LOST AND FOUND

Michael Pye and Kirsten Dalley (Eds.) Lost Secrets of the Gods. New Page Books, 2014.

Lost Secrets of the Gods is one of the latest offerings from the prolific New Page Books. The publishers themselves are making quite an impression in the areas of Fortean and unconventional history, although, after having reviewed a few of their releases, the quality of their authors can be quite hit-and-miss.
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This latest tome is an anthology of essays covering a veritable chasm of time, some examining what has become known as alt-archaeology and others looking at issues in periods that qualify as recent history.

Strange questions are posed and, some would say, answered in an even more strange fashion. There are well-known names here along with some that are fresher to the counterculture. Those of Robert Schoch, whose statements concerning the age of the Sphinx galvanised both the fields of alternative Egyptology and more conventional scholarship in this area, the astonishingly prolific expatriate Nick Redfern, and Jim Marrs, whose book about the assassination of John F Kennedy, Crossfire, is still noteworthy, will be most familiar to regular readers or those steeped in Fortean lore. The subjects covered range from beast men created long past as the guardians of sacred places, the true location of the Trojan War, and indigenous peoples descended from various visitors from the stars. The types of topic also cover a vast sweep, from historical speculation to conspiratorial intrigue.

The variety of questions being asked are typical of those that interest me personally.  Were there giants in the Americas back in the mists of time? Did Atlantis (and it gets more than its fair share of coverage in these pages) really exist outside of the works of Plato?  Are we ourselves alien (this, again, is asked more than once) to this planet?  Were there ten-thousand-year-old secret societies whose knowledge is still preserved to this day?  Certainly it would enlighten and motivate us immeasurably as a species if we were to discover that we are directly descended from a race (or races) of beings who were not from this Earth, although, if this were to be proven, one would have to wonder if our forefathers intended to pop back and see how we were getting along, and if so, what form that would take.

The question is, though, do these inquiries get answered in this intriguing tome?  To be fair, one or two of them almost do. Micah Hanks, for example, tells us that, far from trying to cover up the existence of giants in the West, that there are catalogued bone samples and scholarly articles alluding to the possible reality of the existence of larger humanoids, although as to whether there is sufficient evidence to answer if there was a whole race of such beings is not mentioned. As to the rest, it is provocative stuff, particularly about whether the Trojan War took place on the Atlantic coast and featured, as posited by Steve Sora, the sea power that may have been - well, suffice it to say that it features the A-word again.

I wouldn’t like to say that everything here is convincing. Some of it is even downright confusing. I must say, however, that I take to these anthologies, provided there are some authors who make a reasonably convincing argument for their particular issue and that the subject of the writing is related. This is stretched here by including the Jim Marrs conspiracy piece and the Nick Redfern speculation on ancient spirit forms in with the general ancient alien and archaeology theme. I would say that, at least as a cross-section of some of the more radical thought going on in this area today, this is worth a look. Author biographies are included, along with an index and, depending on the piece, bibliographies at the end of most essays. -- Trevor Pyne