historical

02
Jul
2015

Liber Iuratus Series Intro


As some of you know I have a degree in History from a University one of the top three History programs in North America. My final thesis was on Liber Iuratus Honorii, an early grimoire.
The next several posts will be that essay. I could post it all at once, but I know how attention spans on the internet work, so I’ll break it down into more reasonably sized chunks and post it over several days. Unfortunately due to the nature of academic writing there are long thoughts and paragraphs, so there isn’t always a good place to break the essay down. Some entries will be 500 words, others a 1000. I tended to break it along themes whenever possible.
Due to being on this blog, I’ll be removing the footnotes, because they’re a pain in the arte to put onto wordpress, but I will include all the texts I reference in the final post.
My paper is on whether or not Liber Iuratus is a Christian text or not. It claims it is, and I agree (as I’ll say in the intro), so it might seem odd to write a paper on it, but that’s how the historical process works. We can’t just accept at face value a claim in a text, so we have to evaluate it. So the paper is me breaking down the grimoire and looking for clues that really confirm or deny the Christian nature of the text. If you’re not familiar with the process it might seem odd to prove a text is telling the truth. As a historian we can’t just look at what a text says, we have to understand why it would say that, who benefits from it, why has it survived, and what does it tell us. The most fascinating element of history is taking something minor, and fleshing it out to see what it means. Sure, Liber Iuratus is a Christian grimoire, but what can we learn from it, what does it tell us about Christianity at the time, the view of the Church, the social structure of society? That’s the fun, teasing out the information.
Also, as it’s an academic paper written for a general audience of medieval historians, some of my points and explanations will seem really simple and obvious to magickal folks familiar with grimoires, but they have to be said for everyone else.
So that being said over the next several days I’ll be rolling out my posts on it.
And before it begins, since I know someone will be curious. I got an A on the paper, and my professor only challenged one of my assertions, as she felt it was too biased. It was probably my second favourite history paper to write. (My first one being the creation of the lesbian identity in Western culture due to the World Wars.)

