Customer Reviews

The Galaxy on Earth: A Traveler's Guide to the Planet's Visionary Geography

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I found this book very interesting. It attempts what many would regard as impossible or inadvisable - a kind of classification of the different kinds of subtle, subjective energy-qualities of a selection of 56 global-scale sacred sites. This is a minefield into which few would care tread, but I think Leviton has trodden well, and doesn't fall into the quicksands.

It is difficult to try to objectivise subjective impressions - the archetypal impressions one can gain when visiting an ancient site. From his own observations, and from the histories of the sites he has chosen, Leviton has identified specific threads of energy-quality pervading these sites - a system he then applies throughout the book. He has traced these threads through different sites, establishing the energy-connections between them.

This is a subjective work which can be verified only by the subjective agreement of other students of geomancy (or what he calls 'visionary geography'). Yet I think the author has done well, all things considered. His is one of the best perceptions of the particular sacred site where I live - Glastonbury - and the other sites he covers that I personally know are also quite well worked out. I think this book holds up quite well, therefore. The histories and traditions he gives of each site are interesting too, and well researched.

It's the kind of book you keep for ongoing reference. His idea that the stars of the celestial realm are specifically reflected here on Earth in ancient sites is not new, but I haven't seen this systematically and globally applied before. He has created classes of subtle energy - such as Mithraeum, Labyrinth, Lucifer Binding Site or Cosmic Egg - which I find possible to take in and work with, and translate into my own terms.

Altogether, an interesting book. If you're interested in sacred sites and the subtle energy-grid of the Earth - areas of research which will take decades to make sense of - then this is a good starting place. Leviton has done a lot of work and mulling with this book - seminal inasmuch as it deserves to start a small movement of people further researching this important area of geomancy.

Galaxy on Earth: A Traveler's Guide to the Planet's Visionary Geography (Hampton Roads, 2002, 577 pages) is an unusual new book with a very Hermetic interpretation of sacred sites. According to the author, the Earth's landscape is an interactive living copy of both the cosmos and the spiritual nature of the human and is has an integral part to play in the spiritual transformation of the planet and its people. This book is a tourist guide to the Earth's spiritual energy with important revelations on how to access and benefit from that energy.
"We live," says the author, "on a planet where gods and myths are alive in the landscape, and visions of the spiritual world and mystical experiences are abundant. It is all part of the Earth's multi-layered spiritual body. Think of it as the esoteric side of the Gaia Hypothesis, as Gaia's secret galactic life." The book looks at 57 holy sites around the Earth and shows how historical, archeological, mystical, and mythic facts and attributions are clues to a site's geomantic nature, Hermetic signature, and mode of use. All such sites are holy and numinous, but not for the same reasons, and the author explains why in the book. He also explains that the geomantic and energy structures - let's call them subtle but interactive temples - found at these sites can be classified into at least 45 different types. Each type of energy structure has a different and predictable effect on consciousness and can be used as part of a self-directed initiatory process independent of any religious or spiritual dogma. Further, the author shows that these 45 geomantic features correspond to equivalent structures in the spiritual worlds and in the overall human constitution. These equivalencies put one in immediate and effortless resonance with these sites. This is in accordance with the Hermetic axiom, "As above, so Below," and to which the author would add: "and in the Middle too." This means the archetypes of the spiritual world (Above) are mirrored in the organization of the human (Below) and in the Earth's visionary geography. The spiritual terrain of sacred sites gives us a galaxy on Earth to tap into and use for our own alchemical transformation.