Customer Reviews

The Cygnus Mystery: Unlocking the Ancient Secret of Life's Origins in the Cosmos

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Collins takes the reader on an exciting ride to nearly every continent on earth, intriguing archaeological locations, mythologies, rituals and ancient artwork, and ties it all up very meaningfully with the constellation Cygnus and its neighbors in the heavens. The book is very readable but dense with information - very well-organized. I really appreciate that, as many authors tell you everything in the first couple of chapters and then try to rehash what they've already said in the next eight or ten chapters. I came away from this book with the sense that he could have included much more, but didn't want to overwhelm the reader. He included a photo section, and there is art scattered throughout that enhances the text. There is an extensive bibliography, including websites, and plenty of footnotes for the reader to do further investigations on his/her own. He also inspired me to visit an archaeological site that is only about a half an hour away from me - the Hopewell Mounds in Newark, Ohio. I will definitely reread this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in human culture.

This writer is not a disturbingly deep thinker. That is why the breezily narrated travel stories and able recapitulation of myths and religious beliefs from all over the world of import to the book's thesis gives way to great uncertainty (and countless "I feel as if..." and "I believe...") whenever it is time to draw some conclusions from the gathered factoids.

Had he been even better read-up on ancient religious practice and more versed in philosophical thinking the reader would have been spared the programmatic and (as used) shallow phrase "life and death", repeated throughout without any fleshing out. The writer seems not be able to approach such a weighty theme and the theorizing concerning shamanic practices suffers accordingly. Make no mistake, the book was quite readable, but fell apart when it was time for the theory itself to speak up.

The attempt to come to grips with why shamans of the past would have entered remote and inaccessible caves also strikes me as just about the silliest I have ever read in this genre. (The company tags this book as "History" - a fraud if there ever was one!) And yet the author has the solution to the "cave mystery" within sight, having talked about the symbolic value inhering in the female genitals throughout. It appears he doesn't realize he has already "solved" the mystery, since he mentions the task of solving of the cave riddle long after having presenting a summary on Egyptian religious beliefs. For some real, groundbreaking thinking, see Peter Kingsley's highly acclaimed Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic. It deals incomparably better with the topic. Hint: the cave or dug pit into which the shaman withdraws is easily understood in terms of ritual death, burying and spiritual rebirth.

On the other hand I think he is onto something as far as the constellation Cygnus is concerned. I do buy into the idea of the capability of mankind to diffuse and then preserve traditions as Collins notes apropos the naming of certain postures in the martial arts. The bit about the age during with the Chinese star map would have made sense is absolutely thrilling when pondered upon.

But then there are also the occasional hint within the book that some of the ideas were the fruit of lazy Internet research; checking up on the basis for author's siding with the suggestion that Nobel prize winner Francis Crick was high on LSD when discovering the DNA double helix, I soon found that ONE sensationalistic (never corroborated) report. But I also noted another side of the question, seemingly carrying more weight: the issue of whether Crick and Watson filched important parts of the theory from another scientist. I do agree with the author that psychoactive plants do have mind changing properties, but using rumours as fact will not help the writer's argument.

In all fairness, the book presents many an interesting fact, all on loan from other thinkers, and this book served me best as a pointer to one or two real scientists and their theories. Given the central idea that human evolution was speeded-up by some intensive showers of cosmic radiation, it is a pity the author weren't around then to receive a sprinkle of it himself. :-)
The biggest laugh of this book was the notion that the cosmic rays at one time way back was extremely strong, but that the shamans cleverly hid themselves inside the rock caves to "filter" the radiation and so benefit from the "evolutionary rays" and thereby furthered themselves even more. Do you find that a bit hard to digest, you may want to pass on this title because that seems to be the bottomline: the white shamans in the northern hemisphere were the first to develop (and spread) modern intelligence, presumably not too dissimilar from the author's own.

Written by Andrew Collins, organizer of the Questing Conference (Great Britain's premier event on alternative history, forbidden archaeology, and ancient wisdom), The Cygnus Mystery: Unlocking the Ancient Secret of Life's Origins in the Cosmos is an examination of the origins of life - not in the strict Darwinian sense, but in the sense of humanity's earliest ancestors' awareness of life and death, as connected to a cosmic source. Exploring what astronomic lore has to say about 15,000 BC, in the Paleolithic era when Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus, was the Pole Star, The Cygnus Mystery probes the roots of the amazing physical and neurological transformation in humanity from beasts to fully conscious and complex psychological beings, a metamorphosis that happened almost overnight in geological terms. The Cygnus Mystery proposes that the cause of this sudden shift lay in a sudden spike in the cosmic rays reaching Earth, offering evidence that the rays, which have left behind subatomic traces in deep caves, emanated from the binary star system Cygnus X-3. A handful of color photographic plates illustrate this blend of archaeo-astronomy, scientific revolution and spiritual wisdom.

