Customer Reviews

The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (Yale Nota Bene)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The "Da Vinci Code" was largely fiction. In "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", it wasn't clear what was fact and what was fiction. But "The Other God" is just fact (and some interpretation) and yet as fascinating as the other two works.

Based on some other reading I'd done in this area, I had low expectations for this book. As I read it, the beginning didn't grab me. I didn't see where it was leading. But every new 50 pages seemed better than the preceding 50, not because the preceding 50 wasn't good, but because the latest 50 tied all the earlier pages together. It just kept getting better and better.

If you like reading about the Cathars, "The Other God" is even better. It shows the roots of Catharism, way back to Armenia and before. It tells the Cathar history. It discusses the Cathar beliefs. It's all very scholarly, with the main 294 pages backed up by 126 pages of footnotes and a select bibliography of 32 pages. Items that get alluded to in other books on the Cathars get discussed in depth here, such as the contribution of the Bogamils to Catharism. Not to mention the earlier contributions of Zoroaster, Mani, and Mithraism. Stoyanov is thoroughness incarnate.

If you've read the "Da Vinci Code" or "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", you'll recall the claim that Mary Magdalene had been Jesus's wife. You might have read discussions about that without hearing where it originated. Stoyanov points out that the Cathars introduced that belief (which isn't found in Bogamilism). No evidence it was based on fact (just as a lot in the Bible doesn't have factual support) but the belief did have a function: it at the least gave a higher status to women, something that many women who read the "Da Vinci Code" resonated with.

What I'd realized by the time I finished this book is that religious dualisms wasn't isolated nor odd: it started a long time ago and developed meaningfully in many branches. It feels like orthodox Christianity would like us to believe it was ocassional and short-lived (and thanks to orthodox Christian persecution there's some truth to that) , but "The Other God" shows how widespread it has been and the imporant issues it has raised and provided answers for.

Stoyanov isn't biased. He is scholarly. Since he's careful to support his positions you'll find many references to other works you can follow if you want to learn more, although I suspect for many readers "The Other God" will seem quite sufficient.

Read this book and you'll understand why people going back to the ancient Egyptians struggled to render our lives meaningful by developing myths that made more sense to some of us. Here, then, is a God some of us can believe in: not the one the authorities try to control us with, but the Other God.

The history of secret societies and sects will not be the same after the publication of this book. The amount of new and frequently astonishing information concerning ancient and medieval underground societies is so great and so well-documented that one will need to read the book again and again to select the section of history he wants to explore and understand. The book fortifies with some dramatic new evidence the all-pervading importance of stellar myths and correlations in ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Iran, as emphasized in some recent books, and then traces these and related esoteric trends in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Stoyanov's final discussion of Cathar secret doctrines and myths, including the teaching of a marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene ('described as a 'great secret')and their sources is a tour de force and one has the feeling that he does not reveal all the material at his disposal, hinting that it is reserved for a book yet to come for which I will wait with some impatience.

In a superb and scholarly work Yuri Stoyanov charts the descent and evolution of Dualism (the idea of cosmic conflict between good and evil) from the revelations of Zoroaster and the Orphics, via the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Mithraic mysteries and the great Gnostic teachers, to it's revival in medieval Europe. It reveals a mass of political and religious undercurrents that lie beneath the surface of official history, touching on the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians and the early Freemasons. This is by far the best book available in English on the movement that became known, in its last major European incarnation, as 'Catharism'.

This book offers an astonishing amount of information on very little known religions and heretical secret movements from ancient Egypt to Siberia. Wide-ranging and very well documented, it is also very well-written and readable. To the lay reader most of the information synthesised in this fascinating book will appear not only new but intriguing and even sensational. A must for the fans of historical mysteries and secret sects narratives.

This is the most comprehensive summary of dualist religious topics I have come by so far. Where alternative religious theory/history is a popular subject these days, this book does a fine job in exposing the reader not only to mainstream thought, but every branch and vein possible. The author has truly done his research.
I found it the most informative book on the subject matter yet and have learned more than I had expected.
Yes, there is a lot of detail, but that is what makes this book so fascinating.

An excellent round-up of dualism from Egypt to the Cathars and beyond. Stoyanov mentions various flavors of Manichaeanism, Gnosticism, Zurvanite Zoroastrianism, Bogomilism... if you're looking to understand how Orphism and mystery religions interfaced with Essene teachings or how the sweep of empires contributed to the blossoming of a strict good/evil division, this is the book for you. Highly recommended, very useful, a great resource with excellent chapter notes.

"The Other God" is a Rig Veda net of gems, not a single gem. I discovered it when I was researching the same questions as Stoyanov addresses so masterfully. I suggested it as reading in my Philosophy of Religion course, and I referenced it heavily in my book, "The Order of the Dragon," which extends Stoyanov's history of The Great Heresy (I prefer The Great Heterodoxy as a name) both backward and forward in time. The discovery of an ivory statuette of a lion-headed man in Ulm, Germany, dating to about 40,000 BC indicates how far back this Heterodoxy can go. Its inclusion in Freemasonry and in cutting-edge science indicates how far forward it has come. But it has been suppressed ruthlessly along the way. The one review of Stoyanov's "The Hidden Tradition" can't fault him on facts or reason, so it faults him for Judaeo-Christian heterodoxy. Apparently Joseph Campbell even had trouble getting his books published in his later years, as he too was walking the path of the heterodoxy. After teaching 20 years at an academic institution to complement my main area of bioethics at a medical school, I had my adjunct professor appointment terminated for using that heterodox text as a supplementary reading to expand the parochial texts of philosophy of religion, and for daring to use it in my Nietzsche course to give students the Zarathustrian background one needs to understand Nietzsche.

I'm relieved that Stoyanov has experienced only minor suppression of his work, though I think the last chapter of his book reflects his trying to accomodate that suppression. After carefully showing the ongoing thread of The Great Heresy, he recants in that last chapter and denies there is such an ongoing thread because this tradition is not monolithic. But then, neither is the Jewish or Christian tradition, yet we still group those religious views under unifying categories. I don't think the suppressive cultural tendencies deserve such obeisance, and I hope Stoyanov continues to light the hidden recesses of The Great Heterodoxy. When that Heterodoxy successfully defends itself against suppression by monotheisms, we have Renaissances. When it doesn't, we have Dark Ages.

Dr. Colleen D. Clements

Books like this are real treasures: at once fascinating and scholarly. Usually if you find a book on Mithraism, the Gnostics, Manichees, and Cathars, it's mostly nonsense. But this one is the highest level of scholarship.

I was never bored while reading this; every page is full of information about obscure movements and heresies that anyone who studies the history of religion, especially religion in the Classical world or pre-modern Europe, will love to know.

If you suspect you'll enjoy this book, I guarantee that you will. Of course if you want to read about Nicholas of Cusa, you'll be disappointed, but otherwise, you'll love it.

This book is the best thing I have read on the history and beliefs of the medieval Cathar heretics, the other secret sects behind them (i.e. the eastern Bogomils) and their predecessors in antiquity. I found it a well-written and absorbing read and recommend it to all fans of historical mysteries and riddles.

Although I find the subject riveting, I was slightly misguided by the books description. This is an academically aimed and sophisticated discussion of dualist religion and is not appropriate for someone who is not relatively versed in the subject to begin with. I found myself going to my exterior references often to follow the author's train of thought (tracking down academic references and unknown vocabulary) - although when I gleamed what the author was trying to say, I found his thoughts insightful. This is a very heavy read - and will require some muscling though to get to the end.