Recent Reviews

Due to "The Big Stick" in AC's Equinox, book reviewing deserves a special place in the Thelemic culture of letters, I think.

I've recently composed reviews on LT for Lon DuQuette's Ask Baba Lon and the Carl Weschcke edit of Culling's Complete Magick Curriculum of the G.B.G..

Do any of you have reviews of Thelemic or occultist literature to share?

I have put in very small, off the cuff, reviews of the following:

Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Life of Aleister Crowley… by Richard Kaczynski

The Temple at Jerusalem: A Revelation by John Michell

Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley. A Correspondence… by Aleister Crowley

The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order… by Christopher McIntosh

Tarot Kit for Beginners by Janet Berres

Regarding the Curwen book:

"Today I finished reading my recently received copy of “Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley, A Correspondence.” Edited and with an introduction by Henrick Bogdan; with a forward by Tony Mathews (Curwen’s Grandson) 136 pages, hardcover. It is number 165 out of 777. It has a bookplate from Weiser Antiquarian signed by Bogden and Mathews. The book is from Teitan Press and includes some relevant photos. Curwen authored a book on alchemy later is his life, after Crowley’s death, and his letters never have the tone of a gushing chela addressing his guru. Sometimes the level of interpersonal friction between the correspondents rose to a surprising height. On the whole it is a rather interesting read. Not all of the letters survive, and where this is apparent it has been indicated by editorial footnotes. Many helpful explanatory footnotes have been added by the editor. There is so much discussion of the typing of copies of manuscripts and books, and sending them through the post, that one is strongly reminded of effects that technical changes have had on people’s lives and work since the 1940s (both for good and for ill). Topics touched on in the letters (sometimes very briefly) include: the systems of the O.T.O. and A:.A:., astrology, the Theosophical Society, the necessity for a regular program of practices, traveling on the astral plane, Adolf Hitler (and his exposure to Thelema), the importance (or lack thereof) of Liber AL, contemporary personalities such as Kenneth Grant and Louis Wilkinson, anti-Semitism, the Order of Krishna, Latent Light Culture."

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Thanks for those! You know, if you put square brackets around your titles, you can create "touchstone" links that lead to the book page for each, where your review should also be visible if you've entered it in LT.

Some of my recent reviews that might be of special interest to Thelemites:
The White People and Other Stories by Machen
The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by Budin
New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America by Bednarowski
Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Magee

Thanks for the tip.

An update to #4, an assortment of non-fiction books I've reviewed since January that might be of special interest to Thelemites:
The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy
Language, Truth and Logic
The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine
Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics and the Paranormal
Entheogens and the Future of Religion
The Cosmic Serpent
The Gospel of Judas
The Mystics of Islam
Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga

And a couple on William Blake:
Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law
The Unholy Bible

And a few books of fiction:
The Place of the Lion
Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories
The Jennifer Morgue
Logan's Run

Some more:
The Occult Mind by Christopher Lehrich
The Psychology of Ritual by Murry Hope
The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach
Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
In the Center of the Fire by James Wasserman
Sufism: The Formative Period by Ahmet T. Karamustafa

And fiction:
The Satanist by Dennis Wheatley
The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd
Anima by M. John Harrison

Sigh. I envy you your reading accomplishments, let alone the reviewing. My entire reading list for that time period does not stretch so long, and I assume the above is only the subset relevant to this thread.

I've just posted my longest-review-ever to LibraryThing: an examination of last year's OUP volume Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism that briefly evaluates each of the component papers.

I've posted reviews of these books, in rough order of decreasing relevance:
Secret Agent 666
Priest/ess: In Advocacy of Queer Gnostic Mass
William Blake and the Tree of Life
The Book of the Breast
Sex Secrets of Ancient Atlantis

And some more fiction:
Doctor Sleep
The Fuller Memorandum
The Greater Trumps

Here are my recent reviews on books of obvious interest to Thelemties:
The Three Dangerous Magi by P.T. Mistlberger
Religion Without Revelation by Julian Huxley
The Shaving of Shagpat by George Meredith (an AC recommendation)
Superior Beings: If They Exist, How Would We Know? by Steven J. Brams
Inside the Occult by Henry S. Olcott

And in more tangential material:
The Geometry of Art and Life by Matila Ghyka
Doctor Orient by Frank Lauria
Nomad Codes by Erik Davis
Memoirs of a Dervish by Robert Irwin
The Essence of Religion by Ludwig Feuerbach
The Occult Anatomy of Man by Manly P. Hall

Appreciated as always. Any idea if the Ghyka edition of 2010 includes anything your 1977 edition did not? (Judging your book by its cover, which has its hazards I know.)

ETA Realise, too, I probably am not looking at your cover, but only LT's most popular cover. So which edition did you read?

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Mine is the 1977 Dover. I don't know what changes might have been made to the 2010 re-issue.

Well, it's been nearly three years, so here are just my reviews of greatest Thelemic salience since my last note to this thread:

Theory and Practice:
Homemade Magick by Lon DuQuette
The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light by William Irwin Thompson
The Gnostic Notebook: On Memory Systems and Fairy Tales by Timothy James Lambert
Initiatic Eroticism by Maria de Naglowska
Some Characteristics of the Interior Church by I.V. Lopukhin

History:
Love Sex Fear Death by Timothy Wylie
Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics by Marco Pasi
Ludwig II: Mad King of Bavaria by Desmond Chapman-Huston
The Secret History of Freemasonry: Its Origins and Connections to the Knights Templar by Paul Naudon

Liturgical:
Rites of Public Celebration ed. Fr. Mesniu
The Mass and Its Mysteries Compared to the Ancient Mysteries by J.-M. Ragon
The Mass: A Liturgical Commentary, Vol. I by A. Croegaert
The Mass: A Liturgical Commentary, Vol. II by A. Croegaert

Fiction:
The Woman Between the Worlds by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
The Eternal Footman by James Morrow
The Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink