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. ( )

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. ( )

Not enough information about the results of their writing. ( )