Book Reviews

Conspiracy Theories

Quassim Cassam
Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2019. 136 pp., paper, 12.95

An obsessive interest in conspiracy theories may or may not be a sign of a certain mental instability, but a wholesale belief in them seems to be a pretty good indication. And yet in this interesting and informative book, Quassim Cassam indicates that the role of conspiracy theories is deeper, and their adherents more knowing, than we hapless self-styled rationalists have been led to believe.

“A Conspiracy Theorist,” Cassam writes, “with a capital C and a capital T, is a person who is ‘into’ Conspiracy Theories, that is, unusually fascinated by them and more willing than most to believe them. We are all conspiracy theorists—we all believe that people sometimes get together in secret to do bad things—but we aren’t all Conspiracy Theorists.”

It is often frustrating to argue with diehards of any stripe, but Conspiracy Theorists are particularly prone to turn your most rational arguments against you. If you suggest that throughout history, the sinister forces seem to have been far too inept to keep any big secret at all, Conspiracy Theorists will turn around and darkly mutter, “That’s what they want you to think.”

Cassam observes that Conspiracy Theorists aren’t so much ignorant as all too knowing. They may not have the time, patience, or—dare I say it?—the intellect to master, say, forensic anthropology, but they know a fellow who knows a fellow named Bob, who allegedly “was there.” Hey, besides, experts are overrated. (I think this has something to do with some instinctive American aversion for those deemed “elitists”—people who happen to have credentials.)

Capital-letter Conspiracy Theorists are no longer merely querulous editorial-page dotards with a dull ax to grind, or zany kooks obsessed with flogging a dead bête noire, nor even lonesome codgers holed up in a basement murmuring imprecations against highfalutin whippersnappers and their newfangled notions. Cassam argues that Conspiracy Theorists are far more insidious. They are often committed to undermining scientific consensus thinking, so that ultimately they throw rationality itself under the bus, along with prudence and morality.

Therefore Conspiracy Theorists see themselves as daring mavericks and wild free spirits, unafraid to combat the misapprehensions of blind “sheeple.” But they’re actually spreading ideologically motivated falsehoods. Cassam seems to think he can’t stress this point enough, and maybe he’s right. It’s one of the best takeaways from this slender volume.

Conspiracy Theories, the author notes, are “implausible by design.” They are not rooted in fact but are merely speculative, which is to say “already disproved.” Your standard-grade conspiracy theories might simply be the result of wishful thinking (Elvis lives!); on a more elevated plane, they might constitute a type of fabulism: modern-day versions of ancient myths designed by hierophants to explain how things came to be.

But Cassam is a philosopher by trade, and offers up a far more intricate explanation. The success of Conspiracy Theories is that they “tell stories that people want to hear.” This points to a question: why do people want to hear them? Cassam addresses scientific explanations. Some psychologists posit that conspiracy thinking may stem from built-in cognitive biases in the way we think and might also be explained in terms of personality. Cassam refutes these generalizations but concedes that there is such a thing as a “conspiracy mindset” and asserts that conspiracism is “an ideology rather than a personality trait.” Not all extremists are conspiracists, he concludes, but “conspiracism is integral to [such] ideologies” among both the successful and the marginalized.

Cassam also mentions, more than once, that Conspiracy Theorists only listen to experts who are themselves Conspiracy Theorists, because they exist in a “self-sealing” bubble of “crippled epistemology.” If they are against some recent development, they tend to mutter darkly about government conspiracies and the “deep state.” But if they’re in favor of some quack theory, then a single study, later debunked, stating that kiddie vaccines cause autism is good enough for them.

Cassam goes on to argue that conspiracy apologists, who often are in it for the money, might be labeled “Conspiracy Entrepreneurs.” He doesn’t go so far as to call them enablers, but apparently that is exactly what they are.

Conspiracy Theories, then, are far from harmless. Such wrongheaded thinking can be pernicious, and ultimately downright destructive. Cassam runs down a list: antivaxxers; anticredentialism in general; “the death of expertise”; Brexit; anti-Semitism on both the left and the right. Therefore Conspiracy Theories promote symbols and beliefs that have consequences unforeseen by moderates. Furthermore, they “diminish the credibility of legitimate criticisms and are also a “distraction from big-picture social issues.”

