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 show more 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. show less

A really good meditation into the sacred space of the heart. Melchizedek leads a guided version on the CD that I can't even listen to, because he is too obsessed with gendering things. There's a so-called female way and a male way into the heart. The Earth, Gaia, is female and the Sun is Male. Whatever dude. They're planets. Ugh.

In the market for secret spiritual knowledge, no strings attached? This book of half-scavenged, half-invented lore, presented in an attractive but not too expensive large-format book, should meet your needs. At least until the next product comes along.

Oy, this looked really good, but it turned out to be pretty boring! It seemed like most of the book was just an unexplained travel log.