A Formless Fire: Rediscovering the Magical Traditions of the West

by Ike Baker, Jaime Lamb (foreword), Travis Lawrence (cover_art)

449 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2024

Reviews

[Josh Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was first introduced to the author by his podcast show called Arcanvm, and saw that he knew people I was connected with so I thought I’d check him out. I’d watched/listened to about a dozen of his shows where he interviewed various figures, usually authors, in the field of esoteric subjects. I really enjoy the discussions he has with people, as he’s a good conversationalist and asks good questions.

This book was being sold at an esoteric conference I went to, and although Baker had been a speaker at this conference in previous years, he wasn’t at the one I attended. I felt like purchasing his book was something I had to do.

First off, this book does take a certain position on legitimacy in western occultism, and may rub some the wrong way. When I read the foreword to this, and Jaime Paul Lamb calls it a successor to The Secret Teachings of All Ages, I made sure to scrutinize to make sure this wasn’t a cash grab and one more comprehensive occult snore that could easily be a copy and paste by way of paraphrasing encyclopedic data. Fortunately, although this book contains many encyclopedic facts about Neoplatonism, history of astrology, alchemy, conjuring arts, Kabbalah, renaissance rebirth of the mysteries, John Dee and Edward Kelly’s adventures and misadventures, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, The Theosophical movement and more, it leads to a very beautiful and pointed thesis on what this all amounts to.

I was pleased to gain knowledge of things I didn’t know before and be provided with many a rabbit trail for future book hunting, but most pleasing was the author seems to have had a very genuine spiritual transformation as the result of his practice, and knows which side he’s working for. This book is a refreshing read when it is so hard to find the real pulse of ceremonial magic. Seekers are either offered large tomes of confusing ritual, grimoires that collect dust or contribute to mental problems, new age drivel, or the very loud community of Aleister Crowley’s following. I believe Baker is a successor to Plato’s school of mysticism and is a great boon in assisting Christian mystics in making sense of the swaths of information regarding a grail romance of forbidden topics.

Hopefully A Formless Fire gets a much needed proofreading and second edition. The typos get to be a bit ridiculous in too many places which causes distraction, but I am grateful to have read it and it didn’t affect my overall understanding of the material. I was always able to piece together what it should have been read as, but I hope for a more careful eye regarding the details on a published work standpoint. I’d feel honored to go over his next manuscript myself with proofreading marks. The descriptions were also a bit clunky in parts, whereas others were eloquent and smooth. I look forward to the author’s next book, this one is an authoritative essential and helps greatly any seeker of light to the theory and practice of western occultism.

[Alec Ruhmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an excellent work of scholarship over western esotericism. In a relatively brief amount of pages considering the breadth of the subject matter, Ike Baker explains succinctly the tenets of theurgy, alchemy, astrology, both “higher” and “lower” forms of ancient and medieval magic, and so much more. Considering how specialized these subjects can be Ike Baker assumes some prior knowledge on the part of the reader, which is perfectly understandable and keeps the book from being too big and daunting. I am lucky enough to have gotten into these subjects from the phenomenal work of Dr. Justin Sledge through his YouTube channel Esoterica, so I went in with a cursory knowledge of most of the topics in this book - making me the perfect reader for Ike Baker. The author does a great job at making you excited about the subject matter and prompting further personal study. I would also like to thank Ike Baker for his personal contribution to my copy as it was autographed specifically to me, facilitated through my sister-in-law.

In short, Ike Baker does a great job distilling these very complex topics into something understandable for most readers. His writing never slips into apologism, nor harsh scrutiny. This is a book from a practicing expert with a love of the craft. For that I highly recommend this book as an introduction to western esoteric history!

My only gripe with this book is that there are a lot of typos. I am willing to write this off considering how much I liked the book, but this did end up distracting me. Like Josh wrote in a review previous to mine, I was able to piece together what Baker was trying to say most of the time. Considering how many different languages are being written and translated in this book, I can see how these typos slipped through the cracks during the editing process. I do not think Baker is an expert in German so I can see why, for example, the name of the Masonic lodge “Licht, Liebe, und Leben” (Light, Love, and Life) could be misspelled as often as it was. Those words are phonetically so close! I would love to see a second edition of this book with an editor just as deep into western esotericism as the author who will catch these. But again, I enjoyed the book so much that this problem was not that big of a deal to me.

Thank you so much Ike Baker!

[Mike Longo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant! This is a must-read!