Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #656094 in Books
• Published on: 1992
• Binding: Paperback
• 362 pages

Customer Reviews

The eye of your heart
I agree with and yet very much disagree with the reviews presented here. I neither practice witchcraft or claim to be a critic. However, let us look a little harder at what is being presented. The author created these books apparently from his own pocket for folk that would get something from them.
So what do they offer over an above a mytho-poetic language and bizarre imagery. I feel that it is more to do with an intoxication and a mysteriousness based on being. The idea that being can be rescued via the imagination. So here I say look again. Our language systems constrain our world of appearances. This text shatters that by opening up alternatives. Maybe its chaos or maybe its witchcraft whatever it is it works if you look with your heart. I urge folk to think, via contemplation, and perhaps that is where you will find the way.

exaggerated reputation
contrary to the frantic propaganda this book is a dissapointment: agreed, the binding may be wonderful but I don't judge a book by the cover but by the contents - the truth is that the art is poor, the poetry laboured and tiresome, language turgid and over-written and the material is nothing more than a derivation of Chaos Magic, Typhonian Thelema and Spare. This book is useless to anybody seeking to study or practise genuine magic as it is obviously just made-up Chaos Magic-style giberish.

An over-rated classic
Chumbley A.D. (1992) The Azoetia: a grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft. Xoanon, Chelmsford UK.

This is a book that few have heard of and even fewer (due to its' unnecessarily controlled availability) have read. This work is heavily influenced by Crowley and the Khemetic-Judaic school of the Order of the Golden Dawn.

This work represents a fusion of ceremonial magick and Witchcraft at ratio of three to one and as such, interest in this book is more likely to lie with those whose primary interest is the ceremonial path, rather than the craft.

This work can be seen in the light of being an attempt to introduce some good old fashioned Paganism back into ceremonial magick. Although this is certainly something that needs to be done, it is a matter of debate as to whether this book goes far enough or whether this was a conscious or unconscious objective of the author.

This book is regarded by some to be a masterpiece and like all such works, is therefore flawed. However, I am inclined to take a different view. Although this is certainly a decent enough book and is certainly well written in parts, it is not the great work we are lead to believe. There is I feel a danger for the unwise reader of falling into the trap of the "Emperors' new clothes" and believing the hype without questioning it first.

The style of writing is remarkably contradictory, ranging from being puerile in it's' pretension to displaying beautifully mature prose. The work also lacks a suitable commentary and is not referenced at all. This unfortunately limits its' basis for further study. The rituals although displaying creativity require editing to remove the more impractical elements and to grasp the fundamental arte that lies at the core of the work.

This book should be read critically and seen for what it is, a volume on contemporary sorcery and full of contradiction. A classic perhaps but without doubt, an overrated one.