosophy to one extent or another, whether knowingly or not. A poignant question occured to me: if true magical power exists on earth, where would it be – in the hands of a few obscure people, or in the hands of the rulers? Since magic is what would enable one to gain power, surely then it’s the magicians who would be the ones in power. It’s notable that the section of The Satanic Bible on magic is subtitled “Mastery of the Earth.” The Third Enochian Key is prefaced thus:

“The Third Enochian Key establishes the leadership of the earth upon the hands of those great Satanic magicians who throughout the successive ages have held dominion over the peoples of the world.”

Of course, to many readers, all of the above is purely theoretical, because believing in magic is like believing in Santa Claus, right? Well, to someone like me, who learned how to genuinely move matter with his mind, I’m afraid it’s drastically more believable.

The Spontaneous Healing of Belief by Gregg Braden

The cornerstone of this book is the view that we do not live in a purely mechanistic universe of unbreakable laws, but that heart-felt belief can have a tangible effect on reality itself. What we know as physical reality is but an expression of a deeper reality, and that deeper reality is consciousness. The universe is what Braden terms a “consciousness computer.”

For reasons of my own, I’m already sold on the view that the universe is holographic and that we all are all one consciousness. It was interesting reading Braden’s justifications for this view, drawing in particular from the findings of quantum physics, such as the double-slit experiment.

The book is a mixture of cutting-edge science plus Braden’s personal memoirs, both from his everyday life and his travels to remote places for research. Some of the justifications he makes from personal life felt a little shaky. For instance, he talked about a man who expected to die at thirty-three because his brother had died at thirty-three, his father, too, and his father’s father. Braden believes that it was the belief in this “family curse” that was bringing about the actual result in each case; our bodies seek to mirror what we believe about ourselves. Now, the principle may or may not be true, but the scientific foundation of it cannot stand on a few anecdotal examples from Braden’s personal life. Likewise, Braden makes much of an “impossible” hand-print impression on the wall of a cave, supposedly put there centuries ago by some highly knowledgable seer who lived there and learned to wield power over reality itself, pressing his hand into the rock. I’m rather more sceptical of such tourist attractions. Nevertheless, these memoirs certainly made interesting reading.

Despite these criticisms, I do think Braden may be one of the pioneers helping to bridge the gap between science and spirituality. This gap has certainly been shortening for me personally in recent times, as I withdrew from the influence of dogmatic religion, while also realising that the world was stranger than classical physics. What I notice is a convegence of ideas. Braden’s “belief creates reality” hypothesis is not different in principle from my personal experiments with telekinesis, no different than the power of positive thinking, no different from those “manifesting wealth” teachings, no different from answered prayer, no different even from the underlying principles of Satanic ritual (and that last one is not a joke; see my review of The Satanic Bible). It is extremely interesting when ideas from so many different philosophies converge and point to the same principle: belief affects reality. It tends to make you think, “Maybe there’s really something to this notion.”

Lifting the Veil by David Icke & Jon Rappoport

Lifting the Veil is a transcript of a series of interviews that researcher Jon Rappoport held with David Icke in 1998. Rappoport is the author of several books including The Secret Behind Secret Societies; Oklahoma City Bombing: The Suppressed Truth; AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century. Icke needs no introduction on these pages, as this is the eleventh book of his that I have reviewed.

This is a slim volume of only 135 pages, but it covers, however briefly, a vast array of subject matter, including Princess Diana’s death/murder, secret government, religion, the formation of the USA, signs and symbols, pyramid power structures, money, the suppression of knowledge, mind control, ritual child abuse, consciousness and other dimensions, the New Age movement, the education system. Towards the close of the book there are also some interesting pages of reflection on the early days of ridicule that Icke endured.

Lifting the Veil was published not long before Icke’s most popular book The Biggest Secret, and can be viewed as a summary of much of the information found in that larger volume (albeit without the reptilians). I’ve read so much material by Icke that I didn’t really learn anything new from Lifting the Veil, but it’s a great opener into important information that rarely gets a hearing in the mainstream. It doesn’t demand too much of your time, and it might make you think, “Maybe, just maybe, the picture of the world that we’re being fed on the TV news isn’t quite the way things really are.”

Branded by Robert Swindells

Put yourself in the shoes of young teenage boy, Dale Ward. You’ve got a mum, a dad, a younger sister called Kayleigh and an older brother called Gavin. Life is fairly typical for you, until one day the police arrest your older brother for raping and murdering a girl in an alley – a girl who was one of many. Gavin is found guilty and put in prison for a long time. The press have a field day with you and your family. Your family goes into witness protection. Suddenly you’re no longer Dale Ward but Glen Parish. On the surface, your life seems normal again. But underneath, you know you’re the younger brother of a serial killer.

What an absolutely enthralling premise for a novel. How do you reconcile the loving brother you’ve always know with the monster who brutally murdered girls? Why did he do what he did? Will you grow up to be just like him? How will anyone tell Kayleigh? Are you and your family safe in our new lives, or will the press hunt you down again?

You’ve got to hand it to Swindells. He can pick really his ideas. I’ve enjoyed all of his young adult novels. There’s a grit and an honesty to them that I really appreciate, and this one is no different.

The only downside I found was that, for some reason, Swindells is pulling of a Cormac McCarthy act with this novel. McCarthy (The Road, No Country for Old Men) is known for making some strange decisions with punctuation, such as omitting all quotations marks. Swindells mimics the style here. It doesn’t work for me. In fact, I don’t know that it works for McCarthy, either. All it really does is add a bit of confusion between dialogue and narration, occasionally breaking the flow of reading. Just a small gripe. Otherwise, highly recommended.

The Biggest Secret by David Icke

I think this is the tenth David Icke book I have read. It is, I believe, his most popular and biggest selling volume. You may wonder why I didn’t make this one a priority. Well, it’s because this is the book where Icke introduces the lizards for the first time, and I just wasn’t ready to tackle that. I couldn’t fathom that I could end up believing that our world leaders are actually shape-shifting reptilian entities from another dimension. I also didn’t want to have my opinion of Icke dashed to pieces, since I have benefitted so much from other parts of his research. But … I reckoned it was time to bite the bullet and dive in.

Firstly, the title of the book led me to believe that the entire five-hundred-page volume was going to revolve around the theme of reptilian entites. It doesn’t. The reptilian theme is something that Icke weaves throughout the pages, but a lot of the material in the book is concerned with hidden agendas in human society. In essence, the theory that the world is ruled by reptilian entities is based largely upon the view that the gods of antiquity were actual beings of an extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional nature. Mankind was ruled by these so-called “gods,” and many cultures do speak of reptilian gods. In Icke’s view, the gods never left. Overt rule was exchanged for covert rule. Today, the British Empire is nothing more than the ancient Babylonian Empire relocated and repackaged. Rather than dismiss this whole thing with a knee-jerk reaction, there are certain elements of this research that I personally find fascinating. One is the importance that ruling monarchy place on bloodline, and especially how the bloodline of many key figures in politics, both here and in the USA, can be traced back to Charlemagne (assuming the research is accurate). I find it interesting, and a little suspicious, that we have Egyptian obelisks placed outside powerful buildings around the world. We even have a pyramid with an “all-seeing eye” on the dollar bill, and the same on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. This is very much tied into the secret society known as Freemasonry. A look at the key figures involved in the formation of the United States reveals a massive prevalence of Freemasons. Furthermore, Freemasonry has definite links with the occult. Cut to the present day, and we have photographic evidence of former presidents of the USA being involved in a place called Bohemian Grove, where powerful men go every summer for a holiday which culminates in an occult religious ceremony involving a mock human sacrifice before a massive stone statue of an owl. Think I’m making this up? We have Alex Jones to thank for infiltrating the grove and obtaining direct video evidence of the ritual. This is what the American government gets up to on its days off.

Icke, by his own admission, has never seen an actual reptilian.
Evidence for their existence relies on the testimony of witnesses that Icke has been in contact with, including Arizona Wilder (once a “mother goddess” involved in occult ritual), Christine Fitzgerald (close confidante of Princess Diana), and Cathy O’Brien (once Project Monarch MKULTRA mind control slave). Much is said about the British Royal Family in regard to reptilians and occult ritual. The closing chapter of the book, and one of the most fascinating, is about Princess Diana’s death. Icke goes into a lot of detail in an attempt to show that it was an assassination, and not only that but a pre-planned occult ritual sacrifice.

I did not finish this book believing that reptilian entities rule the world, nor did I finish it entirely unconvinced about the idea, either. What is clear is that something is going on – a hidden agenda that the masses are not privy to, and something which has been going on for hundreds of years and maybe a lot longer. Some of the research in the book I felt was sloppy and inconclusive, and in the end, I felt a degree of frustration that I couldn’t hold something resembling proof in my hand and say, “Here it is!” But there is no denying that there is much to gain in reading this book, even if what you’re left with is somewhat fuzzy. Perhaps the book can best be thought of as an introduction to the esoteric, a book that will make you think, “Hey, the world is not exactly the way I’ve been told it is.” I was left with the awareness that there were numerous, hitherto unknown, avenues open to me that I was eager to do more research into.

Starstormers 3: Catfang by Nicholas Fisk

There are five adventures in the Starstormers children’s space opera, and it has taken me a over year to locate copies of them all. This third adventure, Catfang, finally completes my set. The books are rare and hard to find on eBay, but judging by the amount of search requests my previous two reviews have generated, they are fondly remembered. I was very pleased with the first adventure, not so enamoured with the second, but something just keeps me reading. In part, I guess I’m revisiting my childhood and completing some unfinished business. But the books do hold a certain silly charm for me, even as an adult. The characters of Vawn, Ispex, Tsu and Makenzi (and not forgetting the robot, Shambles) all have their individual quirks, and the interactions between them are frequently funny.

The plots of the stories require a massive suspension of disbelief. If adventures one and two seemed unbelievable, Fisk really goes into overdrive with Catfang. At the end of book two, the Starstormers have escaped the clutches of the Octopus Emperor and are on the run in space. They now discover a stowaway on board: a cat. They name it Fang. Now, I won’t spoil the story by telling you what strange things the crew end up doing with this cat; all I will say is, “Fisk, what have you been smoking!” Because the antics in this book could only seem logical to an author floating several feet above his keyboard. But you know what? I just went with it and I had fun. And I’ll probably finish the series in due course.

