The Magic of Obelisks

by Peter Tompkins

For centuries people have wondered why the Egyptian obelisks were erected, by whom & what they signified. There were at one time hundreds of obelisks throughout ancient Egypt, many of them covered with the lettering known as hieroglyphs. Like the great pyramids, the obelisks seem to possess a strange power, perhaps even the key to the secret of life.
From the time of the earliest invaders of Egypt through the 19th century expeditions from France, Britain & the USA seized obelisks. Transported to Rome by pagan emperors, they were later exhumed by the popes & christianized. The Inquisition, suspicious of secret rites descended from Egypt, persecuted scholars & free thinkers, for whom the obelisks became symbols of freedom. When Americans in 1799 cast about for a suitable tribute to the founder of the country, they chose to erect the largest obelisk ever, the Washington Monument.
In this profusely illustrated book, Tompkins explores the entire history of human association with obelisks; the many theories about them & their magical & physical properties; the adventures encountered in engineering & moving 300-ton monoliths; their association with sexual rites & the hermetic wisdom of ancient Egypt; & their suspected influence on & connection with many secret socities & historic figures including Freemasons, Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, Ficinio, Pico, Bruno, Kircher, Cagliostro, St Germain & Crowley.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

481 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Peter Tompkins was an American journalist, World War II spy, and best-selling author.
His best known and most influential books include The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, reprinted in paperback in 1997, and Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, published in 1976. He is the father of author Ptolemy Tompkins.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read one of Tompkins WWII history books and his thing on 'the great pyramid'. Thinking this would be like the latter, I scooped it up, wondering, after looking at the GR database, why there was only one edition.

Although ostensibly about obelisks, only about half the text concerns them, and then by no means exhaustively. The best and most readable parts of the book, however, do cover several which were moved from Egypt and re-erected elsewhere. These are simple travel-adventure tales, well told. The other half of the book, however, is a rambling, roughly chronological, account of an occult tradition the author believes to have stemmed from early Egypt, a tradition which takes up such diverse groups as the Cathars (whom he thinks, probably wrongly, were different than the Albigensians), the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Anthroposophists, the O.D.O. etc. Thrown in along the way are individuals like John Dee, Cagliostro, St Germaine, Crowley, Wilhelm Reich and amorphous groups such as gnostics and witches. The big secret passed through the ages seems to be linked primarily to sex magic which, in his view, holds great political promise for a better world--if not immortality and intimate encounters with aliens. This business is very poorly done. Author Tompkins seems to be lacking in critical awareness, lumping together facts with fictions, myths with history, not seeming to be aware of the differences.
A much better and less potentially misleading book might have covered the same sources, movements and thinkers, assigning the theories, speculations and tales to their actual proponents while maintaining a critical, objective distance. It might also have actually maintained some focus on the obelisks or changed its title to something more representative of its contents.

[Bart Everson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was pretty well fascinated up to chapter 16, "Atlantis in America." That's where the untenable pseudoscience BS comes into full focus. Ugh. Avoid.

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tompkins describes the history of all those large stone hieroglyph-inflected obelisks that were trucked out of Egypt and hauled all the way to Europe, where they were all the rage. The book is capped with a bizarre chapter about his theory of sexual energy permeating the world, which is his typical style. (He did the same thing when he ended his book The Eunuch and the Virgin: A Study of Curious Customs with a chapter on an imaginary chemical called orgone, which is both invisible and blue.)

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting facts and history of a form that has always peeked my curiosity.