What do these three things have in common? I’m still not quite clear on that.

I received Francis Breakspear’s new book, If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Be Doing It! a few months ago, read a few pages, then got caught up in other things. I recently picked it up again, and so far it’s as direct and funny as his first book, Kaostar!,as expected.

Also as in Kaostar!, essays appear from Kate Hoolu and someone called “Dave Evans” (a pseudonym if I ever heard one).

I’ve just finished reading a two-essay interlude by Kate Hoolu, the first, titled “Stereotyping”, deals with issues of race and culture, and the second, “That behaviour is not normal! But how do you prove it?”, discusses mental health. It’s unusual to see these topics addressed in books ostensibly about practical magick, to say the least. Continue reading »

Popularity: 5%

Legion 49, by Barry William Hale looks to be another fascinating title from UK’s Fulgur.

Hale’s blog seems to be dormant, but Caduceus Books gives us a taste of his style, while Fulgur’s author bio fills in the rest.

From Fulgur’s website:

Barry William Hale has nurtured an early fascination with the order Diptera to develop a buzzing, post-modern grimoire-bestiarum. Drawn from many years practical experience working with Beelzebub and his servitors, Legion 49 provides us with a rare glimpse of ‘the Lord of the Flies’ and the dark quintessence of his Legion. In a series of short, de-constructionist essays the artist explores traditional methods of evocation and the myths surrounding Beelzebub, before providing an iconographical and sigillic recension of his horde of forty-nine servitors, glimpsed through the protective-symmetry of the paper-cut traditions of old Mexico.

Fulgur always produces gorgeous work, last year’s Conjunctio, by Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule and The Valley of Fear, by Austin Osman Spare were further proof of this.

Popularity: 6%

Alan Miller, better known to occultists as Dr. Christopher S. Hyatt, the author of Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation and Other Devices, The Psychopath’s Bible and numerous other works published by his company New Falcon Press, and founder of the Extreme Individual Institute died on February 9th, 2008.

Falcon Press was started in 1981 by Hyatt with Israel Regardie. The name was changed to New Falcon Publications due to confusion with a prior claim to the name by another publisher. After Hyatt’s death in 2008, ownership changed to Michael Miller.

Original Falcon Press was launched shortly thereafter by Nick Tharcher and Linda Miller, selling many of the same titles as New Falcon Publications. Nick Tharcher has been granting interviews recently to clear up some of this confusion.

Joseph Mathey interviews Nick Tharcher and Linda Miller, widow of Alan Miller (Christopher Hyatt) about Original Falcon Press and the separation from New Falcon Publications for Alterati‘s podcast, GSpot in “Falcon, Falcon, Burning Bright?” (Thanks to James Curcio for bringing the podcast to my attention.)

Mona Magick interviewed Nick for the Mystic Journey Radio Show on February 13th in “Occult on the Press with The Original Falcon Press“.

For more info, also see “How Mike Miller came to be CEO of New Falcon Publications” at the old New Falcon Publications Blog, written by Nick Tharcher, and, for comparison, “A Statement by Michael Miller on New Falcon Publications“.

Popularity: 5%

Previously we’ve looked at the hazards of dismissing someone out of turn simply because they’re deemed “too popular“, but how do they get that way in the first place?

Recently on a forum someone inquired as to whether there were any “world renowned” LHP practitioners “like what Phil Hine is for chaos magick”.  This struck me as odd on at least two accounts.

Certainly, Phil Hine has written several well received books about chaos magick (namely Condensed Chaos and Prime Chaos), but why does Hine, for this person, serve to represent chaos magick? Continue reading »

Popularity: 35%

John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation Through Powerful Signs, by Gyorgy Szonyi
State University of New York Press (SUNY), 0791462234, 362 pp. (incl. notes, bibliographies and index), 2004

In John Dee’s Occultism Szyoni argues that, contrary to popular sentiment, Dee’s interest in occultism was not separate from his scientific investigations, but a logical extension of his philosophical studies.

The book is arranged Continue reading »

Popularity: 3%