Ancient inscriptions found in southern Italy are the starting point for Peter Kingsley"s strange but thoughtful exploration of a philosophy that pre-dates Plato--and which, he claims, Plato suppressed when developing his own philosophy, so affecting Western thinking for the next two millennia or more. Parmeneides was a Greek philosopher living in Elea (now Velia) in southern Italy in the sixth century BC. His teacher was Ameinias; his colleague or pupil was Zeno, of the famous paradox of the impossibility of Achilles catching up with a tortoise. In a discursive, informal and almost chatty style, Kingsley discusses the deeper meaning of Parmeneides" poem, of which around a 100 lines survive. Parmeneides, he says, was a healer-prophet, a Pythagorian, and initiate of the mysteries. His poem is about a visit of the living to the Underworld, where he is taught by Persephone. The essence of the way of mystery, Kingsley explains, is lying in total silence and stillness--"incubation"--a fourth state different from wakefulness, sleep or dreaming. While discussing a piece of writing called the Pythagorean Memoirs, Kingsley comments that "the style of presentation seems so casual and smooth that you can easily miss the sequence of ideas, not notice all the threads holding them in place." Unfortunately, I feel that this applies to Kingsley"s own book. Despite a fulsome blurb quote from esoteric scholar Michael Baigent, the discursive style is often a hindrance rather than a help; it is often difficult to maintain the thread of Kingsley"s argument, or even to be clear about the points he is making about Parmeneides" teaching. Despite this, one thing is clear, and that is that Parmeneides does deserve more attention than modern philosophers usually grant him. --David V Barrett