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
01
Mar
2015

Languages and Magick: Cultural Artefacts and Split Personalities


(The bulk of this post was written three years ago, but got lost in the shuffle. To refamiliarize yourself with my ramblings you can find Part One here and find Part Two here.)
I’ve touched a bit upon languages, alphabets and names in the past, but there is another aspect of language and magick that interests me. It’s less convoluted and more just varying opinions. What power does language have (as in a specific tongue), when, and why?
Religions and magickal traditions have all sorts of different opinions. I have Muslim friends who know no Arabic, except what it required to read and recite the Qur’an, and say their prayers. Not to mention Jewish friends that know only enough Hebrew to say the first part of many prayers “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu *mumblemumblemumble*” The why and the how differs. Not surprisingly though very few Christians learn any Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic for their religion –and if you want to win arguments with them, learn these languages.
So why does language (not) matter in magick? I’m talking including religions here, because yes there is a big crossover with magick. There are all sorts of different opinions on why you should or shouldn’t use some language. My friends have explained that the words of Mohammad (P) are sacred, so when reciting the Qur’an or the prayers, they should say it as he said it, that the literal words are sacred. A Lukumi friend of mine has learnt Spanish, Yoruba, and some pidgin language of which the name escapes me for her prayers, for what seems to be a cultural respect. On the other side of things is good old Abraham von Worms who said essentially don’t pray in any language other than your mother tongue as you’ll never be as sure what you’re saying, and you could say or imply the wrong things. Even if you learn the language, there can be dozens of subtle nuances you won’t know if it isn’t your mother tongue, or you’ve spoken it regularly for less than a few decades.
Enochian magick pretty much is always initiated in Enochian. When studying with one lama I was told that my sadhanas (rituals) should be performed in Tibetan, but if I can’t manage that then English would work. He never really explained why and it later confused me when I was taught to do the same sadhana without speaking at all; should I be thinking in Tibetan or English? Yet at the same time many Tibetans do rituals in their Sanskrit forms (in fact my lama translates them into or back into Sanskrit sometimes), yet Mongolians often practice these same rituals in Tibetan. There is this clear idea that language matters, but it’s often the language of the other. So Western and Mongolian Buddhists might use Tibetan, but many Tibetans are using Sanskrit.
What does it matter? I think Lon Milo Duquette said it best, it was on a podcast, but I can’t remember which, possibly Thelema Coast to Coast, but when referring to the Enochian Entities he said something to the effect of “They’re like Frenchmen, they want you to take the effort to speak their language, even if you’ll fail horribly, and then they’ll talk to you in English.” In an earlier post Ars Mysteriorum said that higher beings can understand any language, but it is more polite to speak with them in the language they’re most familiar with. We agree it was a simplified analogy but the rough idea seems appropriate.
Many entities are culturally specific, and have been approached in the same language for hundreds or thousands of years, and while they may understand other languages, these are the languages of their history. One lama stresses performing the sadhanas traditionally, not because they are written in stone, don’t work in English, or anything, but out of respect for the tradition they come from, as well as believing there is a greater sympathy by performing the ritual in the same way and same language as many great saints, holy people, and magickians have for hundreds of years, while my other lama translates them into the older tongue of Buddhism, Sanskrit (but does not translate them into Pali, which is an even older tongue for Buddhism).
Is language in magick just an artefact? Is it an issue of respect? Is there magickal power to it? Another take is magickal languages (well languages in general, but this is Blue Flame Magick, not Blue Flame In General) cause split personalities. Aside from being confused by the language, or worried I’ll get something wrong, when I’m speaking in Enochian I /feel/ magickal. When not cringing at mispronunciations I can’t seem to correct just chanting in Tibetan makes me /feel/ more engaged. This is more than just my simple feelings about the matter though.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (You’ll need an access code like a University library to get this I assume) in their November 2010 had a relevant article “Two Languages, Two Personalities? Examining Language Effects on the Expression of Personality in a Bilingual Context.”
It says “Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions.” People, both notice about themselves and in others, that their personality shifts along “perceived cultural norms” when speaking in another language. People act, in a subtle stereotypical way, similar to the cultural/people that uses that language. In the tests English/French speakers tended to be more verbally aggressive, independent, and withdrawn when speaking in French, common stereotypical traits. Whereas native Chinese, Korean, and Spanish speakers who learnt English tended to be more extroverted, more assertive, and more open to new experiences when talking in English. Traits they associate with the North American English speaker.
Tibetan is the language of the day to day life of the Tibetan people, but Sanskrit and Pali were the languages that the early siddhis and yogis spoke, and by using it they are closer to them…if only in a stereotypical association of the other. English is day to day, but Enochian is supposed the language of the Angels, of course speaking Enochian seems magickal…if only for that reason.
The language rabbit hole goes deeper, because despite whatever objective power might be there, the subjective association of the magickal other adds something to languages in other language, and perhaps that little bit extra is worth pursuing.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
25
Aug
2014

