NETHERWORLD: Discovering the Oracle of the Dead and Ancient Techniques of Foretelling the Future Robert Temple, Century, London, 2002. Hardback, 476 pages, £17.99. ISBN 0-7126-8404-2.

“Science and learning must not be bound and gagged by stuffy opinions, but must be open to free and unlimited enquiry". So writes Robert Temple, never one to fear stepping beyond the accepted limits of historical and scientific paradigms, "Rigid orthodoxy is simply fear; for fixed boundaries are erected by those who have no confidence and who feel threatened".
    Temple, with his great expertise in the history of science and technology, maintains a firm commitment to scientific methodology and to reason. But he stresses: reason, that great ability which we use to understand our universe, must embrace both rationality and irrationality.
    Netherworld – after that world beyond the borders of death, of rationality –begins with an investigation of ancient Oracle centres, first with the author’s exploration of the underground Sanctuary at Baia, near Naples. This was sealed up in the 1st Century BC by the Romans who clearly feared something, rediscovered in 1962, but soon sealed up again. Temple obtained permission to open it again in 2001. He also looks at other ancient Oracle centres. Something enigmatic was happening at them all. But Temple, ever curious, is not content simply to crawl down tunnels. He wants to understand their effect on culture.
    He believes that the deepest function of these Oracles, which gave their pronouncements in riddles famed throughout the ancient world, was in "stirring up the creative and non-rational faculty of man". And beneath these techniques lies an immeasurably ancient concept which has been well expressed in Chinese thought – which forms the focus of the second half of the book – that, "natural processes have some deep connection with human life in a structural sense, so that they can offer hints as to how things are going for us if we know how to read them". He begins this section with the best discussion of the I Ching, its method and its rationale, that I have ever read.
    Temple is fascinated by – apparently - everything, and for this reason his book meanders restlessly towards its fascinating conclusion – which procedure might come as a shock to readers raised in the "sound-bite" mentality. But in this way one receives an education rather than simply entertainment.
    Michael Baigent