Books by Baigent Michael.

Michael Baigent was an author, speculative theorist, and archaeologist, who authored and co-wrote a number of books questioning traditional perceptions of history and the life of Jesus. He is best known as co-writer of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Baigent Michael, Leigh Richard, Lincoln Henry The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete?

• Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross?
• Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists?
• Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets of Christendom?
• Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail?

According to the authors of this extraordinarily provocative, meticulously researched book, not only are these things possible — they are probably true! so revolutionary, so original, so convincing, that the most faithful Christians will be moved; here is the book that has sparked worldwide controversey.

"Enough to seriously challenge many traditional Christian beliefs, if not alter them."
— Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Like Chariots of the Gods?...the plot has all the elements of an international thriller."
— Newsweek

 


Baigent Michael The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History

What if everything you think you know about Jesus is wrong? In the sequel to `The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' Michael Baigent reveals the truth and tackles controversial questions, such as whether or not Christ survived the crucifixion. Twenty years ago Michael Baigent and his colleagues stunned the world with a controversial theory that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene married and founded a holy bloodline. His bestselling book `The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail' (with co-authors Henry Lincoln and Richard Leigh) became an international publishing phenomenon and was one of the sources for Dan Brown's novel `The Da Vinci Code'. Now, with two additional decades of research behind him, Baigent's `The Jesus Papers' presents explosive new evidence that challenges everything we know about the life and death of Jesus. * Who could have aided and abetted Jesus and why? * Where could Jesus have gone after the crucifixion? * What is the truth behind the creation of the New Testament? * Who is working to keep the truth buried and why? Taking us back to sites that over the last twenty years he has meticulously explored, studied, and in some instances excavated for the first time, Baigent provides a detailed account of his groundbreaking discoveries, including many never-before-seen photos.


Baigent Michael Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World

In Racing Toward Armageddon, Michael Baigent, the New York Times bestselling author of The Jesus Papers and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, exposes the conspiracy of religious extremists in the Holy Land and their efforts to bring about the end of the world in our lifetime. Baigent expose the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures who are driving this perilous messianic message forward, and poses a pressing question: can we really afford to remain oblivious much longer?


Baigent Michael  Ancient Traces: Mysteries in Ancient and Early History

In a series of different chapters Michael Baigent examines a number of enigmas surrounding such ancient mysteries as Atlantis and the Pyramids. He investigates such questions as whether there were ancient contacts between Europe and America,and whether a great catastrophe hit the planet around 10000 BC. And in the process he calls into question much of today's orthodoxy on such subjects.


Baigent Michael Astrology in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Science of Omens and the Knowledge of the Heavens

A detailed study of the earliest forms of astrology in Mesopotamia and their far-reaching hermetic influences from the Renaissance to the present day

• Reveals the roots of modern astrology in the Babylonian science of omens, which was concerned not with individuals but with the state and king

• Explores Mesopotamian mythology as it relates to the planets and to astrology

• Traces the hermetic transmission of this knowledge over the centuries from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Renaissance Italy

Among the many significant discoveries excavated from Assyrian king Ashurbanipal’s royal library in Nineveh were tablets documenting the development of Mesopotamian astrology, now recognized as the earliest astrological science.
Drawing upon translations of the Nineveh library tablets as well as many other ancient sources, Michael Baigent reveals the roots of modern astrology in the Babylonian science of omens. He explains how astrology in the Babylonian and Assyrian empires was concerned not with individuals but with the king and the state. He shows that by the first dynasty of Babylon, around 1900 to 1600 BC, astrology had become a systematic discipline, the preserve of highly trained specialists intent upon interpreting omens from the movements of planets and stars. He explores Mesopotamian mythology as it relates to the planets and to astrology as well as to Mesopotamian religion, magic, and politics--for the mythology of Babylon and Assyria served the state and thus changed as the state changed. He shows how this ancient form of astrology uniquely represents both Sun and Moon as masculine entities and Saturn (Ninurta) as the principle of order imposed on chaos. He examines the connections between ancient astrology and the symbolism of Western religions, such as how the “Greek” or “Templar” cross may symbolize the Babylonian god Nabu, now known as Mercury.

