Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith [Hardcover]

I've been reading works on contemporary gnosticism for the past 5 years. I believe that one cannot possibly understand Western Civilization without understanding Egyptian, Greek and French gnosticism/esoterica.

I couldn't wait until this book was published in the US, so I purchased it from amazon.uk.

In my opinion, this is the best work to date that traces the thread of ancient gnostic "heresy" from Egypt to the contemporary West. Some books are better at individual case studies (e.g., the Cathars), but none have done as well as providing a coherent thread for an underground movement. The book is at its best in illuminating spiritual and esoteric aspects of the French Revolution that many others overlook.

The work has some redundancies and some weak arguments (e.g., I'm not convinced that Penn laid out Philadelphia [me: "Love of Delphi?"] to model ancient Babylon), but I rate it with 5 stars because overall I haven't seen anything better.

Hopefully this work has been published soon enough to assist Dan Brown in the writing of his next novel (yes, Dan Brown fans, read this book first!). For instance, I think it is a much better work than Ovason's work on Washington, DC symbology.

I am convinced that there are hundreds of books yet to be written on this subject. Bauval and Hancock has taken us another giant step forward. There should be little faultfinding if they have not achieved hermetic perfection with this work. They are pioneers in this field. After all, Lewis and Clark did not lay any railroad tracks.

There is a tremendous amount of historical detail in "Talisman", with good use of original sources. This is undoubtedly valuable to people with an intense interest in Freemasonry and similar secret organizations. I am one who enjoys a lot of facts and details, but in "Talisman", I found myself getting bored with a fair amount of it. There is also a good deal of repetition, along the lines of "The reader will recall in Chapter 7..." The pace is slow and didn't always hold my interest.

It's definitely worth a read, but you may find yourself starting to skip passages and pages, as I did. I've read most of Hancock's other works and enjoyed them all. I looked forward to reading "Talisman", but this book is slower going than his others (such as "Underworld", I could barely put it down). Perhaps it is the topic, I admit to being more interested in underwater archaeology than secret organizations, but don't feel guilty if you start to turn the pages a little too quickly. You're not alone.

Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval have produced a number of books, separately and together, on various subjects of esoteric interest, primarily dealing with the possibility of a hitherto unknown civilization having existed before the last Ice Age. These books are usually diverting and often thought provoking, as is Talisman, even when the reader fails to be convinced of the overall thesis of the authors.

Talisman supposedly describes the centuries old history of a secret faith which has surfaced time and again in human history. The sections which deal with the early Christian gnostics and the Cathars are very well done and provide some intriguing information about the parallels between those groups of which I had not previously known. I also found the segments dealing with the Templars and their links to the Freemasons intriguing, as will other readers who have enjoyed such books as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The Messianic Legacy, and others of that ilk.

Where I found my interest and credulity flagging were the sections dealing with the numerous references to Ancient Egyptian religion to be found among the French Revolutionaries and in the supposed Masonic symbolism to be found in cities like Washington and Paris. Egyptian references during the French Revolution make sense when you remember that the Catholic Church was considered an arm of the French monarchy, and that therefore anti-monarchists would also be anti-Church and seek to replace it with symbols of other faiths. Also it is well known that Freemasons were actively involved in the Enlightenment Period and that many early US leaders were (and continue to be in the present era) Masons. However, I tend to be skeptical of maps detailing straight lines linking different sites. (It has always been my observation that if you draw lines long enough and in enough directions you can link up just about anything you want to.)

I was also somewhat puzzled by the references to 9/11 that are tagged on at the end of the book. While Al Qaeda members certainly appear to be gullible enough to swallow the idea of a huge Jewish/Masonic conspiracy against them, I don't believe that Osama bin Laden chose to destroy the World Trade Center because the towers had Masonic significance!

All in all I can say that this is an entertaining book which will provide a lot of interesting information about Gnosticism, Catharism, and other assorted heresies and the Catholic Church's responses to them, but unfortunately mixed in with this material is a lot of poorly sorted out and ultimately irrelevant data.