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7 Works 73 Members 3 Reviews

Works by William Meyers

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1942-10-18
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Places of residence
New York, USA
Organizations
Tibet House

Members

Reviews

This is a book that is easy to summarize but very hard to discuss in depth. The concept is easy: William Meyers believes that the old gods, and the new, were actually real people who once lived very long lives, thousands of years in some cases, and they were so long-lived because they were/are vampires. He thinks the historical record, as well as common themes that run through world religions, points to vampirism being a part of our world since human beings organized enough to need or appreciate governments and spiritually dogmatic beliefs.

I walk a fine line when it comes to conspiracy theory. It’s very subjective as to whether or not something like this is harmful. Martin Gardner would think so and we can all agree he was way smarter than me. But I am not bothered by this as much as I am the recent “false flag” trends that cause cretins to harass the families of dead children and deny the existence of bomb victims. This is not as horrible to me as shady purveyors of “non-Western medicine” who convince hopeless cancer victims that medical science is evil, driven only by profits and making them sicker via chemo, and then sell those cancer sufferers very expensive crystals or pyramids or instructions for miserable regimens of coffee enemas out of the goodness of their hearts.

This book is entertaining conspiracy, a form of alternate history that shows how creatively human beings can weave together disparate ideas into a larger tapestry that tries to tell the story of humanity. And it seems to do little harm. I don’t see holy wars or anti-vaccination screeds or weird instructions on how to mutilate the genitals of children springing forth from this theory. And that’s not just because this theory requires both a belief that mythological gods were once living beings AND that vampires are real, something that will require a huge leap of faith in the average reader. Rather, this attempt to explain interesting correlations in religious stories and how they all point to a world shaped and ruled by vampires is not a dogmatic belief system.

It’s the dogma that gets you. It’s always the dogma. And without dogma we’ve got ourselves a fun, sometimes bizarre, interpretation of recorded human history.

This is a snippet from a much longer analysis, the whole of which you can find at:
https://www.oddthingsconsidered.com/vampires-or-gods-by-william-meyers/
… (more)
 
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oddbooks | Apr 29, 2023 |

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Kinsun Loh Illustrator
Steve Bucellato Illustrator
Miranda Meeks Illustrator
Andrey Pervukhin Illustrator

Statistics

Works
7
Members
73
Popularity
#240,526
Rating
½ 3.4
Reviews
3
ISBNs
14
Languages
2

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