I’ve had this book hanging around in my small library for a long time, and it’s only now that I’ve taken it off the shelf to start reading it. I’m not a fan of high magical traditions (though the author talks about more than just about that), I only read this now because I just finished its sequel, “Financial Magic.”
The book is decent, written in a nice solid way, but I do have a few disagreements with the author, beginning with his choice of the word “sorcerer/sorceress as that encompassing term describing all users of magic.
From what I understand, sorcerers are basically considered ghostwalkers/spiritwalkers/soulwalkers /dreamwalkers/deathwalkers, usually majoring in areas dealing with the otherworldly. Not everyone working with magic messes with that. It’s kind of like calling every sensitive an empath, or every spellcaster a witch...when witches (male and female) were traditionally healers and, every once in a while, also nature-workers (at least in Western Europe anyway.)
Also, I don’t think a person has to rely so heavily on ceremony to call on entities. Maybe the author is comfortable with color, drama, and excessive ecstasies, but I’m uneasy with the thought of making a big production out of asking for assistance...especially the part when you feel you’ve got to butter someone up to get them to notice you. People do this to celebrities a lot, and I doubt many of them like that kind of attention poured on them...unless they’re Gabors or Kardashians. Just ask for what you want, offer something in return, and if they accept the terms, you should be good to go. But in my opinion, it’s kind of like constantly asking embodied people in this realm for favors...and seriously, do you really want a gaggle of people hanging around you?
Well, I’m just expressing my preferences. *I* think it’s time-consuming, wastes energy, and is overall unnecessary.
However, one of the things I actually do agree with the author on is the topic of meditation. Meditation is absolutely necessary. If it weren’t for me finding out from a number of sources that meditation is not just practiced in religion, mysticism, and spirituality, but also in magic...not to mention encouraged in such disparate areas like psychology, the business world, and probably the arts...I would have tossed it out as just another stupid joke thing that the religious and the more spirituality-inclined do. But I just can’t do that. It’s too essential. It’s so incredibly important, it’s now pretty much accepted in the secular world. I can’t even begin to encourage people enough to meditate, meditate, meditate. Do it as much as you can get away with. If you don’t do anything else this or any other book tells you about magic, at the very least make meditation a regular practice. It really is that big of a deal.
But even here I have to disagree with the author when he says don’t practice meditation lying down. Yes you can. Granted, you should do it on your back, and you should breath from the belly rather than the chest (and at the first time another person should press on your sternum to check if you’re doing it right...if you’re breathing from the chest rather than the diaphragm, it’s going to hurt), but yes, you can totally meditate on your back. And it’s cool if you happen to fall asleep while you’re meditating...it comes with the territory...it just means you’re relaxed. And I know what they all say, but don’t worry about your thoughts getting in the way. Just don’t get distracted.
But this is the bare basic form of meditation. With other meditations you should have a straight-back chair, do it standing, or do that notorious “lotus position”, but meditations come in surprisingly different forms, from prone to breathing to moving meditations. For a more detailed look at the subject, I recommend an old book from 1997, called “Complete Meditation”, by Steve Kravette.
Anyway, this present book is generally good. I may not like all the high magic stuff in there, but at least the overall tone is sensible. It answered a few dangling questions on magic theory that a lot of other books didn’t bother to explain. That helped, because I found it irritating every time they just went straight to the juice. It also mentioned the tendency of some to wait before using magic as the last resort...when by that time the situation may have gotten so far out of hand that it’s close to the point of no return. (I might be wrong, but that perspective probably started propagating through the books written by Scott Cunningham). And it talked heavily about using what would normally be called “glamour magic,” or simply ”glamoury,” “glamour,” or “glamor,” even though nowhere in the book does the author call it by that name. I guess it’s assumed that only women get to use glamor, (that’s a serious mistake), so a lot of other stuff that would also qualify easily under that term might be just as easily overlooked, no matter who uses it. But that’s a secret between you and me. (My general thanks goes out to the author of “Glamour Magic,” Deborah Castellano, for that insight.)
Anyway, this book managed to shift my perspective a little, from seeing magic as something you just had to hold onto for dear life, to just instruments among a variety of different other instruments you can choose from to accomplish whatever you do.