Heal the World by David Icke

David Icke, after his “spiritual awakening” (or whatever term you choose to put on his transformation from BBC sports presenter to spiritual teacher), wrote five books in a period of three years, which was a prediction given to him by psychic Betty Shine. Heal the World, published in 1993, is the fifth of those books. It could be argued that this was merely a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the only thing I want to draw attention to is that this book does appear to mark the closure of an era for Icke and the opening of a new one. The focus of Icke’s first five books is entirely spiritual; there is little to no trace of the conspiracy material that defines most of his later writing.

Heal the World is one of the better books from Icke’s early writings. It’s a slim volume of about 100 pages, like its predecessor Days of Decision. Some of the same ground is covered: an expose of religion as mind control, which has always been fundamental to Icke’s worldview, as well as a stepping beyond the constaints of conventional science. The theme of this book is self-healing, and by implicition healing the world. Topics include taking responsibility, overcoming guilt, respecting others, judgementalism, spiritual awakening, intuition, UFO activity, channelling energies.

There’s much in here that Icke stands by today, but also some stuff that he has changed his views on. That’s not a bad thing, really. Better a man who openly changes his mind when his understanding grows than one who stubbornly refuses to evolve. His early works had a distinct emphasis on themes like reincarnation, karma, and channelling, which he appears to have moved past. Heal the World is not a book I can agree with one hundred percent, but I don’t think there’s any Icke book I’ve felt perfectly aligned with. Besides, buying into a specific belief system is not what Icke’s writings are about.

Having read ten of his books, I’m struggling to find something new to say about this one, other than it has its moments of profundity, as do many of the others. If you’ve never read one of Icke’s books, Heal the World would make a great starting point.

The Resurrection – Fact or Fiction? by Richard Bewes

Occasionally, a Christian friend who knows that I’ve abandoned Christianity will try to “help” me in a nice sort of way (and sometimes in a not so nice sort of way, but that’s another story). I had one of the nice experiences yesterday, when someone gave me a small book to read called The Resurrection – Fact or Fiction? by Richard Bewes. I decided to read it carefully, just to see if I had anything new to learn on the subject of the validity of Christianity.

The author begins with a short chapter called “Just Supposing” in which he describes a conversation with a man who feels sorry for Christians, i.e. wasting your lives on an afterlife pipedream. This was excuse for the author to present a “what if you’re wrong?” argument, i.e. there’s a God you’ve ignored your whole life that you’ll have to deal with. This chapter was pointless, and was a hairsbreadth away from the emotionally manipulative fear-mongering that is characteristic of religion.

The author’s brief argument for the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts relies on noting how closely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John resemble each other. He makes no mention of the fact that it’s actually Matthew, Mark, and Luke that are similar, and John is quite different. He claims that since three different people, Matthew, Mark and Luke (if those were the authors) individually told the same account with a high degree of overlap, then the account must be true. He doesn’t mention the highly plausible theory that Matthew, Mark and Luke are all sourced from a single earlier document known by scholars as Proto-Mark, which could equally account for the accuracy, regardless of how genuine or otherwise Proto-Mark was.

The author admits that the earliest fragment of any New Testament book is a piece of John dating from around 125 AD, ninety-five years after the alleged resurrection of Christ, and yet he is happy to state that we possess eyewitness accounts of the resurrection. Let me illustrate the problem. Imagine I were taking the stand in a court case and said, “I have an eyewitness account that the deed was done.” When asked to present this eyewitness account, I would then have to say, “Well, Fred saw it happen, but he didn’t write anything down for twenty years. And I only have someone else’s say-so that it was Fred who wrote it. And I don’t actually have what Fred wrote. What he wrote is long gone. Oh, but somebody else copied it before it was destroyed. No, I don’t have that copy either, but I have another one – or a piece of it anyway. This was from 95 years after Fred witnessed the deed. There you go: your eyewitness account.” I would be laughed out of court! Christians ought not to be making this outrageous statement about eyewitness accounts when they are continually relying on second-hand information.

From this point on, the author assumes his readers are on the same page and that every word of the Gospel accounts can be taken as truth. The Bible says the tomb of Jesus was empty, so it must be true. The Bible says that people saw Jesus afterwards, so this must be true. This is called evidence for the resurrection, and it is the only “evidence” presented. The author goes on to say, “Not even the smallest dent would have been made upon the world unless the disciples had been changed.” He’s saying the resurrection must have happened, because it changed the world. In other words, Christianity must be true, because if it weren’t it couldn’t have grown so big. Well, how about the impact of other major world religions? The impact of Islam is nothing to be sniffed at, for instance. Also, no mention is made of such factors as Emperor Constantine declaring Christianity to be the state religion of Rome in the 4th century. I think that might have had something to do with Christianity’s expansion across the world.

The author mentions the writings of Jewish historian Josephus as further evidence of Jesus as a historical character. Josephus wrote The Antiquities of the Jews in the late 1st century, and the volume states:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

The authenticity of the above passage been disputed since the 17th century, and by the mid 18th century the consensus view was that it had at a minimum been altered by Christian scribes, and possibly was outright forgery. Think about it. We’re reading a Jewish historian admitting that Jesus was the Christ, and Jews do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, otherwise they would be Christians, wouldn’t they? Something smells off. Yet it doesn’t stop Richard Bewes, with his personal agenda, from quoting Josephus and completely disregarding the consensus view of historians on the matter.

