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What books did you read when you just started out with Magic?

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18:20 / 07.10.02

Originally most of what I knew about magic I either knew about from talking to my on-line friends who were into it or websites (like Grant Moorison's "Pop Magic", which was inspired me to start doing it). The Invisibles introduced me to Chaos Magic. Eventually I decided to get off my ass and start reading. The first books I read were:

Phil Hine's "Condensed Chaos" & "Prime Chaos"
Peter J. Carroll's "Liber Null & Psychonaut" & "Liber Kaos"
Dion Fortune's "Psychic Self-Defense" (mainly because WSB recommended it).

Aleister Crowley's "Magick Without Tears" & "The Book Of The Law"
& that book "City Magick" (forget author's name)

Generally I don't read much books on magic as I like to invent my own ideas, but some of those books were helpful to me (the first one I read was the Fortune one). Hine in particular was illuminating.

How about you then?

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:07 / 07.10.02

Liber Null and Psyconaut is one I think many here started out with. I know I did. My very first book on the occult was A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, by Gareth Knight.

My early magickal education didn't come from books, though. Mainly it came from this place and www.chaosmatrix.com, which sadly no longer exists.

21:00 / 07.10.02

I'd say the first magick book I read with any weight was The Quabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang. After that, Liber Null, which broke my head into brightly colored gooy bits and really set me off to where I am today. Be Here Now by Ram Daas would have been the next one to smear the gooy bits about again, I recon. After that its a bit harder to track...

Wrecks City-Zen

21:13 / 07.10.02

Ok...my list includes:

Real Magic P E I Bonewits-essential!
New Millenium Magic Donald Tyson- I can't endorse this book enough!
78 Degrees of Wisdom Rachl Pollack- My favorite for the Tarot
The Fire From Within, The Art of Dreaming, The Eagle's GiftCarlos Castaneda
The Magician's CompanionI think it's Pennick...argh
Barbelith Magic Forumof course

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:12 / 07.10.02

Re XXX: I agree wholeheartedly with the Pollack recommendation. I've spent years trying to find a Tarot book that didn't sound like dodgy new age tripe; this one seems to make sense.

I'm still only starting. I've read both Hine books mentioned, am working through Kraig's Modern Magick and have the two Carrolls and Crowley's Magick waiting to be read, as well as Scholem's Kabbalah and Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods Of Haiti.

I found the Hine to be useful, but to make jumps into the "and now, while you're summoning" bits without any real explanation as to how he got there, you know? It's confusing for us magick eedjits.

I have picked up bits and pieces from The Magick here, and more from private conversation with some posters; but I am wary that my lack of knowledge is a bit of a stumbling block in particular types of discourse here.

I guess the most difficult thing is that I've yet to make that whole experiential leap - to feel stuff for myself. And as such, I'm feeling a bit of doubt. I'm sure it'll clear up with perserverence...

01:58 / 08.10.02

One of the books which most influenced me in the direction of magick was the Illuminatus! trilogy. Highly recommended, especially for Invisibles fans.

The following are excellent books for the novice that haven't yet been mentioned.

Visual Magick, Jan Fries
Eight Lectures on Yoga, Aleister Crowley
Book 4 (aka Magick in Theory and Practice), Aleister Crowley
The Middle Pillar, Israel Regardie
The One Year Manual, Israel Regardie

04:06 / 08.10.02

The books that influenced me the most when I first started out on this magickal sojourn would be:

Mystical Qabala and Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune
Magick Without Tears and Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley
Oh and of course The Book of the Law

Undoing Yourself I & II Christopher Hyatt and R.A.W (I think)

Any bloody Castenada book I could get my hands on

That includes some books written by the members of his household such as:
A Sorceror's Crossing by Taisha Abelar
and
The Witch's Dream by Florinda Donner.

MT

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:21 / 08.10.02

Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson.
Masks of the Illuminati by same. This one got me into Crowley, A real initiation never ends.

Then I found Liber KKK on the net.

Then Liber NULL and Psychnaut.

07:32 / 08.10.02

I think the first book I ever read on magic was "The Black Arts" by Richard Cavendish when I was v. young - didn't understand it at all. Followed by a couple of years later by John Symonds "King of the Shadow Realm" (my Dad sighted me reading this and told me, "he was a wanker"). Burroughs biography "Liteary Outlaw" had such strange incidences of magick with mirrors in, I mentioned it to someone I was corresponding with and they put me onto Liber Null. Can't remember after that but two good books for the beginner (or anyone else actually) are Sexual Magick by Katon Shual and Copsmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. I found anything by Stephen Mace esp. "Stealing the Fire from Heaven" great, and very useful for getting into Austin Spare.
Can anyone come up with any non-magickal books that provide a lot of magical inspiration? My starter (plagarised from Phil Hine): "Impro" by Keith Johnstone

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:02 / 08.10.02

Mine was a bit crap- Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth's "Thee Gray Book".
Followed by Carroll. Who was better.

Possibly a bit too much better. I rarely practise anymore, having got very scared in the past.

10:06 / 08.10.02

Yeah, that'd be a good thread - right crap magical books. I didn;t think The (sorry, "Thee") Grey Book was that bad, but very of its time.

10:12 / 08.10.02

This is going to be a horribly embarassing list.

The Necronomicon - It looked dark and evil, and when you're 12, dark and evil = cool.

Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham - There really wasn't much of a choice and it was easy to read.

