Secrets Unveiled By Roy Perdue, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin An infuriating aspect of both books is the way secrets are handled - big secrets, like the third prophesy of Fatima, little secrets like what name does Thomas Pynchon travel under.  Most of the time Towner simply drops them like party favors along the route,  just like we are all supposed to know about them, like they are common knowledge.  Guess what, Donald, if you're out there, they ain't. The first volume of The Whirlwind begins, after a whole series of little secrets in a section that might be a "Roman de clef", with the biggest secret of the last two millenniums, what happened to the body of Jesus Christ? Now, in 2004, we have access to a lot more information that we had even fifty years ago.  The problem is much of the so-called "information" is simply speculation based on a few facts.  Holy Blood, Holy Grail, published in 1982, started off the intense interest in the "Christ Family" and its history.  Problematically, most of the information in that book about the Merovingian Dynasty, secret societies and whatever are the products of a proven con man, Pierre Plantard. Other books have followed.  In the twenty years after Holy Blood, Holy Grail we have been hit with one book after another about Merovingian bloodlines, Christ's survival of the crucifixion, the Holy Grail and its meaning, megalithic stone circles, bible analysis and the list goes on and on. We believe that Towner, in these books, is trying to sort out the fly s**t from the pepper and present a cohesive and organized historical context to these mysteries.  Several characters in the books believe "The truth is out there".  But they also believe that, not only is it out there, but it is right under our noses.  The reason we can't see the truth is we have been brainwashed from birth to accept alternative and sometimes downright incomprehensible reasons for the way things are. An example of this is the divinity of Christ, as an issue and as a point of Catholic Dogma.  It is easy to say that the divinity of Christ, as we understand it today, was only decided upon in the fifth century by the Council of Nicaea, but Towner explains the historical context of that decision.  In short, by the fifth century, there was a broad spectrum of belief in the divinity of Christ.  This spectrum was largely geographical.  In the East, Constantinople for example, the prevailing belief was that Christ was wholly divine, not at all human.  In the Celtic Churches of what is now England and Ireland, the belief was that Christ was wholly human.  The Council of Nicaea was largely a compromise that only left a few people happy:  Christ was wholly divine and wholly human.  As the church as done for thousands of years, it averted a controversy by declaring a mystery:  You can't understand it so don't bother.

Secrets Still Hidden We're not saying we believe any of the heresies floating around out there.  We're not.  We do believe that we should not act like they don't exist.  Towner takes simple explanations and known facts and uses them to take on mysteries like: ·        Where did the Templars go after 1309?  What was the demon, "Baphomet"? ·        If there is a secret society like the Illuminati, what do they do?  And why? ·        Is there some central theme connecting groups as diverse as the early Christian Church in Jerusalem, the Cathars, the Lollards and the Bogomils? ·        What's the connection between the megalithic circles in Western Europe and the circles drawn by "Honi the Circle Maker" in Jerusalem? ·        Dozens of societies existing before the dawn of writing shared a standard unit of measure (the megalithic "yard").  How could this be? ·        Did an ancient secret society know the earth was round?  If so, was this common knowledge?  And if that was true, why was Galileo tried? ·        Both the Bible and recently discovered texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the scrolls found at Nag Hamadi refer to people known as "The Watchers".  What were they watching for?  And why? ·        Do the Grail stories of the Dark and Middle Ages contain secrets? ·        What's the truth about exorcism?  Demons?   It doesn't bother us so much that Towner blathers on about these things, just like he pontificates on the reality of God in the context of Dualistic Philosophy, the meaning of evil and pain and the act of creation.  Towner is, we believe, just letting his own Jesuit training go wild, letting it go for a frolic in the park, so to speak.   What bothers us is Towner's pomposity in not explaining these things but just laying them out there, integrating them into the stories.  He apparently doesn't want to prove anything.  Maybe he just doesn't care.   Towner takes all these big and little mysteries and uses them to encircle the "detective story" at the center:  Why was a man pretending to be the private secretary of a British Lord murdered at Rosslyn Chapel?   Not to burst your bubble, but we don't really find out in Volume I.