Customer Reviews

In The Dark Places of Wisdom

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In the Dark Places of Wisdom is one of the most insightful and well-written books I have ever read. It is a story of historical intrigue backed by tangible artifacts told in a fast paced, yet surprisingly soft and mystical light. I couldn't put it down.

Some of the western hypnotized reviewers here obviously don't understand the profound knowledge that enriched the great ancient cultures. Its decline led to the horrendous Dark Ages where almost all learning was lost. But few ask why. Scholar and author, Peter Kingsley, ponders this question and shows us a bigger picture. He knows his history and esotericism like few others. In the spirit of the true Greek philosophers Kingsley poetically explains where rationality went wrong and subtly encourages the reader to consider a deeper meaning of life. It is no wonder hard cold rationalists feel their ego threatened by the revelations in this book.

If you are myopic in your view of history, and believe myth and folklore are just silly stories, and that anything that came before us must be more primitive, then don't bother to read this book - you won't get it anyway. But if you are beginning to think with your heart as well as your mind, and dare to imagine a history, indeed a future, more beautiful than brain alone allows, then you will love this book. Like a sacred site, "Dark Places of Wisdom" not only conveys unspoken knowledge, it awakens a higher reality.

Kudos to Kingsley!

This is a fairly short book, and can be read in one or two sittings. It is very easy to read, and sort of enjoyable. On the down side, this author spends too much time trying to vilify Plato and Aristotle, resorting to a very unlikely idea that they conspired to bury Parmenides' ideas, and/or make it look like Plato was his true heir, rather than Zeno. As other reviewers of this book have pointed out, they would have had no motive to do so. Since this book is so short and easy, what the author could have done is spend a lot more time supporting his ideas rather than just stating them as fact without convincing evidence. Or better yet, he could have chosen to just focus on the mystical importance of Parmenides' writings and just avoid the conspiracy theory and trying to rewrite history altogether. This is where I have the most sympathy for the author: I believe he may indeed understand Parmenides' writing from a mystical point of view, and in some ways this is why his writing style is passionate. For this reason I almost gave this book three stars; but I couldn't do this because this isn't the only book about the underworld initiation or "dying before you die"; and yet the author almost acts like it is or like he's discovered something nobody else has. If passionate and mystical, the author's style could also be described as lurid. He almost seems to act as if the discoveries are too amazing to be believed, narrating as if he's telling a children's story by continually using rhetorical questions like "And you know what they found next?". He suggests on one hand that people of european descent who are interested in the east are neglecting their own heritage, and then claims that we are indebted to the east and there is a conspiracy trying to cover that up. Actually, every book I've ever read on Greek Philosophy states that the Greeks took significant portions of their ideas from the east. At one point he mentions a memorial (constructed about 500 years after Parmenides was alive) of Parmenides which gives him a title that fits with his theory, yet when he points out that the face couldn't have been Parmenides' (on a statue of Parmenides) but it was a generic face, he overlooks that. In other words, he uses the evidence when it fits his theory, and excuses it when it doesn't. The people who constructed the memorial could have been mistaken about his title and it's implications since it was centuries after he lived. I think that if he focused on writing a book of mystical importance, rather than getting caught up trying to overthrow the establishment philosophers and rewrite history, he'd create something a lot better. He seems to forget that Plato also, was a mystic, and had received the underworld initiation. Even though universities focus mainly on Plato's secular writings, his mystical and esoteric writings are there. I still feel like I want to read this author's other books, if for no other reason than because they are kinda fun, and to write another critique.

