Tim Wallace-Murphy

Why do I keep reading this stuff? Mostly so I can counter True Believers when they ask if I’ve “read the book”, whatever the current woo-woo book happens to be.


Rosslyn is a modest chapel (it was apparently intended to be a full-fledged church, but was never completed) about 7 miles south of Edinburgh. It has especially ornate stone carvings, which are woo-woo fodder – the carvings are complex enough that given time and enthusiasm it’s possible to find all sorts of coded messages in them. If authors Tim-Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins had been content to just make esoteric interpretations of the stonework, the book might have actually had some utility – you could read around the woo-woo and draw your own conclusions.


Instead, despite the title, there’s not very much about Rosslyn here. The authors wander around Europe on a woo-woo pilgrimage to various sites – Compostela, Chartres, Amiens, Toulouse, Notre Dame, Orleans – which are all supposedly stations on a initiate’s journey to enlightenment. No woo-woo is left unwooed, as Wallace-Murphy and Hopkins invoke the ancient Egyptians, the Pythagoreans, the Romans, the Essenes, the Druids, the Gnostics, the Templars and the Freemasons through alchemy, dowsing, astrology, telluric energy, ley lines, meditation and the chakras to determine Rosslyn is the hiding place of the Lost Treasure of the Templars, The Holy Grail, and the Ark of the Covenant. I was especially amused by the mix of mystical traditions; it was enlightening to learn that medieval Templars knew all about Hindu chakras and prāna energy, and that they routinely sent expeditions to the New World (oddly, there’s no mention of the Rosslyn carving that is supposed to represent a pre-Columbian ear of maize). This is mostly documented by references to the author’s other works and the sensations they felt while meditating, with now and then another woo-woo book thrown in. Alas, the book isn’t even useful as a debunking reference, since there’s virtually nothing than can be pinned down long enough to be rationally refuted.


Oh, and according to the authors’ interpretation of the sites as a horoscope, the world will end (or, at least, something will happen) on July 28 2019.… (mer)

Where to begin. It wasn't what I was expecting, which is no fault of the book, so I will try to judge it on what it is, not what I want it to be.

Problem is, the book isn't so sure what it wants to be. Ostensibly, as the subtitle states, it wants to reveal the Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Perhaps half the book, the first half to two thirds, could justifiably be said to live up to the subtitle. But the last third? It is a history of the last three-four hundred years of European history with far deeper analysis of colonialism and factors leading to the World Wars than to any esotericism.

Mr. Wallace-Murphy set himself a large task by starting the book with the prehistoric era and ending with our own times. Even though he mostly restricts himself to Europe and European influences, it's a lot of territory to cover. In the beginning it suffers from historical vagueness and handwaving: there are ancient sites and our ancestors Knew Something about them, Egypt was full of initiatory mysteries with Amarna being especially important (alas, only to later monotheists, not to Egyptian history itself), and similar banal drivel one can find in a thousand other such books. In addition, despite taking the trouble to provide a bibliography, endnotes, and an index, W-M uses not just secondary but tertiary or further works for his source material. And much to frequently for my taste, the endnote cites one of his other books. (I feel it is classier to say something such as "As I wrote in my previous volume Title…" rather than have someone follow an endnote to the author's own work.)

Around the Middle Ages (chapter nine of twenty) I began making note of what to me were annoying to egregious errors and assumptions. For example, monasteries in the 6th and 7th centuries kept "meticulous accounts" and thus were able to deduce that slavery was not cost effective (except in the colonies, apparently). I keep meticulous accounts of my household budget, but all it does is tell me whether I have enough money in the bank to pay my bills. Meticulous record keeping is not the same as accounting as we know it. Accounting was invented centuries later; cost accounting would not be invented for centuries after that. So it's not clear what point he's trying to make.

Then there is "Mystical experience imbues one with a sense of justice; consequently in any rigid, dogmatic and unjust system the mystic is viewed as dangerous and is usually in trouble." Mystics can certainly be subversive to established order, but I fail to see how mysticism is itself leaning towards justice. Was Rasputin (not mentioned in the text) imbued with a sense of justice? I'd have to call that a stretch. He also states that biblical mystics in Israel were messengers of peace. All of them? My impression was that many were a bit more on the angry and scolding side of the scale.

He regularly speaks of the Church (the Roman Catholic one) as if it were some grand, growly, singular entity which is bestowed with the Sight so it knows how all its actions will play out in centuries ahead. Paraphrasing: "The Church knew that [xxx], so it did [yyy]…" Hindsight is 20-20, but foresight rarely can read the big letters in the top row. He cites Robert Graves, the poet and dreamer, as an expert source for history and religion. He cites Ouspensky, writing in the 20th century, as an expert on Templars and Gothic cathedrals, quoting: "The building of Cathedrals was part of a colossal and cleverly devised plan…" Oh, dear, more 20-20 foresight.

Wallace-Murphy lost me completely midway through the book with his endless speculations on the Templars ("…so it could only mean that…"), and finally with the Druidic "seven chakras of the Earth" upon which cathedrals were built. Considering the Druids left no written records or accounts of themselves, I don't know where this bit of lore originated; the endnote cites yet another work by W-M as the source of his information.

All along through his narrative, this historical person and that historical society are cited as initiates, although into what exactly they were initiated is never made clear. They simply Knew Stuff and thus Must Have Been Initiates. But even this unifying thread is lost in the last five chapters. Wallace-Murphy begins here to cover the periods of exploration and colonialism and finishes off with the present day. In his diligence to describe the sequence of historical machinations and repercussions of these times, he seems to forget (near totally in the case of chapter five) that his mission is a discussion of Western esotericism. The last chapters mention only Blavatsky and Steiner in any detail, with, so the index tells me, Steiner given roughly twice as many pages and references than HPB.

The final chapter is some sort of overview of the current state of mystical experience, but I found it trite; for example, wasting ink with a banal recital of variants on the Golden Rule, vaguely linking things to Gaia theory, discoveries of physics to Eastern spirituality, and so on. I was quite surprised that he named none of the scientists or thinkers as Initiates. The closer he came to the modern day, the faster that conceit disintegrated until it was completely lost. And at this point, the book ended, or more accurately, just stopped (somewhat to my relief).

Wallace-Murphy is also guilty of a sentimental racism, othering native people by making them So Much More Spiritual Than We Are. Native Americans are so wise and spiritual. Buddhists are so wise and spiritual. He made a comparison of Western industrial thinking to Buddhist industrial thinking, the latter of which, according to W-M, is based on "spiritual values." So Nike sweatshops are based on spiritual values? I imagine that would be a surprise to the factory workers.

My late husband received this book in 2010 as a review copy, but he did not live to read it. Now I'm not sure why I bothered, since by the end of the first chapter I knew it was not what I was looking for. But I dislike not finishing a book I start, so I soldiered on. Perhaps this review will dissuade others from bothering and thus accomplish something.… (mer)

Either this book is too short or it needs a different title. What the authors have done is written a book about initiatory pilgrimages in western Europe, mainly from Portugal through France, and up into England and Scotland.

The main theme of the book concerns a “reverse” pilgrimage (of initiation) from Santiago de Compostela (with a nod to Cintra, Portugal) through seven Gothic cathedrals that stand on ancient Celtic pagan sites, and which ends at Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, Scotland. This pilgrimage is equated with the ascent of the kundalini through the seven chakras (a Hindu religious system). The authors also describe it as a pilgrimage ‘along a path under the vault of the Milky Way in the heavens’ as seen during summer nights in Europe, and how each site reflects one of the astrological houses.

They then proceed to show how this pilgrimage could have been derived from a (speculative) pilgrimage (of initiation) in ancient Egypt that ran from Philae near Elephantine up the Nile through seven temples to temples at Behedet and Heliopolis. This is why I say the book needs a different title.

Looked at from a second point of view, it would have been nice to see more data on each site, especially maps and photos. The kabbalah gets barely a mention, but seems to me likely to have been more well known than the Hindu system of the kundalini and the seven chakras, at the time these pilgrimages were first formulated. Of course, adequate coverage of these areas would expand the book to several hundred pages.

The book has an extensive bibliography.… (mer)