Let the Standing Stones Speak

Description
The messages encoded in the standing stones of Carnac combine and transcend spiritual truths from many disciplines and traditions, even though their builders lived thousands of years before Buddha, Christ and Muhammed. They explain the true power sources in our world and provide a design for realigning ourselves with them. They interpret the lives of the great teachers and recount the dark history of Atlantis. Linking the chakras, crystals and earth spirits, redefining incarnation and forgotten realms of existence both here an on other planets, they promise us a future of tranquility and peace, children born free of karma on a clean earth, the New Jerusalem. Natasha Hoffman felt welcome when she first stood in the presence of these mysterious giant monuments, set up around the same time as Stonehenge. Walking along these alignments with her companion, Hamilton Hill, she first heard the voice. "This is a vast wisdom library," she realised, "and we can read it." With notes on the author's personal pilgrimages and more than a dozen photographs, The Standing Stones Speak is a great adventure and also a text that may become the New Age Bible.

Review
I was confused from the very beginning here. What type of book was I reading? I needed to get the context right. Was it a work of fiction? Or perhaps an allegorical novel? Neither of these classes actually and accurately capture what's being purported here. Then I recalled an interview with Joseph Campbell, himself an unusual mixture of great academic and spiritual wisdom. He was talking about Myths, and their role in modern lives. It was put to him that all of the great myths were breaking down. They were less and less liable to be worthy bodies of knowledge in these times, times of accelerated change. Campbell agreed, stating that now, myths are still central to our quests for meaning and identity, and if we can't trust the old ones, we need to make up our own.
The best way that I can make sense of this work is to suggest that it is a work about modern myth, personalised for the authors, which they decided to share through the writing of this book. They could come back and say that the stones really did speak to them. I cannot judge that. But I can decide whether or not I wish to take on their myth, either in part or as a whole.

But let's analyse just what they are asking us to take on?
The cynic in me sees all of the expected ‘New Age' concepts.
We are offered a very hierarchical world with The Creator at the top, then the Archangels, then humans, animals and the rest of the seen, physical creation, then we have various levels of the unseen, including Earth Spirits, ents (yes walking trees as in The Lord of The Rings) and Goblins. There are Devas as well but I am not sure where they fit. Well alright, but there is a heavily implicit suggestion that each level is responsible for the level below. Throughout the book the Archangels are berating us for not looking after the world and the ‘lower' creatures in it. They are hugely judgemental here and it feels like we, humans are being called to task for bad acts and negligent omissions over the last few thousand years.
It is like being told off at school, ‘do your maths homework, its for your own good'. And it is never really explained why.
My thought here was, if that is the case, and it may well be, where were they, the Angels? Why has it taken them so long to step in? Why leave it so late? We are told that we are at the place of massive change, that there is much to do and little time to do it in. And it might not work anyway. The hierarchy strongly suggests that the Angels have responsibility here, did they abdicate? Where have they been? So, from a practical point of view it's not all that straight forward.

Theologically though, the world we are offered is even more confusing. There is this mixture of Karma and Grace, free will and obligation, choice and determinism, references to a ‘fall from Grace' which is not fully explained, reincarnation, crystal theory, Atlantis, ley lines, extraterrestrials, a past golden age, cosmic energies, the lot.
It is essentially a dualistic world view, with a creator and created, an us and them, an object and subject, a cause and an effect. I do not see a world of flow, where there is a possibility of subject/object merger, where even for an instant the tree and me can be one. It seems very compartmentalised.

Can I recommend this book? That takes us back to the beginning; it depends upon how you classify the book and on your chosen myth. It doesn't reflect the world view that I have in my personal myth. I don't need the dualism, being beaten up by Angels, nor the confusing theology. In its defence, there are a few very good points, but I have to say that they are the ones that support my world view. If it seems like the type of work that aligns to your myth, then you will get more out of it than I did.

Paperback 288 pages (August 1, 2004)
Publisher: O Books
ISBN: 1903816793