Secret Knowledge Research Articles

THE STORY

1 2 7 R T H E S T O R Y B . H . F A I R C H I L D It has no name and arrives from nowhere, eager for new adventures: the murmur and cries of the crowded streets of Istanbul or Rome or Brooklyn, the blazing eyes of the last gray wolf deep in a cave in New Mexico, the sob of the wind between the disks of an abandoned tractor on the high plains, the homeless man chasing his runaway grocery cart down Sunset Boulevard, a young woman looking out from the front porch of a duplex in Enid, Oklahoma, waiting for the mail. It has, as they say, a mind of its own, bearing secret knowledge, truths from another world, transparent and untranslatable, luminous and cryptic. It arrives almost silently, only the slight crush of lawn grass beneath its sandals, a surprise even though you have somehow expected it. Your hands, rough and calloused from the toils of the imagination, reach out to gently shake its narrow shoulders, to tousle its well-combed hair silvered by moonlight. Where have you been? It says nothing, of course, walks to the far corner of the room, and begins to pray. After waiting for hours, you o√er it co√ee and a slice of pecan pie, then more co√ee. When it leaves, you follow close behind in fear and a traveler’s anxiety. Where can a story end? If it arrives from nowhere, where can it end? 1 2 8 F A I R C H I L D Y But then, as you pass through familiar streets, past the clapboard houses, the pomegranate tree just coming into bloom, the blue Buick parked by the curb, you understand, for there is your mother among the bird cries of the porch swing, reading a letter from a small island somewhere in the Pacific. There is the front door with its torn screen, the voices of a soap opera from the radio, the creak and whisper of cottonwood branches overhead. This is where the story ends. And now you know, this is also where it begins, and you lean into the light, put the pen to paper, and write. ...

The Ditty of Sovijus (1261). The Nine Spleens of the Marvellous Boar: An Indo-European Approach to a Lithuanian Myth

In order to understand the narrative about Sovijus (1261), the author proposes a comparative analysis with similar myths in other Indo-European cultures: Hindu mythology (Indra), Irish mythology (Finn), and Scandinavian mythology (Sigurd). These myths emphasise the role of a sacred animal (Indra’s tricephalous monster, Finn’s salmon, Sigurd’s dragon, Sovijus’ boar with nine spleens). The animal allows the hero access to secret knowledge (divination in the case of Finn and Sigurd, revelation about cremation for Sovijus). Rituals or narratives of other folklore genres, such as tales, could be additional sources for a comparative analysis.

Secrets Revealed: Alchemical Books in Early-Modern England

In 1688 William Cooper, a London bookseller, published A catalogue of chymicall books. For two decades he had collected these titles, locating, identifying and recording details of 422 English books. This list documents one component of the history of alchemy. It also provides a measure of the vitality of alchemical pursuits in Restoration England. The number of titles listed in Cooper’s Catalogue are plotted by year in Figure 1. Cooper lists several dozen alchemical books printed in London in the second half of the sixteenth century, with a concentration of activity in the 1590s. The first decade of the new century was relatively quiet. Production then rose slightly and ran at a relatively even pace through to the 1640s. It increased tenfold in the 1650s. After the Restoration, production continued at this elevated level until trailing off at the end of the century. These books present historians of science with two apparent paradoxes. The first is that they made secret knowledge public. Alchemy was an arcane art. Its traditions were learned through divine inspiration, instruction by a master under an oath of secrecy, and the study of esoteric texts. These texts encoded the procedures to make the philosophers’ stone. In prose and verse, paradoxes, digressions, erroneous quantities, numerical encodings, metaphors and allegories concealed secrets from the uninitiated reader. Some works bore the name of a mythical or pseudonymous

Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not a Virgin (review)