In his final chapter, the author recommends the best way to respond to Conspiracy Theorists: through careful, well-documented factual rebuttals; education of the young in the crucial skills of critical thinking and morality; and outing the usually amoral hardcore conspiracists as merely camouflaged propagandists.

Cassam concedes that the committed may be beyond convincing, and instead recommends reaching out to those who are still on the fence: the susceptible but not yet thoroughly indoctrinated. It’s not enough to say to them, “That’s ridiculous” or “You’re crazy”—you have to engage with the conspiracy narrative and refute it with facts and logic. No easy task. But this valuable book shows the way.

Francis DiMenno

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation

David Bentley Hart
New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019. 222 pp., hardcover, $26.

The conventional Christian doctrine of eternal damnation is one of the foulest, most absurd, and most damaging ideas ever foisted on the human race. To define it, theologians must go through contortions that would be hilarious if they had not caused so much grief.

In this book, the American theologian David Bentley Hart takes on this idea of eternal damnation, which he calls “infernalism.” Advancing a universalist position, he does not dismiss the idea of hell entirely, but he does reject the dogma that God will visit infinite punishment for offenses that, at most, occupy a few decades of a life. “The only hell that could possibly exist is the one of which Christian contemplatives speak: the hatred within each of us that turns the love of others—of God and neighbor—into torment,” he writes.

Hart attacks the belief in an eternal hell on several fronts. In the first place, he explores the expression “eternal fire” found in Matthew 18:8 and 25:41. The Greek here is to pur to aiōnion, and the word of interest is aiōnion. It is derived from the noun aiōn (the origin of our word eon: Hart transliterates it as aeon), about which he writes, “Through the whole of ancient . . . Greek literature, an ‘aeon’ was most properly an ‘age,’ which is simply to say a ‘substantial period of time’ or an ‘extended interval.’” The adjective did not “have the intrinsic meaning of ‘eternal.’ . . . Generally it had a much vaguer connotation.” The fourth-century church father John Chrysostom “once even used the word aiōnios to describe the reign of Satan over this world precisely in order to emphasize its transience.” An aiōn, then, was a very long and indeterminate time, but it did not mean eternity.

Hart cites many verses from the New Testament that back up his assertion that all shall be saved, such as 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For just as in Adam all die, so also in the Anointed [Christ] all will be given life.” Most strikingly, he discusses the teachings of the fourth-century church father Gregory of Nyssa: “God shall be all in all, argues Gregory in a treatise on infants who die prematurely . . . by joining each particular person, each unique inflection of the plērōma’s beauty, to himself.” (Plērōma means fullness in a theological sense.) Indeed, Hart says, the doctrine of eventual universal redemption was very likely more common in early Christianity than the doctrine of eternal damnation.

Hart’s treatment of infernalism is vitriolic: “Christianity’s chief distinction among theistic creeds is that it alone openly enjoins its adherents to be morally superior to the God they worship.” Who of us, after all, would decree perpetual torture for anyone? Even the worst monsters of history committed only a finite number of crimes, however large that may be. But conventional Christians must believe that their God will do this—while believing at the same time that he is all-loving.

Where, then, did this idea come from? Hart notes that in early Christianity “it was still generally assumed that there were mysteries of the faith that should be reserved only for the very few, the Christian intellectual elite, pnevmatikoi, ‘spiritual persons’ (a term even used by Paul), while the faith of the more common variety of believers should be nourished only with simpler, coarser, more infantile versions of doctrine.” The pnevmatikoi, he suggests, knew that in the end all will be saved. “For the less learned, less refined, less philosophical Christians, it was widely believed, the prospect of hellfire was always the best possible means of promoting good behavior.” Hence the Christian elite could “indulge in an act of holy duplicity.”

We know how it turned out. Bad doctrine drives out good. Eventually every Christian was required to believe in infernalism under threat of eternal damnation for themselves.

It is a sign of the degeneracy of current Christian theology that Hart says he is “writing a book that I expect will convince nearly no one . . . I find it even more unsettling to have written a book that I believe ought never to have needed to be written in the first place.”

