Before I begin a review of this book I'd like to point out that I met both Steve and Hakim in 1992 while on tour in Egypt. Steve has become a lifelong friend as a result of that meeting. Steve and I were on separate tours but we both had the privilege of having Hakim as our guide. Most of you reading my comments have never met Hakim. Not only is he a gentle man but the holder of vast wisdom from his indigenous tradition that stretches back for thousands of years. Many persons have regarded him solely as a kindly and experienced tour guide. But because of his 30 years of personal study attempting learn about ancient Egypt especially the king Ahkenaten, Steve was able to discern that there was much more to Hakim than met the eye. As Steve gained more of Hakim's trust, he soon became the student and eventually the transmitter to the public of the ancient Khemitian tradition that has been passed down to Hakim. As he did in The Land of Osiris and now in From Light into Darkness, Steve is sharing with us invaluably important material not only on the spirituality of ancient Egypt but the cyclical, not linear, nature of human existence. He accomplishes this task in 200 pages and written in an engagingly conversational style. Steve provides a telling account how an oral tradition contains greater truth than the written one. He deftly points out the historical conflict between personal direct spiritual experience (the mystical tradition) and religious life mediated by the hanuti (priestly) caste. Very importantly Steve clarifies who the neters were. They were not deities as mainstream academic Egyptology would have you believe but were divine principles framed into a quasi animal/human presentation. The king Ahkenaten did not invent monotheism with the glorification of Aten but was attempting to revive the enlightened state of Aten which was being swamped by the rising power of the hanuti class and the spiritual darkness that came with it. But most significant of all, Steve focuses our attention on a message of hope. The Age of Amun, the time of darkness, is coming to an end and the dawn of Kheper is on our doorstep. For some this may seen Pollyanish but the forces representing the Age of Amun only appear to be in control. Their power is slipping and a new generation has the opportunity to bring the Dawn into fruition.

The oral traditions of native people, while lacking the stamp of academic "peer review," are of intense importance and interest. Stephen Mehler seeks an understanding of history that includes all points of view, but gives weight to those who describe their own history over the opinion of outsiders. This history is what they learned at the knee of their parents following what their parents learned from their own. These are the stories that are passed down through the millennia as ancestral heritage.

The engineering evidence in Egypt has not been explained by traditional Western accounts of its history. The oral tradition now being passed on by Ab'd El Hakim Awyan and brought to the Western world by Mehler provides a cultural framework that allows for a common-sense scientific understanding of an advanced prehistoric civilization that once flourished, but perished in a great cataclysm.

From Light into Darkness builds on The Land of Osiris, providing more indigenous wisdom and unfolding a spiritual fabric that offers comfort and understanding of the cyclical nature of life on Earth, including inevitable periodic planetary changes.