Magic Without Mirrors

by David Conway

"There is nothing of the phoney or the exhibitionist about David Conway. He is not merely a magician, but a genuine mystic, an intensely private person who is absorbed in what Blake called "the inner worlds" and their mystery....David Conway was brought up in a remote country district of Wales....When he was four he was taken to see a local farmer, Mr. James, (who) remained his chief mentor, introducing him to the basic principles of magic...Someone should persuade him to write about his apprenticeship; from the hints he has dropped, I suspect it would be as fascinating as Carlos Castaneda's accounts of Don Juan, as well as being rather more truthful." Colin Wilson in his Introduction to David Conway's an occult primer, 1988

Genres: Nonfiction

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Experience of a reality imperceptible to our senses is something I grew up with. That did not inhibit me, however, from seeking to understand it or explore how it might impact, if at all, on the everyday world in which I lived and felt fully at home. Already as a teenager I was reading Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky (and, it must be said, making little sense of either) as well as Aleister Crowley, the literature of Spiritualism and the musings of Carl Gustav Jung. In addition I was being taught about herbs and country lore by an elderly sheep farmer in the hills of North Wales, a man whose reputation as a magician – that's real magic not the smoke and mirrors kind – was never questioned by people in our neighbourhood.

All of this I have described in my most recent book, Magic Without Mirrors, its subtitle “the making of a magician” intended to signal that I, too, was destined to follow in my teacher's footsteps.

When still in my twenties and barely out of college I wrote my first book, Magic: an occult primer, published by Jonathan Cape and described, to my surprise, as as "one of the best books on magic written in the twentieth century, and one of the best introductions to magic (an altogether rarer phenomenon) , written in any century" (Colin Wilson). There then followed, hard on its heels, The Magic of Herbs and, a few years later, Secret Wisdom: the occult universe explored (though “explored” was inadvertently changed to “revealed” in a recent paperback edition). Some newspaper reviewers predicted I would become a cult figure. I never aspired to that and, happily, it never happened.

What never left me, however, is my curiosity about the wider reality mentioned above and our unique place within it. I have never pretended to know all the answers but by now, I hope, I have learned to ask the right questions. And it's in looking for answers that I invite my readers to join me - in each of my books. My hope is that by the final page of the latest one, Magic without Mirrors, those answers will be within the grasp of everyone.

Reviews

[Morven · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a student of the Occult, especially the history of the revival of the occult, you'll love this book.

This man was a fortunate man who met some of the big names of the day (Crowley) and other unknowns who aided him on the path to the unknown.

The book is chock full of rememberances, philosophy, and anecdotes.

The only thing that kept me from giving it five stars was that there was so much information that it could have been two or three books. It would have benefited from an organizational edit and a proofread.

Still, this is an important book in occult studies. Recommended.

[Bettie]

Some details of Mr Crowley’s stopover at Tredegar House in 1943 are magically recorded by the enigmatic Welshman David Conway in his book “Magic Without Mirrors”. Rare and expensive title.

Culled by @WilliamPCross in his Evan Morgan books