Rating: 
Summary: One of the Best ...
Review: (Revised with additions, 8/26/03)
Thank God this book is still available in its unedited/modified edition, besides the Cicero's!Read and learn. Also, get, and practice, Regardie's 'Art of True Healing,' still available in a useful, functional edition, but little modified by Mark Allen. Well worth your bother! Cannot be recommended more highly: the Middle Pillar 'ritual' is integral to the Regardie material, and is much more practical than it sounds. You won't regret it, answer-seekers ... ! Yet, some have little interest in matters purely/strictly occult. Occultism isn't necessarily the only reason one studies Regardie. Throughout all his books, a useful perspective on the world of psychology is offered. You may not care for western magic, Egyptian gods considered as symbols of the mind, spirit, etc. However, Regardie, although by repute no master 'shrink' himself, offers many useful points of view on psychology and psychotherapy throughout his many books. His sanity and objectivity shine through, little handicapped by personal idiosyncracy. His reading lists can be useful. His 'Teachers of Fulfillment,' currently out of print, I hope to see reprinted soon. It offers a kind of 'Tree of Life' quality coverage on the New Thought ' metaphysical' movement, offering what I think are very useful insights into this movement. 'Energy, Prayer, and Relaxation' is another cognate volume, offering a variant on the 'Art of True Healing' method, and is a useful introduction to such methods/practices. His 'One Year Manual' also stands well next to these. It is a blend of methods and techniques to be used by the individual, not only for health but for personal self-development as well, spiritual and otherwise. To me, it is an extremely practical work. The small but important and essential practise of 'self-recollection' as described therein has proved invaluable to me. It deserves a small book all to itself. Add the essay on 'Meditation' from his 'Foundations of Practical Magic' ( out of print, but also no doubt soon to be re-released, ) well-known and admired among the cognoscenti, and you start to have a very well-rounded grounding/perspective indeed. This is a grounding and orientation of occultism, integrating psychology in general, to form a surprisingly unified whole, and a more than suitable springboard for the individual interested in steadily and carefully pursuing a course of action destined to change his/her life. The recommended reading list of W.E.Butlers handbooks, etc. on an early page of 'Ceremonial Magic,' the non-occult but tremendously useful 'Lazy Man's Guide to Relaxation,' are two other Regardie books no doubt soon to be reprinted as demand increases. Also, Regardie recommends having on hand a copy of Jungs 'Two Essays on Analytical Psychology' on hand, to supplement all these general studies. Frater Albertus' 'Alchemist's Handbook,' featuring an introduction by Regardie, usefully supplements the Golden Dawn material on the Internet. However, you should also familiarize yourself with Regardie introductions to the general Golden Dawn material, found in the two different published book collections of the Golden Dawn. Korzybski's many books on semantics (aka: neuro-semantics) also contributes its moiety to the complete Regardie picture. See also Regardie's introduction to Edwin Steinbrecher's 'Inner Guide Meditation,' for an even further expansion of and familiarity with Regardie's realm and point-of-view. Also on the horizon is 'Regardie Speaks,' useful for getting a further grasp on his ideas. After all these, you will know where to go next. Read his books. Read his recommendations. Read introductions he has written for others. You won't regret it. The methods are not to be rushed into, as they can be quite powerful and useful. Sanity must guide the path and, as Regardie would say, 'fanaticism above all is to be eschewed.' Add to all this his useful recordings, in particular the 'Middle Pillar Ritual' recording, useful with the 'Art of True Healing' essay, and his 'Body Awareness/Relaxation' recording, and you are well on your way. The quiet intelligence, caution, and subtlety which pervades his books, is something I always look for in a writer, as in J. Krishnamurti, and others.
Those looking for a new perspective on life would do well to investigate his work. Although I have since added in to the picture a moiety of Taoist immortalist classics to my 'armementarium,' I am constantly returning to Regardie. ( Taoist health techniques as in Eva Wong, Thomas Cleary and the like, I feel is the direction people like Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, Bernie Siegel, writers on the Qi-Jong, Feng Shui, and similar efforts are headed.) Enrich your appreciation and understanding of other psychology and 'self-improvement ' writings, by improving the entire picture for yourself, with Regardie. You'll be glad you did. It just might be 'more rewarding than watching television,' or pursuing lesser, although 'flashier' writers on personal psychology/human potential and development subjects.
Rating:
Summary: Regardie's Tree of Life well-laden and fruitful.
Review: A book that does not seem to be among the first-mentioned classics of the genre, and I cannot imagine why. Syncretic presentations of magical philosophy and practice are numerous, borrowing from sources such as this, but this book has the unmistakably organic flow and seamlessness of form and substance that mark a deeply considered and eloquent utterance with the ring of mastery. Not a book in quite the modern style or tone, but in a literate, though unostentatious idiom, that does justice to the matter, and serves as an admirable introduction to the Art for such as would as soon not be spoon-fed with more or less predigested material. As an introduction to this subject likely ought to, it leans rather more to the theoretical and expository than to the practical, but makes the point as well and convincingly as I have ever seen that in this endeavor, "practical" exercise undertaken without a deeper understanding of its meaning, is of limited value. And certainly the book is not all as forbidding as the above might suggest, but a well-flowing and engaging volume. Very recommended to whoever welcomes an intellectually and spiritually rewarding challenge.
Rating:
Summary: Magick? Serious? Interested
Review: Amonst a ton of drivel published on the subject, these two by
the one-time Sect'y to A. Crowley are a must for the serious or even seni-serious inquirer into a (the?) basis for an understanding
on the underpiunnings of magic(k)
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book before, Now even better
Review: Bravo to the Ciceros for making Regardie's classic text even more usable for the 21st century reader. I'm glad they changed Regardie's old spelling of Hebrew words like Sephiros to Sephiroth to make them conform with the way modern magicians say these words! Sure, you can still buy the old Weiser edition, but if you do, you won't be getting over a hundred illustrations, great footnotes, a table of contents that you can ACTUALLY read, a 50+ page glossary of magical terms, and a comprehensive index. I know which edition I use more often, and it isn't the Weiser one!
Rating:
Summary: Tree of Life
Review: Complete comprehensive book on the study of Magic Theory and Occult Techniques. A Must have for any serious student of Magic.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Compilation of Magical Theory and Practice
Review: Considered by many to be Mr. Regardie's Magnum Opus, this book is a must for any student of magic, although I wouldn't recommend beginners to undertake it without some experience of ritual and some exposure to occult theory. Regardie's words can be passive and needing of previous knowledge on the readers part, which a good majority of that required knowledge is give in the endnotes to the chapters, but not all. The new illustrations and comments are excellent and no other work has been as complete as this for me; other than Crowley's Liber ABA. If Crowley is hard to swallow for you, then Regardie is the choice to take.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book but...
Review: How does this - how CAN this happen, you ask yourself despairingly, wringing your hands, rending your garments, beating your head on brick walls until bloody. How is it possible that such rambling, barbarous diarrhea of the antique fountain pen as Israel Regardie's "The Tree of Life" manages to survive and accrue praise for decades? There can only be one explanation: the interested demographic must be at least one notch duller than the author. Indeed we are justified in assuming as much when our topic is "magic(k)," the traditional foil of the half-baked dilettante. Nobody knows anything about magic; therefore every smart-aleck off the street is an expert; and the more convoluted, tedious, and prolix the patois in which he couches his ramblings, the more obscure his fundamental bankruptcy of meaning - the greater his addlepated following. "The Tree of Life" is described on the back of my edition as "the most comprehensive introduction available to the numerous, complex and sometimes obscure mystical writings of Aleister Crowley." Now say what thou wilt of Aleister Crowley. I by no means intend to commit the mortal sin of apologizing for anything he wrote or said or did. This much may justifiably be remarked, however, with reference to his literary output: he demonstrates therein an absolutely remarkable tenacity and consistency of thought over the decades of his long life. The question of whether his seminal 1904 "revelation" objectively occurred as he describes is irrelevant even if it could possibly be settled (but I doubt it!); the fact remains that he devoted his every last resource to the propagation of "Thelema," that he nurtured it with his own life in the face of impossible odds, and that he maintained its fundamental tenets (many of which he claimed were antipathetic to his own point-of-view at reception) until his dying day. I can only concur with his detractors that certain of these tenets might easily be construed as "Satanic," "wicked," "perverse," "inconvenient for the corporate American," or take-your-pick; but who cares anyway - ethics and morality are arbitrarily enough defined. We cannot responsibly describe them as "false" or "insane," however, because these terms essentially imply inconsistency and incoherence, and "Thelema" is nothing if not coherent and consistent. Crowley is likewise generally a lucid, passionate read. At the other end of the literary spectrum, however, there's Regardie, one of the more garrulous essayists ever to butcher the language. In his Introduction to the Second Edition of the "Tree," Regardie himself humbly admits the "flamboyancy and tendency to adjectivitis which were the hallmarks of my youth." What an ironic occasion for the understatement of the century. Charles Nodier on hashish reads like an eye chart in comparison with the interminable wildernesses of tangled and confused ideas which constitute Regardie's literary legacy. But don't take my word for it: let me indict the opening sentences of the aforementioned work: "A common expression on the lips of many is the reiteration that mankind to-day with all its ills and aberrations, flounders blindly in a terrible morass. Death-dealing and with octopus-like tentacles of destruction, this morass clutches him more and more firmly to its breast, albeit with great subtlety and stealth. Civilization, curiously enough, modern civilization, is its name." Ugghhh. If you can conceive of sifting through a couple hundred pages of similarly pitiful attempts at eloquence, well, you're quite the morbid personality yourself, aren't you. Personally I was surprised, although I probably shouldn't have been, to find that other readers have often suggested that Regardie is the "best introduction available" to "obscure, complex" old Crowley. If his (Regardie's) work possesses any value at all, it is indeed owing to his restatement of concepts obtained from the Golden Dawn and from Crowley; but he has basically only garbled what was once crystal-clear (or at least semi-transparent) like an illiterate medieval scrivener. On the same analogy, he has added nothing original of any consequence. At least half his text consists of lengthy quotations, and a good portion of the balance is directly [used] from "The Beast" - save it's been "neutered," all potentially offensive trivia tucked away, and the grammar altered just enough to render it redundant. It's not that you can't "get the point" - eventually - with Regardie, or that he doesn't in fact have a point - somebody else's - to make. But why bother with him at all? Let any unbiased third party sit down and read both "The Tree of Life" and Crowley's "Magick in Theory and Practice" and objectively weigh their relative merits as literature. It ought to be incidental to his conclusions, but he might then reflect that "Magick" predates the "Tree" by more than a decade (though they treat of identical subjects in an eerily similar way), and that in spite of this, the style of the former work is lucid and modern and laconic, while that of the latter is old-fashioned, bombastic, and rambling. ... Yes, I'm being too hard on ole Israel, but only because I know this literature and most of what he has to say has been said previously and better.
Rating: 
Summary: Crowley's "sedulous ape"
Review: How does this - how CAN this happen, you ask yourself despairingly, wringing your hands, rending your garments, beating your head on brick walls until bloody. How is it possible that such rambling, barbarous diarrhea of the antique fountain pen as Israel Regardie's "The Tree of Life" manages to survive and accrue praise for decades? There can only be one explanation: the interested demographic must be at least one notch duller than the author. Indeed we are justified in assuming as much when our topic is "magic(k)," the traditional foil of the half-baked dilettante. Nobody knows anything about magic; therefore every smart-aleck off the street is an expert; and the more convoluted, tedious, and prolix the patois in which he couches his ramblings, the more obscure his fundamental bankruptcy of meaning - the greater his addlepated following. "The Tree of Life" is described on the back of my edition as "the most comprehensive introduction available to the numerous, complex and sometimes obscure mystical writings of Aleister Crowley." Now say what thou wilt of Aleister Crowley. I by no means intend to commit the mortal sin of apologizing for anything he wrote or said or did. This much may justifiably be remarked, however, with reference to his literary output: he demonstrates therein an absolutely remarkable tenacity and consistency of thought over the decades of his long life. The question of whether his seminal 1904 "revelation" objectively occurred as he describes is irrelevant even if it could possibly be settled (but I doubt it!); the fact remains that he devoted his every last resource to the propagation of "Thelema," that he nurtured it with his own life in the face of impossible odds, and that he maintained its fundamental tenets (many of which he claimed were antipathetic to his own point-of-view at reception) until his dying day. I can only concur with his detractors that certain of these tenets might easily be construed as "Satanic," "wicked," "perverse," "inconvenient for the corporate American," or take-your-pick; but who cares anyway - ethics and morality are arbitrarily enough defined. We cannot responsibly describe them as "false" or "insane," however, because these terms essentially imply inconsistency and incoherence, and "Thelema" is nothing if not coherent and consistent. Crowley is likewise generally a lucid, passionate read. At the other end of the literary spectrum, however, there's Regardie, one of the more garrulous essayists ever to butcher the language. In his Introduction to the Second Edition of the "Tree," Regardie himself humbly admits the "flamboyancy and tendency to adjectivitis which were the hallmarks of my youth." What an ironic occasion for the understatement of the century. Charles Nodier on hashish reads like an eye chart in comparison with the interminable wildernesses of tangled and confused ideas which constitute Regardie's literary legacy. But don't take my word for it: let me indict the opening sentences of the aforementioned work: "A common expression on the lips of many is the reiteration that mankind to-day with all its ills and aberrations, flounders blindly in a terrible morass. Death-dealing and with octopus-like tentacles of destruction, this morass clutches him more and more firmly to its breast, albeit with great subtlety and stealth. Civilization, curiously enough, modern civilization, is its name." Ugghhh. If you can conceive of sifting through a couple hundred pages of similarly pitiful attempts at eloquence, well, you're quite the morbid personality yourself, aren't you. Personally I was surprised, although I probably shouldn't have been, to find that other readers have often suggested that Regardie is the "best introduction available" to "obscure, complex" old Crowley. If his (Regardie's) work possesses any value at all, it is indeed owing to his restatement of concepts obtained from the Golden Dawn and from Crowley; but he has basically only garbled what was once crystal-clear (or at least semi-transparent) like an illiterate medieval scrivener. On the same analogy, he has added nothing original of any consequence. At least half his text consists of lengthy quotations, and a good portion of the balance is directly [used] from "The Beast" - save it's been "neutered," all potentially offensive trivia tucked away, and the grammar altered just enough to render it redundant. It's not that you can't "get the point" - eventually - with Regardie, or that he doesn't in fact have a point - somebody else's - to make. But why bother with him at all? Let any unbiased third party sit down and read both "The Tree of Life" and Crowley's "Magick in Theory and Practice" and objectively weigh their relative merits as literature. It ought to be incidental to his conclusions, but he might then reflect that "Magick" predates the "Tree" by more than a decade (though they treat of identical subjects in an eerily similar way), and that in spite of this, the style of the former work is lucid and modern and laconic, while that of the latter is old-fashioned, bombastic, and rambling. ... Yes, I'm being too hard on ole Israel, but only because I know this literature and most of what he has to say has been said previously and better.
Rating:
Summary: ITS OK
Review: IF YOU ARE STARTING IN MAGIC,READ IT.IF YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT OLD IN THE PROFESSION,MOST OF THE STUFF YOU WILL FIND ARE KNOWN AND VERY INTELLECTUAL,THOUGH NOT PRACTICAL...
Rating: 
Summary: Nice primer
Review: Israel Regardie is often unfairly lumped together as a follower of Aleister Crowley and as a Thelemite. It is true that Regardie was the secretary of Crowley and sought instruction from him. However, Regardie developed along his own paths after his split with Crowley and became an esoteric teacher in his own right, mainly along Qabalist lines. Regardie was instrumental in reviving the interest in Crowley and Thelema after the former's death. His publication of "The Eye in the Triangle" and his consistently well-done editing work on many books by Crowley kept many of them in print. All his life, Regardie thought of Crowley as a great teacher and a man the world should not miss out on. Just as it is unfair to call Regardie a Thelemite, it is unfair to reproach him with wagging fingers for his admiration of Aleister Crowley. If you want stupid, vitriolic, and totally bogus accounts of Crowley's philosophy and the effect it might have on those assosciated with him, go read one or two of the other reviews. You're not material for this kind of stuff if you are low enough to describe a man's kind of death as a consequence of his occult tecnhique--even more so, when you're wrong with regard to those circumstances, seeing as the only person to witness his death completely contradicts everything you say. All of that is evident from this book. Regardie admired Crowley, defended Crowley, and was deeply influenced by him. Regardie's book, when it comes to essentials, is a particularly good account of the magickal tradition. The only other book worth as much consideration is "Book 4" by that nasty, evil, no-good Aleister Crowley who so many people hate without having the slightest clue what they are talking about (after all, we all know eastern mysticism and the tarot is *terrible* for the soul). The primary difference between Book 4 and The Tree of Life is that Regardie's book is designed for a more general audience (also a heck of a lot less expensive). Regardie, at least for myself, can be a torture to read. Not that it's difficult--actually, he gets kind of "gushy" if I may be excused the word. There's too much of the picturesque and sentimental in Regardie, it can hamper his reading even if it leaves his knowledge and philosophy well enough alone. The illustrations included were a nice touch: mostly Alchemical symbolism, and Christian ecstasies. The Ciceros are, as usual, total hacks. (Warning, warning, the author despises the Ciceros). Somebody besides those two should start editing Regardie books; maybe they could provide real insight into the man and his noble work. Until then, buy this book, wade through the completely frivolous endnotes of the Ciceros (there are over 500 and maybe 10 of them are interesting), who once again seem to want to use Regardie as an excuse to show how much esoteric "wisdom" and "personal insight" they have. Maybe I'm too harsh on them--maybe they just have some bizarre "foot" (excuse the terribly stupid pun) fetish. But, my God! they're determined to ruin the book for you! In short: Ignore comments about Crowley that you may have seen on this site or elsewhere. If you want to know what was true about him, I'd suggest buying "Do What Thou Wilt" by Sutin, a good biography. If you don't care either way (which you shouldn't, if you're a Regardie follower), buy this book for a very good, detailed, discussion on the principles of esoteric philosophy. There *are* disputable philosophic points in this book...but I leave those up to the reader to find for him or herself.
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