Reviewed by: Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not a Virgin Karen Coats FitzGerald, Helen. Amelia O'Donohue Is So Not a Virgin. Sourcebooks, 2010. 217p. Paper ed. ISBN 978-1-4022-4373-8 $9.99 Ad Gr. 9-12. The gossipy, scandal-bait tone of the title of this British import is cunningly deceptive in more ways than one: Amelia O'Donohue is not the central concern of the novel, her virginity is never really at issue, and the novel is not the typical catty [End Page 233] chick-lit that the title might suggest. Rather, the plot centers on Rachel Ross, a Scottish girl who has just started at a new boarding school. There quiet, solitary Rachel becomes the person that everyone confides in, but she also receives more than her share of bullying. She's completely stunned, however, when she finds a newly delivered baby in a hall closet, and she tries, with her knowledge of school secrets, to discover whose baby it is while hiding the infant from the staff. Originally Rachel's prime suspect, Amelia O'Donohue ends up joining Rachel's sleuthing, and together the girls try to sort out which student is keeping this terrible secret, maybe even from herself. Readers will be completely caught off-guard by the baby, but they will quickly be able to sort through clues that have been laid all along as to the identity of the baby's mother, and the intense and secretive atmosphere of the boarding school is effectively conveyed. The book suffers from strained realism at times, though, especially in the tidy resolution, which includes the complete support of the new mother's parents and friends and a boy who likes her enough to take it all in stride. Still, the detached and oddly focused emotional state of Rachel is credibly portrayed throughout, especially when retroactively considered. Readers who've ever wondered how in the world someone could not know she was pregnant will come away with a reasonable picture of how such denial might indeed be possible. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

<i>Tiresias</i>, Film Treatment, 1985

TREATMENT TIRESIAS The Hooded Falcon A Film by Peter Whitehead 90 minutes. Colour (C) Copyright P L Whitehead 6 Glendower Place London SW7 who delights in signs ... Robert Graves1 Introduction In archaic legend of Oedipus, Tiresias is introduced as most renowned Seer in whole of Greece. We are told that he was very old, he was blind, and foretell future because he could understand language of birds. It is Tiresias who reveals to Oedipus truth of his crimes. It is Tiresias who makes Oedipus conscious of what has been only known unconsciously. At first Tiresias resists divulging this secret knowledge, but Oedipus forces him to do so. Tiresias knows that conscious mind of Oedipus cannot tolerate such truth. It can only drive him to madness. And so, Oedipus rationalist, face to face with images of his past that should have remained forgotten, blinds himself- and is banished from City of Thebes and comforts of civilisation forever, to be an outcast and a wanderer. Why does Oedipus blind himself? Is it a meta phor for going mad? At moment Oedipus blinds himself he is of course mad- but is he not in some unconscious way expressing his frustration and anger at not being equal to power of Tiresias? Is he not showing, unconsciously, his desire to be identical to Tiresias? At this moment especially, would Oedipus not have preferred to have been at some time initiated into Hermetic powers of Tiresias, to withstand knowledge that can only otherwise drive him to madness? is hidden meaning in this relationship, this sadomasochistic love between Oedipus and Tiresias, two Blindmen? How did Tiresias become blind? We are told several different stories by Ovid and other classical writers as to how Tiresias became blind and, related to it, received power to prophesy future. Ovid wrote: Some say that Athene, who had blinded him for inadvertently seeing her bathing, was moved by his Mother's plea and, taking serpent Erichthonious gave order: Cleanse ears of Tiresias with your tongue that he may understand language of prophetic birds.2 Others say that once, on Mount Cyllene, Tiresias had seen two serpents in act of coupling. When both attacked him, he struck at them with his staff, killing female. Immediately he was turned into a woman, and became a celebrated harlot; but seven years later he happened to see same sight again at same spot and regained his manhood by killing male serpent. Tiresias Seer- prophet- Shaman- is initiated into those pagan mysteries that are not revealed to ordinary men. This means He has seen Goddess naked- he has witnessed truth that is more than rational, uninitiated eyes can bear. Only through initiation into mysteries of Goddess can he withstand such knowledge without going mad. It is not surprising to discover also that Tiresias is attributed with other important feature normally attributed to Shaman- or primitive magician- bisexuality. We know from [Mircea] Eliade that Shamans from east invariably dressed as women, especially in their states of ecstasy when they are in contact with highest powers- their dual sexual roles symbolising their dual existence on earth and heaven, latter expressed by wearing of Robes of Goddess, symbolising Divine Knowledge.3 Others say that Hera one day began reproaching Zeus for his numerous infidelities. defended them by arguing that, at any rate, when he did share her couch, she had more enjoyable time by far. Women of course derive infinitely greater plea sure from sexual act than men, he insisted. What nonsense, cried Hera, the exact contrary is case and well you know it. Tiresias, summoned to settle dispute from his personal experience, answered: If parts of love plea sure be counted as ten, Thrice three go to women, only one to men. …

<em>Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment</em>, edited by Albert D. Pionke and Denise Tischler Millstein

