In The Book of Atem , Philip H. Farber combines traditional ritual sensibilities with contemporary concepts of neurolinguistics and memetics to create a unique entity Atem. In this instance, the essence of an entity is encoded in a book and activated by the reader. At the same time, the book is a comprehensive manual of evocation, containing dozens of easy-to-follow rituals and exercises for exploring and creating magical entities of every sort. Farber teaches readers to wake up from their habitual trance, to reprogram themselves to stand in the Mystery without unnecessary mystification. This supercharged fusion of triedandtrue magical and psychological techniques moves beyond trauma, healing, and recovery into selffulfillment and selftransformation. Combining both disciplines with methods such as intentionality, autohypnosis, visualization, personification, and experiential journeys, Farber creates a powerful system that opens the way to peak experiences, selfknowledge, even cosmic consciousness. Rather than importing standardized healing images, readers learn to create their own emergent metaphors, their own creative strengths and flexible freedom. Atem is a living Magus, an icon for the twentyfirst century. Part transpersonal shaman, part inner guide, part inner healer, part role model, Atem becomes a personal therapist, a guide to selfdiscovery and selfinitiation. Atem, as healing fiction, helps readers to create their own breakthroughs, their own catharsis emotional clearing that frees energy from internal conflict to flow creatively into new expressions.
I don’t find this as helpful as FutureRitual, mainly due to the prevalence of group exercises in the practices, but the topics Farber covers here are interesting nonetheless.
I've literally just finished a first read of this book and I'm not 100% sure what to think of it. It's simultaneously a mishmash of hypnosis, NLP, and evocations. It has thirty-six exercises in it, which I haven't done yet (mostly because they require a partner to do them with).
This book requires deeper attention and reading; I read it on Scribed but feel that I need to get a hardcopy so that I can read it over a more extended period of time.
Future thoughts may or may not be appended to this not-much of a review! :)
This book was not for me. I expected more relatable NLP. It was mostly filled with invocations and evocations. It also had a section on mimetics which seems to be group-thinking up a living concept. There were nice exercises but they were mostly group exercises