Mysterious Pyramid Power
Ebon, ed
1976
The power of the pyramid is ready to help you manage your life. Pyramid power can do so much: preserve food, sharpen razor blades, and improve health. Really.
Most of the book is a combination of archeology and Egyptology and some notes or diary of a guy sticking stuff under a pyramid to see what happens. Evidently he was able to sharpen his razor and dehydrate organic material. There was also some talk about “orgone energy”. I had no idea what that was but I had a lot of hits from my google search. I actually enjoyed reading the Wikipedia article on Orgone.
This book is a paperback and is holding up pretty well, given its age. I could not read the title given the weird font and color contrast.
I am waiting for someone to suggest pyramid power as a cure for COVID-19. Sadly, I actually think that could happen. Can 2020 just be over, please?
Mary
And years later The Mythbusters would bust this entire book.
But there’s still people who believe in this nonsense. I wonder if I could use this to society’s (and my financial) advantage. Start selling pyramid shaped crystals with magnets attached/inserted into them to anti-vaxxers saying that if you rub it right away on the injection site the pyramid will draw out any toxins and the magnet will deactivate any microchips inside the vaccine, leaving only the parts that will make your child naturally immune to deadly diseases.
Build herd immunity back up while being able to pay my bills….
It’s a tempting thought.
Anyway, as someone born in 1976 I kind of want this book just for that alone, but man, this kind of quackery should be discarded from any library shelf.
For age and condition, perhaps…but whether someone chooses or chooses not to believe in something is not for a librarian to decide. Our job is to just make the information available. I wouldn’t weed this because it is “quackery” but would maybe weed it based on its condition and use.
I read this book or one exactly like it back then. There were a LOT of them.
My brother and I tried sharpening one of Dad’s razor blades in a carefully-measured and -constructed pyramid. Needless to say, it did not work. “Bovine excrement” is the polite translation of what Dad concluded.
Empirical testing! Sounds like you got something useful out of the book after all.
I’m astonished to hear there’s someone unfamiliar with the work of Wilhelm Reich! This is the sort of book that will be requested by a certain crowd, and much of the information in it is no less “current” now than it was then. This is where we get into the question of “accuracy.” At least it includes a picture of Martin Gardner, and one could say that it gives an accurate portrayal of Pyramidology claims.
I’m with you, Mary: “Can 2020 just be over?”
I hope the book doesn’t say that aliens built the pyramids. I once pointed out to a New Age friend of mine – who is of color – that the concept was racist. (I am white.)
Anecdotes as evidence as so fun to read. The contrast between the tone of voice I expect the author would use in reading them v. their complete mundaneness is a laugh. What happened to the pyramid the “private, progressive parochial [??] school” threw out?
I worked i a library of Egyptology for over 20 years. I believe I can say that this book is neither Egyptology nor archaeology. It’s what people in the discipline call ‘Pyramidiocy’.
About the best that can be said for it is that Martin Gardner rates a full-page portrait. I suppose it was considered a ‘Know Your enemy’ type of thing but Gardners ‘Fads and Fallicies in the Name of Science’ remains a great read.
Oh we’ll, the pyramid shape does make a stylish base for a tinfoil hat.
The one on the cover looks more like an executive desk accessory.
Woo! A shout out for Martin Gardner! On a lighter note, I vaguely remember this book. The Seventies were a weird decade.