Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #234298 in Books
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Customer Reviews

An early classic of an ancient tradition.
Many seminal books of occultism include 'The Mystical Qabalah' in their recommended reading list. It gives a basic, but beautiful account. Highly recommended for beginners it has most of the traditional RHP (Right Hand Path) correspondences such as the angels, Hebrew God names and colour schemes. Unfortunately the paths are only explained in a very basic way: their order! This is certainly not due to any lack of professionalism on Fortune's part but because at the time when 'The Mystical Qabalah' was published the occult fraternity were unsure how much the public should be allowed to know. You will now understand the unswerving discretion Dion Fortune exercised. In my opinion it is her best book but that is no doubt resulting from my intellectual lop sidedness regarding Qabalah. In a few decades it will be recognised as an enduring classic.

A fascinating overview of the practical Qabalah system
This book doesn't 'teach' you magic. Instead it offers the basis of a framework that can support every magical system you could find. Fortune's writing is dry at times but pithy. She is less 'politically correct' than might be found desirable particularly with regards to her notions of racial karma. In this case I think that she is dragging in the cultural mores of the 1930's rather than a qabalistic philosophy, but maybe not. Other than that, the book is awesome... it offers information and opportunities for understanding in equal measure... progressing round and around in a spiral of realisation. There are lots of other books on qabalah but this one is a beginner's classic and is worth reading for that alone. Her novels expound the ideas in this book so this is pretty much essential reading for anyone reading Fortune's fiction. The book deals primarily with the Tree of Life and moves on towards the end to deal with approaches to working with the Tree. I found that I had to read the book very slowly and make notes. The paragraphs are numbered and Fortune has a style of logical progression that I became adjusted to the more I read. I found it to be very worthwhile reading time.

A good book for the non-beginner
I found this book very helpful in the detailed descriptions of the spheres. It is too bad that the further book she planned with the information of the paths was never written, or at least published. In addition to the correspondences, there are very good comparisons the other spheres, and many examples which make the difficult concepts a bit easier.