Rating  - Not Completely Useless
Kind of an insubstantial book; I think it might not be worth the cover price, but the Amazon discount price is almost fair. I got this book with specific questions in mind and I feel they have not been answered. The authors presuppose a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader. I would have liked to see more solid information on the theory and practice behind this particular branch of the Occult Arts. The authors seem to be followers of the Chaos mentality of "use whatever works for you" which is fine, but somebody with my mentality needs some solid & trustworthy tradition to use as a starting point. Most of the information in this book had a sort of "well DUH" quality that felt like I already knew it, but just hadn't thought of it that way ... which is where this book's real (and only) value lies. The authors have collected what little information they could scrape together into a single volume to remind you of all the little details you need to consider when creating an entity. But they fall short when it comes to explaining just HOW to make your entity. It seems that creating an entity is exactly like making a sigil, with a few extra steps, but several of the examples provided by the authors involved the use of an entity to do a job that might have been better accomplished with a sigil. If there is indeed a difference between an entity and a sigil, then there's a choice to be made between the two. This book contains no discussion of what criteria determine when to use which technique; this kind of information would be very useful.
The writing style feels like an undergraduate college term paper: easy to understand but hard to pay attention to. The book is jam-packed with typographical errors; spell-checking is not the same as proofreading. I lost count of how many times I encountered the correctly-spelled but completely WRONG word in a sentence. These kinds of mistakes tend to distract from one's message. After a while it got hard to take this book seriously.
The final 1/3 of the book is filled with "appendices" that are short accounts of the authors' own workings with entities. They are entertaining and instructive, but they only document the authors' successful experiments. It may be embarrassing (no more so than at least one of the intimately candid accounts) but showing us a few of your failures, and WHY you think they didn't work, could also be very instructive to your readers. These stories also illustrate another somewhat disturbing point; the authors' motivations seem to be rather (how should I put this?) _petty_, and their behavior reckless. Sending a malicious entity to harry the tenants of a house where you used to live? Creating an entity to help you avoid the legal consequences of your own actions? What sort of behavior are we encouraging here? These stories, coupled with the collegiate style of the writing, ooze an atmosphere of immaturity that absolutely does not encourage trust or confidence.
In short, buy this book IF you already know what you're doing and you just need a handy checklist for entity creation. If you're just starting out & trying to learn, I would advise you to stay away from this one. Seek a better teacher. There are other resources available.
Rating  - Comprehensive for a little written on subject
Besides the professionalism with getting the product as quickly as possible, and in excellent condition, this book is a must for any serious student. It is comprehensive, and what makes it stand out is the fact that you don't see a lot of this material in print; let alone in a newer book. The writing style is relaxed, and everything is spelled out very clearly, including facets that don't normally get mentioned.
Kudos!
Rating  - A primer in the basics
This small text, while by no means great, accomplishes the desired end, and does have some excellent parts. Being a survey of the art of entity creation, the book manages to cover all of the essentials and basics that are tried and true, and has an excellent chapter on creating the varied appearance of the entity on the basis of its intended purpose (which has excellent direct relation to talismanic magic - a created entity being a talisman, essentially). I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter, as it presented info I had not come into contact with before, and, though only 3 pages (the chapter, that is, not the book), I'd think it useful to any practicing student of esoterics.
I feel the book went a bit wrong in its appendices, one author's "real life" example in particular. While entities (and talismans) can be used to exact revenge, it's best not to highlight those.
Rating  - CME
I dig this book. Lot's of good information. In fact, I'm finding I'll need to read it a couple of times. Not that it's too heady, it's just packed with a lot of good info.
The writing is very understandable, it's not written as though I'm being talked down to or as if I will only grasp the information after a decade or more of studying the occult. I think with a basic understanding of the occult anyone should be able to grasp what's being laid out in this book. It makes so much sense.
I once read a review, which could have been here, that stated the author laid it all out, but then didn't tell us what to do with the entities once we've created them. That couldn't be farther from the truth. The end has examples from the author and co-authors. The author is the messenger, we need to do our own work with the message given. It would be like me expecting the driving instructor to continue driving for me once I had the information to do it myself.
Our greatest gift are our minds, we need to use them, exercise them! Take the information and think for yourself. Hell take the information and add onto it, add your own personality into it. Again, CME is a blue print.
I definitely recommend this book to all practitioners.
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Customer Reviews for Egregore Publishing,1932517448,9781932517446,1932517448,133 |