Grimoire Purism: Logical, Rational, and Historical Considerations


This entry has been stewing in my head for a bit, but reading Davies’s Grimoires really brought it out to the surface.
I’d call myself a Solomonic magickian, a lot of my work revolves around the communion with spirits from grimoires in that style. Yet unlike many I don’t think I’m really “bound” to one text. Granted most of the grimoire spirits I use are from Book I of the Lemegeton, the Goetia, but my summoning circle is based on a design from the Heptameron, using Angel and Godnames I spent over two years skrying, my robes are adorned with the Shem ha’mephorash around the edge, and a variety of angelic and demonic seals on the chest and sleeves. So even though I’m Solomonic, my practice in that regard is all over the place a little.
Why? Because it works. There are some people that this boggles greatly, grimoire-purists. We’ve all seen them, people who are convinced that grimoires can’t and don’t work unless you perform everything exactly to the letter. (These are most notably though people who despite this claim lack the fame, fortune, and harem of King Solomon.)
Now, do not get me wrong, I believe grimoires should be used by the book, or as close to as possible until you are proficient with them. I wouldn’t say everything in them is absolutely necessary, but until you know how they work (and that takes experience, not educated guesses based on other systems or your intuition or lack of drive) I recommend keeping as much of the system intact as possible when you use it. Some things are most definitely symbolic I’d say, others are more relative, others might not be important at all, and some are crucial. If I gave you a recipe for amazing cookies, you shouldn’t make substitutions until you’ve made them my way and think I like my cardamom a bit too much. Follow the recipe the first several times, then you have a sense on what can be shifted.
This is where I get trapped in the middle ground. On one hand “Follow the book” on the other hand “Don’t be a slave to it.” What I wanted to address through was some of the issues with the notion of Grimoire-Purists.
Basically, why do you assume the text is right? Just because King Solomon (didn’t) write it, doesn’t mean it’s perfect. How many of us would pick up any modern occult book and say “The author is 100% right, and we have to do everything as they say or it won’t work”? If you’d do that with any magickal text I think you should re-evaluate your critical thinking skills.
As a subset of that issue, just because it is right, doesn’t mean it’s the only way it can be right. Sure, frankincense might be the right incense to summon a King of the Sun, but that doesn’t mean copal wouldn’t work, wouldn’t work just as well, or even better. Right does not have to be this binary exclusive category. Tied into this is the realism of it being 100% exclusively right. Just because my cookie recipe is awesome doesn’t mean you couldn’t make awesome cookies using a variation on my recipe. Good cookies are good cookies. One thing that came up recently in a discussion group around Solomonic magick is the necessity of wearing a belt made of lion skin. People battled back and forth on why it was or wasn’t necessary, names were called, it was the internet. I made a comment, which largely got glossed over though. Lions are going extinct, and while they’re doing better than they were 15 years ago, they’re still endangered. What happens when the last lion is killed? What happens when the last piece of lion fur deteriorates with use and age? Will these spirits then be forever beyond our ability to communicate with? It seems silly, but that’s the way some people think about it when they go hardcore grimoire-purist.
Lastly I want to question the idea of the texts being 100% right from a historian’s perspective. One of the first things I was ever taught as a historian was “Cui Bono” meaning “To whose benefit?” or “Who benefits?” Thousands, and millions of documents have been lost since humans started writing, and each one that survives there is a reason. The first question a historian asks is “Cui Bono” who benefits from this text still existing? Why was this text preserved when others weren’t? In the case of magickal and religious texts you can say belief, divine intervention, or because it works.
The trouble with this notion is not all texts were preserved on purpose, and not all were lost on purpose. For instance the autohagiography of Christina of Markyate was preserved by chance. The only known copy was in a house that caught fire, and it was one of the few texts near the window that the owner saved by throwing it out before having to flee the fire. If not for its random placement in the library we would have lost the first example of Self-Insert Biblical Fanfiction.
Did grimoires survive by luck or human choice? Well, according to Davies they survived by sheer volume. Why were there so many grimoires though? Because they were big business, forbidden texts that teach you to find treasure and get laid, who wouldn’t want that. The trouble is twofold though, not every person who manually copied the texts, or later every printer, had access to the grimoires, and eventually if there are only two or three or whatever grimoires, soon enough everyone who wants them, will have them, or know how to do what it is them. What is the solution to these problems? Make up grimoires, and that’s exactly what happened. As an idealist you can look at the similarities to grimoires and say that shows a continuation of thought and practice, and to some extent that might be right. What it probably shows more often is plagiarism. You own two grimoires and a book on herbs. Well include the prayers and circle from one text, the spirits from the second text, and mix in the herbs from the third, then make up a story about how some great mystic wrote it, it was found somewhere amazing, and boom, next grimoire craze.
Now the tricky part is, just because its random stuff cobbled together doesn’t mean it doesn’t work (doesn’t mean it will either). Here is the thing though, we know virtually nothing about these grimoires and their creation, we have myths, and ideas, and historical theories, but we don’t know. For all we know the Heptemeron or the Lemegeton were just forgeries crafted by a bored innkeeper looking to make some extra money, and by fluke they became popular, printed in large numbers, and got preserved.
So if you’re considering being a grimoire purist, think about the issues, rationally and historically with that, and see where it takes you. Remember, I do advocate trying to be as much by the book as possible, especially until you’ve worked with the system, but don’t assume that everything in it is 100% right, and that right information is exclusive of all other.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
20
Dec
2012

