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So my quasi-girlfriend gives me a fifty dollar gift certificate for Border's Books, which is not half a mile from where I sleep, and has a remarkably well-stocked occult section. I was about to get The Magus, when I realized that for ten dollars more I could get a better version, Henry Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy with modern commentary and annotations and all that good shit (The Magus is a reprinting of a reprint of the Three Books, and, according to the copy I bought, is full of errors). I'm glad I had the gift-certificate, otherwise I would have had to walk out with it (forty five dollars! Gad! I can't afford that right now). I tend to treat large bookstores like libraries, in that I steal books from them occasionally without ever bringing them back.
This book is great. The translator/annotator/whatever claims that by the time you're finished with all three books, you'll have the equivalent of a degree in Rennaisance Occultism, quite possibly the most useless degree I've ever heard of. But I'd love to have such a degree on my wall.
It starts off with a short (fifty or sixty pages, anyway) biography of Agrippa, who was a well-educated minor noble with a brilliant mind and a knack for making poor if not life-threatening political decisions (for instance, he once tried to get an essay praising Martin Luther printed while living in the doggedly anti-anything but Roman Catholic town of Metz. Thank god Agrippa's publisher talked him out of it; he probably would've been killed).
I've only had the chance to browse through several sections, but I can tell there's an insane amount of information in these books. Some of it I would call outdated (there are several rediculous comments made towards women and their abilities as far as occultism goes), but the vast majority I find incredibly useful. It's essentially a complete occult system. Neat!
The grammar is occasionally hard to follow. You'll find commas in the strangest places. Still, it's worth getting. Go find it. |
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