ROBERT TEMPLE
BOOKS PUBLISHED OR FORTHCOMING
In chronological order, with the latest publication first.
To order any of these books from Amazon please click on the title.
Andre Deutsch, February 2007.
The new revised and expanded edition of The Genius of China is out now! The book has much additional information and 50 new photographs.
Century Books, London, 2002.
A revised and updated American edition is also now available - published by Inner Traditions International - under the new title Oracles of the Dead. The book examines ancient methods of foretelling the future and discovering the physical location of the Greek Underworld (Hades), and explores the mysteries associated with Delphi and other oracles of the ancient world. Drawing evidence from a range of sources within orthodox scholarship, physics and biology, Robert Temple shows how the latest developments in science may validate the system of the I Ching. The book also includes a theory of change based upon recent scientific work in a variety of fields.
Century Books, London, 2000.
A German edition is also now available (Die Kristall Sonne). This is a survey of ancient optical and light technology. RT reports on his examination of more than 450 ancient lenses in museums around the world, and explains the accompanying mythological and religious lore and many unusual ancient scientific insights and capabilities. The winter solstice sunrise shadow cast upon the Great Pyramid at Giza is one of the many original discoveries presented in this book. The book has an Introduction by Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
The Sirius Mystery
Originally published by Sidgwick & Jackson, London, and St. Martins Press, New York, 1976. Translated into nearly two dozen languages. Revised edition (expanded by a further 50%) published by Century Books, London, 1998.
Click below to see the bestseller list from the Saturday Telegraph, 24th January 1998. The Sirius mystery featured at number 10:
Bestseller list (PDF, 0.3MB)
American edition published by Inner Traditions International. Featured favourably in a BBC Television Horizon documentary in 1977 (shown in America as a Nova progam). Reviewed favourably in Nature. Estonian, Bulgarian, and Turkish editions have also been printed.
With Olivia Temple, Penguin Books, London, 1998.
This is the first translation into English of the complete 358 fables of the edition of Professor Émile Chambry, over 100 of which had never been translated before. The fables in this translation have been performed by the Classic Stage Company in New York.
The Illustrated Golden Bough
by Sir James Frazer, Batsford, London, 1996.
I was originally commissioned to write an introduction for this book but to my dissatisfaction my work was changed without my consent and the book was still published. To read more about this, and to see my introduction as it was oringinally intended, please click here.
Rider Books, London, 1991.
This translation was performed at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1993.
Open to Suggestion: The Uses and Abuses of Hypnosis
The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England, 1989.
It includes a survey of 150 years of case histories of hypnotic abuse and crime, and a thorough survey of world hypnosis research as it stood in 1989 (Temple had attended international hypnosis conferences and knew most leading researchers. He also has probably the largest private hypnosis library in Europe). The final chapter contains a new theory of consciousness, which was praised (see note in front of book) by Professor Ernest Hilgard, America's most famous living psychologist and former President of the American Psychological Association, who said: 'You have produced a plausible and forward-looking theory.' Professor John Taylor, head of the Neural Net Group of the University of London, also said that the theory had made a useful contribution to neural net theory. (The new theory is based upon Pierre Janet's theory of mental energy levels, combined with insights into parallel distributed processing, and offers also a theory of hypnosis).
Click here to download the publicity release of 1989.
Originally published as China: Land of Discovery and Invention by Patrick Stephens, England, 1986 and as The Genius of China by Simon and Schuster, USA, 1987. Now published by Andre Deutsch/Carlton Books, London. Introduction by Joseph Needham. The book is a history of Chinese science and technology. It won five major literary awards in the West, including ones from the American Library Association and the New York Academy of Sciences. This book was published in full trade editions in several foreign languages. It was adopted by UNESCO as an international project and by them translated into 43 languages, including such esoteric ones as Swahili, Basque, Catalan, Thai and Burmese. The book has been translated into Chinese four times: once for serialization weekly over the course of two years in the Chinese Science and Technology Weekly in the 1980s, once in a Hong Kong pirate edition, once in a mainland pirate edition, and finally officially by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using a team of 34 specialist translators. (A simplified school edition for secondary school children is currently being planned, with the personal encouragement of the Chinese Minister of Education.) The official Chinese edition has a foreward by Dr. Lu Jiaxi, President of the Academy of Sciences, and introductory calligraphy by Dr. Song Jian, then Science and Technology Minister and now President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Vice Chairman of the National People's Consultative Committee.
Rider Books, London, 1984.
The book is a survey of both Chinese and Western oracle and divination techniques in antiquity. It contains the first suggestions of a theoretical link between the Shang Dynasty oracle bones system and the I Ching. It also suggests that a brilliant scientific tradition existed prior to the Han Dynasty, which was later largely eclipsed by the 'five elements school'. This was the book which so impressed Joseph Needham that he asked Temple to work with him on The Genius of China (listed above).
Sphere Books, London, 1983.
A popular account of fifty bizarre findings reported in modern scientific journals.
Umschau Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1982.
This book was never published in English, and contains a new theory of time.