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Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World
NAUTILUS SILVER BOOK AWARD THE SCIENTIFIC & MEDICAL NETWORK 2019 BOOK PRIZE Why did the Roman Church wage a centuries-long campaign to destroy Classical culture and all previous spiritual traditions? What was the secret at the heart of these traditions that was so powerful that an organization would feel justified in torturing and murdering men, women, and children; in burning Christian gospels, Gnostic texts, Jewish texts, Arabic manuscripts; and in destroying temples, monasteries, sanctuaries, Mystery Schools and academies of higher learning? This persistent repression of the shaman-mystic-scientist traditions has left Western culture addicted to a tragically limited and negative worldview that now threatens to destroy the world. Merchants of The Consciousness That Is Changing the World returns to us these spiritual secrets on which our survival now
- GenresSpirituality
544 pages, Paperback
Published September 23, 2019
101 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
Betty J. Kovacs
2 books10 followersPh.D., University of California, Irvine in Comparative Literature and Theory of Symbolic Language. Studied and taught literature, mythology, symbolic language in Europe & U.S. Studied spiritual traditions of prehistory and indigenous cultures and worked with shamans from the Amazon and the Andes in Peru. Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont in California for many years. Author of The Miracle of Death and Journey of the Mothers in Earthwalking Sky Dancers. http://www.kamlak.com"
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 2, 2021
Reading Betty Kovac's book is like reading three books in one, whose themes intertwine providing a rich and rewarding experience for the reader. The first theme is the author's quest to find and experience the fruit of the Cosmic Tree of Life; the inner experience of enlightenment, whose validity has been denied for so many years by religions (demanding belief in their dogmas) and later science, which relies on abstract reasoning and allows only for the exploration of the outer world. She poses questions based on her own disillusionment in finding answers through orthodox religion or scientific materialism and enters a labryrinthe-like spiritual journey which teaches her to relate to the visionary female within her and understand that the central figure in her myth is "Wisdom, the feminine dimension of the divine, the very heart of nature, of life".
It is this feminine side which she and western culture had written off for so many years. Male intellectuals like Richard Parnas (and Jordan Peterson), would not agree with her because they see the evolution of the Western mind as “driven by a heroic impulse to forge an autonomous rational human self by separating it from the primordial unity with nature." Yet all Shaman cultures believe like the Mayans "Only out of the power of these opposing principles can we create at all" and in the archetypal hero's journey "Nature and the feminine support the hero's journey to independence and autonomy". Our male-dominated culture has brought us endless violence, spiritual despair and a disregard for our natural environment which threatens to destroy our planet, so I agree totally with Betty Kovac that "We need to be able to see the suffering we cause when we sever our rational mind from nature and the feminine visionary within us." Without The Sacred Marriage of the masculine and the feminine—the balanced union of opposites", the hero cannot return to our world to bestow his gifts on the community.
The second theme in the book is the rediscovery in our time of the history of ancient cultures and indigenous people whose Shaman-Mystics knew how to harmonize the outer laws of nature with the inner laws of consciousness, "igniting the visionary within us". This tradition was enabled by the achievement of symbolic consciousness, about 40,000 years ago, and was continued in various forms in ancient Egypt, the mystery schools of Crete and Greece, the Jewish traditions of the First Temple and Gnostic Christianity. However, the politics of Church and State forced this knowledge to go underground, wherever it appeared. The Deutoronomists inverted the true myth of the sacred fruit freely given in the Garden of life by the Great Goddess and substituted a vindictive, jealous male God, who demanded to be obeyed. They obliterated references to the feminine side of Yahweh, called Wisdom, who, in the most ancient tradition of Israel created the world together with him. Likewise, the Jesus of the Gnostic texts tells us to go within to develop what is within us, otherwise what we do not bring forth will destroy us. This emphasis on inner experience was anathema to the Church authorities who wanted total obedience and control of the masses.
Kovacs writes:"The teachings of Jesus now had to be about belief in Him and not about the direct inner experience of our own divinity." This would be the decisive factor in Western culture: individual experience was negated."
Yet despite centuries of repression, the Shaman-Mystic tradition kept reemerging from the depths. Kovacs tells us of the merging in Akmim of the ancient Egyptian and Presocratic Shaman-Mystic traditions with Platonism, Jewish and Arabic alchemical texts. In turn this amalgam was infused with Sufi ideas and imported into Europe reaching the famous school of Chartres cathedral in the heart of catholic Europe, where they were merged with European soul stories such as "the Grail" in an initiation to produce "the birth of the higher self". Kovacs emphasizes "All of these expressions reflect the reemergence of what Catholic Europe had repressed: soul, woman, and Gnosis." Kovacs points to five waves of awakening where " Each renaissance has challenged the Western heroic model of mental development with a more complete archetypal pattern for our evolutionary future". The fifth wave is our time, where we have rediscovered cultures that nurtured Shaman knowledge, quantum science and the mystic tradition are no longer strangers, the balance between masculine and feminine is being restored, and countless people have experienced anomalous phenomena such as altered states of consciousness, Near-Death Experiences, UFOs, and crop circles which "do not make sense within the context of a material world view". These changes are part of a wave of organization created by the Merchants of Light, who are drawn to us by (what Peter Kingsley calls) the vast missingness deep inside us and our longing to fill it with meaning and light.
The third theme of this book is an amazing story of overcoming tragedy by communication with the dead, during the three years when the author's mother, son and husband were killed in car accidents. After his death, Kovac's son, Pisti continued to communicate with his parents and his insights into the transformative process of our consciousness that the Merchants of Life are bringing about, is a central part of this book.
This book is a must read.
