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occultism

Spiritual & Demonic Magic – from Ficino to Campanella * Daniel Pickering Walker (1958 * isbn 0750923725)

A title from 1958 fortunately not let run out of print. D.P. Walker was member of the same Warburg Institute as our beloved Frances Yates of who I reviewed various titles. Yates often drew on this book by Walker, but I never really came to read it. I rapidly paged through an old print in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam when looking for info about Francesco Giorgi and later saw that a recent printing (2000) is available from Amazon, so I decided to get it and read it after all. Now I seriously need to look at my article about Renaissance occultism again since Walker has much more and often better info than any book that I used for this article thusfar!

Walker was a music-historian (as Yates was an art-historian) and got interested in the music magic of Marsilio Ficino. This is the basis of this book about Renaissance magic about which you can read in the mentioned article. What Yates calls “natural magic”, Walker calls “spiritual” magic, because -as he explains- spiritual magic doesn’t want to reach beyond the spirit, the ‘middle soul’. All in all a very interesting work about various Renaissance figures all traced back to the magic of Ficino. Walker also proves less historical and more focused on the actual ideas and systems themselves than Yates in most of her works!

777 And Other Qabalistic Writings Of Aleister Crowley * Israel Regardi (isbn 0877286701)

Not the easiest book about the Kabbalah, or better said “Qabalah” since it is the Crowley version. This book has three parts. First part is a collection of Qabalistic writings from Crowley’s “Equinox” magazine. Then you get the rather famous “Liber 777” and the last part is the “Sepher Sephiroth”.

The first part mostly deals with the Qabalistic wordgame “gematria” and is sometimes very detailed, sometimes not so detailed, but most of all pretty vague and difficult. I suppose that when you dig into it this could be a starter for your own gematrical experiments, but I know a better introduction than Crowley’s, even in the Crowley tradition (see “Chicken Qabalah” review).

Then we get the famous “Liber 777”. This was originally also more of a book. It contains writings about symbolism in different traditions and religions, but this is rather short. Then we get a lot of tables of correspondences which are undoubtely usefull for a practical magic(k)ian, but personally I don’t see too much in all this. The lengthy explanations are sometimes helpfull, sometimes not. The tables are sometimes nice, but often not really. They do show Crowley’s rather wide knowlegde of different traditions and religions and it all reminds a bit of H.P. Blavatsky, rather chaotic and a lot of information.

The third part is to me by far the most helpfull part of the book. The “Sepher Sephiroth” is a long list with words in Hebrew catagorised after number-value. So you get the most important words with the value 1, 2, 3, etc. This is of course very convenient when you want to experiment a bit with gematria. You have a word, find out the number value and you can easily look up a word with the same value without having to combine letters and search your dictionary if there is a word with these letters.

So, the books are combined and completed by Israel Regardi, which sometimes makes the layout not too wonderfull (Regardi’s few words in a normal font, Crowley’s text too small), but it can also be helpfull to try to understand Crowley’s chaotic style of writing.

Overall not a good introduction to the Kabbalah or even the Qabalah. Essential for Crowley-followers and eventually also for the more experienced Kabbalist I guess. But especially the “Sepher Sephiroth” makes this book a must-buy for anyone who wants to take gematria to a more practical level.

De Sleutels van Salomo * J. Verschure (transl.) (isbn 9063785240 * 1981)

A Dutch translation of the Claviculae Solomonis, the (Greater) Key of Solomon. “Translated from Hebrew to Latin by Rabbi Abognasar and translated to French by Mgr. Barrault, keeper of records Arles.” It is different from the well-known translation of MacGregor Mathers. Learn the basics of Kabbalistic angel magic and find here many sigils and pentacles. This text is quite well available in different languages, this Dutch version is quite nice. Read more about the content in my article about angel magic.
27/8/03

The Satanic Bible * Anton Szandor LaVey (isbn 0380015390)

Most people heard about this little book and most people also have an opinion about it, but how many actually read it? Well, quite a lot, that’s for sure and that’s becoming more and more as well, because it’s actually quite well obtainable nowadays. I -for example- got my copy in a new-age shop in my hometown.

“The Satanic Bible” is divided in four parts:
1. (fire) -Book Of Satan- the infernal diatribe
2. (air) -Book Of Lucifer- the enlightenment
3. (earth) -Book Of Belial- the mastery of the earth
4. (water) -Book Of Leviathan- the raging sea

After an introduction, a preface, the book opens with The Nine Satanic Statements which are as follows:
1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipedreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of this “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!

These statements actually explain the book quite well and they already show that the philosophy of LaVey is more (self)humanitarian than anti-Christian or (worse) the typical way that people think Satanism is (the medieval view).

The Book of Satan is actually written by Redbeard and it isn’t the most lucky opener for a book that was supposed to deal with the usual prejudices against Satanism, since it’s of a very anti-Christian nature.

The other books are of the hand of LaVey himself and deal with subjects such as ‘satanic sex’, ‘love and hate’, ‘satanic holidays’ and ‘the black mass’ (Book of Lucifer), which are quite provocative subjects, but really not very provocative when you read what LaVey actually has to say about the subject. Nothing against the will of the other, everything on equallity and with the most care for animals and children (who are best left out of any Satanic activity.
The ‘Book of Belial’ deals with Satanic rituals.
The ‘Book of Leviathan’ with ‘Satanic lifestyle’ so to say. It ends with the famous and often quoted ’19 Enochian keys’.

The writing style of LaVey is very light and simple. He has a great sence of humour and a brilliant way of describing what he means (for example the ‘psychic vampires’). Reading the ‘Satanic Bible’ will wipe away most of your prejudices. It may not be all that groundbreaking, but LaVey sure had some points and original ideas about certain subject. And since the book isn’t very expensive, it’s a nice thing to read on a rainy sunday-afternoon. -3/10/00-