Today, I was reading Frater BarrabbasTiresius' blog and found myself wondering what type of poison ink letters he recieves in his hate mail file. His latest entry is a critique and analysis of the book Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation: A System of Personal Power written by Joseph Lisiewski.
I have not actually read Lisiewski's book; but given the book review and my own experiences with book reviewing, Barrabbas must recieve some charming hate mail. Of course, I seem to remember Lisiewski being impressed with a couple of the books that I was not completely supportive of, so the poison ink might end up coming from the exact same people. Next thing, I know I will hear that me and Barrabbas are involved in the same conspiracy.
Then again, given the fact that I view poltergeist activity and strange noises as a sign of inefficiency, smoke and fire as potential hazards, and am only concerned with accomplishing my desired effect, it might not be so wrong to lump the two of us together. Of course, everyone knows how I feel about Golden Dawn, so Lisiewski claiming that Golden Dawn does not work because it was built up from corrupted sources just sets my teeth on edge.
Barrabbas' review makes me want to track down a copy of the book and see if Lisiewski is as insulting as this review makes him out to be. Fortunately (in a sense), I do not have the money or time to do so.
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5 comments:
Lisiewski's validity can be completely judged in the opening of the book where he gives a short history of magic through the ages.
Not even the history of magic, but the general European history given in his book is wrong. For example, Lisiewski propagates the idea of a dark ages, to quote him, "...the
western world entered a time of extreme social repression
and all intellectual growth was extinguished."
This despite the fact that for decades every historian dealing with that period of European history has noted that the dark ages were a time of innovation, growth, and the scientific practices of that era set the foundation for much of modern scientific theory and practice.
The term dark ages isn't even used among most modern historians because of the misleading and negative connotations of the term. The term was originally created and used chiefly by people who were not historians and had political, cultural, and religious agendas they were trying to promote.
The fact that Liwieski again promotes this idea which is still alive in popular thought but has been disproven a hundred times over and is no longer held by any living professional historian of the era goes to show that he is either too lazy to do the necessary research for his book, that he is intentionally misleading the reader in order to form an inaccurate history of magic to support his theory, or he's lacks the necessary skills and intellect to be writing non-fiction works professionally.
I just got done taking a Medieval History class, and what I learned was so NOT the sterotype. Yeah, if you cannot trust their general historial research, you have to wonder about their magical literature and history reasearch. (And yes, I am majoring in both history and literature.)
New agers are so clueless. Enjoy living in material and intellectual squalor.
New agers are so clueless. Enjoy living in material and intellectual squalor.
Which of us are you addressing?
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