This book reads like a mystery story, or rather a story aboutmystery. It is based on solid academic scholarship, but is by no meanswritten in an academic style. Rather, it is a highly personal account of the author's discoveries about a famous Greek philosopher, Parmenides, and the philosopher's surprising secret. A philosopher whom thousands of years of academic scholarship and philosophy regarded as a dry logician, turns out to be the representative of an authentic Mediterranean tradition of mystical practice. Kingsley's writing takes on an almost religious intensity in places; he writes like a man with a vision, trying to awaken those who have suppressed or forgotten their own spiritual connections. DARK PLACES OF WISDOM is something that can transcend the seminars and the classrooms, reaching out to spiritual searchers who are sick of the banalities of our society and are questing for a more direct experience of the divine. According to Kingsley, this is how that quest, and that experience, was done back in the Sicilian colonies of ancient Greece, 2500 years ago. And that tradition that Kingsley discovers, has been hidden in the depths of our Western culture and consciousness ever since. If you want an adventure which is both intellectual AND mystical, try this book. END

I first read Kingsley's books almost 5 years ago. It was life-changing. Every time I re-read In the Dark Places of Wisdom, in particular, I'm taken back to that electric excitement, that freshness and wonder of tremendous discovery. It's true, what the other reviewers say, this book reads like a mystery novel, a whodunit. Awe and urgency come through on every page.

In the Dark Places of Wisdom is not an easy read, but not for the reasons you might expect. I think it's because we, as a culture, are drowning in our own sensationalism. If you turn on the TV for half an hour, you'll see what's totally trivial and inane presented as momentous and earth-shattering. When we do finally encounter a real discovery, it can be extremely hard to accept. We're jaded. But that doesn't mean that great discoveries don't exist anymore. Kingsley's research is meticulous and impeccable. If you care to look, it will become harder and harder to escape his conclusions.

And then, when you wrap your mind around what's in this book and see the implications, you'll find that it's anything but a light read. You will probably find it, as I did, both profoundly unnerving and utterly thrilling. It's such a surreal experience to discover that everything you've always taken for granted about your civilization is wrong. And it's nothing short of magical to find out that the truth is more beautiful, more alive, than you ever could have hoped or imagined. It's like seeing life for the first time. It's like walking into another world. Read this book. Your heart will thank you.

Imagine taking a journey in time from the Greek origins of western civilization to the present and in doing so, uncovering the forgotten and discarded truths that give birth to that civilization.

Peter Kingsley has taken such a journey in an archaeologicaly iconoclastic and original interpertation of recent evidence which links us to a spiritual tradition, a tradition that is at the very heart of our western civilization. What is so lamentable is how alien this tradition, now myth, has become to our modern way of life.

What we call myth, according to the author, was actualy closer to fact in our ancient past and to accept what he says is to take a spiritual and intellectual leap of faith into the world of ancient Greece of mystics, gods and godesses, heroes, oracles and dreams.
But to us, the antithesis of western reason and logic that this tradition supposedly engendered.

I liked how the author lends relevance and immediacy to his views by persuasively arguing that we in the west have lost our way and that by embracing the ancient teachings that we have lost we can begin to heal, which is a major theme of the book. This is not a spiritual guide or any new age pap. It's simply a candle in the dark that shines our way and forces to see the evidence before our very eyes. Evidence which links us to our most human and spiritual of pasts.

I found this book convincing purely on the raw Greek and other archaeological evidence presented and with text as guide it is hard not to draw the same conclusions as the author.

The author: "People who love the divine go around with holes in their hearts, and inside the hole is the universe. It's people like them that this book is about".
I'm certainly not one of these people, and I'm not ready to take that leap of faith, but what this book has succeeded in doing, like a delphic oracle, is in sowing a seed.

I found this book astonishing and I think it will appeal to people who give our ancestors (or all indeginous cultures) credit for much more wisdom than we posess and to people interested in the universal theme of the spiritual quest, especialy to readers of Joseph Campbell.

This book is about so much more than what it seems to be. I read this because it was in the bibliography of "The Apples of Apollo" by Ruck, Staples, and Heinrich. Don't think for a minute that the wisdom loved by Parmeneides is something you find just by sitting still in a cave. I would not have understood Kingsley's book at all had I not already read the other. I'm sure Kingsley knows exactly what he is doing.

