Mandrake Speaks Newsletter

• Magick Works: Mandrake - New Title

• Grimoires By Owen Davies (review)

• Devoted by Scarlet Imprint (review)

• The Cornish Witchfinder (Review)

• Priestesses, Pythonesses & Sibyls (Review)

• Lectures Talks

• Groups Meetups

• Conferences & Exhibitions (click to view)

  
  COA, Occulture, Equinox, Nu-Thelemic Symposium and more - its going to be a busy year.

Devoted -

Scarlet Imprint has done it again. Another ravishing text which combines tasteful production with quality writing. Bound in saffron coloured book cloth with a cut back design which, depending on how you look at it, is either a chalice or two faces about to kiss. By all means judge this book by its beautiful cover. The collection of essays found in Devoted are tales of the bhakti yoga of modern magick. Levannah Morgan described her allegiance to Inanna. Stephen Grasso leads us into the society of the Loa. Peter Grey reveals more on his worship of Babalon. In total fifteen essays, which provide an excellent range, both in style of writing and of the diverse of spirits to which the contributors are consecrated.

In common with previous productions from this energetic publishing house, we have not only quality and substance but also novelty, for these are quintessentially modern practitioners of the arcane arts. If nothing else this book demonstrates successfully that prayerful, even 'religious' praxis within occultism is thriving. Through these essays we are introduced to fourteen occultists who have a living relationship with their gods. This makes a pleasant change from the model that presents spirits as being endogenous psychic productions.

My only reservation is that I want more! (But perhaps that is the doom of those who are devoted!) Not merely more details about methodology (some of the writers in this collection are painfully honest about their techniques). I guess it's that Devoted left me hungry for the intensity of experience that our authors have found in their adorations. In Devoted we hear voices that speak directly from the visionary state. This book is a poetic download from magicians living in the rapture of their gods, and their hymns of praise are quite intoxicating.

Julian Vayne

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Devoted
Various
Edited by Alkistis Dimech
Introduction by Peter Grey
Scarlet Imprint

www.scarletimprint.com

Devoted is an octavo book of 173pp, bound in saffron book cloth, black chalice stamped and finished with night black endpapers.

It is being prepared in a strictly limited and hand-numbered edition of 814 copies.

A copy can be yours for thirty-one English pounds plus postage.

Devoted comprises fifteen essays by fourteen writers on their devotional practice.
It is a bloody and passionate blend of primal gnosis and poetic expression.
These essays reveal and revel in powerful applicable magickal practice.
They are suffused with the living experience of the Spirit world.

Devoted will enrich your own work, whether you are witch, magician, heathen, thelemite, or sorceror.
From possession work, to blood letting and fetishes, to sabbatic dance, there is a wealth of experience to explore within these pages.

Devoted provides indepth essays on working with:

Babalon
Ishtar
Hecate
Lilith
Loki
Tiamat
Dionysus
The Yoginis
The Lwa
The Spirits of goetia

Our writers are a chorus of powerful new voices and established practitioners whose Work has often been overlooked:

Stephen Grasso, Peter Grey, Mogg Morgan, Jake Stratton-Kent, Richard Ward, Levannah Morgan, Ruby Sara, David Blank, Mark Smith,Charlotte Rodgers, Mordant Carnival, Tony Elliott, Alkistis Dimech,George Sieg.

Priestesses, Pythonesses & Sibyls:
The Sacred Voices of Women who speak with and for the Gods
Edited by Sorita d’Este
Avalonia Books

PB, 196pages, RRP £12.99, ISBN 978-1905297214

www.avalonia.co.uk

Truth to tell I tend to be narrow in my choice of reading material, so the opportunity to review this book has also given me a chance to challenge my limitations, which can only be a good thing!

I personally am not into gender discriminate spirituality such as Goddess Worship and whilst I acknowledge it is a path for some, it is not my way.
Conversely, for many years I was quite outspoken about the lack of strong women’s voices within some magickal groups before I eventually realised there were many other social, racial, and sexual groups that were also not represented in certain magical circles which indicates a greater issue than simple misogyny.

Thus while I was slightly put off by the appearance of this book, with the swirling feminine archetypes on the cover and some of the contained photographs of beautiful glamorous practitioners, I was also intrigued to read the words within that were experiences of trance work by a range of contemporary, female, magical practitioners.
So I pushed myself and was well rewarded.

The first three essays assembled in the section ‘Ecstatic Histories’, were of a more academic format, and whilst nicely written and well presented, in my mind were too short; however they acted as a good introduction for the work to follow.

The remainder of the book consisted of articles written by eighteen contemporary practitioners from a variety of traditions and their experiences with trance.
These traditions include Goddess Spirituality, Wicca, The Western Mystery Tradition, Thelema, Candomble, Voudou and Seidr.
While a variety of perspectives from different Traditions is of interest for the reader (and shows a fascinating correlation of experience and result, despite differences in approach) and lifts the anthology beyond the narrow focus of what is considered to be ‘women’s spirituality’; what makes ‘Priestesses, Pythonesses, Sybils’ fascinating is the immersion, and studied passion, focus and exploration in all of these women’s writing.