Strictly speaking, I cannot say that Hart’s book convinced me, because I agreed with his central thesis before I read a word of it. But he must know the current theological milieu well enough to foresee the obliviousness and obstinacy with which his arguments will be received.

It is always perilous to cross-compare different teachings, but we can easily transpose this universalism with classic Theosophy. The latter does not speak of a Fall or of sin in the Christian sense, but it does speak of each individual monad in an almost endless journey through cycles of manifestation and reintegration in ways that broadly resemble Christian universalism.

Hart is deservedly one of today’s foremost theologians. His translation of the New Testament, also issued by Yale University Press, may be the most intellectually honest version ever done. Publishing That All Shall Be Saved, which he describes as a “companion” to that New Testament, may be the greatest act of theological courage yet seen in this millennium.

Richard Smoley

A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data

A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data

Alexander Boxer
New York: W.W. Norton, 2020; 336 pp., hardcover, $28.95.

Alexander Boxer’s inaugural book, A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data, is the net result of a data scientist’s labor of obsession with astrology. In view of the fact that Boxer has a doctorate in physics and degrees in the history of science and classics, maybe it was in his stars, or at least his curriculum vitae, to write this book.

A Scheme of Heaven has much that both an astrology lover and a skeptic might find interesting: historical tidbits, breakdowns of key astrological definitions and terms, keen scientific references, loads of data and data analysis, and the author’s own reflections on his self-confessed fixation on the topic despite his own skepticism.

Boxer’s central argument is that regardless of whether astrology itself has any validity, the pursuit of knowledge about terrestrial affairs and personality inclinations from the movements of the heavens has led to meaningful developments in mathematics, cryptography, and other fields of science. In fact he cautions skeptics about underestimating astrology’s importance: “Nevertheless, and however well-meaning the motives, those who would amputate astrology from science’s history, or set it apart for ridicule, do nothing to preserve science or its history. On the contrary, they are being deeply unfaithful to both.”

Boxer, for the most part, follows his own advice. He never dismisses outright the thoughts of classical astrological authors and even expresses delight and wonder about their creativity and perspicacity, like in the Astronomica of Marcus Manilius, a Roman astrologer and poet of the first century CE. Even so, he is not quick to accept anything that these authors say on face value. He takes the astrological claims of several authors, including Manilius and thirteenth-century Italian astrologer Guido Bonatti, to task, on the basis of statistical examinations that use modern data. For instance, he explores whether Bonatti’s electional astrology aphorisms on buying and selling would hold up if they were converted into algorithms and then used to create an investment fund to match the Dow Jones performance from 1980 to 2018. (According to Boxer, they wouldn’t.) He does similar analyses of Bonatti’s caution not to initiate a trip while the moon is below the horizon and Manilius’ take on appropriate careers by sign.

It’s unsurprising that astrology doesn’t always fare well in Boxer’s statistical scrutiny, especially since statistical models like the oft-cited Gauquelin Mars effect, based on the research of French researcher Michel Gauquelin, haven’t been replicated with different data, according to Boxer. (Although several independent skeptical groups, to their own dismay, have duplicated those results.)

Nonetheless, the author looks at most of astrology’s history in an even-handed way. Since Boxer has come to astrology as an open-minded novice, he’s able to relay advanced astrological concepts in a concise, clear, and digestible fashion without complicated jargon. But that doesn’t keep him from getting lost in other weeds. If you’re not suitably versed in statistics or elements of advanced mathematics, be prepared to reread parts of his book. Similarly, there are a few times when the author veers off topic, such as piecing through the rarefied details of ancient and modern mapmaking as he discusses Ptolemy’s Almagest. Fortunately, those times don’t occur too often.

Nor does the author have much patience for a qualitative experience of astrology versus a quantitative one. Unfortunately, this is often a common problem when one tries to dissect astrology merely through dates and numbers. For instance, it’s odd that that he never collects firsthand data himself with a visit to an astrologer. Odder still is that despite his sweeping review of the literature of astrology’s history, with adequate testimony from classical astrologers themselves, he doesn’t engage any contemporary practitioners, other than a brief mention of astrologer and historian Nicholas Campion. If he had, he might avoided a few errors, like stating, “In the ancient debate as to the existence of free will, or of nature versus nurture, astrology has long just laughed, insisting upon an extreme form of cold, mathematical determinism.” This has never been true, as any astrologer conversant with Hellenistic astrology might have told him. Likewise, while weighing in on house systems, he states that only the Placidus astrological house system collapses at extreme terrestrial latitudes. (When in fact nearly all of them do.)