Reviewed by: Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment Martha Vicinus (bio) Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment, edited by Albert D. Pionke and Denise Tischler Millstein; pp. xii + 225. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010, £55.00, $99.95. Readers of Victorian Studies will probably know the story of the dying Luddite. Looking up at the clergyman hovering over his bed, he asked, “Can you keep a secret?” When the clergyman nodded in the affirmative, the Luddite winked and said, “So can I,” and died. Secrets left untold die; neither the clergyman nor we will ever know the inner workings of the Luddite movement. Yet most secrets are known, or half-known; their afterlife is as intriguing as their original meaning. This collection of case studies will expand our understanding of how and why secrecy functioned in so many different venues and genres. While some authors continue to find Michel Foucault’s influential writings useful, others suggest promising new approaches. As different critical paradigms are taken up, fresh insights into the “economies of knowledge and concealment” will come to the fore. Albert D. Pionke’s introduction surveys the different forms of secrecy, including deception, concealment, and discretion, and provides a guide to current criticism. His various literary examples highlight the polymorphous quality of secrecy. Christina Rossetti characteristically turned the practice of secrecy, rather than any particular secret, into a form of female power, while Elizabeth Barrett Browning viewed secrecy as an unfortunate social necessity that concealed a woman’s authentic self. Although the “bewildering range of secrets and motives for keeping them” makes it extremely difficult to generalize about Victorian attitudes (10), Pionke concludes that private secrets were more acceptable than public secrecy. Lady Audley’s secret bigamy (and madness) may have been deeply shocking to readers, but the 1844 revelation that the Post Office was regularly opening mail in the name of national security had far greater consequences. [End Page 147] Madness and extreme emotions are central to several essays. Maria K. Bachman suggests that the real villain of The Woman in White (1860) is the ostensible hero, Walter Hartright, who repeatedly misleads readers by creating a “tangled web of deceit—an amalgam of narrative gaps, fragmentary, and at times, confusing stories, either incomplete, inconsistent, or incoherent, arranged by a master of deception” (93). While one may agree with her reading, she fails to explain why readers like Hartright and enjoy his deceptions. Denise Tischler Millstein analyzes the various ways in which George Eliot uses the poetry of Lord Byron in Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) “to reveal the threatening overlap of political and sexual secrets” (135). Hers is a subtle analysis that just redeems the priggish Felix for this reader. Robert P. Fletcher contrasts Augusta Webster’s complex handling of the first-person pronoun in her monologues with her own refusal of the personal. Webster, he argues, carefully distinguishes herself from her “monomaniacal male narrators” who tell “Gothic tales of jealousy, obsession, and violent secrets” (152). He concludes that these characters were an opportunity to demonstrate the price of violent heterosexual masculinity while keeping her feminist self apart from her readers. Several non-literary essays show the pervasiveness and contradictions of secret knowledge. Michael Claxton explores the dilemmas of late-nineteenth-century professional magicians who had to adapt to “a changing world in which the desire to create wonder was increasingly in tension with the technological and literary urge to dispel it” (166). Audiences were altogether too eager to expose their most difficult tricks, which were dependent upon the suspension of reason. Ironically, as the status of professional magicians rose, books revealing trade secrets and amateur magicians proliferated. Eleanor Fraser Stansbie skillfully decodes “The Fairy Feller’s Master-stroke” (1855–64), a tour de force by the painter and parricide Richard Dadd. Stansbie argues that through this extraordinary painting, filled with small creatures and an enormous “fairy feller,” whose back is turned to the viewer, Dadd was able to express his personal frustrations with imprisonment in Bethlem Asylum and to keep some portion of himself hidden from the gaze of his doctors. David J. Bradshaw’s essay on John Henry Newman also focuses on the benefits of...

African-derived religions on the Web: Cyber “terreiros” (places where Afro-Brazilian fetichism is practiced) and Global African Diaspora

Through websites, mailing lists, social networking and blogs, which discuss issues associated with African-based religiosity, I evaluate the contribution of the Internet for the creation of a new social network that is being built, once the real terreiro is being replaced by the virtual terreiro. Also evaluate its contribution for the transformation of traditionally oral-centered religions into hypertext religions, as they are being reconfigured virtually, in an image-text space, hypertext space. Such facts show that there is a new reality: the democratization of knowledge (even the secret knowledge, liturgics), and the new path to establish the diasporal African-derived religious field as a space to globally forecast African-derived religions, with magic-religious services available or as a self resource − when the Internet transforms the so-called minority religions in global religions, and they become, therefore, socially inclusive religions.

Religiões afro-derivadas na web: cyberterreiros e afrodiáspora global

Through websites, mailing lists, social networking and blogs, which discuss issues associated with African-based religiosity, I evaluate the contribution of the Internet for the creation of a new social network that is being built, once the real terreiro is being replaced by the virtual terreiro. Also evaluate its contribution for the transformation of traditionally oral-centered religions into hypertext religions, as they are being reconfigured virtually, in an image-text space, hypertext space. Such facts show that there is a new reality: the democratization of knowledge (even the secret knowledge, liturgics), and the new path to establish the diasporal African-derived religious field as a space to globally forecast African-derived religions, with magic-religious services available or as a self resource ? when the Internet transforms the so-called minority religions in global religions, and they become, therefore, socially inclusive religions.

Religiões afro-derivadas na web: cyberterreiros e afrodiáspora global

Through websites, mailing lists, social networking and blogs, which discuss issues associated with African-based religiosity, I evaluate the contribution of the Internet for the creation of a new social network that is being built, once the real terreiro is being replaced by the virtual terreiro. Also evaluate its contribution for the transformation of traditionally oral-centered religions into hypertext religions, as they are being reconfigured virtually, in an image-text space, hypertext space. Such facts show that there is a new reality: the democratization of knowledge (even the secret knowledge, liturgics), and the new path to establish the diasporal African-derived religious field as a space to globally forecast African-derived religions, with magic-religious services available or as a self resource ? when the Internet transforms the so-called minority religions in global religions, and they become, therefore, socially inclusive religions.

Multifactor Identity Verification Using Aggregated Proof of Knowledge

The problem of identity theft, that is, the act of impersonating others' identities by presenting stolen identifiers or proofs of identities, has been receiving increasing attention because of its high financial and social costs. In this paper, we address the problem of verification of such identifiers and proofs of identity. Our approach is based on the concept of privacy preserving multifactor verification of such identifiers and proofs achieved by the development of a new cryptographic primitive, which uses aggregate signatures on commitments that are then used for aggregate zero-knowledge proof of knowledge (ZKPK) protocols. The resultant signatures are very short and the ZKPs are succinct and efficient. We prove the security of our scheme under the co-gap Diffie-Hellman (co-GDH) assumption for groups with bilinear maps. Our cryptographic scheme is an improvement in terms of the performance, flexibility, and storage requirements than the existing efficient ZKPK techniques that may be used to prove under zero knowledge and the knowledge of multiple secrets.

The Secret Knowledge of Folk Healers in Macedonian Traditional Culture

The Secret Knowledge of Folk Healers in Macedonian Traditional Culture

The Renaissance Englishwoman in Code: Blabbs and Cryptographers at Elizabeth I's Court

In this essay I argue that the marginalisation of women's work in the early modern period was, sometimes, an enabling condition. Shakespeare's Bianca converses with her lover in a secret language, and Mary Stuart similarly smuggles letters out of prison to her supporters in code, trying to circumvent Elizabeth's spies and cryptographers. Women writers did not always seek to circulate their words or see them in print, in other words, and what looks like illiteracy on the part of women - poor spelling or garbled syntax or a crabbed penmanship - may instead mark a skillful command of letters, a dazzling 'high' literacy which rivals Latin learning, and occasionally disables it. Many women at Elizabeth's court during the years of Mary Stuart's intriguing display a similar expertise in cryptography. I also explore Jane Seager's 1589 New Year's gift to Elizabeth as well as some of Elizabeth's speeches about Mary Stuart as evidence that early modern women writers might represent themselves as practitioners of secret knowledge, disdaining publication, courting misreading.

BCH coding and intelligent watermark embedding: Employing both frequency and strength selection

This paper presents a novel approach of adaptive visual tuning of a watermark in Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain. The proposed approach intelligently selects appropriate frequency bands as well as optimal strength of alteration. Genetic Programming (GP) is applied to structure the watermark by exploiting both the characteristics of human visual system and information pertaining to a cascade of conceivable attacks. The developed visual tuning expressions are dependent on frequency and luminance sensitivities, and contrast masking. To further enhance robustness, spread spectrum based watermarking and Bose–Chadhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) coding is employed. The combination of spread spectrum sequence, BCH coding and GP based non-linear structuring makes it extremely difficult for an attacker to gain information about the secret knowledge of the watermarking system. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed approach against the existing approaches. Especially, the margin of improvement in robustness will be of high importance in medical and context aware related applications of watermarking.