It is this feminine side which she and western culture had written off for so many years. Male intellectuals like Richard Parnas (and Jordan Peterson), would not agree with her because they see the evolution of the Western mind as “driven by a heroic impulse to forge an autonomous rational human self by separating it from the primordial unity with nature." Yet all Shaman cultures believe like the Mayans "Only out of the power of these opposing principles can we create at all" and in the archetypal hero's journey "Nature and the feminine support the hero's journey to independence and autonomy". Our male-dominated culture has brought us endless violence, spiritual despair and a disregard for our natural environment which threatens to destroy our planet, so I agree totally with Betty Kovac that "We need to be able to see the suffering we cause when we sever our rational mind from nature and the feminine visionary within us." Without The Sacred Marriage of the masculine and the feminine—the balanced union of opposites", the hero cannot return to our world to bestow his gifts on the community.
The second theme in the book is the rediscovery in our time of the history of ancient cultures and indigenous people whose Shaman-Mystics knew how to harmonize the outer laws of nature with the inner laws of consciousness, "igniting the visionary within us". This tradition was enabled by the achievement of symbolic consciousness, about 40,000 years ago, and was continued in various forms in ancient Egypt, the mystery schools of Crete and Greece, the Jewish traditions of the First Temple and Gnostic Christianity. However, the politics of Church and State forced this knowledge to go underground, wherever it appeared. The Deutoronomists inverted the true myth of the sacred fruit freely given in the Garden of life by the Great Goddess and substituted a vindictive, jealous male God, who demanded to be obeyed. They obliterated references to the feminine side of Yahweh, called Wisdom, who, in the most ancient tradition of Israel created the world together with him. Likewise, the Jesus of the Gnostic texts tells us to go within to develop what is within us, otherwise what we do not bring forth will destroy us. This emphasis on inner experience was anathema to the Church authorities who wanted total obedience and control of the masses.
Kovacs writes:"The teachings of Jesus now had to be about belief in Him and not about the direct inner experience of our own divinity." This would be the decisive factor in Western culture: individual experience was negated."
Yet despite centuries of repression, the Shaman-Mystic tradition kept reemerging from the depths. Kovacs tells us of the merging in Akmim of the ancient Egyptian and Presocratic Shaman-Mystic traditions with Platonism, Jewish and Arabic alchemical texts. In turn this amalgam was infused with Sufi ideas and imported into Europe reaching the famous school of Chartres cathedral in the heart of catholic Europe, where they were merged with European soul stories such as "the Grail" in an initiation to produce "the birth of the higher self". Kovacs emphasizes "All of these expressions reflect the reemergence of what Catholic Europe had repressed: soul, woman, and Gnosis." Kovacs points to five waves of awakening where " Each renaissance has challenged the Western heroic model of mental development with a more complete archetypal pattern for our evolutionary future". The fifth wave is our time, where we have rediscovered cultures that nurtured Shaman knowledge, quantum science and the mystic tradition are no longer strangers, the balance between masculine and feminine is being restored, and countless people have experienced anomalous phenomena such as altered states of consciousness, Near-Death Experiences, UFOs, and crop circles which "do not make sense within the context of a material world view". These changes are part of a wave of organization created by the Merchants of Light, who are drawn to us by (what Peter Kingsley calls) the vast missingness deep inside us and our longing to fill it with meaning and light.
The third theme of this book is an amazing story of overcoming tragedy by communication with the dead, during the three years when the author's mother, son and husband were killed in car accidents. After his death, Kovac's son, Pisti continued to communicate with his parents and his insights into the transformative process of our consciousness that the Merchants of Life are bringing about, is a central part of this book.
This book is a must read.
December 16, 2019
Interesting historical review of staying in touch with soulworks. The ideas were well researched and clearly presented, you have to follow up on the references to get much in depth discussion.
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March 17, 2021I was very moved by Mrs Kovac's book Merchants of Light. I was always puzzled how the western world could become so thoroughly cut off from its spiritual roots. Just look at the gracious bushmen dancing and you get an idea how poor our collective culture has become! The book is well researched and offers a good introduction about the various spiritual renaissance movements of the West and their vision of what humanity can be(come) and had already achieved in prehistoric times. The references list in itself is a treasure trove for anybody that wants to pierce the deceitful veil of our cultural past and learn about our true spiritual identity. That book has now a very special place in my heart and bookshelf!
November 29, 2024
A very beautiful book, you should definitely read it. I differ from the author on one point. We do not change consciousness, but consciousness directs us and does so by means of our language. We live according to the words that are formed, because sounds form a universal pattern (klankhelix, sound helix, Lauthelix). Languages arise because words become longer at the back (adjectio) and dissolve at the front (detractio). Linguists have never realised this. Now that they do, including Ingo Plag or Freek van de Velde, they are plagiarising the ideas of the 'white women from the lost millennium', because they mastered the soundhelix. The coins they left us prove this, because we can now interpret them with the help of the sound helix.
March 17, 2023
As a Jewish man who believes that the restoration of the 'divine feminine' to be absolutely vital to both our spiritual and physical survival, I wholeheartedly recommend this wonderfully educational and inspiring work. Not only does it elucidate the historical removal of 'the Goddess' and shamanic-mystic tradition from authorised scripture (and it's societal consequences), it also illuminates a path towards healing, wholeness and the reclamation of our souls. As such, I am very grateful to have come across the works of Betty Kovacs: a voice of hope and sanity in these dark, dystopian times in which we currently find ourselves.
August 23, 2022
One of the very best books I've ever read! The book we desperately need for our current times, both personally and collectively. Incredibly informative and insightful, and explained with such clarity. A truly transformative experience!
September 26, 2021
Lots, lots & lots of information! Very interesting.
March 27, 2022
Excellent. Must read.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews