VERY HIGH STRANGENESS

Rev. Alyson Dunlop Shanes. Mystic Visions: Spontaneous Supernatural Visions, Flying Disk Press, 2024.

There is no denying that Rev. Shanes has had a very active life filled with experiences and encounters with angels, demons, aliens and the paranormal. She grew up in a family that had supernatural experiences; at age four she started doing yoga exercises and at fourteen she communicated with a guardian spirit she called Norman using a Ouija board. At about the same time she was given a copy of The Exorcist by her grandfather who probably did not realise it was not age appropriate.

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THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MIND

Charles Stein, The Light of Hermes Trismegistus: New Translations of Seven Essential Hermetic Texts. Inner Traditions, 2022.

As a fan of the Hermetica – those extraordinary cosmological, philosophical and magical works attributed to the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, which had an immense but shamefully ignored impact on Western culture – it’s always good to see a new work on the subject. 

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MEETING WITH A REMARKABLE MAN

Tobias Churton. Deconstructing Gurdjieff; Biography of a Spiritual Magician. Inner Traditions USA. 2017.

Of all the spiritual teachers who have reached some measure of public prominence and fame there is none quite so enigmatic and fascinating as George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (?1877-1949). One of the key points of his teaching was that most humans are disunited three-brained beings in a state of hypnotic 'waking sleep', acting more or less like machines according to their programming and external stimuli.

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PLATONIC MYSTICISM

Arthur Versluis, Platonic Mysticism: Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art. State University of New York Press, 2017

Although Platonic Mysticism is written for fellow academics by a scholar specialising in the subject – Arthur Versluis is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University – much of what it has to say has a wider relevance to we Magonians.

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ROCK AND ROOTS

Christopher Hill. Into The Mystic: The Visionary and Ecstatic Roots of 1960’s Rock and Roll. Park Street Press (2017)

For those hoping for a scholarly examination of the 'visionary and ecstatic roots of Rock and Roll', this book will prove to be a disappointment. There is very little attempt to delve into the complexities of Eastern or Western mysticism, whether by reference to the origins of Buddhist or Hindu mysticism in the Vedas, or Christian mysticism originating in the writings of St. Dionysus the Aereopagite, and maintained in the monastic meditative tradition to the present day.
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TALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

Ronald H. Fritze, Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, Reaktion Books, 2016.

"Egypt from ancient times to the present has remained a perennial object of fascination, fantasy, mystery and, at times, obsession and madness. The Egypt of one’s dreams is often just that, a dream rather than the real Egypt of history. That, however, to a large extent is what Egyptomania is all about."
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CONNECTIONS AND LOOSE ENDS

J. Douglas Kenyon. (ed) Lost Powers - Reclaiming our Inner Connection. Atlantis Rising, 2016.

Most of us have been duped at one time or another. Whether it is a belief that we once cherished, only to become disillusioned as we grew in wisdom and experience, or the amazement of sleight-of-hand magic, there are many ways to be deceived. Some are useful and amusingly impressive, others may be embarrassing, painful or seriously damaging.
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BAPHOMET: ACTING THE GOAT

Nikki Wyrd and Julian Vayne. The Book of Baphomet. Mandrake, 2015.

In reading and reviewing this book, the phrase 'curate's egg' kept coming to mind. That means to say I found the book to be good in parts. It is a stimulating but rather odd concoction of writings by a male and female couple who have evidently been practitioners of Chaos Magick for many years and are initiated Wiccans.
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LETTING IN THE LIGHT

P.T. Mistlberger. The Inner Light: Self-Realization via the Western Esoteric Tradition, Axis Mundi Books, 2014.

My immediate reaction on being handed The Inner Light to review was that this was a book that could go in one of two very different directions. The title and subtitle, together with the packaging and the cover blurb’s description of the author as a ‘transpersonal therapist’ and ‘transformation workshop facilitator,’ awakened all my prejudices against the New Age.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL BIOGRAPHIES

Bernard McGinn. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae: A Biography. Princeton University Press, 2014.