Yoga in Asia—mimetic History: Problems in the Location of Secret Knowledge

On one level, and with reference to a specific frame of reference, embodied forms of practice that have come to be associated with Yoga and Taoist philosophy appear to be very similar if not identical in terms of form, structure, and purpose. However, there is no clear-cut history of communication between eastern and southern Asia concerning the exchange of ideas linked to these practices, and where some scholars presume direct, linear exchange, and obvious congruity, others see radical difference and discontinuity. Taking the inspired work of the Bengali scholar Prabodh Candar Bagchi as a point of departure—and eternal return—the argument presented here is twofold. First, it is highly problematic to conceptualize cross-cultural contact in the premodern period not just in terms of the modern geopolitics of nationalism—which is fairly obvious—but also in terms of a history of ideas that is itself structured by modernity. Second, secret knowledge transforms what is in fact impossible—immortality, transcendence, enlightenment—into a historical vortex that is both local and global. Mimetic history is the recursive pattern, structured through the paradox of secrecy, whereby the impossibility of embodied enlightenment is reflected in forms of practice that, in terms of both time and space, endlessly anticipate perfection.

Jewish Alchemists in Central Europe in the Later Middle Ages: Some New Sources

Jewish Alchemists in Central Europe in the Later Middle Ages:Some New Sources Gerd Mentgen (bio) "Alchemy [as well as astrology] was regarded as a Jewish specialty, despite the fact that the number of Jewish alchemists known to us is small."1 Although this statement by Joshua Trachtenberg, which dates from 1943, remains basically valid, a close look at the sources reveals that records of Jewish alchemists are not quite as rare as Trachtenberg and other authors, with the exception of the late Raphael Patai,2 have assumed. Here I will present hitherto neglected evidence about a number of Jews who engaged (or may have engaged) in alchemy. 1. About half a century ago, Gerhard Eis examined a manuscript in the library of the University of Heidelberg, entitled Alchymey teuczsch (= "Alchemy in German"). He came to the conclusion that it was "one of the earliest German monuments of alchemical activity [End Page 345] and literature."3 Writing in code, one of its authors hinted that the composition of the text began in 1426 under the sign of Taurus. There are other astrological sections, too, but the manuscript is mainly about a group of four alchemists who tried to produce gold in the year 1423. Eis showed that the alchemists endeavored to attract the interest of Bishop Leonhard of Passau and must have lived not far from this city. The leader of this group seems to have been a certain Master Niklas Jankowitz. The codex itself does not deal with a Jew, but its cover does: a parchment diploma edited by the cousins Johannes and Georg, landgraves of Leuchtenberg and counts of Hals, two noblemen from the Passau region. They guaranteed the Jew Salman Teublein, his wife, and his servants the same rights enjoyed by the Jews of Regensburg and Straubing. At the time, the landgraves represented the duke of Bayern-Straubing vis-à-vis the Jews of Regensburg. They allowed Salman Teublein to hold religious services and maintain a school in any town in their territory and to lend money as well.4 At first sight this diploma has nothing to do with the manuscript it binds. A closer look indicates otherwise: in the document, the landgraves insist that Salman Teublein not reveal his secret art to anyone as long as he and his family live under their jurisdiction. If Salman intended to leave, he must teach the landgraves the three best procedures he knew or the three they liked best, and declare under oath that he had not withheld any further information concerning these operations. For their part, the landgraves agreed never to reveal to anyone outside their own family details about Salman's secret knowledge, so that it would not become known beyond the borders of their county. I agree with Gerhard Eis's hypothesis that the authors of the Alchymey teuczsch were probably Salman Teublein's successors and were the alchemists of the landgraves of Leuchtenberg.5 Fortunately, this is not all we know about Salman Teublein's career. There is evidence that in 1415 he was called Salman of Hals and lived in Innsbruck. This must have been after his engagement at the landgraves' [End Page 346] court. His new lord, Duke Frederic IV of Austria, who was also Count of Tyrol, somehow became aware of the special expertise of his new Jew. When a Jew named Isaak of Nuremberg was arrested in the duke's lands without a travel permit and sent to prison, Isaak's sister Henndlein and his brother Simon tried to get him released with the help of the magistrate of Regensburg, where they were both living. Salman got involved in the case and tried to help Isaak gain his freedom. A third party offered the duke 2,000 florins, but could not reach an agreement with him to allow Isaak to return to Nuremberg. Salman was more successful. On March 18 he reported to the magistrate of Regensburg that Duke Frederic had agreed to release Isaak from prison on condition that Salman pay over 600 florins. In addition, and evidently of greater importance to the prince, Salman had to reveal to Frederic the precious art which he had mastered and which had...

