BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Sexual Magick & Other Essays (1988) Katon Shual   The Secret History of Western Sexual Mysticism (2008) Arthur Versluis   A Brief History of Nakedness (2010) Philip Carr-Gomm   If you are looking for some 'how to' manual involving dark side practices, Shual's Sexual Magick is not the book for you. Rather it is a sensitive and humane investigation of the role of the sexual in modern magical practice and it is thoroughly liberal in tone. Katon Shual is the pseudonym of the Oxford-based magician, Mogg Morgan, who has done much in such circles to bring the somewhat harsh and masculinised world of Crowley and Grant into line with modern liberal and tolerant culture. The high point for me was an extended 'rant', allegedly from the God Set, against not Christianity (the usual target of neo-pagan resentment) but late paganism as it developed under the Roman elite. For a simple account of how neo-pagans see sexuality in quasi-political and cultural terms, pag...

The Principles of Taoism (2000) Paul Wildish The Principles of Taoism is an excellent and very readable basic account of Taoism in Thorsons' 'Principles of ...' series. It covers not only the basics of the belief system in both its philosophical and religious forms but gives a solid and rounded account of its history and its influence on Chinese medicine and martial arts. Personally, I find Taoism a highly amenable philosophy and approach to religion even if I cannot wholly engage with it myself. It is possibly the most humane of ancient philosophical paths but it is highly culture-specific in its general forms even if its basic philosophy can be studied with profit outside East Asia and the Chinese diaspora. It is not, however, without flaws. The most obvious one derives from what tends to happen when 'essentialist' a priori reasoning gets hold of reality and then tries to bend it to its will - this is the so-called Outer Alchemy, derived from an ove...

Eros and Thanatos (1999)   Klaus Bottger Forbidden Erotica (2000) Mark Lee Rotenberg Tom Poulton: The Secret Art of an English Gentleman (2006) Editor - Dian Hanson The ostensible purpose of Eros and Thanatos is to give us the work of Klaus Bottger, a German artist (1942-1992) whose ouevre of erotic prints has been picked up by the Erotic Prints Society in 1999 and padded out with an introduction and two pornographic short stories (by English writers) with a German theme - one set amongst the free love German student community of cliche and the other providing a mock psycho-analytic case study in which a brutal Freikorps soldier learns gemutlichkeit and leaves his bourgeois analyst in something of a disturbed erotic state. Bottger has talent but the work goes nowhere. While the stories have some some interest, they do not have great interest while the Germanic link between sex and death is laboured. It would have been far better to produce a slimmer book of prints with ...

Sex in History (1980) Reay Tannahill Art Nouveau and the Erotic (2000) Ghislaine Wood Sex in History is over forty years old but still provides an informed, often wry, and certainly intelligent review of the history of sexuality. It is a first point of call for anyone new to the subject who is looking to understand how we became what we are both as a culture and as individuals (at least in the West).  Tannahill's judgement is excellent, given the facts at her disposal. I strongly approve of her refusal to take at face value any later imposition of theory on how minds worked in the past. We can know nothing of past thoughts.  The Freudianism that was still regarded as respectable when she was writing the book is now seen for what it is - another 'grand projet' from comfortably off dead white males and their camp-followers. It gets only a couple of mentions and then with not much respect. Good! She is also not sentimental. The Amerindians may have been treated appal...

Fulcanelli and the Alchemical Revival: The Man Behind the Mystery of the Cathedrals (1990)   Genevieve Dubois  The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved (2000) Colin and Damon Wilson   The Secret History of Lucifer; The Ancient Path to Knowledge and the Real Da Vinci Code (2005) Lynn Picknett   Who Are The Illuminati? (2005)  Lindsay Porter   Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear (2008) Daniel B. and Jason Freeman   Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-Religions (2009) Ronald H. Fritze We will start by getting rid of the worst book. The translated tome on Fulcanelli the alchemist is dreadful - poorly written, obscure, poorly translated, poorly edited, pompous, deeply incoherent and providing no context or analysis. It contains some interesting photographs and some less interesting but at least accurately photographed documentation. You are left with an impression of a set of more than a little nutty marginalised figures living from...