Ancient Mysteries no. 16, July 1980 (continuation of Journal of Geomancy)
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Any occult book fronted by a foreword by that well-known hierophant and thaumaturge Jimmy Young of Radio 2 bonhomie must be suspect. Add to this heady brew of media madness Elvis Aaron Presley, late of this planet, predictions about Prince Charles’s certain marriage in 1979 and we have a book destined to sell in its thousands aided and abetted by the worst excesses of Fleet Street serialization for this is the sort of stuff that publishers dare to issue when real researchers cannot get their well-studied works in print. But such is the way of the world. Secrets of the Runes is obviously aimed at the titillatable reader who gets her kicks ogling the cavortings of media witches in the News of the World, the secret life of Elvis the Pelvis or Nostradamus’s Greatest Hits. And whilst the latter probably was hitting more than missing, this book does not. When one considers the available material on runes, from Carlyle Pushong, Michael Howard, Nigel Pennick and others, this book is astonishing, not for its daring to hypothesize new theories or even to tell the aspirant how to curse his neighbour. No, that would have been a contribution to the sum of human knowledge. This book’s writer and ghoster has made the worst and least relevant book purporting to be about runes which has ever been published. Page after page of supposed predictions based upon the use of pseudo-runes (incorrect by any standards) are fronted by Kim Tracey’s greatest predictions: the names of Princess Anne’s baby! Now, true prediction is to say, for instance, that a Boeing 747 airliner will crash at Orly airport on May 23 1981 with no survivors. If this happens, then a real prophecy has been made. But the names of a baby, based on the grandparents? We also have a warning to Presley that he would die. Well, we all will, and anyone looking at his bloated and degenerating shadow of his former self could have told that he was not long for this world. Still, {38} the runes were used. weren’t they, and they can’t lie, can they? Another actor showbiz person who consulted this remarkable seeress was David Janssen who dropped dead not long after the book was published. No mention of his impending demise in the book, though. Now if Tracey’s runology is so wonderful, as archpundit discjockey Jimmy Young believes so ardently, where did she get it from? Yes, of course, her previous lives. Egypt … burnt as a witch during the French Revolution … The French Revolution!!!!!??? Then isn’t it monotonous, burnt again in the next life (something’s wrong with the law of Karma, here) in Spain. In 1830??? And why were these people always high priestesses in Egypt? Wasn’t anyone an ape-man in the Olduvai Gorge, or even a peasant in Bronze Age Lyonesse?
Enough of this and on to the Runes. Now if we read Tracey and her daemonic shadow we see that Odin got them – correct. One mark. But then we see that the Teutons were so feuding and fighting and learning how to wield the sword that only the womanfolk had time to learn them. So much for the Manx rune-master Gaut and the Norse Crusaders who carved their names in runic inside Maeshowe on Orkney in 1152. And of course the Old Religion of the Druids who worshipped at Stonehenge carved runes on that venerable megalithic monument.
Her runes are equally suspect, some aren’t even runes. The sig rune, universally used to denote or promote victory, is for health. The tyr rune is for romance not strength in battle. And there is an odd letter like a primary schoolchild’s ‘b’ which ain’t runic by any stretch of the imagination.
It is sad to see such sloppy scholarship added to the normal wishy-washy vagueness of Hollywood clairvoyance and the
gullible ‘stars’ who foot the sizeable bills. If prediction is the business, let’s see some real runes
or let them stick to the Tarot and clean Astrology. Other books advertized at the back of this one include The
Musicians of Auschwitz. ’nuff said.
N.P.
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Paranoia is probably a word invented by those who conspire against us in order to cut off belief from those who see through the conspiracy. Or so we may believe if we follow the thesis laid out by the authors in this erudite analysis of the forces of evil which plague this planet. Roberts and Gilbertson trace the manifestations of the Dark Gods through the UFO phenomenon, weird happenings, the prophetic writings of novelists, the insanity of cults and the power politics of the Bilderberger group. The machinations of Adam Weisshaupt, the Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Nazis are all seen in terms of the ahrimanic powers which grip those who have sold their souls for power, for this is the demonic empire in action, the forces which war on sentient life and freedom of the human spirit.
Like many such investigators of the demonic empire, the authors have suffered identical illnesses recently. Such happenings are real. Casualties in the cosmic battleground are continuous, as suicides and internecine strife in UFOlogy continue.
As an overview of Fortean and geomantic phenomena seen from an interventionist angle, this book is
thoroughly
recommended. The conspiracy theories of assassinations, international capitalism etc. fit in perfectly with the thesis.
If you are at all interested in the struggles of the demonic empire for the minds and souls of humanity and their
willing and unwilling instruments, then you should read the Dark Gods. You may be more paranoid after reading it, but in
the words of the Prophet on the Subway Wall: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out
to get you!
Nigel Pennick.
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Kurt Saxon is best known for his Survivalist publications, the epitome of United States rugged individualism and self-reliance tinged with a leavening of Vigilante homespun philosophy. In Modern Prophets he attacks the supposed psychics and seers who inhabit the pages and screens of the American mass-media. Their fame, he claims, rests upon nothing more than a sham recounting of a few successful and often not very clever prophecies which have come to pass. Four years of predictions of the most popular modern prophets are collated and analyzed by Saxon who blasts them to pieces with the facts. Most of the prophecies of Jeane Dixon (Saxon’s main target), Joseph de Louise, ‘Akashan’ , Maurice Woodruff, Edward Snedeker etc. etc. actually never materialized despite the fact that most of them were useless trivia such as the fate of Princess Anne, Jackie Onassis, Liz Taylor, Peter Sellers, Richard Nixon, Frank Sinatra and other showbiz personalities, which are of little importance anyway.
There are several echelons of psychic seer, and it is those who claim divine guidance that come in for Saxon’s stick. To claim divine guidance is not a passport to perfection – far from it. After all, Hitler said “By resisting the Jews I struggle for the work of the Lord”, the Witchfinder-General Matthew Hopkins had implicit faith in his divine mission and the pronouncements of the Ayatollah Khomeini are familiar to us all.
Jeane Dixon is not the only of these god-given seers. At the age of 8 she was told by a Gipsy fortune-teller that god had given her the gift of prophecy. Her good fortune in later years in marrying a Chevvy dealer in Washington DC who met a lot of politicians (who also believe they are divinely inspired) stood her in good stead to become one of the {60} leading soothsayers of the US establishment. Year after year, she churned out predictions hot off God’s Hotline, coming up with such world-shattering prognostications as: Johnny Cash to disappear mysteriously; or Dustin Hoffman to win more fame and success … thankyou, Lord, for such important messages!
Saxon writes “If the Creator actually wanted such messages delivered to us through a prophet, then that prophet would speak true 100% of the time. There would be no margin of error in the message and there would be no question of its source any more than one would question the source of a Western Union telegram.”
Out of 1075 contestants allowed 5 prophecies each in a National Enquirer prediction competition, there were only 11½ correct forecasts, about 1 ‘hit’ for every 450 prognostications. Of Saxon’s professionals, (who were not in the contest), their success rate was about 1 in 10. At first sight this would tend to corroborate the seers’ claims, but an alternative and more prosaic solution seems more likely, that the prophets’ greater ability to make educated guesses is the result of their full-time studying of current events.
The works of Kurt Saxon are not restricted to seer-bashing. His journal, The Survivor, a sort of post-apocalyptic Whole Earth Catalog, emphasizes self-reliance before and after the collapse of society. Each month this invaluable publication gives practical details of self-defence, power manufacture, windmills, firearms, antiburglar devices, chemicals and other necessities of postindustrial civilization life. Details for making your own alcohol (or tear gas!), steam cars or survival electronics vie with reprints of nineteenth century survival in the construction era of American rugged individualism. Thoroughly useful information.
Unlike his ‘modern prophets’, Saxon is grounded in the here-and-now. Essential reading for those who wish to know.