Review: Yoga Body – Mark Singleton


yogabodyYoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice – Mark Singleton
Oxford Press. 2010. 262pp. 9780195395341.
When most people think of yoga they get an image of people stretching, and posing, and breathing deeply. If you mention that yoga is a religious tradition most are confused, and some know that and either think that the religion has been stripped out of it, or that the Gods care how flexible you are. If you mention that the idea of yoga as being this physically focused system of stretching is less than a hundred years old then suddenly people get irate. People have a surprisingly vested interest in the historical authenticity of posture yoga, even when they’re doing it strictly for physical purposes.
This book challenges all of that, by examining medieval yoga texts, and modern yoga and fitness texts from the last century and a half Singleton manages to illustrate the best and most comprehensive history of modern Western yoga. He starts with the bold assertion that “there is little or no evidence that āsana (excepting certain seated postures of meditation) has even been the primary aspect of any Indian yoga practice tradition – including the medieval, body-oriented haṭha yoga.” ((3)) He then moves on to show that not only was this posture-based focus not included in traditional yoga, but it was considered backward and superstitious.
The book follows the complex dialectical history of yoga to the modern portrayal. Initially there is focus on the lack of focus (or mention) of physical postures in the traditional yoga texts -including the ones that are often sweepingly claimed to validate posture yoga like Patañjali’s yoga. Then slowly he builds an intricate picture that set the stage for posture-based yoga to arise. He moves into the confusion between fakirs and yogins to the Europeans (largely the British) and how that started a feedback loop. Around the turn of the 20th century there was an international obsession with fitness, various schools of acrobatics, gymnastics, and bodybuilding appeared at that time, and as India was under British rule it was caught up in this craze.
Singleton shows how the name yoga was appropriated or co-opted into this physical culture, starting off as more of a body-building system, and then into gymnastics and stretching, all the while moving farther away from the traditional yoga. I should clarify that Singleton doesn’t consider modern yoga as wrong, false, disconnected, or anything like that -though he may criticize the bad history involved- instead he states that modern yoga is just a natural progression of the system. While I completely agree with all his research and his analysis, I can’t agree with the conclusion. What yoga has become was not shaped by spiritual or cultural progression, but cultural oppression and colonization. What is thought of as yoga was created by an interaction between British laws outlawing yoga, European contortionism, and Swiss gymnastics. I cannot agree with the premise that it is a natural progression or part of the same continuum, I feel it is more of a deviation than a development. This is not to say I have no use for modern yoga, only that I recognize it as a modern system with no basis in historical yoga, and a physical practice. That being said this book is extremely well researched, well documented, and deeply analyzed (a nerd’s dream) and if you’re interested in yoga one way or another, I recommend you pick it up, and draw your conclusions from the research.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
12
Jul
2011