Tracing the hermetic transmission of this knowledge over the centuries from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Florence, Baigent reveals how the religious and magical aspects of early Babylonian cosmological speculation played a significant role in the Renaissance, influencing prominent figures such as Cosimo de Medici, Marsilio Ficino, and Botticelli.


Baigent Michael, Leigh Richard The Temple and the Lodge: The Strange and Fascinating History of the Knights Templar and the Freemasons

In this enthralling historical detective story, the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail trace the flight after 1309 of the Knights Templar from Europe to Scotland, where the Templar heritage was to take root, and would be perpetuated by a network of noble families. That heritage, and the Freemasonry that arose from it, became inseparable from the Stuart cause. The Temple and the Lodge charts the birth of Freemasonry through the survival of Templar traditions, through currents of European thought, through the mystery surrounding Rosslyn chapel, and through an elite cadre of aristocrats attached as personal bodyguards to the French king. Pursuing Freemasonry through the 17th and 18th Centuries, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh reveal its contribution to the fostering of tolerance, progressive values, and cohesion in English society, which helped to pre-empt a French-style revolution. Even more dramatically, the influence of Freemasonry emerges as key facto in the formation of the United States of America as an embodiment of the ideal "Masonic Republic".


Baigent Michael, Leigh Richard The Elixir and the Stone

Since the seventeenth century, science has been contending with philosophy, organized religion and the arts for domination over Western civilization and society. By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and skepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival.
In The Elixir and the Stone, Baigent and Leigh argue that this occult revival -- and indeed the entire revolution in attitudes which has taken place recently -- owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric teaching which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and which then went underground. The authors trace the history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy -- which has much in common with contemporary holistic thought -- charting it's origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magi of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee; prototype of Shakespeare's Prospero in "The Tempest, but the central figure that emerges is that of Faust himself -- one of the defining myths of Western civilization.
The Elixir and the Stone" is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to a little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover it offers away of looking at the world that is in one sense 'alternative', but in another, deeply historical.


Baigent Michael, Leigh Richard The Inquisition

After the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of south-west France in 1208, a Spanish monk - later canonized as St Dominic - took up the cudgels by establishing a kind of secret police to ferret out heresy - thus began the infamous Inquisition. Baigent and Leigh tell the whole extraordinary story, taking it on into the nineteenth century and showing how after the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870 the Vatican attempted to establish new authorities that were an intellectual equivalent of the Inquisition. The Inquisition offers a fascinating narrative account of one of the most influential and horrifying movements in the history of western Europe.


Baigent Michael, Leigh Richard The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves 20 miles east of Jerusalem in 1947 and 1956. Now Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, co-authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, have succeeded in uncovering what has been described as 'the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century': the story of how and why up to 75 per cent of the eight hundred ancient Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, hidden for some nineteen centuries, have, until very recently, remained concealed from the rest of the world. Through interviews, historical analysis and a close study of both published and unpublished scroll material, the authors are able to reveal the true cause of the bitter struggle between scholars, for these documents disclose nothing less than a new account of the origins of Christianity and an alternative and highly significant version of the New Testament.

Investigates why the contents of the earliest biblical manuscripts, found forty years ago, are still being withheld from the general public and studies unpublished materials that provide some startling new views about the early Christians. 40,000 first printing.


Baigent Michael From The Omens Of Babylon: Astrology And Ancient Mesopotamia

This study is an account of what is known of Babylonian astrology, retelling a lot of Mesopotamian material that has been buried in abstruse academic tones. Although it is most specifically about Mesopotamian astrology, it also tells the story of the discovery in the 19th century of this ancient city, and describes what is known of their culture. The second part of the book focuses on each of the seven major deities of their religion - their myths, cults and omenology, and how much of these ancient Babylonian interpretations of the gods natures has survived in modern astrology.