A dizzying labyrinth of credulity
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Mysteries and Secrets Revealed
From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in America
Loren Pankratz
Prometheus Books 2021
Hb, £25, 472pp, ISBN 9781633886681
If you have ever asked yourself “How can anybody believe that?” then Loren Pankratz’s history of deception is highly recommended. As a former professor of psychiatry now involved in forensic consultancy, there is little about human gullibility that he has not considered. From the ancient world to the rise of Spiritualism, he guides the reader through a dizzying labyrinth of human fallibility in its search for existential reassurance.
Beginning in Delphi, Pankratz explores how the trust of the Athenian elite in the oracles remained steadfast even in the face of defeat at the hands of the Persians and the apocalyptic plague of 429 BC. Their political agency thrived until the more astute Theodosius sanctioned their questionable prognostications in AD 392; a move indicative of growing public suspicion and the rise of Christianity. The 17th-century polymath Bernard de Fontenelle later explored this rich seam of deception in his History of Oracles (1687), which to the annoyance of the Church drew a comparison between the naïvety of the oracular devotees and the control mechanisms of Christian demonology. Appeals to paranormal forces were a feature of civil society through the centuries, we read, and Pankratz explores the close parallels between scientific and mathematical discoveries and the acceptance of alchemy, magic and astrology as legitimate investigative protocols, particularly among Renaissance thinkers such as Geralmo Cardano.
The persecution of Galileo Galilei and his insistence upon empirical observation becomes a suitable case history for the author to further explore the complex relationship between scientific and religious authority. As the Copernican revolution spread throughout Europe and the flawed Aristotelian cosmology favoured by the
