It's all connected! In more ways than one. Myth continues to open its vastness to me, yet withholds its secrets. Why are all myths all over the world so similar? Because they contain astronomical and mathematical knowledge and are the vehicles used to transmit this knowledge to the future.

Brilliant thesis. It raises the question, why do we stop looking? Why stop there? Where ever "there" happens to be, it is not the final answer and ceasing investigation stifles human growth. Yet here we are believing that the pyramids are only 4000 years old and that we are the first advanced civilization on earth.

Took me three months but I finally got through it. 10 stars for all the juicy mill material but subtracted 5 for it being way overwritten and often a little too opaque. Probably the perfect text to use as the basis for a windmill cult. JK...unless?

Extremely interesting, well researched, and novel hypothesis. My copy is now riddled with post it notes and highlights, I feel like I need to read it a second time and comb through every name and number I marked to make a mindmap chart of repeated characters or figures under new names to understand it better, but genuinely very interesting.

This book is a long format essay that connects the dots between the story of Hamlet and Hamlet's core characters to other earlier characters from around the world and earlier times (often referencing Plutarch, who we know Shakespear adapted Romeo & Juliet from). Most of the earlier stories are more direct in using references to astronomy and cosmology as a core aspect of the story - using storytelling and to both pass down information to the layperson, as well as safeguard more specialized information from the masses as it goes down through oral tradition with each successive generation.

"Vi saranno uomini le cui menti troveranno rifugio nella poesia, nell'arte e nella santa tradizione che sole liberano l'uomo dalla morte e lo volgono all'eternità, fintanto che le stelle continueranno a brillare su di un mondo ridotto per sempre al silenzio"
Ponziano

This is a book that reminds me of the mythological discourses by Joseph Campbell. It is an anthropological detective story that traces the origins of myths throughout the world and finds common elements in their origins. One finding is that the geography of myth is not that of the earth but rather is celestial. For anyone who is familiar with Greek mythology this is not a surprise, but we find here again that mythological language transcends cultural and geographic boundaries. The author explores myths unfamiliar and familiar. For example he discusses the Epic of Gilgamesh in "The Adventure and the Quest". In it he finds connections with myths from India to Greece and beyond linking the symbols to constellations in the sky. The chapter concludes with a reference to knowledge:

"The notion of fire, in various forms, has been one of the recurring themes of this essay. Gilgamesh, like Prometheus, is intimately associated with it. The principle of fire, and the means of producing or acquiring it are best approached through them." (p 316)

The essence of human knowledge seems bound up in these mythological origins. A difficult read, but worth persevering, Hamlet's Mill should be of interest to all who are interested in the origins of man's mind and his images of the world.

Una lode e un biasimo.
La lode è il grandioso lavoro dietro al tema trattato e la bravura nel tuffarsi in un difficilissimo groviglio di fonti e ambiguità.
Il biasimo è che gli autori (o l'autore), a causa di una prosa poco limpida e asistematica, trascinano il lettore in questo groviglio e invece di aiutarlo a trovare la giusta strada lo legano. A ciò è dovuto lo stile e l'uso eccessivo di note, nonché l'incapacità a rendere il discorso fluido e discorsivo.

Very brilliant and very, very difficult

This book proposes that the origin of human knowledge goes back to ancient astronomy-astrology and provides ample evidence that all humanity at one point has a common mythology based on observing the stars. I’ve written several books and have a PhD and let me say, the book is hard. Have a star chart next to you.

I was probably too young when my dad recommended this book to me as a "must-read." Slogged through diligently only to feel deflated and relieved that it had come to an end. Although, who knows, it may have altered my brain, and thus explain my current obsession with Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, and other such books. I am wary of recommending it to others.

Even though I have read a bunch of source materials referenced in this essay, the style of writing and lack of hand-holding, made it a hard go. That said, I enjoyed it so long as I accepted that the argument it was making was beyond my comprehension, the sheer pleasure of having so many myths told in tandem made it a page-turner.

An intense overview of the common origins of science and myth. One example being the European myth of Hamlets (Ahmlodhi's) Mill and the scientific concept of the precession of the equinoxes. A facinating read.

This is a dense analysis of ancient mythology in which the authors explain that most myth is not about the adventures of historical human characters but of astronomical bodies. There are similar stories and themes in myths around the world, not necessarily because there was an Atlantis providing a cultural heritage for everyone on earth, but because everyone observes the same skies. The sun always appears to make the same annual journey through the background stars, and ancient cultures were also very much aware of precession. This is where it gets the most interesting. It's all well and good to notice Mars takes roughly two years to complete an orbit, and to write stories about a character with warlike attributes who returns after a two year journey, as von Dechend notes in the preface to the book. It's much more impressive to see that many cultures understood the almost 26,000 year cycle of the precession of the earth's axis. Such knowledge tells us civilizations were devoting a minimum of several centuries to careful astronomical observation, because it would take generations to notice a one degree change. It would take thousands of years to notice the vernal equinox sun or winter solstice sun moving through various constellations. Yet many cultures did notice, and when they pass down stories involving zodiac signs we need to decide if they are extremely ancient clues which time the stories to distant epochs. Is a golden calf about the vernal equinox sun in the Age of Taurus? Is the golden fleece about the sun in Aires? Are stories of lions about the age of Leo? If so, then civilization goes back much further than we have been taught to believe.

Themes the authors focus on include the "Mill" of the title, with spinning millstones representing the circular rotation of planetary orbits and our own planet around its axis, generating our view of a spinning sky. As so many ancient cultures have myths about the world tree (used as an axis shaft) being chopped down or having its roots gnawed away at, or the sudden unhinging of the mill peg, and the destruction of the mill, we must wonder why ancient writers did not view the pole of rotation as a permanent fixture. Is it merely because they noticed gradual change, with a series of pole stars over the 25,800 years of precession? Or did they survive more than mere gradual change? Were there sudden pole shifts in which the entire surface of the earth suddenly changed position, with earthquakes and tidal waves and the demise of great civilizations? The authors, early on, mention "catastrophes and the periodic rebuilding of the world." (p. 3) Such events would certainly be the focus of any writing done by survivors in the generations following such an event - and one good way to convey knowledge of such ideas through generations of post-catastrophe dark-ages would be to simplify the scientific and mathematical principles into myth. So we see the same unusual numbers in Egypt, in Norway, in India, in Mexico... and we are taught some science without necessarily realizing what we pass on to the next generation.

"Hamlet's Mill" would have benefitted greatly from better editing. A huge mass of relevant material is presented, but not organized with the flow of a well-honed argument. I think the information presented was ground-breaking, and as an author myself, I found it extremely useful. My own discovery of specific patterns in ancient writing may not have been deciphered had I not read "Hamlet's Mill" and other great books on mythology and astronomy and ancient history. Readers interested in an analysis of ancient myth may want to read Joseph Campbell's "The Mythic Image" or for an archeoastronomical denconstruction of myth, perhaps Hancock and Bauval's "Message of the Sphinx" or Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods." "Hamlet's Mill" merely hinted that major religions may really be more about astronomical processes than we thought, but for more such astrotheological analysis of the major religions read books by Acharya S like "Suns of God" or "The Christ Conspiracy." Weidner and Bridges' "The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye," Michell's "The Dimensions of Paradise," the Flem-Aths' "When the Sky Fell," Montaigne's "Pole Shift: Evidence Will Not Be Silenced" and Hapgood's "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings" are probably all of great interest to anyone who likes "Hamlet's Mill."

gud shit, if you discount the Freemason biases