‘Do you mind if I invent you?’: ethical questions in the writing of creative non-fiction

‘In autobiography’, writes Nancy Miller (2002: 210), ‘the acts - performed and witnessed - that might seem to beg not to be revealed are the very ones that produce writing. ’Secret knowledge’, she continues, ‘becomes public shame …As you tell the secrets of others, and violate family codes, you separate yourself from their power over you, even as you return to them in memory’(Miller 2002: 210). By definition the memoir project I have been writing has been carved from shame, as it were, since it seeks to talk about what was held taboo, a family secret. And even if all involved can agree in principle it is a good thing for the story to be told, nevertheless shame itself may cling on doggedly.

Things in Doubt: <i>Inventio,</i> Dialectic, and Jewish Secrets in Cynewulf’s <i>Elene</i>

Cynewulf’s Old English poem Elene, which relates the story of St. Helen’s finding of the True Cross in Jerusalem, is also a story of Christian learning and the dialectical pursuit of truth. In the poem, the cross is not simply a symbol or an emblem of Christ. 2 Rather, it is a mode of connection that ultimately makes the intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christian learning possible. Elene represents the True Cross as an intersection through which arguments supporting Christianity are discovered, while the poem also articulates the conditions under which Christian learning can be pursued and fulfilled. The poem’s Christians are frustrated in the process of discovering truth because they are subject to the privileged knowledge of the Jews, who become the Christians’ epistemological limit in the poem. Only after the Jews are forced to reveal their secret knowledge can the Christians possess the True Cross and therefore make effective arguments for their faith to establish it in the world. Elene has frequently been interpreted as an allegory, an approach with some limitations. 3 I argue that Elene ultimately becomes an allegory not

Longing for Reconciliation: A Challenge for Women with Borderline Personality Disorder

The aim of this study was to explore the way in which traumatic childhood experiences influenced the daily life of women with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). An explorative design comprising in-depth interviews and a qualitative content analysis was used. The findings revealed one main theme—Longing for Reconciliation—comprising two themes: (1) Living with a sense of shame and guilt and (2) Struggling to be released from a sense of being trapped. Longing for reconciliation influenced the women's daily life as well as their search for the meaning of traumatic childhood experiences. New meaning can emerge through change, forgiveness, and reconciliation, thus helping women with BPD overcome their struggle and gain the insight and strength to look into their secret knowledge. Meaning can emerge and help them to develop an empathic understanding of themselves in the context of past and present relationships.

The Secrets of the Kingdom: Religion and Concealment in the Bush Administration. By Hugh B. Urban

Hugh Urban built his scholarly career primarily through studies of South Asian Tantra, the cultural dynamics of Tantra's increasing profile in the West, and other forms of religion that stress occult aspects of sexual magic, including neo-paganism and Satanism. In recent years, he has widened his attention to additional religions in which secret knowledge plays a prominent role, including Scientology and Heaven's Gate. Urban's latest book brings this expertise to bear on a study of how the George W. Bush administration has used “religion and concealment.” This innocuous-sounding shorthand may itself conceal part of Urban's goal, because he intends a highly damning critique of Bush and his religious–political allies based how they have approached two issues. The first is their use of religion—how Bush's political power base includes a prominent place for conservative fundamentalists and neoconservative religious people, as well as how Bush draws on religious rhetoric and self-understanding. The second is how Bush has operated in relation to a nexus of issues concerned with controlling information: legal and illegal surveillance, propaganda based on half-truths and deliberate lies (and/or the use of narratives and “spin” that collapse the distinction between truths and lies), collusion with a highly centralized and biased corporate media, use of torture, enabling elites to pursue hidden agendas (as opposed to deliberating in democratic and transparent ways) when deciding public policies related to the environment and war, appealing to executive privilege and national security to cover up unpopular and/or criminal activities, and the like. “Secrecy” as a shorthand term for this nexus of issues is not wrong, but it could be misleading because the core issues boil down to the control of knowledge and use of lies in the service of elite power agendas.

The apotheosis of Janaab' Pakal: science, history, and religion at classic Maya Palenque

Introduction New Life at B'aakal Recovering Maya Astronomy Constructing Portals Errors and Identities The Public Face of Recreation Recreation Through K'awiilian Astronomy Zuyuathan: Secret Knowledge and the Maintenance of Power Epilogue Glossary Index.