Basic Magick: A Practical Guide

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Summary: Magick WORKS if you know the correct procedure
Review: A step by step guide in using Magick to improve and enhance your life. Not to be confused with 'Black' Magick or get-rich-quick schemes, this book teaches you how to achieve RESULTS by using sound magical techniques. The principles given are simple to grasp, easy to understand and entirely free from the absurdities often presented as Magick. Plain English is used throughout! To desire better health, more money, success and happiness is perfectly natural - no matter what the misguided may tell you. This book shows you how to achieve these things by using perfectly natural techniques in a safe and sensible way. Full back up is also given by the author on his web site titled THE COSMONOMICON ...

Rating:
Summary: It must be great to know it all
Review: Frankly I am surprised by the number of people who like this book. While the magikal techniques are certainly tried and true and the importance of positive mind sets, I was really turned off by his dogmatic and pompous statements. For example he "Categorically states" (his words) that 'astral' entities outside our own creation do not exist. That would include Angels, Devas, Nature spirits, what have you, along with demons and devils. While I would agree that we do indeed, for the most part create our own demons, metaphorically speaking anyway, it is arrogant to essentially say we (that of the physical world) are the only entities in existance, and that there are no other intelligences outside our dense vibration. Also, as one other noted, his dismissal of reincarnation and karma as being "silly dogmas" Well, they aren't even dogmas. But I guess if you treat magik as a science, you best alleviate the metaphysical, which somehow seems a contradiction, to me.

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Summary: *
Review: The general feeling I've had throughout the years, is that popular magic and its supposed practice are ridiculous goth fads. And for the most part they are, safe enough to say. Take a look through the "new age" section of your local bookstore, it is easy to see what I mean. 95% of the books sold on the topic of magic, or "magick" if we're being pretentious and annoying about it, strike me as somewhere between amusingly dismissable and disgustingly moronic.

Still, I'm smart enough to know that mankind's most distinctive characteristic is his astonishingly willful ignorance, and that it is simply common sense to realize that the human mind houses a great deal of unharnessed potential. The American educational system, the American government, popular media, and Western religion are, needless to say, pointedly unhelpful when it comes to learning to explore and utilize our full potential.

Philip Cooper's "Basic Magick" was the first book on this subject that I came across that struck a genuine chord. In many respects it's no different than most books on the subject, which is to say that it's haughty in tone, sometimes pretentiously prophetic, and frequently just too silly to take seriously. Its arguments and reasoning are confident and, at the same time, notably underdevloped, whimsical, and ill-supported. Additionally, it's just as stupid looking as any other "magick" book on the shelf; I admit I would've been a trifle embarassed purchasing this at a bookstore. Insecure? Maybe; but maybe with a valid reason.

However, if a bit arrogant and often questionable, the author is not a fool; the ideas, exercises, and attitude of the book all have a great deal of merit. Cooper's interpretation of magic in a metaphorical vein, and his assertion that mystical concepts like gods, demons, angels, magical paraphenalia (rings, knives, wands, etc.) are helpful strictly in terms of being symbols to the mind--is refreshing. Not everything he has to say bears close scrutiny, but one detects a tangible (and rightful) degree of sympathy for the skeptic.

Additionally, the book is fun to read. If the ideas aren't always rock-solid, the author's vitality and attitude *are,* and he manages to inspire without seeming preachy. His exercises are, at least at their core, notably useful and worthwhile. His frequent encouragement that the reader ignore magical systems mired in literalness and fad in favor of personal creativity is also refreshing.

The book isn't exactly a comprehensive tome--it is brief and introductory in nature. But for me this was fine. While hardly an ideal investigation of the topic overall, Cooper's book does house many helpful ideas and provides an interesting and less ridiculous angle on the idea of magic than I've seen elsewhere. His book gave me hope and inspired in me a great deal of thought and interest in the possibilites of the human mind, as well as exercises detailing how to begin to explore and perhaps utilize them. I recommend this book to beginners who have equal measure of enthusiasm and skepticism for magic in general.