BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Human Sacrifice: A Shocking Expose of Ritual Killings Worldwide (2008) Jimmy Lee Shreeve It is always difficult to review a friend's book, especially when it is a signed gift - a bad review might offend and a good review be distrusted. Fortunately, Jimmy Lee Shreeve is one of the least 'precious' of litterateurs, a man who consciously models his style on American 'gonzo' journalism, a man for whom criticism is like water off a duck's back. So it is with some pleasure that I can say that this book really is worth reading, assuming that you have a strong stomach and that you take it for what it is and not for what you might like to be. The book is published by Barricade whose list includes quite a large number of more conventional true crime books that concentrate on one of America's greatest gifts to the world - the 'romance' of organised crime. From this perspective, 'Human Sacrifice' is definitely a bit offbeat because it is look...

The Magical Revival (1972) Kenneth Grant   The Real Middle Earth: Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages (2002) Brian Bates   Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (2009) Owen Davies   The Book Of English Magic (2009) Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate    Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus (2009) Paul Weston   There is no book quite like Kenneth Grant's Magical Revival . But what exactly is it? In some ways it is a conventional narrative of the 'new' Magical experiment that was introduced by the 'revelation' of Aiwass to Aleister Crowley in 1904. Grant takes us through to the Zos Kia Cultus of Austin Osman Spare who died in 1956. But this general narrative is overshadowed by the book's true purpose which is to do for Magic as a religious narrative what the Early Church Fathers did for Christianity - to express both its cogency and its mystery and so its high and serious purpose as a spiritual tradition, if not necessarily a religion in the formal se...

The Undergrowth of Literature (1967)   Gillian Freeman with an introduction by the psychiatrist David Stafford-Clark   Sex And Spirit: Ecstasy, Ritual And Taboo (1996) Clifford Bishop   Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (2006) Hugh B. Urban   Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006) Esther Perel     The Undergrowth of Literature is an intriguing bit of history, both because it was written in the mid-1960s when sexual liberty was under discussion openly for the first time in decades and because of the subject matter - the types of pornographic literature available at the time. The inclusion of women's magazines from a feminist perspective and Marvel Comics from a fetishistic perspective make it a true curiousity. It is not a great book. It is of its time. But it is useful to read because it shows how much we have changed since 1967. Intellectuals cannot n...