Languages and Magick: Angels, Demons, and Drunken Scribes


So last time I rambled on the importance of specific languages in calculating the name of an angel. It had a lot of open-ended and circular problems. Are languages important, why, and which ones? It led to some interesting discussion in comments, twitter, and an email. (At first I was confused how this person got my email, until I remembered I put it on my About page, just so people could get in contact with me without having to post a comment. I guess my brain is too full remembering The Raven and Pi to 23 digits to pay attention to what I do with my blog.) This is more of me working out my thoughts in writing, and hoping for some good ideas.
Now the process of calculating an angels name surely complicates matter and if you just stick with already named angels and demons that will make it much better. I remember when I first got into spirit work I had this strong instinct that by knowing the name of a spirit I had influence over it, by knowing their Name I could control them. Over years I found this idea represented in Babylonian/Akkadian/Sumerian magick, in Egyptian magick, western Ceremonial Magick, even in Vedic and Buddhist magick. Names have Power. Along with this is the parallel idea that Sigils/Seals have the same control/influence. Simply I’d say a name is auditory and a sigil is visual but they are the same thing.
Traditions may argue how much power and influence the name or symbol gives you, but they largely agree that they do. So that makes this a lot simpler than calculating a name, here you have the name provided for you, and a seal, and that makes it simple… as long as you never look at another text. When I received my Goetia of Dr. Rudd I was surprised by how many of the names and seals were close but not the same as my Mathers version. I had come to understand a lot of this magick through the doctrine of names. But what did it mean when Halphas/Malthus and Raum have their names and seals rendered differently? If my power over Malthus or at least my ability to contact or communicate with em is based upon my possession of eir seal and name how did I accomplish anything if I had it wrong? I can’t reach you if I dial the wrong number, can you reach a spirit with the wrong name/seal? This preoccupied me more than some people’s focus and questioning of the inclusion/absence of the Shem ha’mephorash angels.
I was able to wrap myself around this, and that became less of a concern until I realized it wasn’t just names and seals changing, but spirits were being stolen, or split, and combined. This opens up a magickal can of worms on its own, but I want to focus on names here. If the name is the connection and control of a spirit, what happens when a name of one spirit gets applied to another apparently unrelated entity? Or more curious to me, when a spirit’s name and existence was completely a mistake? Halphas above is a good example, Halphas is the 38th spirit of the Goetia and Malphas is the 39th and they share similar abilities and may have been a scribal error initially. Or Berith the 28th spirit of the Goetia whose name is actually the Hebrew term for the covenant between YHWH and the people of Israel (Belanger 70) and was probably included in Christian occult texts because they knew this “Berith” had power, but didn’t know who (or what) it was, so obviously a demon.
So where do these entities and power come from? Is there something inherent in the word and what it represents? While not a demon the covenant between YHWH and the Israelites is arguably a powerful thing (if you believe it) and maybe the name taps into that? Maybe it’s the collective attention (fear) of generations of priests and magickians that give these names and seals form and force, even if they’re drifting off of the original. But how does that apply when the name of someone gets applied to someone else, or a name from nothing but a mistake? Is this an issue that transcends the language issue? Absolutely but it is the naming that has me wonder, because if names and seals matter, then how come they work when they’re wrong?
Again I have no answers to offer, but in traditions that value the power of names and seals, how can we reconcile the fact that these change, or are added, misappropriated, or scribal errors? I’ve been leaning toward the idea that it isn’t what you use, but the process, but I’m still working some of that out in my life and in my head.
Source:
Belanger, Michelle. Dictionary of Demons. Llewellyn, 2010. Print.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
04
Jul
2011