Earth Power Cunningham again - Same reason as his previous book.

To Ride a Silver Brookstick Silver Ravenwolf. I liked the cover and it was a fairly large book. I felt I was getting my money's worth.

21 Lessons of Merlyn Not sure who wrote it. I just really liked the structure of it. Each chapter would tell a story, then there'd be practical stuff.

Secrets of Shamanism Not sure about the authors. It was cheap and shamanism had always interested me.

There were a lot of other books. I bought at least one book a week and read them all.

I really didn't start getting serious about stuff until I found the Chaos Matrix (which is coming back eventually!) and Tools of Chaos (which is archived somewhere).

11:43 / 08.10.02

The first pagan/magic book I read was The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, though I'd been into Tarot for about two years at that point (and I agree with the recommendation of Rachel Pollack by the way). I didn't care for it a great deal, really. I subsequently read Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Alder which gave a good overview of the scene. I'm not sure which book gave me the "jolt", but I remember using a number of guided meditations from the book Pathworkings by Pete Jennings. The book itself was small, cheap and had awful drawings, but had a great deal of useful pathworkings which I used. It certainly got me started. I tended to find useful things in a range of works, including The Celtic Shaman by John Mathews, and some of Kenneth Meadows' works, though I can't recommend them much, but they served a purpose at the time. I did happen upon Phil Hine's Condensed Chaos and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles around then and found them to be illuminating.

12:55 / 08.10.02

on chaos magic: bey's ontological anarchy, v for vendetta (yup, the comic) & liber kkk

there are others, much more non-magic(k)al. wait till i get home

15:49 / 08.10.02

Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods Of Haiti That's Voodoo Gods of Haiti, actualy. I just finished that one a bit ago and found it very helpful. I'm currently poking through the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot book by Louis Martien, which does some neat stuff with mapping voodoo to quaballa to tarot. Crunchy.

Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditations was Hiatt with Antero Ali, I believe. I like Ali, he has a neat approach to things. His Angeltech - A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection is still one of my favorites as a guide to self initiation. I highly reccomend that as a followup to Undoing Yourself, its more work along those lines but more applied. His Akashic Record Player was fun as well, kind of an adventure novel that's really a lesson in magick.

Anyone read the Celestine Prophesy? I thought there was a lot of good stuff in there, though the whole "put on your light body" bit at the end was a real let down.

Another one I got a lot out of was By Oak Ash and Thorn, DJ Conway. It takes some filtering of the "those evil christians oppressed our beautiful Celtic wisdom" crap, but the shamanic techniques are golden.

Leaves of Yggdrazil by Freya Aswyn. I asked the gods for info on runes, and they gave me this one. I liked it a lot. Thorsson's Runelore is another excellent piece on rune magick.

And I've said it before, I'll say it again: The Magickian's Companion is the bom. Its the most essencial reference I've seen. Whitcomb knows his shit.

at the scarwash

20:25 / 08.10.02

Anyone have a clue if Deren's book is ever going to come back into print? It's impossible to find a used copy these days.

20:29 / 08.10.02

No idea, I got mine from ebay, of all places.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

21:45 / 08.10.02

Another one I got a lot out of was By Oak Ash and Thorn, DJ Conway. It takes some filtering of the "those evil christians oppressed our beautiful Celtic wisdom" crap,...

Yeah, she really lays into orthodox religion here and there. I do like her exercises, though. This book really helped shape my shamanic practice, for good or ill. I know Lothar Tuppan didn't think much of her, but hey, I do dig some of her stuff.

22:15 / 08.10.02

The first book I read was Power of the Witch by Laurie Cabot.

It's excellent. Totally made me think about things in a different way and gave me a good basis in magickal techniques. I've read it quite a few times.

Then I read Prime Chaos and Liber Null & Psychonaut and loooved them! (Also highly recommend Urban Shaman by Serge Khaili King.)

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:06 / 08.10.02

cusm: Mine is called that, actually. There's variants on the title in different editions.

testpattern: I bought my Deren book new, at a place called Adyar in Sydney. It cost me A$38 in-store, but it's A$32 if you buy it online. Which is, y'know, like ten bucks US. At any rate, it's available new from the publisher, too? Now if only the same could be said of this Bertiaux that I keep hearing about...

01:44 / 09.10.02

I know Lothar Tuppan didn't think much of her, but hey, I do dig some of her stuff.

He's not the only one...

10:40 / 09.10.02

Cusm and Rothkoid: I believe you're both outside the US so this might make ya a bit sick...

Ps: Rothkoid - Bertaiux is by and large incomprehensible, and the size of a phone directory. It's accquired the kind of cult rep 'cos of its bizarreness and it's rarity rather than it's use value. - I wouldn't say there's nothing to it but it makes Kenneth Grant look like a Jackie Collins novel, the only comprehensible bit is the first 10 chapters whcih I've got photocopied. If you want 'em. PM me.

11:56 / 09.10.02

just relaised that was very uninformative for everyone else - Maya Deren film at NFT in London, see link above.

16:48 / 09.10.02

Aah! I see, "living gods of haiti" is the new edition. They tweaked the title a bit, is all. Cool, good to see it in print again.

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22:40 / 09.10.02

I should say William S. Burroughs and bands like Psychic TV, Coil & Throbbing Gristle also got me interested in magic.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:09 / 09.10.02

Actually, Sypha; what's the best place to start with magick Coil?