This is an odd and interesting book that has deepened my appreciation for Greek history. Basically, it explores the mystical orientation of many of Greece's greatest thinkers, including Pythagoras and Parmeneides. Most importantly, it shows that in their mystical orientation they were more than "thinkers". Kingsley explores how Plato sought to change the direction of Greek thought by focussing more on rational thought, a turn away from the experiential spirituality of the earlier philosophers. He explores that experiental spiritual tradition which was "mainstream" prior to Plato's usurpation of it. Kingsley attributes Platonic philosophy's eclipse of this earlier and more deeply rooted tradition to Athenian military beligerence.

In our understanding of the history of Greek thought, it sometimes appears that the early portion of that history involved oral myth and inspired poetry, while the latter portion is devoted to liberating man from the superstitions of the past, through rational thought. Kingsley shows us Greek thinkers who understood the value of myth and of exploring the depths of the psyche, for revelation, for healing, for finding wholeness and connection to a realm beyond death, the realm of "heros" who attain immortality through exploration of truth.

We don't have a lot of written material attributed to Parmeneides or written about him from reliable witnesses. Therefore, much of this little book contains Kingsley's inspired interpretation and analysis of this limited amount of material, utilizing the considerably greater amount of information we have on the world in which Parmeneides and his peers lived.

Some might not like this, but for me it was useful and meaningful that he brought this material to life for me, convincingly.

I found reading Peter Kingsley's "In the Dark Places of Wisdom" to be quite frustrating insofar as he writes a great deal without really saying much. The idea behind this book is that there was once great wisdom lost to us as a result of a "conspiracy" lasting for over two millennia and perpetrated by western philosophers since the time of Plato. The majority of this book is dedicated to Kingsley's attempts to sort the threads of this lost wisdom, as revealed in some recently found artifacts, back to its source in Parmenides' and Pythagorean philosophy before it was tampered with by the "conspirators" including Plato, Aristotle and many others who subverted and corrupted their message which originated in the east. This is all fine and well and at times interesting, but the whole of Parmenides Philosophy as expounded by Kingsley would fill no more than 4 or 5 pages out of the 255 written (I'm being generous here). The rest of the book is devoted to showing how Kingsley has divined the truth coupled with his rather pedantic approach to exposing all Philosophers since Plato as missing what he, and he alone, sees so clearly. Kingsley promises to show us the way back to the essential truths of Parmenides. However, the only practical implications I can draw from this book would be for me to "lie down in a cave for a few days, eschewing food and distractions of the modern world and `incubate'". Thereby, in some mysterious way, I will find myself (if I really, really desire it) in the underworld in the company of the Goddess of Truth who will teach me wisdom and the means of filling the void in my inner being. Ah, it would be great if, as Kingsley implies, it were that simple. He ends this book by saying it is the first chapter of a long story so Kingsley may have something substantial in the future to say about Parmenides, the extant fragments of his writings, his philosophy and ecstatic techniques as a shaman and magician which he didn't accomplish this round.

...because it is a novel. Kingsley started going off the deep end with this one, but as long as you remind yourself that this is just a story he is telling, a story from within him that actually has very little to do with Plato and Parmenides but only one guy's vision of them as characters in a book, it is actually a charming little thing to read. It may be literature and it may be mysticism but philosophy it ain't.

This book simply floors me. Along with his scholarly tour de force Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic, Kingsley is proving himself to be the Wilamowitz, Rohde or Nietzsche of the start of the new millenium. The man knows his sources intimately and has a truly sympathetic and astonishingly wide-ranging grasp of all the relevant material. As a neo-pagan who is at home with greek religious traditions I am so pleased to find a writer who combines solid scholarship with a mystical appreciation of the material he writes about. This book is a steal at twice the price. Buy it! read it and keep it always handy in your library of necessary texts.