Languages and Magick: Alphabets, Orders, and the Naming of Angels


Language and magick; there is so much I could write and ramble about this combination that it will take several posts. Names, linguistic drift, spoken languages, dead languages, when languages have power and why; every time I sit down to write or think about this I come up with more ideas.
For now I’m going to focus on alphabets and names. I recently finished updating my Genius Name Calculator (more on it in an upcoming post) and I know what you’re thinking “Kalagni, you’re already a genius and you already have a name, what do you need this calculator for?” That’s not what you were thinking? Could have humoured me at least…
What I’m referring to is what gets called the Angel of the Nativity and is often connected to the idea of your Genius or Daemon. Renaissance magick has a method of calculating the name of this spirit from your birth chart. If you’re interested you can find it in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III Chapter 26, or wait for my post with the calculator. Traditionally this is done in Hebrew, so I made my calculator in Hebrew. After all, it’s a magickal language isn’t it? I shared the calculator in this early form on an elist and people were appreciative, but asked for other languages. While Hebrew is traditional it isn’t uncommon to see this done in Greek and two different methods of doing it in English are popular too. Now for the rest of this post to matter you’re required to assume this method works, that you can find out a valid and workable Angel name from this process, so at least keep that idea in mind for now, if you assume the method has no validity than this is just a moot ramble.
So now you have one method, which you can substitute four different languages for and you end up with four different names. Using the time of this writing as an example the name of our Angel is Kavatzalah in Hebrew, Gochochopa in Greek, Xaqedije in English, or Majihats in another way of doing it in English. Which is correct? Are they all correct? Xaqedije sounds Enochian almost.Will any language work? I had someone ask for this in Sanskrit, which while representing a totally different culture, philosophy, and magickal system, I can’t give a reason why Sanskrit isn’t just as valid as Greek, Hebrew, or English. Especially as Sanskrit is also seen as a very magickal language.
Now one theory is that all of these are correct, loosely it is like brother, frère, frater, bruder, four words/names but one meaning. If that’s the case I can stop wondering, go home, and sleep soundly, it just means Kavatzalah is the Hebrew from of Majihats, simple. While I don’t deny the possibility of this answer it does seem a bit too easy to me and I don’t like that. (I tend to make life difficult by rejecting the simple initially)
Do we make languages magickal? I’ll touch on this in a later post, but the two most common languages for this process are Hebrew and Greek, languages that the magickians who used this system didn’t speak natively and associated with the magickal traditions they studied. Is it their investment in the magickal tradition of the Jews and Greeks that make these the languages magickal to use rather than English, German, or French? So is it the case that Greek and Hebrew aren’t inherently magickal, but the amount of time, both personally and historically, spent investing the languages with magick give them power?
With both Hebrew and Greek the alphabets are used in order when doing the calculations, yet both English methods don’t use the alphabetical order. Is that because English is too mundane and everyday to us as it is and requires some mystery added to it to become workable? (While the 26 letters of English and the order we have now is actually from the last two-hundred years most of the alphabet existed in roughly the same order before then, so I doubt that’s a factor) Perhaps it is something about our religious upbringing or ancestors, the languages important to our religion (in the Christian age of Europe that would be Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) or what our ancestors (however you view that) spoke, that this connection gave them the magick.
I don’t know, sorry if folks reading thought I might have a conclusion. I alternate between all languages are valid and there is something that makes one language more valid than the rest, but I don’t know if that language is always more valid or if it is personal. Perhaps Tibetan would work best for me, but Greek better for a friend and Enochian for another? Maybe the language doesn’t matter, but it is the process and effort that gives strength and reality to the Angel of the Nativity? The effort and process matters more than the tools? I don’t know, but I’d love to get thoughts on this. Hopefully in time I’ll have a follow up, as I’m strongly suspecting some friends are going to get roped into an experiment with this. I see myself distributing a bunch of Angel Names (and fake names) in my future.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
28
Apr
2011

Review: Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set


Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set – Stuart R. Kaplan
U.S. Games Systems. Inc. 2009. 9781572816398.
Pamela Colman Smith is an unsung hero and artist in western occultism. She most famously illustrated the Rider-Waite tarot (I’ll discuss the naming convention later), largely based on Golden Dawn symbolism and teachings, and it is probably the most influential tarot deck ever. She was much more than this though, she was a quiet mystic, a member of the Golden Dawn, and a talented artist who received some recognition in her time and was sadly forgotten.
The Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set tries to bring this visionary woman back to our lives. The set contains two books, a tarot deck, and some artistic extras, which will all be discussed in their own time. This set was released in 2009 (somehow I missed hearing about it) on the centennial anniversary of the publishing of the Rider-Waite tarot and I think it is great collection to have.

