Heretics:
Past and Present

Brian Allan

Average Rating 6/10 (1 Review)

The occult, the paranormal, UFOs and aliens, the weird and wonderful are all covered in this remarkable and insightful book with new angles on the old and ideas that are only just coming to the fore in modern science. Brian Allan has spent decades going where other researchers fear to tread and asking difficult questions. Now in this all-encompassing book he discovers the depth of those our religious ancestors once called heretics. There was more to their often seemingly strange language; there was insight in those peculiar rituals; there was truth locked away in those arcane ideas. This book is a must for any serious researcher of the paranormal, an absolute requirement for UFO believers and a fantastic first port of call for those still lost on the esoteric highway of life.

About the Author:
Brian Allan has researched and commentated on the paranormal for 50 years and appeared in numerous radio and TV shows, conferences and documentaries on the subject.

'Are we prepared to see the world in a new way? Are we open enough to listen to those people once believed to be heretics and blasphemers? Prepare to bend your mind.'

Review by Geoff Ward (300611) Rating (6/10)

Review by Geoff Ward
Rating 6/10
Brian Allan chronicles various challenges made to consensus reality over the last hundred years or so, broadly under the headings of what he considers to be the 'twin spectres' of magic and religion, although the heresies recounted are not necessarily of the religious or inquisitorial kind, and often take us into the realms of conspiracy theory and 'New Age' discoveries. Indeed, his book is more to do with the definition of heresy as something profoundly in conflict with what is generally accepted than as a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine.

But every heresy is a banner for a perceived reality - and an exclusion - for those at odds with the established order, and Allan marks out the territory, following an introduction to the origins of occult belief, in a series of brief discussions of a range of occultists, magicians, religionists, psychics, writers and ufologists, including Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant and H P Lovecraft.

'It is strange that as our rejection of organized religion gains momentum, we still apparently need something to cling to and so we invent one.' This particularly telling sentence from Allan, although written while discussing the subject of UFOs, could be applied to all of the beliefs he explores.
However, I do not think it at all 'strange' that a new religion should be invented - although it does not have to be 'organized' as Allan perhaps inadvertently implies - to replace a conventional one which, for many, has outlived its usefulness. We have an innate religious drive which needs to be satisfied by a faith of some kind, and ufology is a good example of that.

Allan points out that, in all cases, it is the context in which the term 'heretic' is applied, and who applies it, that is vital - who decides someone is uttering heresy, and under what rules? Rightly, he sees the charge of heresy arising from fear of change among those with vested interests in the social status quo, but also, within scientific and technological communities, from arrogance and a blinkered world-view, all too common today.

It must be said that the book has many Shandyesque digressions into areas of personal interest to the author but only obliquely relevant to the general theme, such as comments on the Beatles, the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan and early sci-fi movies.

With similar obliquity, the books' tendentious sub-title is 'Can we now explain the unexplainable?' The answer, of course, as far as that 'now' is concerned in relation to the subject matter, is 'no', for the book has much more to do with seeking than finding.
Geoff Ward (30th June 2011)