History of Occult Sciences

by René Alleau

112 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[BlackCatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Author does a good job of a quick walkthrough of ancient magic thinkers and practices from Mesopotamia to a very short last chapter on modern occultism. The writing wasn't confusing nor overly scholarly (though at times references to unknown authors if one is not well versed in occult history) and had many pictures to show throughout. The book went through the idea of magic, alchemy and so on was not only something contained in western thought, and did not even start in the west. A lesson learned was about how Magic has beginnings from ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt, and to the 1900's, including an interesting part on hallucinogenic mushrooms used by Mayans, Aztecs, etc. My only criticism really is the author seemed to have a biase pf pro-parapsychology. Not much was touched on Theosophy, Alister Crowley, etc. and the last few pages I read as preachy. I did agree however, that history needs to be studied from multiple angles and magic is one of them.

[flannery · Rating 4 out of 5]

BF1411 A422h: Wow! This is the first time I've gotten to add a book. Neat pictures, sick cover, and pretty well written. Me likey!