Back of the Smith Waite Centennial Tarot


The first book included is The Artwork & Times of Pamela Colman Smith by Stuart R. Kaplan. This relatively small book of just over 100 pages is exactly what it sounds like. Kaplan tells the story of “Pixie’s” mysterious life. As you’re led through her life Kaplan also gives many examples of her art, in fact only once is there a spot where you can open the book and there isn’t some example of Pamela’s art. She lived a fascinating life; charmed, beautiful, sad, and lonely all at the same time. Most people only know Pamela as the Rider-Waite artist but she was far more than that, an accomplished artist who had shows in New York and London, an author and artist of folk tales from Jamaica, and a poet. The story is sad and the art is just beautiful. It was much to my dismay after reading the book I found out you cannot obtain prints of her artwork and my favourite painting from the book seems to have no presence on the internet at all.
The second book is The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite. I feel there is little to say about this book, it was originally published in 1911 to explain the Rider-Waite tarot. This particular edition does not contain the images of the cards.

Centennial Strength


The set comes with The Smith-Waite Tarot Centennial Edition deck. This is not just another reprint of the Rider-Waite deck you’re used to seeing everywhere. First off, to clarify terminology, the deck you see everywhere, and probably have is properly called the Rider-Waite tarot; Waite after A.E. Waite and Rider after the publishing company that first produced it. Some people, myself included, refer to it as the Smith-Waite or Waite-Smith tarot in an attempt to remind people who gave us this deck. The deck included in this set is properly called The Smith-Waite Tarot Centennial Edition, firmly putting forth that Pamela Colman Smith was one of the creators and will not be forgotten. There is more to it than just the name change though, the Rider-Waite deck is filled with bright, almost jarring colours. No yellow is a muted yellow, it is a daffodil screaming yellow, and this is a product of how the earlier decks were reproduced from the original.

Common Strength


For The Smith-Waite Tarot Centennial Edition Kaplan has used a 1909 printing of the deck to restore the deck to its original colouring, something I find far more peaceful and elegant than the borderline cartoon colouring of the general deck. I find this makes the cards stand out more and the subtly of shading and symbolism easier to see and work with. Also, this deck has done away with that gawdy blue and white diamond pattern on the back of the cards; instead the back is adorned with Pamela’s monogram and a rose. It isn’t a reversible back due to the rose, but it is subtle enough that you still can’t pick out which way is up without turning the cards over. Without a doubt this version is replacing my Rider-Waite tarot.
Lastly the set comes with a few artistic extras. It contains six reproduced postcards with Pamela’s artwork, only one of which is an image from her tarot. It contains three 5×7 prints of some of her art and a 5×7 photo print of Pamela herself.
Everything comes in a handy box with packs away nicely. My only complaint about the set is one I’ve had with far too many decks I like and that is it contains a drawstring bag for the deck rather than a box. The box that the art, deck, and books come in is too large to carry around and I find decks not in boxes get damaged too easily so I have to find another storage device for my cards. Other than that small complaint, I found the set wonderful. It is great to see Pamela Colman Smith getting the attention she deserves and the deck, the art, and the books are just wonderful. Really a must have for any tarot enthusiast.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
12
Apr
2011

