2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future
by Mark Borax
Book Summary Information
Author: Mark BoraxEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-15
ISBN: 1583942084
Number of pages: 264
Publisher: Frog Books
Book Reviews of 2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future
Book Review: No stars for a no-brainer!
Summary: 1 Stars
I read this book with ever-increasing incredulity, not, I hasten to add, because of any issues to do with the synopsis as can be read above, but wholly to do with the fact that not a single word of that description can be found within the pages of this shallow and ego-driven nonsense. That synopsis is as far from a truthful product description as you will find anywhere. You could not possibly compare the author's vacuous ramblings with Carlos Castaneda. How could you? Borax is an intellectual pygmy who has not obviously read any esoteric material except possibly Rudolph Steiner, and even that is just as a name-drop, as there's certainly nothing more. And to print a huge "2012" in two inch high letters on the front cover is a further absurd exaggeration of the content. That's utterly dishonest.
There are many, many well-researched and certainly far better written books on the subject of 2012, but it becomes plain that our author has not come across a single one of them. If he had, he might well have realised that to join those brave explorers of a new age, you had to come up with some content. And I have to say that I have never, ever come across a book of this genre so utterly lacking in content. I'd rate the content pertaining to the 2012 genre as being about 6%, and that is most certainly nothing to do with any research on the author's part. Even the content relating to the author's actual apparent vocation, that of astrologer is on the most vacuous level.
This book was published in 2008. How can it be, then, that there is not a single reference to John Major Jenkins, who first broke ground with his detailed archeoastronomical studies of the Mayan Calendar, or to Jose Arguelles, with his understanding of Harmonic Convergence (which is, amazingly, actually mentioned in Borax's book!), or to Carl Johan Calleman who understood the Mayan Calendar as a metaphysical map of the evolution of consciousness, or to Barbara Hand Clow, whose interpretation of Calleman's work in "The Mayan Code" should be required reading for anybody remotely curious about the metaphysics of 2012, and who also is an astrologer, but more than that, a shaman, and a seer, which Borax could never aspire to. What about Geoff Stray's labour of love compilation of 2012 end-time information, or Jay Weidner's extraordinary research into the Cross of Henday, or Drunvalo Melchizedek's truly cosmic information, or Lawrence Joseph's scary but optimistic work on the material and scientific issues of our civilisation's demise, Apocalypse 2012.
Borax certainly could not have read Daniel Pinchbek's "2012, the Year of the Mayan Prophesy" because had he done so, he would have recognised it as the definitive benchmark for a first-person memoir, written by a master of his craft, and loaded with enough content to spill out in several directions. In fact, Pinchbeck's book might have stopped him from any absurd attempt to publish his own lack of understanding of most of life's mysteries.
And Atlantis. Our hero is gobsmacked by the concept of Atlantis, but here again, the idea of actually doing any reading and research of his own simply would never occur to him. He's amazed at almost anything, but won't do any more than simply say how blown away he is by everything.
And there are many more researchers who should be required reading as a background to filling in the whole necessary knowledge-base for a better grasp of what we are, where we came from, and where we might be going. Graham Hancock and Ervin Laszlo come to mind, not to mention the Theosophists. The utter conceit of the blurb on the back of Borax's book ("...he was part of the original mystery school that Ellias Lonsdale founded...) Has he any idea at all of what a "mystery school" was in ancient times? Not unexpectantly, there is no bibliography, nor even an index.
The only interesting stuff in the book comes out of the mouth of Lonsdale, his hero and mentor, but it is not at all clear if the author has any clue at all about the great man is talking about. Maybe it's just as well, Borax is not one for insights. The core content of Lonsdale's words I have no problem with. But Borax drowns out the message with his own issues, and with his own facile pop style of writing. Basically Lonsdale should have batted Borax away, and told him to write up his personal diary by all means, but to leave him, Lonsdale out, please. Borax comes across as an emotionally immature, socially backward teenager, but get this: he's actually a grown man, who can't resist any attractive girl who comes into view. Those parts of the book dealing with his love life, or lack of love life, are just plain ridiculous, being somehow inserted into the story which, don't forget, is still to do with 2012. It's the most appalling mishmash of content and banality, this quite obviously deeply insecure person filling pages with the most boring and trite adolescent nonsense.
There is some of the most excruciatingly embarrassing dialogue I have ever seen in print. How could he possibly have allowed the following to appear? On page 40, after his first reading with his hero, the master astrologer, Lonsdale, he is walked out into the lobby of the building, as a "woman with dark hair and piercing eyes looked up from her briefcase":
'Susannah,' Lonsdale said, 'I've just met the most amazing thirty-three year old!'
The dark-haired chiropractor took my hand and stared into me for a long moment, scrutinising the effects of the reading. She looked from me to the astrologer, then back again. 'Wow,' she said. 'Wow.'
I wanted to hurl this rubbish across the room.
And right at the end of the book, I could not actually believe what I was reading:
"I am so grateful to my parents, and have never forgotten my mother saying when I was five years old, 'My son is going to write the Great American Novel.'
Look Mom and Dad - I did it!"
At this point, I felt quite ill.
There appears to be no trace of irony here at all. Also, what novel? This book is a memoir, a self-indulgent personal account of a non-life, and it should never have been made public. No stars for a no-brainer, but the system won't allow it, so one star it'll have to be. Lonsdale can have the star, because I'd say that the master astrologer is the only star in this show.
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