Drunvalo Melchizedek

OK, so the epochal date of Dec. 21, 2012 has come and gone, and criticizing this trivial book may seem unfair. But it deserves to be said that this author's books are the moral equivalent of robbing temples. Here as elsewhere, he cobbles together bits of half-understood ancient lore, selectively recounts meetings with "elders" of exotic cultures, and glues these bits together with dollops of pseudoscience.

Here's an example, from the present book, of Drunvalo's indifference to the material he steals. The ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá (or Chi'ch'èen Ìitsha' in the Maya) is ignorantly misspelled "Chitzen Itza." He can't be bothered to properly spell the names of his present-day Maya informants. He promiscuously mixes Maya and Aztec cultural material as if there were no distinction. Even his cover art is Aztec, and the book is rife with mentions of Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec god — probably because he's the only Mesoamerican deity most white people have ever heard of. Hey, it's all "ancient wisdom," right?

I don't blame the readers of these books, or not much. They're looking for information about reality, which they suspect is not fully explained either by empiricism or dogmatic religion. But what this author gives them is slop. Everything about Drunvalo Melchizedek, from his multi-culti pseudonym to his lazily sensationalist "teachings," is a con.… (meer)