TODAY I have started the drafting of a new book co-authored with Ahmed Osman: REMOVING THE VEIL, The Quest for Maat (Inner Traditions, Spring 2014). As a seasoned writer I believe that the quality of a book is reflected through the inspirational effect placed in the opening paragraph of the first chapter. The miracle of modern technology and the Internet allows me to share this exciting moment with you all: that first step in the careful and lengthy construction of a good book. Here, therefore, is the first attempt in draft format, uncorrected and unedited: "Today the world refers to that very long and narrow strip of the fertile Nile Valley running from the First Cataract in the south to the shored of the Mediterranean in the north as ‘Egypt’. This term is universally and happily taken for granted as being the original name of this part of the world. As for the people that inhabit it, they are regarded –as they indeed regard themselves-- as ‘Arabs’. It therefore often comes as a surprise to many, even to those actually living today in ‘Egypt’, that both these terms are historically and ethnologically incorrect. Indeed, when considered from an historian’s viewpoint, calling this country ‘Egypt’ and its people ‘Arabs’ is, very simply, misleading. To understand why, and to know what must be the legitimate nomenclature for this country and its people, is to know the true origins of our own civilization and, more importantly, to be able to provide the world with the ‘missing link’, the divine spark –the perennial theology, as we ourselves prefer to call it— that hopefully will kick-start a new universal road-map to reform and reset humanity on the right track of spiritual evolution. It is, quite literally, our last chance, our final hope, to save humanity from self-destruction by a nuclear and ecological Armageddon that is presently dangerously in the hatching."
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 07:13:41 +0000