The Destruction of the Past

This is not unfortunately, applicable only to those who would term themselves 'witches'. Under the guise of politics and/or religion, book-burning has been a popular pastime throughout human history. Adolph Hitler was not the only person to use this form of informational destruction and control.

For example, perhaps the greatest library of the ancient world was the one at Alexandria, Egypt. It was founded in the third century, BCE. The library at its height contained some 500,000 manuscripts; virtually all the ancient writings available from the Greek-dominated world. In an episode of the television series, COSMOS, it was stated that the library was considered so important that visiting ships had to turn over any manuscripts they had so the scribes could copy them and add them to the library's collection.

The library ended up being burned in 47 BC during a civil war between Caesar and the followers of Pompey. In 272 CE the library was burned by order of the Roman emperor, in 391 under orders from another Roman emperor, and in 640, possibly by Muslims during a religious war (although the last is still subject to some debate).

The destruction of libraries and collections of books for religious purposes extended far beyond Egypt. The Aztecs, the Incans, and the Mayans had thousands of books called 'codices', containing much of their knowledge. The Spaniards destroyed these, considering them to be the works of the devil.

Incunabula were books or other printed materials published during the 15th century, with most of the works being in Latin, and dealing with the topic of religion. Although these writings were Christian in content, even they were subject to destruction (by other Christians) during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

The Muslim world is noted to have had many libraries, but these also "were destroyed by the 13th century". (New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, 1991 edition).

All this of course, is in addition to any loss of written materials due to natural processes such as decay and other forms of damage.

It is estimated that perhaps only 10% of what was written in the ancient world still survives, most of the remaining 90% being destroyed for religious purposes by the dominating religions of Christianity and Islam.

One question that comes to mind is this: did any of this group of books that were destroyed come from the legendary Atlantis or Lemuria? Although many people believe in the one-time existence of both lost continents, there has still never been any solid, physical evidence in the forms of ruins or written material from either continent. Granted, Plato wrote about Atlantis, but there is still controversy over whether he was talking about an actual continent beyond the Mediterranean, or people's memories of the destruction of the Minoan civilization with the explosion of the volcano at Thera.

Followers of Edgar Cayce believe that books from Atlantis are still in existence, and are stored within a chamber under or near the Sphinx. Within the last year the existence of such a chamber, or chambers, has been verified, although the sizes and contents are still unknown. It will be most interesting to see if the investigation into the chambers will continue to be covered by the media, or if certain political/religious factions will make sure little if anything leaks out about the investigations, especially if any books are actually found.

The concept of book-burning has not died out yet, of course. World War II saw massive book-burnings by the Nazis. The tradition has continued in the U.S. In the Cincinnati Enquirer of October 20, 1991, for example, is an article entitled "Minister Plans 2nd Book Bonfire", in which a Dayton, Ohio minister was planning his second book burning. Things to be burned included "pornography, horoscopes, tarot cards, rock albums, and materials related to Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science and New Age religion." A pretty complete list and a not-very-rare activity in the U.S. at present.

The best example of the ultimate result of such information destruction is George Orwell's novel 1984. The purpose of the government in the novel is to destroy words. By destroying words, the government believes, they can destroy the ability of the people to think anti-government thoughts. This was the basis of Hitler's book-burning sessions. The religion-oriented bookburnings are, basically, to prevent "unacceptable" anti-religious thoughts.

Such methods have never worked totally, of course, because there have always been at least a few people that try to keep the information alive, if necessary through the art of memorization. In today's world it is much easier to keep hundreds upon hundreds of books and other information on computer discs of one form of another, making information-destruction on the part of governments and churches even more difficult.

But governments, religions and other groups will continue, despite this, to attempt to control what people can think, see and do by their destruction of information. It is an event that can happen anywhere, anytime, and it is something which we must always be on guard against.