Sticking almost singularly to the hoarier voices of horoscopic astrology, Boxer, despite his book’s broad scope, has lamentably left his Scheme of Heaven adequate in one way yet incomplete in another.

Samuel F. Reynolds

Samuel F. Reynolds, a former skeptic, had a life-changing visit to an astrologer, and thirty years later, he consults and teaches astrology full-time. He also serves on a few astrology organizational boards. His site is UnlockAstrology.com.

Forbidden Fruits: An Occult Novel

Forbidden Fruits: An Occult Novel

Joscelyn Godwin and Guido Mina di Sospiro
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2020. 288 pp., paper, $19.99.

Occult novels, especially thrillers and mysteries, are a popular genre that can provide escapist entertainment for even the most serious esotericist. And surely there was never a better time for some escapist entertainment than 2020.

Yet the very elements that make thrillers and mysteries attractive—extended suspense, the unfolding of surprise events, and the final resolution of a puzzle or conflict—also make them difficult to review. No reviewer wants to pepper their review with spoiler alerts, much less spoilers themselves. It’s a dilemma that I will do my best to surmount.

Forbidden Fruits, like Godwin’s and Mina di Sospiro’s first occult thriller, The Forbidden Book (2012), takes place in the Mediterranean: in Italy in both books, with the addition of the island of Malta in their new novel.

While the occult core of The Forbidden Book was a consideration of the esoteric philosophy of Julius Evola and its considerable downside, Forbidden Fruits delves into both the contemporary survival of the Catholic chivalric Knights of Malta (né Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem) and the possible discovery of the psychoactive nature of the entheogenic initiatory components of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

All of this is pondered and revealed in the context of a series of murders whose perpetrators are assuredly evil and omnipresent, but at the same time exasperatingly elusive.

At the center of the drama is the Pinto de Fonseco family, a noble Maltese lineage descended from Manuel Pinto de Fonseca, the storied Portuguese Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Scion Sebastian Pinto, who is fabulously wealthy, has been underwriting a deep-sea archaeological dig that turns up a prehistoric golden artifact in the shape of a pomegranate. He is also the inadvertent witness of a savage beating of an African immigrant by Russian skinheads, helping to run them off before they have the chance to murder their victim outright.

These two events at the outset of the novel adumbrate two of the main themes of Forbidden Fruits: ancient history, wisdom, myths, and their continued effects today; and the forces at work causing and shaping the flood of immigrants from Africa into southern Europe and beyond. It is not long before Pinto and his family, as well as lead archaeologist Dr. Monica Bettlheim, are plunged willy-nilly into grappling with dark forces stirred up by the dig’s discovery. Someone wants them dead, but who or what? I leave it for the reader to find out and enjoy the paranoid thrill of running for your life.

What sets these highly readable thrillers apart from Dan Brown’s or those of his run-of-the-mill imitators is that Godwin and Mina di Sospiro use their novels to impart actual information or at least well-researched speculation. Although both authors shared the writing tasks, there is a singular authorial voice and style, and it is an elegant one. Yes, this is pop literature, but it is pop lit of a very high quality. The plot is tightly woven and without the holes of logic or detail that seem to plague Brown’s best sellers.

Whether it is speculation about the ancient roots of religion or a description of an actual method of skrying or a discussion of alchemical symbolism, our authors know that of which they speak —or, at the very least, know the best sources to tap.

I have no hesitation to recommend this book to Quest readers, as you are the ideal readers who would best appreciate what Godwin and Mina Di Sospiro have achieved.

Jay Kinney

Jay Kinney was founder and publisher of Gnosis: a Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, and author of The Masonic Myth. His articles and reviews have appeared in Chronicles, California Freemason, Reason, and Quest.

