One of the big advantages of print-on-demand is that it opens up the field to practical magicians who are writing on subjects which are too daring for the commercial publishers, like working with spirits. Martin Coleman’s Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy is a book written by a bloke who has a system and it works for him. It comes with all the useful advice you need to work his system and gives some interesting insights into the whole business of working with the dead. I want to make this clear that this is not a field of interest for me. When I work with the dead and ancestor’s it is an adjunct to my other work. But it
book review
Shadows of the Infinite
Magic once seemed black and white. My teachers made it clear that you should not work with demons or dark gods and only needed to emphasis the light. It pre-supposed that such black magic existed, but it needed to be ignored. Concentrating on such forces was not only unbalanced, but it led you to all sorts of problems and mental instability. Their case was re-enforced by the fact that the only people who apparently wanted to touch such magical systems were kids or those who were desperate to shock their parents. The only notable advocates of such systems, such as Kenneth Grant and Aleister Crowley, were scary. Systems also required the use of techniques which were pretty disgusting, with ritual
Temple of the Cosmos
I have been reading Templeof the Cosmos by Jeremy Naydler and he hits some rather important points which some neo-pagans might not like much.The book looks at what the Ancient Egyptian worldview would have actually been and how this could have led to many of religious ideas. What Naydler accidently does is put a spanner in the works of would be neo-pagans who wished to create a modern form of Egyptian worship with their worldview.If Temple of the Cosmos is to be believed to get a real Egyptian religion you would have to short circuit many of the modes of thinking of modern life. Naydler believes that the world that the Ancient Egyptians had was one where their myth,