Instead of using the available space in the book to provide detailed arguments, the author wastes space by accusing non-Christian readers of having a moral barrier to Christianity. He says it’s not a matter of evidence but a matter of willingness, because we may find the idea of converting to Christianity upsetting. In reality, the Christian is as suspectible as the non-Christian in being swayed by his personal desires. How about people who convert to Christianity for purely emotional reasons, in the absence of evidence? When a belief system is demanding your mind, body and soul, evidence is paramount. Smart people, Christian or otherwise, rule their emotions and don’t allow themselves to be ruled by them.

Doubting Thomas gets the limelight towards the end of the book, Thomas being the man who would not believe the resurrection unless he saw Jesus for himself. The author’s argument is that Thomas should have been able to trust the words of the people he had been living among, those who witnessed the risen Christ. And to us, he likewise says: “The reports of the original first-hand witnesses are enough for faith.” Oh yeah, that would be those first-hand witnesses that we don’t have.

The final page of the book is headed “Check the facts!” and is a list of Bible verses from the New Testament. I think it’s fair to say that the only evidence for the resurrection of Jesus are the writings of the New Testament. Beyond that there is nothing. Are the Gospel accounts real history? That’s the big question, isn’t it? I have yet to hear a convincing argument that they are history. There is certainly no corroborating evidence from other 1st century sources to say that Jesus was a real person. And there’s even a case for the view that the story of Jesus is a retelling of a much older myth of life, death and rebirth. History is full of such saviour God stories which have high degrees of overlap. Even the Old Testament account of Joseph appears to have remarkable similaries to the account of Jesus’ life.

The Resurrection – Fact or Fiction? is a borderline dishonest book, presenting flimsy arguments that bear no weight when scrutinised. The Christian who uses a book like this can walk away feeling that his faith has been strengthened, as long as he doesn’t think too deeply about statements like “We have eyewitness accounts of the resurrection.”

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown

Derren Brown is a stage illusionist, extremely well known in the UK, less so further afield. He’s on television here quite often and is always worth watching. His stage personality is quite different from the norm. While many illusionists thrive on projecting the image that they have psychic abilities, Brown openly admits that he’s not in the least bit psychic. This approach works a treat when he goes on to perform the most baffling tricks that make you think, “This guy’s got to be psychic.” I’ve often wondered if he has a genuine psychic ability and he’s fibbing us that he hasn’t. But after having watched some recordings of his stage shows a few times, and relying on some of the information imparted in this book, I’ve been able to figure out some of his tricks. I would call Derren Brown the master of misdirection. He really is a marvel to behold. And his book is a terrific read, on many levels.

Tricks of the Mind is divided into six parts. Part 1 is entitled “Disillusionment” and is a short account of how Brown became an atheist after being a born-again Christian in his teens. Although I’m personally not a Christian, I found Brown’s reasoning not entirely satisfying. He clearly aligns himself with the “physical reality is all there is” brigade and this is something that colours his entire thinking. My personal view is that the reliance on evidence is a worthy scientific discipline, but there may well be many things out there that are true but simply don’t bow down to our personal requirement for proof. “Evidence only” is not something to shape your entire worldview on, in my opinion.

Part 2 is entitled “Magic” and this is where the book really takes off. I’ve amused countless people (and myself) by demonstrating a simple card trick that Brown takes us through. I’ve even developed my own variation on it, where I can do it blindfolded whilst letting the other person handle the cards. The trick is mesmerising, but really hinges on the most beautifully subtle piece of audience misdirection. Here’s me having a go …

Part 3: “Memory.” Now we go from the fun to the practical. Brown explains several memorisation techniques in depth. I’ve tried some of them and they work a treat. They all function on the little known fact that it’s far easier to remember pictures than it is to remember words and numbers. In short, you create visuals to represent words. For instance, a few months ago I committed several facts about Albert Einstein to memory, as a test. I can now effortlessly regurgitate the following facts and more about him: he was born in 1879, died in 1955, received Nobel prize for physics in 1921. He was Jewish, but raised in a Catholic school, and lived in Germany. To remember Einstein’s birthday, I have the mental image of myself sitting at a table wearing a jersey with the number 7 on it, in front of a birthday cake with seven candles. I’m posing for a photo and Albert Einstein is peering over my shoulder, looking silly and giving the camera a thumbs up. “Say what?” you cry. Well, here's how this works. I want to remember Einstein's birthday, so I'm interested in associating the number 79 with Einstein (I can drop the 18 to make things easier, since I know it certainly wasn't 1979 that he was born). The birthday cake in the image reminds me that the picture has to do with birth. It's my seventh birthday, which would have been 1979. So, when I want to recall Einstein's birthday, I simply bring this image to mind and quickly deduce the number 79 from it. For the Noble prize date, I picture Einstein receiving his prize while drunk. So, when I recall this image, I naturally ask myself, "Why did I store an image of him drunk?" And it becomes easy for me to recall: "Ah! Because 21 is the legal age for drinking in the US. 1921!" It sounds overly complicated, but when you realise how readily distinctive images stick in the mind, it becomes far easier to remember things this way than to memorise by constant repetition. If I had had this book when I was at school, I would have aced my exams.

Part 4: "Hypnosis and Suggestibility." Here you'll find instructions for how to actually carry out hypnosis and put someone in a trance (although Brown in not a believer in such a thing as an actual trance state, only in suggestibility). I have no idea how valid the techniques are as I haven't tried them, but judging by Brown's stage work I would have a lot of confidence in them. There's a lengthy section on NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming). My favourite section was on phobia cures, as these are personal exercises you can perform on yourself.

