In July I posted about the one-man, one-act play written and performed by John Burns, Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil, which is showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.

LAShTAL.com hosts an in-depth review written by Frater FS, which is largely favourable:

Condensing any life, never mind Crowley’s into less than an hour requires some remarkably tight editing and Burns wisely chooses some key vignettes to give the broad strokes of the Crowley biography. Burns does this with remarkable intensity and effect, slipping into various characters on a minimal stage with nothing but a writing desk, a phone, a dagger and a wine glass for company (Burns plays Crowley in his 50s, balding and in bow tie and frock coat).

Check out the full review on LAShTAL.com, it sounds like Burns has done an excellent job – wish I was in Edinburgh!

I haven’t been able to locate many other reviews of the show, and none go as deep into it as Frater FS. (For example, EdinburghSpotlite.com gave it three stars in a review by Keith D, but without much analysis.)

The show is still on, and will be until August 28th, 2010. If you see it, I’d love to know what you think.

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Back in 2007 I reviewed Sacred Land: Intuitive Gardening for Personal, Political and Environmental Change, by Clea Danaan for SpiralNature.com.

I gave it a favourable review (it was a great book), but I also mentioned my disappointment that it seemed solely geared for women.

Ms Danaan must have stumbled upon the review recently, because she posted an explanation in her Intuitive Gardening Blog, writing that:

When I originally wrote the book, it was intended as part of a series of books called the Goddess Guides. The first was called Goddess’ Guide for the Magical Bride and became my book Magical Bride. The second was about healing, and I haven’t written it yet. The third became Sacred Land. If you have read both Sacred Land and Magical Bride, you will know that I profile goddesses related to pertinent topics in each book. The series was meant to be geared towards women, on normal topics we deal with every day like marriage, gardening, raising children, and health. I wanted to include goddesses and women who inspire me on each given topic.

Danaan goes on to explain that it was retitled several times and all references to goddesses and sisterhood were removed from the title, but not from the text itself, which contributed to the odd female-centric feel of the book. It was, in the end, unintentional.

Another cool thing about the Internet: you can learn the stories behind books straight from the authors themselves.

Thanks for the clarification Clea Danaan!

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Over at Rune Soup Gordon introduced a book game with the following guidelines:

How would you introduce someone to magic using only books? He or she has a month in a lake house and will read whatever you tell them in the exact order that you tell them to. Not even any peeking at other books on the list.

It’s a good game, for the full list of rules and to participate, click here. You can see Gordon’s picks here. I offered my response in the comments section, but I thought I’d share it here too, with a little more about why I chose these books in particular.

My aim was a little different than Gordon’s, I took the game as a chance to create a new magickian from a complete skeptic, not to create a mini-Psyche – that would have been a different list altogether. Perhaps a project for another day.

Without further ado, here’s my list: Continue reading »

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Ashley Naftule is a used bookseller by day and a playwright by night. He doesn’t currently maintain a proper blog, but he can be reached via Facebook and Twitter.

To be honest, I’ve dodged a serious bullet with Datura. When its editor, Ruby Sara, put out a call for submissions on Scarlet Imprints last year, I almost submitted a handful of poems for inclusion. The thought of an anthology of occult-themed poetic work and essays on the mystical aspects of the creative process struck quite a nerve with me, and I was eager to contribute. Luckily a combination of a busy life at the time and a creative dry spell prevented me from sending Sara anything by the deadline, and after reading through Datura, I’m deeply thankful that the few pieces I was able to conjure up never got sent her way. For even if they were accepted and published in the pages of Datura, the quality of the content is so high my work would have looked like utter shit next to everything else between its covers.

Datura contains the work of 26 poets, that work being a mix of 6 essays and 47 poems. When I picked up Datura, I was really eager to read the essays. Scarlet Imprint has published three other anthologies in the past – Howlings, Devoted, and Diabolical -  and their occult essays were absolutely stellar. While I do love poetry, and have a deep fondness for the Pagan and fortean realms, I’ve read enough awful odes to Odin and tree-spirits (and composed quite a few myself, to be fair) that the thought of a book devoted to such poetry might be a risky gamble. I figured that six good essays could make up for some lousy astral-poetics. Thankfully while the essay-work is every bit as good as I hoped it would be, the poetry in Datura manages to keep its nimble-feet from stepping into the bear-trap of twee Pagan cliches. Continue reading »

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Upon checking my postbox yesterday I found a package from Disinformation.com containing their 2008 and 2009 catalogues, and Hidden Wisdom: The Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition, by Tim Wallace-Murphy.

I don’t normally post about all the neat stuff I receive from publishers, but this is the first time I’ve received anything from Disinformation, and this one sounds kind of neat.

From the description found on the website for Hidden Wisdom (which, not-so-coincidentally, is the same text found on the back of the book):

From Egyptian mythology to Jewish mysticism, Rome and Greece to the druids and the gnostics, Tim Wallace-Murphy exposes a fascinating lineage of hidden mysteries and secret societies, continuing through the Templars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons to our modern visionaries. This hidden stream of spirituality and that of sacred knowledge are inseparably entwined to form the single most important continuous strand in the entire Western esoteric tradition.

This tradition exerted a seminal influence on the thinking of the builders of the great cathedrals; leading teachers in ecclesiastical schools; philosophers; playwrights; poets such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake, and W. B. Yeats; and on artists and Renaissance giants such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. It is also the root from which sprang alchemy and modern science.

Now, as more people are looking to find information on the alternatives to dominant religions and dogmas that have told us what to think and how to behave, as faith has been questioned by religious scandals, economic meltdowns, and an increasingly sick planet Earth, Wallace-Murphy reveals the secrets of the masters, including invaluable spiritual insights into everyday life that have been hidden throughout the ages. He shows us who kept this spiritual tradition alive despite appalling persecution, so that we in the twenty-first century might benefit from its accumulated fruits and ennoble our lives.

It’s been a good long while since I last read this sort of book. Sounds like fun.

Disinfo has a lot of neat stuff in their catalogue, I look forward to pursuing more of their stuff. Is there anything you’d like to see reviewed?

Full 2009 catalogue available here.

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