Re: From FT Val
Subject: Re: From FT Val
From: "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 1/16/09, 21:39
To: "Val Stevenson" <val_stevenson@dennis.co.uk>

Hi, Val-

Sorry for the delays; I've been unusually busy. I actually appeared on Fox News last week, of all things.

Here's my review of 2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother. Let me know if this works for you.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

Review: 2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother

Christine R. Page, M.D.


By Barrett Brown


Certain books defy summarization. Others can be easily summarized very quickly with terms like "nonsense" and "unreadable." To summarize, 2012 and the Galactic Center: The Return of the Great Mother is an unreadable piece of nonsense, even in the context of the genre.


Within the grand tradition of the New Age soft-cover, there has always a tendency to extrapolate apropos of nothing, to bring together unrelated mythological factors without regard to reason, and, of course, to engage in watered-down numerology. But author Christine Page takes this pastime to new and wonderful heights. Whereas many mystics are content to compare sets of threes to other sets of threes – the Holy Trinity of Christianity being some manifestation of the Triple Bodhi of Buddhism or the Triple Goddess of wherever it is that the Triple Goddess derives from, for instance – Page goes on to associate such threesomes with twosomes to boot; the Trinity, one learns, is "the duality represented by the Father and Son with the central beam of the Holy Spirit or Mother." Admittedly, this whole "Hey, three is also two plus one!" thing is certainly a major breakthrough in the field of mystical something-or-other. So, props to Page on that one.


And to be fair, the book covers quite a bit of ground. Here's a fairly representative passage:


Having worked with the chakras for more than twenty years, I have become increasingly concerned by the trend to number these energy centers in ascending order starting with the base, or Muladhara, chakra... Does it not seem strange that no attention is paid to the energy tracking along the legs and into the feet?


 That does seem strange. But where the hell is all the 2012 stuff? Yes, it is herein explained that the earth will soon be aligned with the galactic center and that this will be very swell indeed. But this is mentioned almost in passing, as Page is more concerned with such side-issues as the U.S. Navy's conspiracy to keep whales from communicating with us and how women ought not take the pill because it robs them of the creative drive inherent to their natural menstrual cycles.


Okay, so the book does actually defy summarization.



On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 5:38 AM, Val Stevenson <val_stevenson@dennis.co.uk> wrote:



On 26/12/08 22:37, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Howdy-

How long did you want the review of The Mayan Prophecy to be? Incidentally, it's actually a well-written and non-crazy take on the subject.

Barrett,

Happy new year, for starters. Non-crazy? Thank heavens for that! About 750 words, please. Thanks.

Vx



--

Val Stevenson
Reviews editor, Fortean Times (forteantimes.com) - "Possibly the most
entertaining publication on the planet" - Wired
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