Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #320315 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Customer Reviews

Voodoo, but not as we know it.
I have wanted this book for 20 years. Was it worth the wait and the answer is yes. Bertiaux has a very dark reputation in the occcult world and yes that is here but also insights into Magick from a point of view that delivers much good too. It describes this as the expanded edition that was meant to include diagrams. But in the reprinting they were left out. Homer Simpson must have been on the job that day. Thankfully they can be downloaded and printed then added to the book. It's a big read with lots to digest but to me a worthy addition to my Occult library.

a modern practices or half-baked?
Looking at Michael Bertiaux's Voudon Gnostic Workbook makes me think about the discussions and petty fights between practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine and doctors of Western Medicine. The TCM professional looks at the person as a whole, the western physician looks at the acupuncture points he has to needle to get the results he wants and doesn't care about the deep underlying mechanisms of Chinese Medicine. No wonder then, that the results of the western physician are not lasting - or need to be supported by additional western practices and drugs!

One of the most quotes African proverbs that springs to mind when looking at Bertiaux is "in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king". Vodou is not a tradition of spell-casting, conjuring and invocation/evocation. It is a way of life and a practice to achieve alignment with ones destiny by creating health, wealth (not riches) and happiness. Unfortunately Bertiaux does not portrait vodou in this way but makes is a cheap, dark and "powerful" practice to support his chaos-magical practice. But even power is understood differently in vodou then how Bertiaux presents it - the power vodou teaches us is not power over others (or over the Loa) but over our own lives.

I could ramble on more, but I doubt it will change much! Chaos magic will always be chaos magic and once exposed to it, its difficult to change your mind and understand that spirituality could actually be more then a means to an end that can be used at your leisure!