I did note a strong undercurrent of Wicca and frequent mention of the ‘Drawing Down of The Moon’ Ritual throughout the book.
However upon reading more closely it can be seen that a study of Wicca has acted as a springboard to some of these writers, such as Sophie Fisher, to explore other traditions. When you think about it, there are few initial routes to study structured magical spirituality in the Western World; Wicca being one.

Janet Farrar’s piece ‘Waking the Gods: Our Odyssey into Trance Prophecy’ was a particularly fascinating chronicle of her journey exploring a variety of trance techniques, and ‘The Republic of Heaven on Earth: Trance Gender and Choices’ by Yvonne Aburrow was superb.

I do suspect that this anthology is targeted at a specific market, considering the cover and magical backgrounds of the contributors and I feel Sorita d’Este has made a mistake here as the book has the potential to have a much wider appeal.
However in essence Sorita has done an admirable job: this is a book of voices and experiences of women who are intelligent and articulate explorers in the realm of trance and oracle.

[Charlotte Rogers]

The Cornish Witch-finder (Review)

William Henry Paynter and the Witchery, Ghosts, Charms and Folklore of Cornwall

Selected and Introduced by Jason Semmens

ISBN 9780902660397, 256pp, published at £11.95 by the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies.

Which you have to admit is a bit of a bargain for such a well turned out illustrated book. Although personally I prefer a lighter bookwove to the heavy coated but undoubtedly high quality stock used here. I could also have done with an index, a real adornment to any good book, in my opinion, William Paynter (1901 - 1976) was a folklorist, antiquary and bard of the Cornish Gorsedd who specialised in collecting witch-stories and folklore during the 1920s and 1930s. Seems to me that these days more traditional approaches to witchcraft are very popular amongst the practitioner community. Many might be sceptical that contemporary wiccans share any common ground with the witches of the great European witch hunts. Even so there can be very little doubt that there was quite a vital nineteenth century witchcraft tradition surviving up to the First World War. Afterall the ethnology collections of Oxford and elsewhere are full of the surviving magical objects from this time before the modern occult revival. Traditional practitioners may once have been pretty thin on the ground but have achieved a miraculous revival and nowadays the world and his wife claims to be one. In his time Paynter had to work quite hard to find any living informants. I thought it was maybe a good time to pop down to see my friend the Cunning Man Jack Daw and ask him a few questions about all this.

I found him outside his caravan grollicking a rabbit, Over a cup of tea I asked him whether Paynter ever managed to meet any living witches? His accounts are always of the kind "while discussing the mysterious fraternity of wizards and witches with an old man well over eighty he informed me that about forty-five years ago his attended the assizes in Bodmin . . . just before dinner ... a strange individual, dressed in a long white shirt, entered the room etc.," I repeat, did Paynter ever get to meet the actual Wizard or must he always settle for these second or third hand accounts?

"It's the nature of the beast" JD says cryptically

"Pardon?"

"The West Country in the nineteenth century is libel central. So the short answer is,
that first hand interviews with the real Mccoy are so rare as to be non existent."

"So no one ever met a real witch?"

"Not one would admit it."

"But" I interjected, "he could have spoken to any number of modern practitioners who claim to have witches in the family from these very places and times?"

"Yep" JD replies, "tis a mystery."

I showed him my copy of the Cornish Witch-finder and he was very soon absorbed in its contents, letting out the odd grunt of recognition and affirming that it was truly an excellent collection of articles full of the most revealing material.

"That Paynter" he says, "he has a fine Cornish Nose. He knows his stuff, although some of it he might have took from the works of other folklorists such as Bottrell and Hunt."

He was full of admiration for the editor Jason Semmens for having the nous to have tracked all of them articles down from some many diverse and obscure sources. So there's an endorsement. The book is full of rare and fascinating material although naturally rooted in the conventions of the times. The introduction by Jason Semmens is detailed and informative and all in all this is a very welcome addition to the genre. And at £11.95 a pop, what are you waiting for?

[Mogg]

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Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies, isbn 978-0-19-920451-9

366pp, £14.99 hbk

"The production of grimoires was an entrepreneurial enterprise that thrived wherever the influence of secular and ecclesiastical censors was restricted by geographical, educational or political factors. The opening up of America created just such an environment, and hucksters, quacks, astrologers, fortune tellers and occult practitioners of all shades thrived." p. 188

Which may indicate that the primary audience for this book might not be the "hucksters, quacks, astrologers, fortune tellers and occult practitioners" some of whom might even read this newsletter. Owen Davies has built a strong reputation for himself as author of the groundbreaking Cunning Folk: Popular Magic in English History re-branded with an eye to the MBS marketplace as Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History. Here again he has taken up a largely neglected topic with some verve and produced a page turning history of the grimoire.

