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Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, September 2019







Denisovan Origins: Hybrid Humans, Gobekli Tepe, and the Genesis of the Giants of Ancient America
By Andrew Collins and Gregory L. Little

Inner Traditions
Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
September 2019, 432 pages, 6.63 x 9.5, US $24.00/Can. $29.99
Includes 16-page color insert & 91 b&w illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-59143-263-0

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

“A missing chapter in our knowledge of the emergence of civilization,” Graham Hancock, the author of the New York Times recent bestseller America Before, wrote of this book. This is an extraordinarily compelling and thoroughly documented volume by two top-notch investigative authors who have exhaustively tackled the huge challenge of illuminating our dark and terribly distorted ancient human past. At last someone has competently stepped forward to set the record straight and present the true story of the evolution of humanity, bringing into meaningful clarity and sharp focus the profound implications of the latest discoveries to be found at the very ancient Gobekli Tepe site in Turkey, numerous and significant clues from many other corners of the world, including the Mound Builders here in North America, as well as the ancestral links of the Solutreans, Denisovan-Neanderthal and Denisovan-human hybrids, with the incredible mental advances that began to significantly accelerate human civilization more than 40,000 years ago because of the genetics of the Denisovans. The details in Chapter 19, The Shamanic Civilization, reveals genetic research wherein two genes were isolated suggesting that the Denisovans possessed autistic, amazing savant-like qualities, offering additional thought-provoking insights and possibilities into the amazing and evolving Denisovan mindset and influence. On a global and hugely comprehensive scale authors Collins and Little delve headlong into some of the most complex and challenging mysteries and controversies surrounding ancient human origins, the emergence of civilization, the roots of shamanism and the implications of their belief systems, animistic archetypes, particularly raptors and corvids, as with the Thunder People of North America, the afterlife journey along the cosmic Path of Souls, and a much truer picture of the original inhabitants of the Americas, as well as other diverse regions of our world. The reader is in very competent hands with Collins and Little. They’ve been busily chipping away at and exposing these ancient truths and all of this hidden knowledge for quite sometime. I feel this current collaboration between them is a crowning masterpiece achievement. Their previous works have been leading up to this monumental volume, like Collins’ The Cygnus Mystery (2006), Gobekli Tepe (2014), and The Cygnus Key (2018) and Little’s Path of Souls (2014) and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds and Earthworks (2016), to mention but the latest.


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Haunted Cars and Highways:
The definitive account of paranormal events on Britain’s roads
By Antony Milne

Empiricus Books
The Studio High Green
Great Shelford
Cambridge CB22 5EG
Great Britain
www.januspublishing.co.uk
2019, 446 pages, Paperback, £13.95
ISBN: 978-1-85756-894-3

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

British author Antony Milne, the previous author of Sky Critters (2016) and Fireballs, Skyquakes, and Hums (2011), likes to pursue unexplained phenomena. In his latest book Haunted Cars and Highways, Milne compiles an extensive collection of eyewitness reports from all across the British landscape of mysterious apparitions of various types. Many consist of motorists encountering apparitions of cars, horse-drawn coaches, and people, who while they appear solid initially may next disappear without a trace. Some apparitions float in the air, may lack a face, while some accounts possess elevated strangeness levels as with a motorist who reported being chased by a ‘demonic entity,’ another report of a ‘flying pterodactyl’ with an estimated 18-foot wingspan, and even a ‘fire breathing dragon.’ One couple allegedly drove into a village that hadn’t existed for several centuries. Then too there’s the reports of encounters with fairies and aliens, both associated with strange lights. As with people who reported to Keel encounters with Mothman and UFOs and then experienced poltergeist activity in their homes afterwards, Milne recounts similar things that reportedly happened to our motorists who had spooky encounters out on the roadways just before. The author explores the usual theories, quantum physics, parapsychology, hallucinations, and even elements of a trickster intelligence interacting with these frightened motorists. The accounts are many, puzzling, and intriguing, but in the end we remain with more questions than answers.


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The Forever Angels:
Near-Death Experiences in Childhood and Their Lifelong Impact
By P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D.

Inner Traditions
Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
2019, 240 pages, 6 x 9, US $18.00
ISBN: 978-1-59143-358-3
www.BearandCompanyBooks.com

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

Atwater, a very familiar name to those in the NDE (Near-Death Experience) field, the author of 18 books on interrelated subject matter, and a near-death experiencer herself, in this book draws upon information derived from interviews with nearly 400 childhood experiencers. She details how these very young experiencers for the rest of their lives are profoundly changed, how they afterwards develop psychic and intuitive abilities, higher levels of intelligence, and what some describe as “wisdom beyond their years.” In addition, there were some other really unusual claims among these experiencers. For example, several children claimed that they found how at times they could levitate after their initial NDE. Many children described how they could breath underwater, and Atwater found adult experiencers who likewise needed little or no air while underwater, and she mentioned how after her own three NDEs she was that way, as well as her own son. “He never panicked underwater when he was small,” Atwater wrote. “We did. We finally figured he must be ‘part fish.’ Still is, by the way.” Atwater noted how 44 percent of her childhood experiencers felt as though they had come from another world or dimension. They didn’t feel like they fit in with this world. Two described having been alien abducted and taken aboard a space craft and given a tour of other planets. This is interesting as a number of researchers studying NDE and UFO contactee claims have been noticing the similarities between these two experiences.


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God and Love on Route 80:
The Hidden Mystery of Human Connectedness
By Stephen G. Post
Foreword by Larry Dossey, M.D., author of One Mind

Mango Publishing Group
2850 S. Douglas Road, 2nd Floor
Coral Gables, FL 33134
2019, 236 pages, Paperback, US $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-64250-009-7

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

The author of this book, Stephen G. Post, Ph.D., wrote the bestseller Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Happier, Healthier Life by the Simple Act of Giving (2008). The reason for Post’s positive outlook on life, which is evident from his earlier book title just mentioned, is revealed in the pages of this inspiring book. Here you will learn how the author, back when he was a boy, had a strange reoccurring dream, what he came to call his “blue angel dream,” where a young man was about to step out off of a ledge high above an ocean when, out of an early morning mist, the light blue image of an angel’s face emerged and spoke, “If you save him, you too shall live.” Young Post was genuinely puzzled. He did not generally remember his dreams, and he wasn’t a big believer in literal angels. Yet these vivid dreams seemed to be calling him to some unknown destination out west. Was it a creative delusion produced by his own mind, he would wonder. At the time he was a young student at New Hampshire’s St. Paul’s School. Eventually the answers manifested, in miraculous and synchronistic ways with a road trip that led to the Pacific end of Route 80. This book tells the authors remarkable story of a spiritual journey and self-discovery and reveals for each of its readers how we too may better face the challenges and potential opportunities by responding to our own inner guidance and synchronistic signs along our own life journey.


Sunday, October 13, 2024