Dowsing for Atlantis: The Art of Psychic Archaeology

The Secret Vaults of Time: Psychic Archaeology and the Quest for Man's Beginnings (1976) by Stephan A. Schwartz

At first, I suspected that this was some kind of Psych novelization, where Shawn was posing as an archaeologist named Stephan Schwartz, and probably calling Gus something like "Babylonius Jones".

But no, this is a stone-cold serious book about psychic archaeology: the art of showy guesswork applied to long-dead people who can't disprove you with a dash of subconscious observation passed off as divination.

The synopsis of the book hails clairvoyance as not only a valuable tool for archaeology, but as the only logical thing in an otherwise inexact science.

"Until recently, however, archaeology has been a somewhat inexact science relying for the most part on serendipitous finds and speculative theory. ... Automatic writing, ESP, and divining rods - these are the tools of a developing science: psychic archaeology."

Nevermind the fact that the job title "Psychic Archaeologist" sounds about as credible as "Dinosaur Therapist".

From my perusal of this book, there are a couple questions I have that were sadly left unanswered:

1.  Is there a style guide somewhere that can tell me how to properly cite a ghostly monk in an academic paper?

2.  When will this monk apparition leave my nightmares?

If you want to check out this book, click here, or maybe if you want a more recent, and quite frankly, more reliable book on history, try one of the following, and you'll also be helping out the blog!