Review: Magic in the Biblical World – ed. Todd E. Klutz


Magic in the Biblical World: From the Rod of Aaron to the Ring of Solomon – edited by Todd E. Klutz
T & T Clark International – Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 245. 2003. 261pp. 0567083624.
“[A]lthough the increasingly recognized shortcomings of defining ‘magic’ as a primitive form of behaviour exemplifying a type of mentality different from and inferior to that of ‘religion’ had become apparent to a handful of scholars by the 1950s, the majority of authorities continued long after this to assume that such definitions were valid and useful.” (2)
This issue is central to the text, essentially every chapter –each being an essay by a different researcher– devoted some time to trying to define magic in relationship to religion. The papers originally came from the Magic in the World of the Bible colloquium in 1999, the focus was not on the validity or reality of magic, or the question of Jesus as a magician, but instead the focus was to understand the notion of magic in the social and legal world of the historical context of the Bible.
This is an academic text, not a practical or theoretical manual, within the covers of the books it is all about history, language, and politics. Only two spells, from Sefer ha-Razim, are given in the book and only so that paper may dissect the ideology behind the spells.
It is commonly believed that to Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths the distinction between magic and miracle is that miracles are from YHWH, and magic is from other sources. The first two parts of the text, of three, grapple with this idea, is it valid and historical? To do so they provide a close reading of the mentions of magic and miracles, the Hebrew and Greek words used for them, and the names applied to the practitioners. Parts of this discussion are highly specialized, requiring an understanding of ancient Hebrew and Greek grammar to follow, but if you can work through the language (or perhaps skip it all together) the conclusions are interesting, and intimate that in the Biblical world magic and miracle weren’t as definitive of categories as many people think.
The paper “Magic and Scepticism in and around the First Christian Century” was quite intriguing. In it the author analyzed the magic/miracles of the early apostles and the reactions in the texts, and begs the question did people really believe and accept magic/miracles to the extent we believe they did, or was the population they were trying to convert sceptic not just of their faith, but of faith and miracles in general. It includes some really interesting reading of the evidence.
Part III of the book was of the most interest to me, as the title “’Magic’ in Disreputable Books from Late Antiquity” may imply. In these papers the authors dealt with Sefer ha-Razim, The Testament of Solomon, and the origins and etymology of Alchemy. The focus was largely to analyze the clearly magical tradition that existed and the source and ideology behind these practices. Here we get a close reading of the Greek artifacts left in Sefer ha-Razim and the astrological implications in The Testament of Solomon.
As I said early on, this is an academic text, this is not a practical or theoretical manual. If you’re looking to practice a Biblical form of magick, this book will be of little to no use for you. If you’re a historian with a passion for the Biblical tradition and/or Biblical magick this book may be of little practical use, but will be without a doubt fascinating and insightful.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
18
Nov
2010

Review: Babylonian Magic and Sorcery – Leonard W. King, M.A.


Babylonian Magic and Sorcery: Being “The Prayers of the Lifting of the Hand” – Leonard W. King, M.A.
Weiser Books. 1896, 2000. 275pp. 0877289344.
In the seventh century BCE Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, had a series of prayers collected and copied down from an earlier Babylonian source (xix). Known as “The Prayers of the Lifting of the Hand” this collection is the foundation of King’s text. This is not a how-to book on Babylonian magick, this is not a historical or anthropological analysis of Babylonian magick, this text is just a modern re-enactment of Ashurbanipal’s collection.
King is not an occultist, he’s an Assyriologist which means he isn’t translating this text with a magickal or religious bias. His interest wasn’t in reproducing a viable magickal system, quite simply he just wanted to translate a collection of Babylonian prayers to help further the study of the culture. The book contains an introduction about the work and the source, the transliterations and translations of the different tablets, a vocabulary, and finally a reproduction of the tablets as a source text.
This book is not something most magickians could pick up and make any practical use of, but for the more historical and academically inclined magickians this book is utterly fascinating. Unfortunately like most cuneiform tablets there is a lot of damage. Some tablet/prayers are just slightly damaged and pose no real problem, others are so heavily damaged that of an entire prayer only a few words remain.
This book is a great resource, as King wrote this over a century ago before the neopagan revival, and is writing as an Assyriologist so it is wonderful to see prayers and magick from an ancient culture without reinterpretation and reworking for “modern sensibility.” It is strictly a translation, and as a Western magickian it is great to be able to see how different the world view was, and yet occasionally see glimmers that persist into magick today.
If you’re looking for a practical occult text to get results with, this is not the book you’re looking for. If you’re a historian, Assyriologist, or academic magician then this book as a rare reproduction of a source text is an amazing read.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick