Book Reviews

A Short Philosophy of Birds

Philippe J. DuBois and Elise Rousseau, translated by Jennifer Higgins
New York: HarperCollins, 2019; 157 pp., paper, $19.99.

The authors of this book write:

Like Mongolians, birds don’t travel with a compass, GPS, or a map, because they intuitively possess all these internally. Take the bar-tailed godwit. This little wader (also known as a “limicole” or mud-dwelling bird) is a close relative of the curlew and spends its life in coastal marshes or estuaries. In spring, the godwit migrates to make its nest in the Arctic. By tracking one of these godwits with a satellite tag, researchers have discovered that they are capable of covering the distance between Alaska and New Zealand—over 7000 miles—in one go. That equates to flying for a whole week at forty-five miles per hour. Consider, too, that the godwit weighs just 250 grams. What’s more, during this non-stop flight, the godwit only allows one half of its brain to fall asleep at a time—allowing it to fly continuously during its sleep. Imagine if we humans could sleep this way.

The authors of this book ask: whatever happened to our sense of direction? Wherever we go, whether it be a vacation or a deeper spiritual journey, we depend on some version of an external GPS. We don’t trust our internal instincts, as the godwits do.

Philippe J. Dubois is an ornithologist and a writer who has traveled all over the world watching birds. He is an author of several books on climate change and biodiversity. Elise Rousseau is a conservationist and author of several books on nature and animals. Their book provides twenty-two profound lessons on qualities we can learn from birds.

Tukaram, a famous Marathi saint, sang that our closest friends are in the nature around us. This elegant book reminded me of that teaching from my childhood. The authors inspire us to take a step back and reconnect with the nature and listen to the “tiny philosophers of the sky.”

The first chapter is titled “Embracing Our Vulnerability.” For a species of duck, the molting period is a period of vulnerability. When new plumage is replacing the old, these ducks are temporarily unable to fly. “Eclipse plumage” is a phrase used to describe “a liminal twilight that occurs while the bird waits for the essential feathers that it has to shed to regrow.”

The lesson is profound. Why don’t we humans do the same and cultivate the patience needed to “eclipse” ourselves whenever we face vulnerable situations? After great losses, we feel the pressure to move on. We rarely take the time to be with our sadness, gather our strength in our own version of eclipse plumage, and reemerge.

Many years ago, a goose family laid eggs in the planter on my deck. The mother goose would sit on them, hatching, for days, and the male goose would stay put on the deck, protecting his family. I couldn’t go on my deck because he would sit in a position to attack. I didn’t understand this fully till I read Dubois’s and Trousseau’s book: it is the geese’s commitment to their family.

The authors tell us about many such qualities. The hen takes a dust bath (live life to the fullest); the eagle glides high in the air, looking for its prey (true courage); doves fall in love (tenderness); a bowerbird builds his nest, beautifully decorating it in bright colors (adding beauty to the world); a robin brawls and fights (audacity in defending oneself); a corvid uses tree branches to reach hard-to-access foods (using one’s intelligence—forget the expression birdbrain!); and a bird loosed from its cage uses its freedom to roam while staying near the safety of the cage (dealing with fear).

In their conclusion, Dubois and Rousseau say that in “our changing world, threatened by climate change and destruction of natural habitats, many bird species are disappearing.” How do we adapt? How do we survive and, more importantly, how do we help our dear friends, the bird species, to survive? The authors say, “The day we decide to protect birds will be the day we decide to protect ourselves.”

This was an inspiring book. Lately a red-crested bird has been coming and sitting on a shrub that I can see from my reading chair. He sits there and watches me read. I wonder if he has something to tell me. I intend to ask the next time I see him.

Dhananjay Joshi

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Giza’s Industrial Complex: Ancient Egypt’s Electrical Power and Gas Generating Systems

James Ernest Brown, Dr. J.J. Hurtak, and Dr. Desiree Hurtak
Pagosa Springs, Colo.: Ancient Energy Research Center and Academy for Future Science, 2019. 150 pp., paper, $35.99.