Creating a Life of Integrity: In Conversation with Joseph Goldstein

Creating a Life of Integrity: In Conversation with Joseph Goldstein

Gail Andersen Stark
Somerville, Mass.: Wisdom, 2020. 231 pp., paper, $18.95.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

—Rumi

Many books have been written on the paramis—the ten components of perfection in Theravada Buddhism. Gail Andersen Stark has written a book that shares her intimate journey to integrate the paramis in her own life. What motivated her? It was a spirit of inquiry that sought to find a harmony between one’s livelihood and inner meditative pursuits.

Each spiritual journey needs a companion—not necessarily a guru—who can guide, share, inspire, and walk with you. Stark’s yearslong friendship with the noted meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein meant that she did not have to search far. This book is the culmination of their work together.

Each month Goldstein provided Stark with instruction on a parami. Stark then spent that month integrating it into her daily life. She shares her experiences with the reader. At the end of the month she had a check-in conversation with Goldstein, and these were truly heart-to-heart communications.

Stark has a wonderful view of how these paramis relate to each other. She calls it a “Path to Peace”: “Being generous [dana] makes us feel happy. We aspire to live with more virtue [sila]. We investigate and renounce unskillful habits (nekhamma). Wisdom [panna] blossoms. Energy [viriya] blooms. Now patience [khanti] is needed. Slowed down, we discern and speak with more truthfulness [sacca]. We grow increasingly resolute [adhitthana]. Loving-kindness [metta] becomes our first response. Now with equanimity [upekkha] as our guide, the bliss of blamelessness arrives.”

I was drawn to the section on wisdom. Wisdom means insight into three characteristics: impermanence, the unsatisfactory nature of phenomena, and selflessness. Goldstein told Stark, “Begin by paying attention in our daily lives in different situations as they naturally arise, hold the intention periodically throughout the day asking, ‘What do I understand here?’, let the wisdom come to you, and explore different areas of your life again, asking, ‘What do I clearly see in this situation?’ Be specific. For example, you could ask, ‘What is creating suffering in this situation? What is driving it?’”

Goldstein also asked Stark to investigate impermanence (how am I seeing impermanence in this moment of craving?), the unsatisfying nature of phenomena (what is my attitude that is causing suffering? Am I overlooking the fact that everything is arising and passing away?), and selflessness (what am I identifying with?).

Stark’s insights about wisdom come as she experiences an earthquake. She has an amazing revelation: “If I am not the cause of my happiness or my discontent, if everything is arising out of certain conditions (like this earthquake) and passing away (hopefully like this earthquake), if I am not the one constantly craving or resisting, if there is actually no me inside wanting or resisting so fiercely, if I can really see the arising thoughts and emotions as not mine and impermanent, at least in this moment . . . might I not be better equipped, and wouldn’t it be so much easier, to just pause for a moment or two and let them pass by like this earthquake?” The earthquake passes by, but the wisdom does not.

Goldstein’s “check-in” thoughts are equally profound. “We are just so caught up in the story of our lives that we’re not directly perceiving the impermanence. And we can see it on every single level. It’s not that it’s hard to see. It’s just remembering to look.”

Stark shares another insight with Goldstein: “Each and every time I think whatever is up won’t go away, I just watch as it does . . . and what I noticed was that I was never asking or investigating when I was happy . . . I don’t want to investigate happiness and cause it to go away!” Goldstein adds on investigating: “We all do this. We come home and we say, ‘Oh, I am tired.’ Or we say, ‘I’m angry, I am sad, I am happy.’ The great Burmese Master Ledi Sayadaw said to say ‘I am tired’ is wrong view about tiredness. The ‘I’ is unnecessary.”

Stark’s book is necessary in today’s confusing times. Practicing integrity takes hard work, but the rewards are extraordinary—“the bliss of blamelessness.” Even to take one parami and delve deeply into it would bring about a transformation. In the concluding chapter, Stark describes a moving experience as she feels great love and compassion towards all beings. “It is working!” she cries.

I have a personal reason to express gratitude for this book. Many years ago I heard the character J.R. Ewing in the soap opera Dallas say, “Once you give up your integrity, the rest is a piece of cake.” It had stuck in my consciousness. Reading Stark’s book has finally eradicated it.

Dhananjay Joshi

The reviewer, a professor of statistics, has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for forty years. He reviews regularly for Quest and works as a volunteer in the archives department of the TSA.