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David Gordon White. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A Biography. Princeton University Press, 2014.

The excellent ‘Lives of Great Religious Books’ series is continuing: McGinn begins by observing that few people have ever read the whole of the Summa theologiae, which runs to a million and a half words. Personally, I have only read the sections on demonology. Even Bertrand Russell’s compendious History of Western Philosophy deals mainly with the shorter Summa Contra Gentiles. 🔻

HIS EXCELLENCY

Sean Stowell. The King’s Psychic. Great Northern Books, 2014.

The world between the wars was one in which all sort of strange fringe characters circulated, many lying on the boundary between the respectable and the quite charlatanesque. There were all sorts of health quacks, strange political fringes, and the field of psychical research and the paranormal was no exception.
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DEVILISH DOINGS

Robert Ziegler. Satanism, Magic and Mysticism in Fin-de-Siècle France. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

On the first page of the first chapter the author informs us that “In Britain, renowned occultist Alfred Waite characterized France as fertile ground for the spread of black magic . . .” Arthur Waite was indeed one of the leading occult authors of the time, but this does not encourage us. Later, he refers to “the Hindu goddess Shiva”.
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TEMPLE OF SOLOMON

James Wasserman, The Temple of Solomon: From Ancient Israel to Secret Societies, Inner Traditions, 2011.

I came to this book with high anticipation. As, in James Wasserman’s words, the Temple of Solomon ‘is a fundamental component of the spiritual and religious yearnings of millions of people and has been the symbolic focus of the teachings of esoteric societies for three thousand years,’ the idea of gathering together in one volume all the history, legends and traditions relating to it was a promising one. 🔻

REJECTED KNOWLEDGE

Wouter J Hanegraaff. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

I think I had better start this review with a warning as to what this book is NOT about; despite the subtitle it is not about the wide range of ‘damned and excluded’ topics discussed by Forteans, psychical researchers and the like. Nor does it really cover the full range of ‘magical’ and ‘occult’ beliefs mentioned in the publisher’s blurb.
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SCANDAL OF KABBALAH

Yaacob Dweck. The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice. Princeton University Press, 2011.

After Spain and Portugal expelled the Jews, north Italy, and in particular Venice, became a major centre for Judaism. Among the prominent Venetian rabbis of this period was Leon Modena (1571-1648), who wrote an autobiography at a time when that was an unusual thing to do, so that a great deal is known about him. 🔻🔻🔻

ART AND THE OCCULT

Charles Colbert. Haunted Visions; Spiritualism and American Art. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

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Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker and Gian Casper Bott (Eds.). Séance; Albert von Keller and the Occult. University of Washington Press/Frye Art Museum. 2011.

In 1855 the American artist William Sidney Mount received two letters from another artist, encouraging him in his work, and giving advice as to the manner in which his paintings should develop. Although critical of the “sameness of design” in some of Mount’s paintings he acknowledged the originality of much else of his work.

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THE GREAT OOM

Robert Love. The Great Oom: The Mysterious origins of America’s First Yogi. Penguin Books, 2011. 

A while ago I read a piece in the papers about a vicar who turned a yoga exercise group out of his church hall because he said it was un-Christian. At the time I mentally filed this along with the “political correctness gone mad” type of story. This book puts the vicar’s action into a historical context, and a remarkable one it is too. 
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THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography, Princeton University Press. 2011.

The four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible has given rise to a large number of articles, along with radio and television programmes, about its origins and influence. Now Princeton University Press has begun to issue a series of 'Lives of Great Religious Books', beginning with 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead', which, in the Evans-Wentz edition, was one of the 'bibles' of the hippie movement, and has sold more than a million copies.
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A SEXUAL OUTLAW

Vere Chappell. Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock. Wieser Books, 2010

Ida Craddock (1857-1902) was a pioneering American sexologist, who eventually committed suicide rather than face a long prison sentence imposed upon her through the actions of the moral entrepreneur Anthony Comstock. This book, by an officer of the Ordo Templi Orientis, provides a basic biography and a selection of her works.
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