History and Practice of Magic

[Scott]

The History and Practice of Magic by Paul Christian is one of my all time favourite books. It is a TOME that you could drop a Hermeticist at 80 paces with (provided you could throw it that far) weighing in at just over 600 pages.

 

It is like so many books on the occult not the sort of thing you can take without at least a pich of salt in some places. Like many books prior to the influence of the Big "L" presses there is no nice neat divider line between fact and rumour. On the same hand however it is also unlike many of the modern texts in that the practical aspects of this book in terms of Higher White forms are fairly explicit (as far as they were in those times and really can be without castrating their power anyway) and the explanation of Arcana I - XXI as part of a Magi induction is superb (interestingly enough for those who love to put downers on such things this book refers to the tunnel unde rth Sphynx which they actually found a while bacK!)

 

But don't let that scare you off. This book is INVALUABLE in that it gives a first hand recount of times that these days oh so many "almost kind of imply some knowledge of". If you like your info to come in an authentic mystery wrapper with the seasoning that this century simply doesn't make then this one is for you. It is the sort of authoritative text that existed before fools and dollar merchants started the wave of thinking that everything should come from Uni students talking about documented evidence!

[AnjelWolf]

Thanks Scott...I copied the title down and will look for it as well :)