Book Review
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Mardie MacDonald Fund
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Lost Secrets of the sacred Ark - Amazing Revelations of the Incredible Power of Gold.Most compelling thought:The traditional image of the Ark of the Covenant fails to take in account certain crucial Biblical revelations. The Ark may have even been some sort of device. Buy this book for: Folks that study Ark related matters, and who already have a hefty shelf full of relevant material. This book is certainly not suited for the beginning Raider. |
Laurence Gardner
Laurence Gardner is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Distinguished as the Chevalier de St. Germain, he is a constitutional historian, a Knight Templar of St Anthony, and is Presidential Attaché to the European Council of Princes.
A brief review of:
Lost Secrets of the sacred Ark
Beneath this brawny title lies the weirdest book I've ever read, and that not because of the subject but because of the way it is presented. Laurence Gardner makes a compelling case for the nature of the Ark of the Covenant: it is an electrical device, a humongous DC accumulator or capacitor that serves to electrify gold (to make some kind of benevolent white powder) but on occasion zaps people to death or levitates on earth's magnetic field.And yes, the Law prohibits us from making graven images (or rather more specifically: to create statues of objects of our worship), so the cherubim on the ark may have been the poles of a battery. And yes, the Egyptians of old may indeed have harnessed and used electricity. And, alright then, there are some odd references to either white powder or the consumption of gold in the Bible, the ark was too heavy to carry, and the brazen vessel in the Temple of Solomon seems void of any practical purpose, but why does Gardner render an inescapable P.T. Barnum aura to his story? What agenda simmers in Gardner's daunting intellect to garble so vast a knowledge into this paradoxical tabloid-level treasure hunt, or to betray the prime directive of the teacher, to test any hypothesis before presenting it for real?
Usually a curious and forgiving reader I feel almost insulted by the lack of solidity of this book. Gardner promises proof that never comes, leans heavily on certainties that are certainly not consensual, connects soaringly far-fetched conclusions to some admitted Biblical enigmas, and ventures out on exegetical sidetracks that meander through intellectual badlands, up and down very slippery slopes and into the sloughs of conjecture.
To make his story stick Gardner hijacks some of the most treasured Old Testamentary scenes and sets them to work in the salt-mines of his scheming. Moses was not a misplaced Israelite but none other than the mysterious semi-monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton, who, after his abdication, led his Israelite brethren to mount Horeb, where some unmentioned temple existed, which was really a white powder producing plant ran by this guy named Shaddai. The stones with the Law on it were ruby-sized gems. The Ark was a battery. The Magdalene was in on it. The Templars were in on it. Reality is a web as fine as lace and Gardner is its prophet.
Gardner drags deeply on the either disputed or else casually ignored work of Ahmed Osman, who nevertheless proposes some intriguing similarities between Akhenaton and Moses. In the end, however, most people find the utterly diverging theological models of these two leaders more convincing. Akhenaton and Moses are simply more unlike than alike.
Gardner doesn't think so. He is the anchor man of the side show, and he reads his news like facts on ice. Elements from the platinum group, when properly agitated, transform into white powder, obtain the unexplained and wholly bizarre quality of 'negative weight,' zip into parallel dimensions, and provoke the US government into yet another evil cover up routine.
What is the purpose of this crazy book? And why are there people who are pretending that it is true and sound? It's obviously aimed at the Bigfoot-Unicorn crowd. Is it perhaps a grand experiment to probe the levels of gullibility that mankind has succumbed to? Or proof that indeed any image can be projected on the Rorschach blot of history, soon to be followed by scantly clad Gardner's jumping out of a cake at a Stargate convention? Waving a little red flag with FOOLED YAH written on it?
