Selective Book List

General Orientation: Suggested Essential Reading. There are 14 books recommended for a general overview of metahistorical issues and questions.

Pagan Christs by J. M. Robertson
Beyond Theology by Alan Watts
The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light by William Irwin Thompson.
Memories and Visions of Paradise by Richard Heinberg.
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
The Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford.
From Atlantis to the Sphinx by Colin Wilson.
The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler.
Arktos by Jocelyn Godwin.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.
Angels and Aliens by Keith Thompson.
Supernature by Lyall Watson.
Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine by James Lovelock.

 

Thematic Reading. These are 15 books suggested as basic reading in relation
to the five informing Themes of metahistory, three for each Theme:

Sacred Nature

Blackfoot Physics by F. David Peat.
Inanna by Diana Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer.
Voices of the First Day by Robert Lawlor.

Eternal Conflict

Cosmos, Chaos and World Order by Norman Cohn
The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm


Origins

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock.
The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker

Moral Design

I Ching, Translated by Richard Wilhelm
Voices of Our Ancestors by DhyaniYwahoo
Homo Ludens by Johann Huizinga

Technology

Coming to Our Senses by Maurice Berman
Technopoly by Neil Postman
In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander

The Seven Classics. These are books recommended for an understanding of the background of metahistory and history writing in general. They give in-depth perspective on the origins of historical writing, as well as insight into altered ways of looking at how history is told, how it can be spun, and how narratives can be evaluated.Commentaries on these books are incorporated into the essay, Background to Metahistory.

The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer
Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell
Hamlet's Mill by Gorgio de Santillanna and Herta von Dechend
When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone
Black Athena by Martin Bernal
Cities of Dreams by Stan Gooch

NOTE: Although the books of Hayden White are responsible for putting the word "metahistory" into current discourse, White's work is purely academic and rather forbiddingly loaded with freeze-dried categories and self-referential jargon. As I have said elsewhere in the site, metahistory is not an academic chess game, it is a path of liberation from belief-driven behavior. There is little or nothing in White that can contribute to the practice of metahistory as developed in this site.

Finally, there are a few reviews on current books of metahistorical bearing. This list is subject to periodic additions. At present (June 2004) it includes the following:

The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce.
A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala by Karen King.
The Mystery of the White Lions by Linda Tucker.