I’m going to do something a little different than usual. Normally, I try to only focus on works I’d actually want to read, what makes them good, and things to be aware of, but this work is different. The goal is to be brutally honest about the good and the bad, but overall constructive.
That being said, I read this book, so you don’t have to. Secrets Revealed (no author) is a book about the metaphysics that make occult and psychic phenomena exist. It promises a lot and delivers very little. Unlike most cheap, impulse books I buy ($8 or less), this book is basically irredeemable. Let’s go over the work, their approach to scientific occultism, what all is covered, and where it goes horribly wrong.
About the Work
Secrets Revealed is a 43 page (pseudo)scientific overview of parapsychology (we’ll get into why in a bit). The work aims to cover “telepathy, wizardry, black art, magnetism and the reality of spirits” per the cover. It reconciles occultism and psychic phenomena as being one in the same.
We also see explanations which touch on spirits, magnetism, and crystals which are staples in any good New Age work. The concept behind the astral body and the collective unconscious or Akashic Records is present as well. We get a little bit of everything, but not much depth. The work is short, quick, and concise with the topics and explanations it employs.
Scientific Occultism or Pseudoscience?
This book touches on many of the same standard principles of modern New Age works, but tries to strengthen the arguments with a mix of evidence and anecdote. Which one is which is the hardest question to answer. Many more scientific examples cannot be substantiated as well.
I try to read most works as a skeptic, but I’d also say I’m open-minded and largely a believer in (parts of) the spiritual and occult. Books like this definitely merit a more skeptical treatment though. Raw anecdote and ways to test a set of beliefs go further than vague references to things which are hard to substantiate. One can help a little, the other harms the whole process.
There is also a good bit of talk about the more pseudoscience interpretation of crystalline energy balance and similar. If you want to believe in crystals because you feel they channel energy on a higher plane, I can at least suspend disbelief depending on the results, but this tries to push the line a little too far into the physical sciences without anything substantial to back it up. This is further exacerbated by allusion to gross medical oversights that our “doctor” (the author writes as if they are, or were, a practicing physician) makes (such as mentioning ignoring the modern Hippocratic Oath for certain patients).
Content Quality
The quality is lacking through and through. The book is either a (poor) translation, or written by a non-native English speaker without access to a proper editor. While this isn’t always a complete deal-breaker, it makes this work go from confusing to absurd in many spots.
I would have had to reread spots (if I could have been bothered to do so) in order to make sense of certain sections. It was a hard read for such a small book, but that wasn’t from depth of content. There may be some redeemable content in the work, but the “packaging” makes the juice not worth the squeeze.
Is It Worth It?
Short answer: no. This book feels like pseudoscientific garbage at best. There might be something of substance in it, but it feels like the type of thing you’d expect to be put together off from the lowest bid on something like Fiverr. I read it to thoroughly review it, but all I feel is a few dollars poorer to be honest.
The only redeeming feature I could think of would be the reference to certain scientists and doctors, but it would be an exercise for the reader to determine how relevant their work is to parapsychology. That is, assuming they exist at all. With the quality of the writing and the work overall, I really wouldn’t trust a word in this book. Caveat emptor with this one.