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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Precious Piece Of History Preserved, May 21, 2004
This review is from: Lost Worlds and Underground Mysteries of the Far East (Paperback)
"Lost Worlds And Underground Mysteries Of The Far East" is a reprint of a book first published in 1938 in England by the Anchor Press. And as the old song goes, "They just don't write 'em like that anymore."
The author of this impressive combination of anthropology and comparative religions is an English journalist named M. Paul Dare, who in the 1930s was employed as the News Editor of "The Times Of India," a prestigious newspaper that covered daily events in India in the years before it was granted freedom from British rule. Dare's job gave him ready access to everyday current happenings in India, but it also allowed him to witness firsthand many of the strange practices and customs of what was still at the time a very backward and primitive country.
Along with his background as a meat-and-potatoes journalist, Dare also had a keen interest in things of an occult nature, and he spent a great deal of time trying to separate fact from fiction as he sorted through many bizarre claims of supernatural powers and weird local rituals that sometimes included human sacrifice. Dare even recounts in the pages of "Lost Worlds And Underground Mysteries Of The Far East" being on the scene when a ceremony intended to initiate some young virgins into a career as temple prostitutes turned deadly after one of the women cried out in agony from the painful, invasive ritual. Having gone afoul of a taboo forbidden by the rules of the rite, her throat was summarily cut and the blood used to continue the ceremony.
Which is certainly not a tale for the squeamish. In fact, much of the book contains similarly disturbing anecdotes, which at times induce a sensation anthropologists call "culture shock," the involuntary emotions of revulsion and shame an outsider feels when first exposed to a society so profoundly "other" than one's own. But Dare contends that the many-faceted culture of the Indians should still be respected, arguing that human sacrifice is just as rational to the Indians as "eating rabbit is to us." He further declares that just as no one can prove or disprove the tenets of Christianity, so neither can they decide the case when it comes to Indian occultism. Attempts by the occupying British government to try those accused of human sacrifice for murder were considered arrogant and wrongheaded by Dare, though he admits to being repulsed by the practice personally.
Meanwhile, there are many juicy occult-type stories of a less threatening kind related in "Lost Worlds And Underground Mysteries Of The Far East," including a chapter on the somewhat familiar reptilian race, creatures of the serpent family who can take human form at will. That particular legend continues today in the accounts of some alien abductees who describe meeting large reptilian humanoids onboard UFOs. Also featured is a chapter that takes up the challenge of trying to verify whether the famous Indian Rope Trick is a bona fide supernatural achievement or simply mass hypnosis. The working of curses and spells, some successful and some not, is examined, again with Dare making the earnest effort to find real-world proof among the many beliefs and superstitions of the time.
Dare's writing style is clean and economical, as befits a seasoned journalist, but his elegant prose is sadly a thing of his time. Inner Light-Global Communications is to be commended for reprinting a true classic of occult literature and for offering readers in our time such a fascinating look back at an entire culture steeped in the casual acceptance of countless arcane mysteries that have yet to be explained in our so-called more civilized era.
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