Sunday, February 1, 2009

True Magick, A Beginner's Guide

* * * * (4 stars)
AmberK
Llewellyn Publications, 1994
Paperback
ISBN 0-87542-003-6

It's 15 years old, it's not very big, it's been reviewed or recommended countless times. It's likely to be on any magic-practicing Pagan's “must-have” booklist. Lately, my copy's been calling out to me.

Rereading it takes me back 15 years, to a time when I took classes from AmberK. What struck me then was her encyclopedic knowledge of Wicca. In those days, I didn't know enough to understand how much of Wicca was based in ceremonial magic, but I knew I wasn't much interested in aspergers, athames, and bollines.

My bias: I know more now, and I'm even less interested in ceremonial magic and ritual (are they indistinguishable?), no matter which Pagan tradition I find them in. They have little to do with my spiritual practice or spiritual worldview. I do believe in “magic” (several kinds), but too often the practice of “Magick” doesn't live up to its potential for being a useful tool for personal or planetary transformation.

In AmberK's last chapter, “Your Magickal Education Continues,” she talks of Nature as teacher, and recounts several of her magickal experiences of Self and Mother Earth. She recounts the wisdom a tree-teacher shared – the use of its branch-shadows for divination:

“Keep your heart open, and your mind quiet, and I will lead you to the right choice for you.”

It's in this chapter that my experience most resonates with hers. And yet, when I look back to my early days as a Pagan (and back then, “Pagan” wasn't my primary identification), I acknowledge that AmberK's book was an important introduction to a worldview that informed me of many things, some of which I eventually rejected.

Useful material for anyone:

  • Evaluating Teachers (from ch. 2): traits to look for (positive and negative)
  • How Magick Works (ch. 4): the Laws of Magick boiled down to four components, along with a discussion of the three-part model of the self (High Self, Middle Self, Younger Self)
  • Preparing Yourself for Magick (ch. 5): she begins at the beginning – the mundane must not be neglected in pursuit of the metaphysical (though she falls into an unfortunate new-age pitfall when, in her exhortation to magickal practitioners to take responsibility for themselves, she states that “everything in your life … is there because you chose it”)
  • The Pyramid of Magick (from ch. 7): this 6-dimensional model of personal power could be used by anyone interested in spiritual practice (the base of the pyramid: knowledge; its 4-sides: creative imagination, will of steel, living faith, ability to keep silent; it's inner space/structure: love)
  • Ethics and Hazards (ch. 12): the ethics section is minimal, but the author does a good job, in a few pages, of discussing one of the most overlooked, undertaught realities of undertaking a conscious magic(k)al practice: there are risks involved across the realms, magical and mundane. It is these seven pages, in fact, that decide my 4-star rating.
Reviewed by Sage

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