This an idiosyncratic guide to resources, mostly books. Everything in here relates to this blog in one way or another. It is not exhaustive. It does not cover articles or social media or anything I have only half read. I am bound to forget something significant. It is light on women authors, and at first I thought that it was because the voice of women is poorly heard in this space. I may be wrong about this. It also skews Eurocentric, because that is the kind of magic with which I am familiar. Some books I literally inherited and are very old. In the 1980's I began a Masters Degree in History with the topic Occult and Esoteric Practices in New Zealand Before 1945, so some of the books are from that time. Many are now in the common domain and you can get free PDF's. At times I will make comments.
BOOKS
HISTORY OF MAGIC
Briggs, Katharine M British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler 1977. Folk magic lasts longer than religion. And longer than ceremonial magic too, probably.
Copenhaver, Brian The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Englightenment 2015
Gardner, Gerald B Witchcraft Today: Secrets of the Witch Cult Revealed 1954. Stunningly lurid, absolutely of its time, now almost unreadable; we have to remember that Gardner was such an important figure in the development of the Craft.
Gilbert, RA The Golden Dawn: Twilight of the Magicians 1983. Has a foreword by Israel Regardie
Harrison, Michael The Roots of Witchcraft 1974
Howe, Ellic The Magicians of the Golden Dawn 1972. Tells of the implosion of the GD by competing talents and egos.
Hutton, Ronald The Triumph of the Moon 1999. Best for the early part of the book, which described the antecedents of modern pagan witchcraft. He nicely collapses the distinction between high and low magic maps onto witchcraft.
Lachman, Gary Politics and the Occult: the Left, the Right and the Radically Unseen 2008
Levi, Eliphas The History of Magic 1913. I think my copy is a first edition. Also describes operative magic.
Turner, Palmer (ed) The Heptarchia Mystica of John Dee 1986. Dee is important because his experience of angels was not at all angelic in the new age sense. His angels demanded group sex, and eventually got it. Even the most cerebral of magics comes down to sex in the end.
Valiente, Doreen An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present 1973. This particular copy has stamped on it 'Hillmorton High School Library. Reference Only'. I imagine sitting in a high school library reading about how to make witches' ointment at the tender age of 14 or so. Valiente was a major figure in the development of British Wicca, but she was new to me when I inherited the book.
GRIMOIRES, BOOKS OF MAGICAL PRAXIS
Chappell, Helen The Waxing Moon: a Gentle Guide to Magic 1974. Reads like it's 1974. Sweet.
Crowley, Aleister 777 undated. This is a book of correspondences, for the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, which include sexual acts and sexual fluids etc and their correspondences to planets, numbers and so on.
Crowley, Aleister Magick in Theory and Practice 1976. Begins with the gorgeous, transgressive Io Pan! evocation which is a ritual in itself.
Echols, Damien High Magick 2018. Damien Echols of the Memphis Three spent years on death row for a murder he did not commit. He survived by practicing what is basically Golden Dawn ceremonial magick. Excellent for anyone making excuses for not doing the thing. If he can do it on death row, with no special tools from the local witchy shop, you can damn well do it in your bedroom. He now has a YouTube channel.
Ecouteux, Claude The Book of Grimoires 2002. More wide reaching than Peterson (see below) but less thorough. These together give a great outline of 'low' magic practiced by cunning people in the early modern period.
Fries, Jan Seidways: shaking, swaying and serpent mysteries 2009. Fries' unique take on the Norse magic of Seidr, it is a form of bodywork that has some implications for sex magic.
Loyola, St Ignatius The Spiritual Exercises trans. Thomas Corbishley 1973. Medieval bodywork lol. Iggy's highly ritualized explorations of the interior imaginal world mirror that of the ceremonial magician.
Levi, Eliphas Transcendental Magic 1972. Levi gave us modern interpretations of many magical staples such as the pentagram, and Baphomet.
Mason, Asenath Lilith: Dark Feminine Archetype 2018
Mathers, SL McGregor The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage 1975
Peterson, Joseph Grimorium Verum 2007. Fairly kick-ass as grimoires go, my favourite spell is to extinguish a fire. And to make two ladies or two gentlemen dance in the nude. Cf Lecouteux above.
Waite, Arthur Edward The Wordsworth Book of Spells 1992. This is the latest iteration of Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic from 1911
SEX MAGIC AND MAGICAL SEX
Alexandrian, Sarane The Great Work of the Flesh: Sexual Magic East and West 2015. This is mostly a history, by a writer best known for his work on surrealism. It deserves to be less obscure.
Carrellas, Barbara Urban Tantra: sacred sex for the twenty-first century 2007. It isn't tantra, but it is lovely, life affirming stuff. Recommended. Great exercises.
Flagg The Forked Tongue Revisited: A Handbook for Treating People Badly 2015. This is a book for tops and dom/mes, more particularly sadists. I put it under magic because it is. This is the most ethically clear piece of writing on the subject I know. Welcome to what was my world for a while. Such fun!
Flowers, Stephen E and Flowers, Crystal Dawn Carnal Alchemy, Sado-Magical Techniques for Pleasure, Pain and Self-Transformation 2013. Oh dear, Stephen Flowers is pretty influential on the far right side of Heathenry and his work on Runelore has become definitive beyond its ability. However, this is a really good book on actual sex magic, it doesn't flinch, there is no fluff in it, and it is workable.
Grey, Peter The Red Goddess 2016. Especially good at the start of the book, this is a most beguiling story of Babalon. Recommended, although the ramblings about Mary are a bit Dan Brown.
Grey, Peter and Dimech, Alkistis 'The Brazen Vessel' 2018
LaVey, Anton Szandor The Satanic Witch 2003. Originally the Compleat Witch, it is wildly dated and is mostly about using magic for a woman to get a man. Bizarre, mostly.
Mason, Asenath Rituals of Pleasure 2018. Along with Bill Duvendack, Asenath Mason has published many books of LHP magic and her works on Lilith are relevant here. Not for the faint of heart.
Miller, Jason Sex, Sorcery and Spirit: The Secrets of Erotic Magic. 2014. This is a solid work and a good intro from a lifelong practitioner.
Williams, Brandy Ecstatic Ritual: Practical Sex Magic 2016. Cute.
CHAOS MAGIC
Carroll, Peter J Liber Null and Psychonaut 1997
Hine, Phil Condensed Chaos 2012
Mace, Stephen Shaping Formless Fire: Distilling the Quintessence of Magick 2019. Stephen Mace has been around for ages and straddles Chaos and LHP magic nicely. Readable intro to the subject, very right wing politics unfortunately, it is the curse of the magical ego.
Morrison, Grant The Invisibles Comic book series from the 1990's, published as four volumes 2014. I so wish I was an Invisible. Has that edgy conspiratorial end-of-the-century vibe, not unlike this edgy conspiratorial end-of-the-world vibe we have today, come to think of it.
SEX
Berkowitz, Eric Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire 2012.
Carellas, Barbara Ecstasy is Necessary: a practical guide to sex, relationships and so much more 2012
Grant, Melissa Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work 2014
Lister, Kate A Curious History of Sex 2020
Thomashauer, Regena Pussy, a Reclamation, 2016
USEFUL FICTIONS
Fortune, Dion The Goat-Foot God 1936. Reads like it's 1936. Dion Fortune was chaste in her practice, so all the sexual tension remains just that, with the final ecstatic ritual thingie being a fairly abstract business. But she was a wise practitioner and very influential.
Huysmans, JK La Bas undated. This copy is very old, hand cut pages, more than slightly foxed. La Bas (Down Below or Down There in English)was famous in its time as the height (or depth) of decadence. First published in 1891, it has it all: a femme fatale, a defrocked priest and a black mass. The raddled tail end of the romantic Satanism movement that started with the likes of Shelley and was such a powerful reaction against modernity and rationality.
ALSO
Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo 1966. I refer to this in the text, directly.
ONLINE
Angela Puca 'Angela's Symposium' YouTube Channel. Angela is a PhD and a university lecturer, and her videos are always based on a work of academic research. She has a brief series on magic and BDSM and also covers more general sex magic.
'The Whores of Yore' is Kate Lister's lovely sex-positive website about prostitution, its history, and the rights of sex workers. She has a section on sex workers' voices and I contributed there under the name Clio Magnum Rossi.
'Against Everything with Conner Habib' is a podcast by Conner, an ex porn star and sex worker now embarking on an academic career. He covers a wide range of occult and cultural topics, and also talks about sex positivity from time to time. Interesting interview, although very long at times.
'Mistress, Mercy' 2018 is a docu-drama about Renee Chignall, the young dominatrix who was eventually acquitted of murdering her client. I unpack this in the text, about what not to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment