Customer Reviews

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to agree with another reviewer here. This book is desperate for a new editor. Far too much information is listed in an "appendix" format, while the bulk of the theories presented come across confusing and disjointed.

However, the scholarship is top notch. This is one of those works which was scoffed at for years until being accepted as "common knowledge" today. The basic premise involves the transmission through ancient myths of astronomical knowledge. The fascinating thing is that this astronomical knowledge is spread all over the world through hundreds of cultures. A full understanding of the workings of Precession of the Equinoxes is the main focus here, which is incredible when you consider that the precessional cycle covers a period of approximately 25725 years. The calculations necessary to chart precession should be nearly impossible for ancient people to accomplish, particularly since we've been told for years that they were barely able to feed themselves, much less have the time or patience to develop such an exacting observational science.

The symbolism of myth is a direct correlation with the movements of the stars and planets, as well as a description of the workings of the Earth's wobbly axis, according to the authors. After reading this work, one line of questioning always comes to mind: How is it that peoples separated by thousands of miles and an equal number of languages always seem to refer to astronomical pheonomena by the SAME names? The Zodiac constellations are represented by the same animals the world over... how is this possible? The constellations certainly don't look like much to the casual observer or even those who were more-than-casual. How did the ancients reach the same observations if they had no contact with each other? The book doesn't answer this question, but it stares every reader in the face.

The theory here is very satisfying to those who refuse to believe that ancient peoples were nothing more than savages. The scholarship is superior to most of the "alternative" historical works currently in print as well.

The ideas rate 5 stars, but because of the jumbled delivery I am forced to remove a star. This is not light reading; be prepared to work hard to capture the ides presented. It's worth it.

The Reader will find that this book is quoted in the bibliography of many if not all recent books concerning the origins of human civilisation and the extent of knowledge possesed by our ancestors, that it has almost become a bible to modern researchers in this field. However, upon reading, it is not hard to see why this should be.

The authors show compelling evidence that myth was a way of handing down complex information in easy to manage packages within stories, and that modern man has lost all understanding of the true nature of the myth. They also boldly state that the majority of this information pertains primarily to the mechanics of celestial movements and the precessional cycle.

However, it can be at times a very heavy text and can indeed be hard to understand upon first reading, but perseverence is most rewarding. At times the text is interupted by periodic quotes of German, Latin or French which, if one does not know the language can cause the reader to feel that he/she has missed some major point of the argument. Having been published in 1969, this book is beginning to feel its age especially with the help of modern authors explaining many of its main arguments in a much more simple and effective way.

It is an excellent book, and one that you may go back upon in future to study again and again. However, it is not advised for the casual reader, and most definately not for any one with a less than passing interest in myth.

I must admit, this book is DEEP. The first time I read Hamlet's Mill, I was confused, but my interest was sparked. The second time, I sat in awe as I mentally organized the content. The third time, I got it. This book is not for the casual reader, but for one that is ready for a shift in his way of thinking about astronomy, history and mythology. Hamlet's Mill focuses on the symbolism of Old World mythology and the transmission of knowledge through archaic language. Refering to mythologies from Sumer, Egypt, China, Japan, Iceland and MesoAmerica, it is an indespenseable addition to anyones library interested in the transmission of knowledge through symbolism. Although not organized in a very systematic way, it is by far the most comprehensive book so far written on such subjects. Main themes include the Precession of the Equinoxes, gods as constellations, World Tree as Earth's axis, Deluge as the shifting of the visible sky and much, much more. The info along with the fairly new science of Archeoastronomy should, and one day will, bring about a paradigm in thought about the notions of early civilizations and their knowledge of the heavens in realation to man on Earth.

I found this book to be an amazing analysis of world mythological systems. The authors are two historians of science that make a convincing argument (in my opinion) that myths and mythical stories are, in fact, how archaic astronomy had been past from generation to generation. They reinterperet catastrophic mythical events as reference to the precession of the equinoxes. Mythical personage (Gods, Titans, Dragons, Heroes etc.) from China to Ancient Egypt to Greece to Meso-America are shown to be, in fact, referencing constellations and their positions as these changed due to the precession of Earth's axis over centuries. Moreover, the authors discuss myths from linguistically, culturally, temporally distinct societies and show the astonishing commonality of names, events, and motifs. They make a cogent argument that the knowledge base of archaic people was far deeper and wider; that the archaic people have had empirical knowledge of the precession of equinoxes-a knowledge that requires at least a couple of hundred years of continuous observation to arrive at-and that they encoded their knowledge in the language of myths. This was knowledge for the elect and unlike our contemporary sciences it was not for everyone. In addition, the authors claim that these myths are tatters of an archaic World-View that placed man in an orderely universe of change. A world view whose echoes may still be heard in the Illiad & Odyssey, Shahnameh,Timeaus, Mahabaharata, and Nihon-gi. It is remarkable that this book, first published in 1968, has not made any waves in those circles that value such understanding. It is also remarkable that how much more convincing the author's arguments have become in the light of the discovires chronicled by E. C. Krupp in his marvelous volume "Echoes of the Ancient Skies". I shall never again look at the myths in the way I used to look at before reading this book, i.e. as just-so stories.

I've been reading and re-reading this book for over twentyfive years. My first reading inspired the work I've been doing ever since. Everyone, including me agrees, that it's not an easy book to read. It's written in a style that's not interested in accommodating the instant gratification reader. It's full of scholarship of the old kind, erudite, witty and demanding. It's also a subject for which, as the authors say, there is no map- 'From whichever way one enters it, one is caught in the same bewildering circular complexity'. You've got to bring your whole mind to it.
But it's just beautiful; the authors take delight in their erudition as much as they do in debunking their fellow academics, at the same time celebrating those figures from the past who knew what was afoot.
What inspired me most was the idea that what we'd been lead to believe were the flights of fancy of a primitive people living in ignorance, or the revelations of supernatural beings, (ie myths) were in fact the creation of profoundly human intelligences searching for meaning in their experience. What they discerned in the process was not only the patterns of the universe but also how those patterns were reflected in their own minds.
Hamlet's Mill introduces us to the possibility of hearing the echoes of those ancient minds, and to understanding the profound influence that their insights have had on our spiritual lives.
If you, like the authors, suspect, or are prepared to consider, that Plato has more to tell us about myth than psychology does, or if you think that somehow art and science are the same thing, then you should try this book; if it gets a hold of you, it will never let go; if it doesn't, you'll consider the authors tendentious and overbearing, and you'll miss the revolution in thought it offers: it's not everyone's cup of tea.
The anthropologist Levi-Strauss called myth 'the Architecture of the Spirit'; this book was the first attempt to describe the grammar of that architecture. Other authors since have used the revelations of this book to pursue ideas about variuos esoteric events in history. What distinguishes this book is that, for all its focus on the starry sky, it remains firmly rooted in humanity. Someone should make a proper index though!

Books are the modern repository of information. But in antiquity, it was the memory or rhetoric of a learned person. This book discusses one ancient subject which was passed on orally from generation to generation, but which only made it to currently read matter in obliquities, hence the title, named after the character from the Shakespeare play of the same name. It turns out that that story outline has been around since pre-history and has as its' purpose the transmission of the knowledge of precession, which is the regular wobble of the axis of the earth, causing our planet to move its' annual spring equinox to a differant Astronomical House every so often and which takes over 25000 years to cycle back to the first House. A knowledge of precession is the backbone of astrology and it's attendant "scientific" kin, astronomy, as well cosmology and cosmonogy, among other disciplines. But this exceedingly robust tome uses precession as a background to fire volly after volly at many targets and does so in the most erudite and spot-on manner imaginable; the breadth of the language used being delightfully lilting and requiring a keen mind and might perhaps force you to hit the encyclopedia time and again in order to keep up. The scope of the book is certainly above anything else I have ever read, and it stands as a monument to the scholarly method and to pure critical scientific endeavor. Will most likely alter your thinking pattern for good. Quite a read!

The other reviews go into the details of this book well. I won't rehash all that. It's not an easy read at times and it can be a bit confusing but since I first encountered it I was convinced that this was a major work--better documented than any book that delves into the idea that ancient peoples were no dummies and that world history may not quite be what we think. In fact, I no longer look at a clear night sky quite the same way any more since reading this--the geometric plane that defines our solar system is now far too obvious to me. I often imagine what night skies must have been like 5000 or 10,000 years ago. How could we ever have assumed our ancestors weren't paying close attention and asking hard questions? (Well, actually, that's easy to answer--current humans hardly pay any attention to the night sky, barely any attention to nature as a whole. I'm no tree hugger but this is NOT GOOD)

Unfortunately, (and treat this as a warning) all my friends and not-so-friends that love A&P (Atlantis and Pyramids) material, and who should be much more critical with their reading, never seem to have the patience to get through this book and often don't even have the desire to read it. No levitating monoliths, no alien gene splicers, no global catastrophe...B-O-R-I-N-G. That's probably just as well; this is a book for grown-ups with open and questing minds who have serious interests in archeology, anthropology, technological history, astronomy, and related fields. Highly recommended.

Universal coherence. We still seek it because we know it must "exist." Read this, McClain's "Myth of Invariance," and "Pythagorean Plato", Van Crevel's prefaces to Obrecht's Missae Sub Tuum Praesedium and Maria Zart (in the edition abandoned because he took it to far in search of symmetries), and the fine work on Angkor Wat by Eleanor Mannikka, learn observational astronomy, and sidereal astrology and its history (Cyril Fagan, Garth Allen, Rupert Gleadow), and you've got all you need to understand the old mind, on the basis of what they saw and lived with. It helps if you can live some place dark, where you can see the skies at night, like people did until pretty recently.
Organizationwise, the writing is at times caught inconclusively between summaries of stories and drawing of connections, and perhaps the really definitive points are not highlighted or isolated as they deserve to be, because they are such universal historic human truths. But this book is not about MYTH, it is about ASTROLOGY, MUSIC, MATHEMATICS, NUMBER AS REVEALED BY THE HEAVENS, AND EMBODIED IN LITERATURE, PRE-COPERNICAN EXISTENTIALISM: THIS IS HOW IT WAS, what you saw happening in the sky night after night, why and how deeply this was experienced by all humanity. It was spoken of in various but perceptually related ways, at all times everywhere before the modern world revealed its coincidental nature (there's no reason for the sun and moon to be the same size, but that's what they look like from here, and there you've got yin-yang, etc >> all the great symmetries). Too bad it isn't "true". Or maybe perception means that much, and it is "true" locally. Great work. I hope follow up literature exists.
If you are concerned with philosophy and non-modern minds, God Bless 'em, this is endless and indescribably rich food for thought. Writing, though, seems at times overwhelmed at what to do with it all, though NOT stupidly. This is very high grade stuff. This is not pulp mysticism, just not quite written as well as one would hope. And it's just a door into the real thought. It is Sumerian, but to understand how it became the universal truth of as above so below, you must know music from the monochord up, it ain't easy, but it will open all Timaeus inspired thought to you, for starters. But you must learn tuning and proportion. Among other things. And don't confuse Sidereal Astrology with the "normal" metaphoric stuff. It ain't like that.

In the science of Egyptology there are certain books that you are supposed to know not to discuss openly, but be sure you have read. The writers and their works become like sex, politics and religious conversations at upscale parties; you don't discuss them not because they aren't valid, but because they are too much so to accurately gage one's reaction to bringing them up, or how personally they will take it, OR how upsetting someone's lack of a concrete, well thought out and defensible opinion on it will be perceived on both sides. This is one of those. Alan Alford's books, particularly THE PHOENIX SOLUTION (currently only available in the UK; see Amazon.co.uk) are the "Hamlet's Mill"s of our generation (said by none other than Michael Rice, a great writer/Egyptologist himself), but this is the prototype turned archtype for the final decades of the twentieth century- and it isn't even Egyptological in nature.

Schopenhauer once said that there are three stages for the life of an emerging truth: first it is ignored or scorned, secondly there is violent opposition... and then thirdly, it is accepted as self-evident. It will be some time before you develop the ability to see all of the religious/mythic/astronomical discoveries of deSantillana and von Dechend as self-evident when you immediately put the book down (because there are so many), but oh, when you do, it won't ever be forgotten. Their proven theories create a paradigm shift regarding perspectives on the Ancient and Classical world that send ripples through everything, including our misapplied view of Darwinian theory on prehistoric culture, and the basis of religion and philosophy for the millenia following, right up until today. Their elucidation of the ancient scientific- as opposed to purely gut-instinctual (aka non-existent) mind, done in an almost poetic but still erudite fashion, makes for both a enlightening and page turning read. The stars have a way of becoming more beautiful when you read this book, as they become really meaningful again.

This is the kind of book made more for open minded scholars and those who appreciate their work, as opposed to the realm of the out there, Astronaut theorists. In fact, it made me question the validity of the Bauvals and Hancocks of rogue Egyptology and Babylonia/Sumerology that much more, because of how it ennobles the communal prehistoric mind, beyond the need of extra-terrestrials to explain its achievements. It is made obvious by deSantillana that it is a communal mind that our current prejudices have been made all but incapable of understanding.

The only thing that could keep it from earning a perfect five stars for me would be it's seemingly anxious way of ignoring Egypt to tenously put ancient Sumerian culture at the center and forefront of all knowledge. It is almost the way you would nervously ignore a drop-dead gogeous blonde who walks in to a party in a red mini-skirt and leather, while your wife is staring at you angrily in her best dress. (In other words, it paradoxically works to justify the work of Egyptologists who say that "ovah heeyah" is where all the real beauty is, but in an almost annoying way.) That (let's call it) forgiveable prejudice nonetheless also necessitated leaving out much of the rest of Africa in their thesis, and obscuring some of the ancient Middle East- even in talk of the actual meaning behind the drum and rhythm in religious ritual. I would suggest the work of Gerald Massey (ANCIENT EGYPT, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD) after spending a few nights with this one to pick up from where I feel they drop the ball.

Nonetheless, its relevance and importance cannot be overstated, as much for deSantillana's standing in academia (Professor of the History of Science at MIT), as for what and how he and the equally esteemed von Dechend wrote. They also both gleefully acknowledge their antecedents and intellectual mentors like Dupuis, Lockyer and Godfrey Higgins, further reifying the field of scholarship that makes everyone in stale academia more than a bit uncomfortable, and has for more than a century.

(It also makes you look again at the genuis of Shakespeare with whole new eyes!)

A very special book for all times.

I first was alerted to this book through the less than scientific book, The Global Superstorm, by Bell and Strieber. Thier comments on this book sparked my intrests, not from the rather outlandish conclusions that Bell & Strieber drew from it, but from the idea that myth may contain astronomic data encoded in metaphor. I was able to track down the book, and I must say, it is an involved and scholary look at the transmission of human knowledge through the ages and across cultures. The book is well researched and documented and a must have for anybody looking to increase his/her understanding of the deep-human condition. While this book is not strictly speaking a lay-persons idea of an easy read <many key quotes are in latin/french/or german>, it is a great asset on the library shelf, with a much deserved spot next to Cambel and Frazier.

If myth is your thing, buy this book!