Many emotions were felt. A rollercoaster ride... in a non fiction book. That's new. I've ranged from "why the fuck is he implying ancient aliens" to "damn I'm never gonna look at this the same way ever again".

The author is an atheist. This is the most important fact you need to know when reading. It explains why he's targeting Christianity the most. It explains why he clearly states that early neolithic people worshipped nature, but is hesitant to ignore the similarities of pantheons of these religions. It's implied that the ancient Greeks didn't really believed in their own gods, it was just some form of metaphor. Of course, unsourced (as are many other statements). Socrates was put on trial for being impious against a metaphor I'm sure.

The author's atheism then makes it clear that maybe you don't need a God to be spiritual. He claims that losing our nature-worshipping ways has made post-industrial Europe so bleak (which I agree with). But for some reason, he's ignoring the obvious fact. The ancients looked at the sun and stars, marked happenings that stood out because they were outside. Then suddenly, as we build roofs, get full time jobs, and barely look up, it all starts magically withering away? Worship nature, while the only tree you see is a carefully curated row of the prettiest trees in a park. Worship lunisolar events when you don't know when the full moon is, you got meetings the whole week. The material foundations of the pagan theology might be deserving of a whole new book, but it should have been mentioned. What also should be mentioned, is at least one example of naturalistic spirituality without some form of a God, Gods, or human-like supernatural. Otherwise you've drawn a comparison, ignored the differences, and said all the differences don't matter, and the similarities make it the same thing.

This is my main gripe. Only an atheist could be jumping around in this cold precise manner between various religious holidays, draw similarities, point to how similar they are. But then this spirituality thing is brought into view and it's just off. It's this half-way longing for the safest pagan theology (all the religions he talked about had Gods, aspects of nature, or some personalization of the things they worshipped...). But of course, we need to cut that one out, and stick to the non-committal parts, like having beers at a certain time of the year, but not do sacrifices, or offerings. We feel the need to celebrate X on Y date (the guy literally says it's in our DNA), but as we got separated from nature, most of us don't (this is also ignored).

Beyond me not connecting to the underlying theological movement at all, the book was illuminating in parts. The Wheel Of Time is something I'll be using as a framework when I learn about just about any ancient holiday, and even some modern ones.

The overview of ancient findings, and some insights into the methodology behind some of the claims were great to read. The style is great, the author is an absolute master at conveying information to people like me. The graphs/images attached convey information properly. It's very well structured.

There's typos, the summaries get into a wholly different topic sometimes, and the National Geographic/old History Channel documentary narration made me put down the book without hesitation.

Oh yeah, heavily implied that there was some ancient giga-civilization that we're all descended from. Haven't heard about that at all.

Sleep deprived 2AM rant, but I needed to get it off my chest.