The book offers a convincing alternative to the theory that the three stars of Orion's Belt formed the basis for the position of the three pyramids in Giza. I do not like Robert Temple's books so this writer's

opinion of his books coincided with mine: he's okay for unearthing data but best ignored as to his conclusions.

I have difficulty reconciling the data put forward by Charles Hapgood (who put forward the theory of a periodic shifting of Earth's crust in his "Path of the Poles") with the implied belief of Andrew Collins that the North Pole has always been where it is now. Hapgood's data is simply too detailed and incontrovertible. The evidence is that the current collection of stars (including Cygnus)that presently form the North polar constellations must be comparatively recent phenomena. Coral formations in Toronto, Canada mean the poles have moved. The Cygnus theory (in which I concur)needs more exact dating.

This is an excellent piece of detective work by Mr. Collins. He breaks a lot of new ground here, more than in his previous books, where he stands on the shoulders of others more. The author's premise is that ancient civilizations understood man's origins to be extra-terrestrial, and specifically derived from the area of the Galaxy that is home to the Cygnus(Swan) constellation of stars or planets. He travels the globe collecting evidence to support this contention a la Graham Hancock.

For my part, I can find nothing here that is profoundly disagreeable or even unreasonable. I look forward to the author's next work.

I read mostly the last section about how only 3 percent of our DNA is usable, while the other 97 percent perpetually being duplicated over and over again, even though they are non-usable until something or events that might activate them to perform, but to perform what? The promises are that someday, some interstellar compatible pre-programmed frequencies will bring our other 97 or less percent DNA into actions...the Cygnus X-3 is a very High Energy Emitter, even our ancients known about it...something to ponder about...

I found this an interesting and unique read in that I had not heard on any such Cygnus connections mentioned in any other works. And not just a couple, there are scores of instances of cultural and shamanistic examples he lists globally. One gets the feeling there is a thread here that leads to missing history and myth - that his was fairly widespread, but not much discussed. However, that is not unprecedented and is really the norm for many topics such as the Pyramids, Nabta Playa, and other archeological anomalies. Dovetail other topics such as possible correlations or similarities with Orion alignments and Cygnus as well as Dr.Paul LaViolette's theories of cosmic ray influences and some sort of picture starts to develop. I intend to re-read this one, I think more is to be found - thanks for this contribution Andrew.

Andrew Collins makes a different claim to how we humans became who we are today in this book The Cygnus Mystery. Before he gets to his theory, he takes us to many ancient monuments dedicated to the Constellation Cygnus and how the swan (or goose) plays an important part of many cultures mythologies. This part of the book is very interesting and the reader is taken to some amazing monuments of antiquity. It is actually quite amazing how many sites out there are dedicated to Cygnus out there.

The reasons given by many are varied, from using the stars to guide people as they made treks to using the alignments during the seasons for crops. Since none of us were there, it is up to much speculation until evidence is found to support the claims for the use.

Mr Collins then gives us his theory as to why Cygnus was so important. It goes down to the star Cygnus and the radiation it produces during pulses. Mr Collins states that one super pulse from the star Cygnus reached the Earth over 20,000 years ago and gave us the leap into intelligence we needed. This does sound fascinating, but then one question comes to mind: How did the ancients know it was the star Cygnus which made them smart? Radiation itself is invisible to the naked eye, and if it did cause intelligence, we had to grow into it. So how did we notice it? Mr Collins never answers that question, but states we are all here because of it.

While the theory itself is fascinating and is grounds for interesting debates and discussions, the author does need to explain how early humans realized it was the source of their knowledge.

The Cygnus Mystery is a real arm chair science trip. It combines terms like microblazar, cosmic ray bursts, the DMT molecule and radon health mines with astronomy, anthropology and mythology and finds their common elements from many ancient cultures around the world. Andrew Collins provides ample evidence that the constellation Cygnus (with Cygnus X-3) was a focal point for religious and shamanistic veneration, stemming from around 40,000 years ago. It appears that a burst of Beryllium-10 from outer space affected earth's evolutions at the time when Deneb in Cygnus was our pole star. Save yourself a lot of ground work in reading because the bibliography for this book is extensive. He does miss out on the Sumerian theories of Zecharia Sitchin but he knows about the Nephilim from the Book of Enoch, the point being that earth evolved with outside help.

The book is very detailed with a great deal of research that has been done on this constellation. I learned alot on the cults and histories of the European peoples. Worth a read if you are into ancient histories and astronomies.