OD's book is likely to be of special interest to those with some knowledge of the genre. Davies gives very few examples of a grimoire's actual content, so there is an assumption that the author has already read one or two. The small examples OD does give tend to underline his thesis that the grimoires are at best a debased form of ancient magick or worst cynical, gibberish. Modern magicians tend to approach the grimoire as an exercise in magical creativity but also as a possible source of Pagan wisdom and occult knowledge that has somehow survived the hands of Christian iconoclasts.

Academic authors are obviously quite keen for the practitioner community to read their work although they are less keen to read anything the practitioners write about the same subject. So you won't find much here of the contemporary magicians approach to the grimoire, apart that is from old chestnuts such as the Necronomicon and the Satanic Bible.

Even so, there is much in here of interest to the contemporary practitioner, once one gets over the slight disappointment at the absence of any mention of the "Goetia", the most popular example of the genre. There is also nothing of what surely be the most famous of all occult trials involving a grimoire, that of Gilles the Rais - Bluebeard. For those with an interest in Aleister Crowley, there is also very little in this book. Crowley of course, represents the way the practitioner community has reframed and rationalised the grimoire over the years. And Crowley penned what is considered to be the best and most cogent of all modern grimoires - Liber ABA.

However most of the book's contents were new to me - although one passage where I would take issue with the author is when he discusses the Theban Magical Library alternatively known as The Greek Magical Papyri or Greco Egyptian Magical Papyri. Davies tells us that these are somehow connected with the very first grimoires in the sequence - which would be my own intuition. But he then says that "There are distinct differences between the magic they contain and that found in the earliest magical inscriptions and papyri from the time of the pharaohs" (p 9) . I read that and thought that must be wrong and wondered where he could have found such a view amongst Egyptologists? My heart sank when I saw the reference to Geraldine Pinch's seminal work on Egyptian Magic, could she really be so out of step with all her colleagues? But there again what does Geraldine Pinch actually say (p. 160-1):

"The openly expressed malevolence of these spells seems un-Egyptian but similar desires may lie behind some of the earlier Letters to the Dead. These do no specify exactly how the akhu are to deal with the writer's enemies. . . Many spells in the Graeco-Egyptian Magical Papyri describe how to make a deity appear and answer questions. The appearance may take the form of a dream for the magician or a vision for the child assistant. These spells are the private equivalent of consulting a temple oracle, or of incubation - sleeping in the temple to receive a divine dream". (my emphasis)

In other words there is quite a lot of Ancient Egyptian religion in the PGM and I suspect the grimoires. Afterall doesn't it say in the Goetia that the spirits speak the Egyptian tongue?

These small issues of the beginning aside, Davies' study is soon on stronger ground after fifteen hundred years of development we arrive at the era of the printed book, when the grimoire really did make it big on the world stage. As the book's publicity confirms, "to understand the grimoire is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism and the expansion of western culture across the oceans."

One tantalizing parallel between the PGM and later grimoires is the "Sixth & Seven Books of Moses" discussed in fascinating detail by OD. These books began circulating in Germany in the eighteenth century and were to become popular in USA. One could of course argue that given the well known existence of the first five, it is just human nature to want to supplement this with a sixth, seventh or even more; just as some bright spark penned a "Fourth" book of Occult Philosophy, a "Fourth" Veda or even "Fourth" chapter of Crowley's "Book of the Law". Interestingly no ancient edition survives of a "Sixth" and "Seventh" Book of Moses. The PGM jumps straight in there with "The Eighth" . There may never have been a sixth or seventh in classical Greco-Egyptian magic, none has so far been found. The explanation advanced for this hiatus is that the number "eight" has special symbolic resonance, perhaps connected with Hermes and the Company of Heaven .

OD calls these "modern" versions "pulp . . . to signify not just the quality of the paper but also the merit of the contents printed on it - worthless, pappy, throwaway literature fit only for those too intellectually limited to digest more serious fare. They were not the sort of publications that found their way into academic and public libraries. Yet their influence was such that, by the late 1930s, American educationalists were waging war on the genre." p. 233. Looking at the few examples of the contents given in OD's study, these would not be so out of place in the PGM - so I wonder where their real provenance lies?

If you want gnosticism and theurgy, one maybe needs to look elsewhere than in this study of grimoire. Owen Davies is revealing the dark underbelly of the magical tradition. I suspect he might even side with the shrinking minority of academics who still follow Frazer's division of magic and religion. Religion from this perspective, being all about social networking and rationality; magick the malign, irrational, solitary practice, bent on material gain. Drive a wedge between Egyptian religion and its magick, downplay the philosophical aspect of the grimoire and it all begins to look that way. It is in these areas that Davies book certainly has an colourful tale to tell. No surprise then that coming up to date, we venture into the explicitely fictional grimoires as instanced in H P Lovecraft's Necronomicon. The book concludes with a discussion of the huge popularity of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible and the promise that, in case you didn't know it, the history of the grimoire is hardly likely to be over. "As we enter uncertain times . . . There is no sign of these books being closed for good. " p. 283

[Reviewed by Mogg Morgan with some assistance from David Rankine and Jack Daw]

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