Part 5: "Unconscious Communication." This is all about reading people through their body language, and also exerting some level of control over another's perception of you by deliberately controlling your own body language. One simple observation can be that a lot of blinking indicates stress, and the frequency of blinking shows the speed at which we're processing information. Brown is also careful to note that the science of telling when a person is lying to you is not exact or easy.

Part 6: "Anti-science, Pseudo-science and Bad Thinking." This, for me, was the most disappointing part of the book. Some of it was excellent, such as the detailed explanation of a technique used by fake psychics called cold-reading. But Brown is attempting to make a blanket statement on the unreality of the whole arena of the paranormal, using only a few examples. I'm definitely a believer in the paranormal. My view comes as a result of learning how to do telekinesis and obtaining definite results under rigorous test conditions. I was amazed that Brown could spent so much time researching the esoteric and end up a disbeliever in everything beyond a purely physical nature. I was also alarmed by how readily he employs Ouija boards in his stage shows, believing the results to be nothing more than the unconscious mind. I'm not so easily convinced in the safety of them, as I have personal experience that there's more to life than known physics.

An almost brilliant book and definitely life-enhancing, written with wit and insight. Highly recommended for the excellent things you can learn about the workings of your mind.

Love Changes Everything by David Icke

After reading many books by David Icke and being impressed with some of his views, I grew particularly interested in reading this early work as a result of the author’s own comments about the book in a 2008 interview: “Love Changes Everything … I don’t like that book, because it was written at the most extreme time of my transformation, when wasn’t sure what planet I was on, never mind what my name was.” It’s well known that Icke was ridiculed in the early days for his claim of being the Son of God, or rather a Son of the Godhead. I really wanted to get to the bottom of all that. I thought his first book The Truth Vibrations would tell all, but people often get the chronology wrong. The Truth Vibrations was actually written before his head blew, and is reasonably balanced in comparison to this follow up. People associate The Truth Vibrations with Icke’s “Son of the Godhead” phase because its publication coincided with the infamous Wogan interview, at which time Icke had gone through a startling spiritual experience in Peru which resulted in him transforming into someone who wasn’t sure what planet he was on. And the book that lets you look into that phase of Icke’s life is Love Changes Everything. The book doesn’t start well, as on the very second page of the introduction, Icke states (emphasis mine):

Since the publication of The Truth Vibrations I have learned so much more as I have communicated almost daily with Rakorski, the one known as Lord of all Creation, who is directly responsible for the changes the Earth will undergo. I also communicate often with the one we know as Jesus, the Spirit of the Earth, and many others.

Icke’s present view is that there never was a Jesus, and he has held that view since at least 1999 (he talks of it in The Biggest Secret). Icke now says the story of Jesus is purely astrological, containing many elements from the stories of other saviour gods of antiquity: Horus, Mithra, Buddha, Krishna, etc. It’s rather startling to hear him talk of communicating with Jesus in the early days. What was really happening? Was Icke lying? Was he being deceived by lying spirits? Who can tell. At least it clears up the notion that he was claiming to be Jesus, if nothing else. What exactly did he mean by “Son of the Godhead”? From page 103:

Some find it hard to accept that there is more than one Son of the Godhead. They believe that Jesus is the only Son of God. It is true that Jesus is the most evolved of these beings, but there are many of this evolution around the universes. Sons and Daughters of the Godhead carry and channel energies which can have a very powerful effect on the energy system [of the planet], and they can also restore links between a planet and the network. They have a different role to that of a Son of Man, and the two are not the same. They are created by the Godhead to serve Creation and the energy system, and are given a particular energy package that allows them to channel and generate incredibly pure and powerful energies. The more they evolve the purer and more powerful those energies become. They also have the ability to stimulate energies in other life-forms when they travel to or through an area. However, Sons and Daughters of the Godhead should not be seen as more important or special than anyone else. They have a role to play, but then so does every single life-form, nor are they super-human. They struggle with the same emotions and problems as anyone else.

The book continues by listing some people that Icke says were Sons and Daughters of God: Akhenaten (Egyptian pharoah), Cleopatra, then Jesus. He devotes a whole chapter to Jesus, retelling his life, disregarding a great deal of what is revealed in the Bible and supplanting it with information channelled through psychics. Here, apparently, is a channelling directly from Jesus himself: “I hoped that the Earth would change. That we could remove negativity with minimal landshifts and volcanoes and then continue with the energy work. Many people seemed willing to change …”

Here’s some information about John the Baptist that will give you a flavour of the sort of re-telling Icke is doing:

John had a mervellous understanding of cleansing energy systems and chakras and opening up beings spiritually by removing negativity and past-life karma. It is said that he lived in the wilderness, but it’s more correct that he lived in an area where many varied plants, rocks, and crystals were available. It was also near a place of Divine Water. Divine Waters are rivers or springs which carry Godhead energies as part of the energy system. People went to John to have their physical body cleared of any lingering negativity. The final cleansing was total immersion in the Divine Waters.

Love Changes Everything is based almost entirely on information channelled through psychics, in particular Mari Shawsun. The book provides a re-telling of history, including dramatically specific information about Atlantis, King Arthur, Lucifer/Satan. Are we supposed to simply take this information on faith? Apparently so. The Jesus part of this story is what really put things in perspective for me. We know those channellings are completely wrong (and Icke knows it, too, today), so that immediately throws the entire book into the realms of imaginative fantasy. It’s a nice bed-time story, but it has absolutely nothing to say about what really happened in history.

The overall problem with the book is that Icke has allowed himself to be taken for ride by the claims of psychics, and it badly damages his credibility. I can’t help wondering whether he’s making the same mistake today, in the credence he places in the claims of people like Credo Mutwa, Arizona Wilder, Stewart Swerdlow, Zecharia Sitchin and others – people he uses to validate his claim that world leaders are shape-shifting inter-dimensional reptilian entities.

You know, I can’t deny that I’ve been inspired by many a thing that David Icke has said, which is why I keep reading him despite the things (incredible or otherwise) that I can’t take on board. But his claim to have channelled Jesus damages my view of him more than anything else he has ever said. I am reminded to have my BS detector on full alert when reading his books.

Here are some of Icke’s personal reflections on the most extreme phase of his spiritual awakening, not long before writing this book. From page 141:

Then, in March 1991, I went over for a third visit to Canada to work with a channeller, Mari Shawsun. I can remember the time vividly: it was just as if someone had flicked a light switch. Suddenly, the David Icke I have just described had taken a step back. He was still there, but no longer controlling events. I think the same thing must have happened to Mari also. It was such a strange feeling. It was as if the real me had become an observer, just looking on, sometimes in horror, at what was happening. [...] What happened next, however, was a real shocker. Communications came through that I was from the evolution called Sons of the Godhead. More than that, a list of fantastic and specific physical events were given that were supposed to happen before the end of the year. To top it all I was to call a press conference and tell the world all this. [...] I will never forget that press conference and I doubt if any of the journalists will either. I stood there in my tourquoise tracksuit telling them all this stuff and as I read out the list of “changes” I remember my rational aspect saying with a distant voice: “David, what the hell are you saying? This is absolute nonsense.” But my mouth continued to open and my credibility continued to sign its own death warrant.

It’s clear that in Love Changes Anything, Icke is in the process of recovering his rationality, but he had far from fully recovered, as is clear from the information he continued to place credence in. I leave you with a full transcript of Icke’s personal reflections on the early days, from the 2008 interview mentioned at the top:

When you’re working with psychics, as I was in those early days, trying to make sense of what was happening to my life and make sense of what I was beginning to understand, you’re at the mercy of the psychic who is communicating information. For instance, what psychics do is they have the ability to access some of these other frequencies of existence and bring information from entities on those dimensions into this one. Now, you know, there are great footballers of world renown and there are people that kick a ball about on a team at the park on a Sunday morning. They’re both footballers, but they’re not the same quality of footballer – the same ability. And also, if someone has a belief system – a psychic – about a religion or Jesus or whatever, what happens is – it’s like telepathy – as the energy is communicated through the psychic, the psychic will put their own spin on it, and it can come out in a less than pure way or less than the same accurate way than it was communicated, because it has gone through a filter which is based on belief – belief in something. So all these factors are in there with regard to information, in regard to how accurate it is or whatever. What I will say about the The Truth Vibrations particularly – Love Changes Everything … I don’t like that book, because it was written at the most extreme time of my transformation, when wasn’t sure what planet I was on, never mind what my name was. I was transforming from the person who presented the sport on the BBC to what I became, and now it’s easy for me to transform from one state to another because, you know, you get used to it, and all the rest of it. But in those days, you know, I was a baby from this point of view. It was a real challenge. It was a very bewildering experience. So, Love Changes Everything was written at that time, with, to be honest, the bewilderment that I was feeling – the confusion that I was feeling. But The Truth Vibrations, the first one, which was written before my head really blew, I am extremely pleased with that. It’s interesting that when I talk about things today, I’m talking about them in a more detailed way, with a greater understanding than then.

The book Icke wrote after Love Changes Everything is his autobiography In the Light of Experience, which I have read and reviewed. It provides yet more insight into his past, and is an excellent book by comparison. Perhaps Love Changes Everything should be looked at as the one book by David Icke that should never have been written.

Days of Decision by David Icke

This is the fourth book David Icke wrote since his spiritual awakening in 1990. It’s also his smallest, clocking up only 86 pages. Nevertheless, what it lacks in size, it makes up for in content. Chapters 1 to 4 in particular will arrest the attention of newcomers to Icke’s work and dispel any notion of “crackpot” that might have festered in the wake of that long distant Wogan interview.

We begin with fast, sharp insight into all the planet-raping, soul-destroying insanity that we call normal life in the western world. Icke then shines a light on humanity’s lack of thinking, exposing the conditioning of everyday life and our unthinking acquiescence it. Then comes a courageous expose on religion and its use as a tool for control. Science then comes under fire, or rather, system-serving science, which is quietly destroying the planet. You won’t be unaffected by the information in these chapters. It’s as relevant today as ever.

The book then turns to matters of an esoteric nature, discussing psychic channelling; the universe as a frequency; consciousness and the eternal mind; positive-negative balance (a different way of looking at good and evil); Earth as a conscious entity; an approaching spiritual awakening of humanity; and finally the importance of love.

Icke is not totally on the same page today as what he was expounding in the early 1990s, but there is much in here that reflects the same understanding he now expresses at a deeper level.

Days of Decision is compiled from speeches that Icke made all over the United Kingdom, during or not long after the days of his widespread public ridicule. It would have been amazing to attend one of those early speaking engagements. I’ll bet a lot of mouths regretted their laughter before too many minutes had passed.

Copies of Days of Decision show up now and then on eBay. Well worth chasing it up. If you are someone who has never read any of Icke’s work before and are completely new to his controversial views, this volume is an excellent entry point. From the back cover: “This book is written for those who are beginning their journey to truth and understanding at this time of immense change.” You might well be changed after reading it.

Sapphire and Steel by P.J. Hammond

Sapphire and Steel is one of the strangest and most fascinating television dramas that I remember from childhood. Sapphire (played by Joanna Lumley) and Steel (David McCallum) are agents of a mysterious sort of inter-dimensional police force. Where they come from is never quite made clear – only that they are not human, and they appear to know a great deal more about the world than we do. They arrive on our dimension at certain times and places, to contend with a mysterious malignant force that is regularly attempting to break into time. Each agent has his/her own unique paranormal abilities with which to do battle.

There were six seasons of Sapphire and Steel, and this short book is a novelisation of the first season. It concerns a family who live in a big house filled with clocks. The reading of a nursery rhyme becomes a “trigger” that causes all the clocks to stop and the parents to vanish into thin air, leaving two bewildered children behind. Then two strangers appear at the front door, a steely-eyed man and a woman in a blue dress. The children have no clue whether they are friend or foe, but Rob, the boy, quickly learns that if he is ever going to see his parents again, he must put his trust in them.

These words of mine can’t quite convey the spooky feel of the show. The writer, P.J. Hammond, had a real knack for unnerving the viewer that was almost Lovecraftian – giving us nothing more than quick glimpses of a dark and terrifying reality just beyond the range of human sight. I think this was billed as a children’s show back in the late 1970s, but it’s anything but. I remember having childhood nightmares about being trapped in time, and when I finally revisited the series when it first came out on videotape in the early 1990s, I was able to connect the dots.

I don’t normally read novelisations, because they tend to be mere cash-ins on a successful series or movie, but I made an exception this time because it’s written by the series’ creator P.J. Hammond. I thought it might offer fresh insights into the bizarre mythology, but sadly the book reads almost like a word-for-word reconstructions of the script, fleshed out with descriptive detail. Most of the book is told from the point of view of Rob, and so, nothing more is learned about the characters of Sapphire and Steel than what was already on display on the television screen. I feel this was a missed opportunity to go deeper than what the visual medium allowed.

I can understand how a book like this would have been a worthwhile purchase back in the late 1970s, before the era of videotapes and DVDs, when we there was no opportunity to revisit your favourite programmes other than waiting for re-runs which might never come. But nowadays, you would be better served by picking up the series on DVD. If you have a taste for sci-fi that’s a bit “out there,” I recommend you check it out. As for the novelisation, its only value is as a collectible.

Reality Is Plastic! by Anthony Jacquin

Reality Is Plastic! is a book on hypnosis. It’s extremely short, just shy of 100 pages, but those pages are packed with information. There’s less of an emphasis on understanding what hypnosis actually is, more on practical routines that you can try on your friends. The book provides illustrated step-by-step instructions, such as how to invoke paralysis in limbs, how to invoke amnesia in your subject, how to make your subject think you are invisible. It all sounds far-fetched, and it’s not something that I have personally tested, but I have a friend who swears by this book and has used the routines to great effect.

The book places great importance on the confidence of the hypnotist being one of the prime factors in hypnotising someone. It’s the idea that hypnosis occurs when your confidence creates the expectation in the subject that they will be hypnotised.

It’s true that this kind of esoteric knowledge can be used for ill intent, but equally true that it can be used for good intent, such as the curing of phobias and the releasing of addictions. Ultimately, knowledge is neutral. It’s how we use knowledge that matters. Personally, I’m all for learning as much as I can about the workings of the mind, and research into hypnosis is proving for me to be a great avenue.

The book will be more useful to those who are interested in street hypnosis – the fun side of things. But the insights apply right across the board.

The only downside is the price. Anthony Jacquin sells the book for £22.50 plus £2.50 postage from his website, which is an insult for a paperback book of this size. For me, esoteric knowledge is a joy to share, not an opportunity for excessive greed. Worse still, the book is ring-bound, giving it an air of amateurism. And the text hasn’t seen a decent edit, judging by the many puncutation errors throughout. It you want to self-publish, do it right.

That said, the book was a fascinating and worthwhile read. A useful book for any budding hypnotist to have in his library.

In the Light of Experience by David Icke

Almost a year ago, I read my first David Icke book; it was I Am Me, I Am Free. Since then, I’ve been reading his work continuously, in tandem with my other reading. Icke’s books are tough on brain, and after devouring my fifth one, I was just about Icked out. Then In the Light of Experience came along, which is a refreshingly simple book by comparison, because it’s an autobiography.

What struck me as odd was that the book was written and published in 1993. Those familiar with Icke will know that he only got started on his spiritual journey in 1990, and a great deal has happened between then and now (2009). 1993 struck me as a bit early in his career for an autobiography. Nevertheless I was eager to read a detailed account of his early years, not least because these were the years when he faced the biggest ridicule – something that he has always said was the making of him, because it freed him from the prison of acting according to how others judge will us.

The internet is littered with audio and video interviews of David Icke, and he has often recounted his early experiences, such as his initial eye-opening encounters with psychic Betty Shine, his later spiritual experiences at a circle of standing stones in Peru, and the public ridicule that came on the heels of his appearance on the Wogan talkshow. You can also read a fascinating summary of his early years at the beginning of Tales from the Time Loop. I’ve listened to a lot of David Icke interviews (and I mean a lot), but there are things in In the Light of Experience that I have never heard him talk about anywhere else. Most fascinating of all was a relationship with a woman called Mari that resulted in a child, while David was still married to his wife Linda. Icke talks about this with brilliant honesty.

The first half of the book is devoted to Icke’s earlier years: his childhood, brief football career that ended because of athritis, his time as a journalist, sports presenter, and spokesman for the British Green Party. The other half of the book is concerned with 1990 to 1993. One chapter in particular is entitled “The Son of the Godhead.” Here’s a couple of excerpts:

I did not have the luxury of a long and gradual preparation period that many others enjoy. My higher consciousness and those working through me just opened the top of my head, the crown chakra, and poured in these unbelievable energies. For many weeks I was staggering about like some spiritual drunk, hardly knowing what planet I was on!

The most important three words in terms of publicity and profile were “Son of God”. I said I was a Son of the Godhead and this was immediately repeated in the media as the Son of the Godhead. What I said was true. We are all expressions of the energy that is everything, what I call the Infinite Mind, and what others individualise under the term God. Therefore, if you want to use symbolic language, we are all Sons and Daughters of God, all part of the Infinite Mind of Creation. But because society programmes people, even those who don’t believe in religion, to think the words “Son of God” mean the biblical version of Jesus, the media predictably linked me to that whole concept of “messiahs” and the “second coming”. The result was someone who was fundamentally challenging religion and the Bible view of Creation being dubbed in the media as someone who had discovered religion and was promoting the Bible!

For those who appreciate the work of David Icke, this rare and long out-of-print book is probably the deepest look you’ll find into his life. Keep your eye out for it on eBay.

The New World Order by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells is best known for his fiction. This little book is non-fiction. It’s essentially a very long essay on the subject of globalisation, something that is highly relevant in today’s world, where we see so much centralisation of power underway, as corporations merge into bigger corporations, and governments become collectivised into unions. When reading this book, which was published in 1940, it’s important to remember that the term “New World Order” didn’t carry the same sinister significance that it has in the minds of many conspiracy believers today. What I’m saying is, let’s not call Wells a bad guy on the grounds of the title alone. There’s much in the book to commend it.

Here are three quotes that I find particularly impressive. I don’t know how much these will strike you, but I personally went through an awakening about eight or nine months ago, where I became aware of how much my mind was being manipulated by the dogma of religion and the false assumptions of science. In my eyes, these quotes are as fresh and relevant today as they ever were.

On religion and its resistance to criticism:

Most of our belief systems rest upon rotten foundations, and generally these foundations are made sacred to preserve them from attack. They become dogmas in a sort of holy of holies. It is shockingly uncivil to say “But that is nonsense.” The defenders of all the dogmatic religions fly into rage and indignation when one touches on the absurdity of their foundations. Especially if one laughs. That is blasphemy. This avoidance of fundamental criticism is one of the greatest dangers to any general human understanding.

On our planet-wrecking consumer mentality:

Natural resources are being exhausted at a great rate, and the increased output goes into war munitions whose purpose is destruction, and into sterile indulgences no better than waste. Man, “heir of the ages,” is a demoralised spendthrift, in a state of galloping consumption, living on stimulants.

On the false assumptions of science that turn us into know-it-alls:

“Science” comes to us from those academic Dark Ages when men had to console themselves for their ignorance by pretending that there was a limited amount of knowledge in the world, and little chaps in caps and gowns strutted about, bachelors who knew all that there was to be known. Now it is manifest that none of us know very much, and the more we look into what we think we know, the more hitherto undetected things we shall find lurking in our assumptions.

The thrust of the book is this: Wells believes the world must become collectivised under a single leadership, or else the world is doomed to destruction by inevitable war. He bases this conviction on something he calls “the abolition of distance.” War, in olden times, was fought by travelling on foot or horseback to your destination, but in the modern world of technology, it is now possible to attack any part of the world very quickly. Everyone is neighbour to everyone else, in that sense. It begs the question, how do you defend your border? You can’t. The abolition of distance, Wells argues, creates too many possibilities for devastating war scenarios, and makes the end of the world inevitable.

Much of the book theorises about what sort of world government could function to be fair to all people. This was tough stuff to understand for me personally, because my political knowledge is not good. The overarching question I kept asking myself was, “If there’s one force at the top of the tree to which all others are subservient, how do you stop it turning into a global tyranny somewhere down the line?” It seems naive to suppose that a single centralised world government would simply stay good and fair over time. And if there are no powerful independent countries (which is the idea) to call upon for help to release you from such tyranny, what can you do? Nothing. In my mind, centralisation of world power is one way to world peace and a very short step from permanent tyranny. The book didn’t give me answers to that objection. Wells was firmly locked into the mentality that the world as it stands is doomed unless we centralise power. I’m not sure if the present world system really does need to collectivise, and I certainly don’t think a single world government is the answer. We’re almost seventy years past the writing of this book, we’re in possession of far more destructive technology, and we’re still here.

In any case, this book is an illuminating, thought-provoking read.