I'm almost done with it now and there's not really much else to recommend it. A quote from the section on divination: "The runes reflect a culture of struggle and fierce determination. Turning that culture into a gentle, kind, bourgeois middle-class American clone is insulting at best" (16
cool . But...I thought I could take symbols from anywhere and say they mean whatever I want!
stare The book quickly stops being about what I would call "postmodern magic" (the stuff in the beginning about symbol manipulation and the power of magic being in its aesthetic value for the practitioner) and degenerates into a typical hodge-podge of everything a beginner wants to know about magic; divination, magical attack, servitors, your Holy Guardian Angel (referred to as the HGA), remote viewing, evocation, invocation, spirit classes, magical groups... The author just says "this is what a mage should do and know" and never says
why by connecting it back to the original thesis. He dismisses whole sections of the occult world by saying "I find them uninteresting" with no further explanation.
My recommendation is get it from the library or borrow it from someone if you must. Don't waste your money.
In other news, Tropical Storm Hanna is raining on us. But there doesn't look like any damage in my area so far.
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