Product Description

This title delivers a genuine transformation of occultism.The author assumes no previous knowledge, only a willingness to explore what magick offers, yet it's apparent to anyone with a background in the subject that Alan Chapman is drawing on a wide range of experience, from classical Crowleyean Magick, to eastern metaphysics, and back again to Discordianism and Chaos Magick. Chapman's writing-style is humorous, direct, seductively logical, and his enthusiasm for the benefits of magick is both tangible and infectious.The novice magician will indeed find themselves equipped to commence all sorts of magickal operations: trance work, enchantment, divination, and even some of the higher forms of spiritual development. To experienced magicians, Chapman offers a subtler challenge: he revitalises magick by cutting it free from the extreme relativism Chaos Magick bequeathed, provocatively redefining it as: 'the art, science and culture of experiencing truth.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #238227 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Alan Chapman is a Western magician and writer, a Magus of the A.'.A.'. and a member of numerous secret societies. He has appeared in the Fortean Times and Chaos International, and regularly contributes to the award-winning website www.thebaptsisthead.co.uk. Alan is the author of 'The Camel Rides Again! A Primer in Magick', and co-author of 'The Blood of the Saints' (with Duncan Barford).

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Stuff
Have you ever had the thought, "If only that had been around X many years ago, it would have saved me no end of trouble and wasted time!"? This is the kind of book that, after ten years of occult study, I really wish had been available when I was starting out. Cutting through a huge amount of nonsense that has accumulated around the Western Tradition, the author gives a detailed yet easy to read in-depth study of the occult. And there is plenty to offer the advanced practitioner too - not least in his discussion of the "Great Work" as the ultimate goal of all magick.

Clearly the author is no armchair magician, but somebody who lives, breaths and thinks magick. As it has been said before, Magick is not something you do, it is something that you are; here the author makes no apologies for the totality of magick in life, and that is something that I find infinitely refreshing.

Superb and Witty Exploration of Magick
I enjoyed this book immensely. It is written in a humorous tone at times ascerbic and at other times written in with a pomposity which reminds one of the writings of Crowley. I dont mean this in a negative tone, for it is A refreshing read. Tired of Llewellyn Wiccan modern dogmatic books which peddle the same old fluffy bunnie wiccan magick and correspondances from ten years ago ? Tired of the modern Chaos magic books which are postmodern in the extreme to the point of incoherence ?

This book is the antidote. Indeed, he makes a good point for the process of initiation being left out of chaos magic - that extreme post modernism and relativism of this system might leave one looking at an empty universe. The book points out initiation is right in front of our nose everyday in every experience.

What is great about this is book is it is very practical with many exercises and interesting gives for example a variety of approaches for any goal. In here we hear echoes of Carroll, Robert Anton Wilson, Crowley and the highly experienced insights of the Author.

Definately this book is recommended for advanced magicians, it may give them some possible ideas or routes out of problem areas one could fall into or philosophical malaises which can result. In addition, every beginning in true magic should read this book for the principles it underlines. Possibly one of the most initiated books in print. However, I think that traditionalists of any system will either not like nor not understand this book, because it exposes some of the self illusions or delusions self appointed authorities can fall into. Ironically, those who seek magick often seek liberation, but often fall into a new dogma which enslaves just as much as that from which they were trying to escape. It is clear this has not happened to the author who understands the system and how it works. Those who are 'the sheep' of a tradition bleeting out the some old ideas without understanding them might learn something from this book.

I highly recommend it to anyone seeking the true nature of magick. As mind expanded as Robert Anton wilson, as humorous and clever as Crowley whilst the author is clearly one of the next big names in magic of this generation with his own style and ideas. I'd like to see many more books by the author.

Advanced Magick for Beginners by Alan Chapman. Aeon Books, 2008
I consider this kind of book on magic long overdue, and I love it that a friend and colleague of mine has written it.

In the 1970's, the author relates, the formation of Chaos Magic revitalised the practice of magic with its practitioners' enthusiasm for verifiable results instead of transcendentalist flim-flam. Since then Chaos Magic has reached something of a dead end, where even supreme magical competence leaves one wondering `is this it?' The extreme postmodernism embraced by many modern practitioners leaves one with nothing worth having and Alan Chapman proposes a corrective approach to the practice of magic.

He defines magick as "the art, science and culture of experiencing Truth." An art because arbitrary aesthetics alone dictate method. A science because it has a methodology that produces results which peers can corroborate. A culture because it has implicit ethical and social considerations. And he uses that unpopular word `Truth,' considered here as that which one experiences, rather than merely a set of privileged propositions. This truth, he argues, has only two limits: one's imagination and the available means of manifestation.

At which point he takes us from entry-level exercises through the gamut of magical skills all the way to the Great Work of Magick. But he wants most of all to restore the initiatory dimension all but lost in Chaos Magic after the seminal work Liber Null and Psychonaut, which mentioned but did not explore adequately this aspect of magic. He stands bravely against the dominant anti-transcendentalist public views of some of his own colleagues and mentors, and for this alone I would give him a hearing. And here too he has done his homework, as you can see for yourself on the website The Baptist's Head, where he contributes regularly.

Amid a slew of popular rehashes of basic sigil magic his book comes as a genuinely fresh offering to the field. So for the missing dimension of postmodern magic, you could do no better than to read this book. I recommend it warmly.

The Kite