Ancient Egypt has arguably been the source of more fringe speculation than any other historical culture, from tales about ancestral links to Atlantis to theories about pyramid-building aliens. Although modern scholarship has worked hard to throw cold water on the more extravagant variants, there is still no shortage of vexing mysteries involving this civilization, which even hard-nosed moderns continue to grapple with.

How did the Egyptians manage to move such large stone blocks, sometimes hundreds of miles overland? Why does Egyptian culture seem to have reached its peak near the earliest stages of its development? How did they achieve such extraordinary precision with some of the hardest stones on earth, as evidenced not only in works like the famed seated statue of Khafre in the Cairo museum but the many gargantuan sarcophagi down in the Serapeum of Saqqara? How does one explain the astonishing holes bored in hard stones around the Giza plateau, which look like the result of advanced machine tooling? The list goes on.

One of the most enduring mysteries of all, of course, is the Great Pyramid. What exactly was it used for? Despite its official reputation as a tomb, no pharaonic body was ever found inside it. This massive structure incorporates a series of extraordinary alignments, both geometrical and astronomical. Some claim that it served as initiation chamber and consciousness-raising device, while others point to the peculiar sonic properties in various parts of the structure. Having experienced some very strange acoustical phenomena in it myself, I have no doubt there is far more than meets the eye to this monument.

In recent years a growing chorus of voices has been suggesting that the monuments of the Giza plateau represent a kind of advanced technology normally associated with modern industrial societies. This school of thought was spearheaded in recent years by engineer Chris Dunn (The Giza Power Plant) but has been developed in a different vein by authors James Brown and J.J. and Desiree Hurtak in their new book.

The potentials of water play a pivotal role in this work. The authors propose that various structures around (and beneath) the Giza plateau were designed to activate sophisticated processes of “water splitting,” which in turn could exploit the enormous potential of hydrogen as a fuel source. Though we normally experience water in its liquid, gaseous, or solid states, they suggest another possible form: electrified or energized water. They go on to say that there is “good evidence that the Great Pyramid was a gigantic water processing plant to create electrified water and other chemical transformations.” It all sounds very space-agey, of course, but as the authors point out, the Egyptians “had the technology to build extensive pyramid structures, why could they not produce something as simple as energy from salt water batteries or hydrogen gas from water that high school students can do today?” We already know as a result of such discoveries as the so-called Baghdad Battery that some ancient cultures had devised ways of generating electricity, so it’s conceivable that the Egyptians could have developed related technologies.

What exactly would they have used this energy for? One possibility would have been electric lighting sources for their temples or for use in constructing tombs and tunnels deep underground. The authors theorize that structured or energized water could have also been utilized for agriculture, health and healing purposes, or ritual applications. As they point out, sacred water has long played a role in the ceremonies of religious cultures, from baptism to ritual purifications and cleansings.

Much of what the authors are proposing is speculative, of course, but as someone steeped for decades in highly speculative writings—including Theosophical ones—I admittedly have a high tolerance for far-out ruminations. What distinguishes this book from several others, however, is the science. While I don’t have an extensive enough background in electronics or chemistry to pass final judgment on the finer details of their research, I have just enough to suspect that they may well be on to something and that their work merits serious attention. The book could open the door to important insights into this ancient culture and our collective history.

A good-sized chunk of the book is technical in nature, which could make it tough sledding for non–technically minded readers. For them, I’m tempted to suggest skipping ahead to the conclusion, then going back to the beginning and reading forward from there. I’d like to think the authors might consider publishing a more accessible version of their research down the road in order to reach a wider audience.

