As early as Palaeolithic times, the stars of Cygnus—the Swan—the ultimate expression of a widespread belief in the bird as a symbol of the soul—were seen as the gateway to heaven. Shamanic journeys, Native American funeral rites, the alignments of prehistoric standing stones, all pointed the way to this sky-world, accessed via the Milky Way or an imagined cosmic axis. Collins traces this astronomic lore back to 15,000 B.C., when Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus, was the Pole Star. At that time, our Paleolithic ancestors practiced their religious rituals in caves deep in the earth—caves whose bird-imagery art, anthropologists have found, was the creation of shamans under the influence of hallucinogens that let them travel in visions outside this world. And in that same era, humanity underwent a change in physical and neurological makeup so fast it seemed to occur virtually overnight. What caused this sudden leap forward? The Cygnus Mystery proposes that it was a dramatic rise in cosmic rays reaching Earth, and provides evidence that the rays, which left subatomic traces in those same deep caves, emanated from a binary star system known as Cygnus X-3. These findings, Collins explains, challenged the certainties of the scientific establishment—until, in 2005, a U.S. think tank went public with its own conviction that a binary system producing powerful jets of cosmic rays triggered a rapid acceleration in human evolution during the last Ice Age! Includes a color photo insert. Published at $29.95. Our price only $19.95!

THE CYGNUS MYSTERY By Andrew Collins. 368 Pages. 6x9 Paperback. Illustrated. Bibliography. Index.