Customer Reviews

The Atlas of Secret Societies

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Once again we have another mishmash of information on purported "secret societies" cashing in on the DaVinci Code mentality.Like so many other mass market sensational books on this subject which often recycle the same illustrations from the Man,Myth & Magic series of the 1970's, the illustrations here are interesting --but the factual research is flawed.

One of the most valuable things I learned from my first graduate seminar in academic research was a section on "Why authors are inaccurate" and this work fits the criteria perfectly. I can always tell if an author has bothered to do his research whenever I see a history on modern Rosicrucians. The only discussion on AMORC occurs in a sidebar and focuses on the famous dispute between Clymer & Lewis.Controversy sells, I suppose. The author then flat-out states that AMORC was founded on a charter from Reuss's OTO. What a joke!! Any author with a reasonable sense of accuracy could have pulled up AMORC's actual history from the internet. [...]

While the intricacies of Rosicrucianism may appear complicated the historical facts of Lewis's trip to France in 1909 and subsequent founding of AMORC in 1915 are widely available.

The continued association of Crowley and the OTO with AMORC after all these years is not only ludicrous but

serves as a red flag that the author has not done his homework thus condemning the book's remaining research.

Having said this, the book might make a nice addition to your library after it has been remaindered

I found this book to be a re-hash of almost everything I've come across regarding "secret" societies, with little, if anything, original about it.