In the end, their work brought me back to an idea I’ve pondered for years about the ancient Egyptians myself—namely, that they likely employed a more holographic way of thinking about the world, which operated on multiple levels simultaneously (like Egyptian hieroglyphics, which can be read on several levels). For that reason, I suspect their extraordinary structures may have served multiple purposes–spiritual, aesthetic, magical, geometrical, as well as technological. So should we view impressive structures like the Great Pyramid as deeply spiritual temples or as highly advanced machines? It may well be that they were both.

Ray Grasse 

Ray Grasse worked on the editorial staffs of Quest magazine and Quest Books during the 1990s. He is the author of several books, including The Waking Dream, An Infinity of Gods, Urban Mystic (excerpted in Quest, fall 2019), and Under a Sacred Sky. His website is www.raygrasse.com.

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Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times

THOMAS WATERS
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019. 350 pp., hardcover, $65.

This is what many people believe about witchcraft: In the Middle Ages, the Catholic church cracked down on survivals of the old pagan nature religion. Its practitioners were labeled as witches and persecuted, often burned. This antiwitch rampage lasted into the eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment convinced the world that witchcraft had no effects; those who practiced it were simply deluded. After that point, belief in witchcraft died out until it was revived in the mid-twentieth century.

As this book, which focuses on witchcraft beliefs in Britain from the eighteenth century to the present, shows, much of this view is simply wrong.  It is true that Britain's Witchcraft Act of 1735 eliminated penalties for witchcraft per se, although it created penalties for those claiming to practice it. But popular belief in witchcraft never went away. It diminished somewhat, especially in the early twentieth century, but came back in full force during the century’s second half. In fact, witchcraft has been alive and well in Britain from the earliest days to today.

Neither the British government nor the Church of England played any role in perpetuating witchcraft beliefs; indeed they did everything they could to stomp them out. But belief persisted. Nor was it merely a matter of scary stories told around a fire. Witchcraft accusations were leveled by local people at local people, and these locals often took vengeance into their own hands. One example was a man from Westminster in 1831, who, “though living within sight of Parliament,  tried to shoot his neighbour—a woman who, he claimed, had bewitched him for the previous four years.”

 Witchcraft has many, often contradictory, meanings. Today some people call  themselves witches because they believe they are continuing the Old Religion. Wicca, the best-known version, derives its name from the Old English word wicca (pronounced witcha), which means male witch. (A female witch was a wicce, and the practice was wiccacraefte). Oddly in light of all this, today Wicca (pronounced wicka) is an abstract noun referring to the reconstructed present-day religion.

In the minds of the British common people, however, witchcraft generally meant doing harm to others through occult powers. This could range from causing cows to dry up to inflicting illness and death on the victims themselves. By contrast, individuals who used these methods to heal or protect people from witchcraft were commonly known as cunning-folk.

The authorities’ position was ambiguous. The Witchcraft Act (not repealed until 1951) was based on the idea that witchcraft was nonsense. On the one hand, this meant that the magistrates tried to protect people (usually women) accused of it. On the other hand, it meant that they often prosecuted cunning-folk who were trying to heal or rescue people from witchcraft.

Waters tries to connect his story with the larger history of occultism, but a short and perfunctory chapter entitled “Occultists Study Dark Arts” shows only the most basic knowledge of Theosophy, Christian Science, and the occult revival of the late nineteenth century.

Otherwise, Cursed Britain is well informed and well told. On a more theoretical level, it leaves a great deal to be desired. Waters does not satisfactorily explain why beliefs in witchcraft persisted so doggedly in an age of science and supposed enlightenment. He falls back on two suggestions. One is belief: “for it to work, you must quash your doubts.” But there are cases in which people suffered from the effects of witchcraft without believing in it or knowing that anyone had put a curse on them. He also relies heavily on the idea that this “imaginative, uncanny, and wishful way of thinking” is chiefly due to a human desire to make sense of the inexplicable. These do not do full justice to the evidence.

Waters is a lecturer in history at University College, London, who published this book with Yale University Press, so he is unlikely to give any explanation that does not line up with rationalistic materialism. But his theoretical arguments are neither forceful nor convincing: the reader suspects that he himself is baffled by the phenomenon—perhaps because he has researched it so thoroughly.

Waters bemoans the rise of belief in witchcraft in present-day Britain and wonders what should be done about it. Again, he does not come up with much of an answer, writing, “Witchcraft reached its lowest ebb in modern British history when  the state clamped down on the market for alternative health care, with targeted regulation and more policing. Perhaps a similar campaign could be mounted today, against the most unscrupulous spiritual healers operating in Britain.” An updated version of the Witchcraft Act, perhaps?

Richard Smoley

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Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being

Agustin Fuentes
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019, 206 pp. Hardcover, $28.

In this book, Agustin Fuentes, chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, addresses belief, why we believe, and how our beliefs shape ourselves and the world around us. He explores belief in three areas: religion, economies, and love.

Fuentes takes us on an anthropological deep dive into what makes us human and how the “human niche” developed. He gives a detailed time line of this development, as well as the evolution of plants and animals and the construction of the “human place.” He stresses that “the capacity for belief is not rooted simply in neurobiology.”

One third of the way through the book, Fuentes defines human culture as a system of the “distinctive processes of humanity that evolves as a central component of the human niche.” He tells us that “how we believe is explicitly an aspect and outcome of human culture . . . and why it is central to the processes of belief.”

To believe, explains Fuentes, “is to invest in something, utterly, wholly, and authentically such that it is one’s reality. So cultural constructs are real for those who hold them.” He goes on to say, “Much of what humans do is structured by what they believe.” Evolution of culture is ongoing largely because “becoming human is ongoing . . . We are humans evolving past, present, and future.”

The human mind enables belief by giving us our ability to imagine. According to Fuentes, imagination consists of “mental representations of objects or events not present in the subject’s current or recent external context.” Obviously our idea of God would be a mental representation as well.

In Fuentes’s view, belief, especially religious belief, “is not about being fooled.” Indeed it can be a “certainty of something that cannot be seen.” He considers religious belief to be just a small part of what humans believe, although “it is a major element in the human story.” Indeed religious beliefs, perhaps more than any other kind except love, have shaped our world and culture. As he says, religious belief “has massive impacts on the processes and experiences of humanity, and thus is central to an understanding of becoming and being human.”

Fuentes goes on to address belief in economies, which has relevance for us today, given the dissonances regarding the role of government in the economy and the economic system that best serves our needs. Economic systems, Fuentes says, “are not naturally occurring features of the world. Economic systems and ideologies . . . are human made, certainly creative and imaginative and very real, but the products of human society. They exist because we created them, and they are maintained because we believe in them.”

When it comes to love, Fuentes says that “belief and love are intertwined” and that “humans have to believe in some, or many, forms” of love. Perhaps love is the form of belief that is most vital for becoming human. “Our capacity to believe emerges from evolutionary processes and is intrinsically tied to our abilities to imagine, to be creative, to hope and dream, and to infuse the world with meaning. This enables us to love.”

Does belief matter? Fuentes concludes that it does: “Knowing why and how we believe is central to making belief matter for the better in the future.”

Does what we believe matter? Again, Fuentes says it does—in matters such as climate change, social justice, and inequality. He notes that “patterns of . . . inequality, driven by beliefs, are not uncommon.” Fuentes deplores fundamentalism in both religion and in “scientism,” writing that fundamentalism is “an abuse of the human capacity to believe.”

If you are looking for Fuentes to enter the realm of truth in his discussion, you will be disappointed, because the truth of belief is far beyond the anthropologist’s purview. The most beneficial act might be for us to learn to hold our beliefs lightly as we constantly progress in the act of becoming human.

Clare Goldsberry

Clare Goldsberry, of the Phoenix Study Group, is a freelance writer and author of The Teacher Within: Finding and Living Your Personal Truth.

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