Book Reviews

The Heretics: Past and Present

By Brian Allan

Book to be launched at Weird 10.

Synopsis

Heresy, literally ‘one who chooses’; a charge normally with religious overtones, levelled against those who chose not to accept blind dogma and dared to think differently, magicians were almost invariably regarded as heretics

In this new book we confront whether magick merely a butt for ill informed jokes, disbelief, bemusement and bafflement, or is something else entirely. Something now so remote from the humdrum fabric of everyday life that we have forgotten what it was and how deeply it affected us. At one time magick was accepted as a simple fact just like the air we breathe, much as the work of alchemists was accepted as fact, although, to be fair, alchemy, through its often revolutionary discoveries, did act as one of the parents of modern science.

In this book we find a tour de force starting with the earliest beliefs and how, over time, they morphed into the first vestiges of ‘magick’. We discover how influential the ancient theory and practise of magick has been on modern society; from the shamans and animists to the men of religion who, almost incredibly, compiled the ancient grimoires often containing the most horrific rituals, incantations and spells. Although these gruesome works slowly disappeared from mainstream teaching, there is still clear evidence that the shamans and their teachings still dominate parts of society.

We discover modern practises that in the Dark and Middle Ages would have condemned those who practised them to torture and execution in one form or another, still exist at the highest levels of the security services through mind control and other technologies. On the subject of mainstream magick we encounter such notorious figures as Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Grant, Anton Le Vey and Austin Osman Spare. Perhaps surprisingly, we also find such unlikely characters as L Ron Hubbard the creator of Scientology, and Jack Parsons who was one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Also in this heady brew we find avant guard film maker and author Kenneth Anger and legendary rock icon Jimmy Page.

Surprisingly, we find that terrifying images of the darkest kind of magick appear in the supposedly fictitious works of the late H.P Lovecraft and Robert Howard whose characters and dismal landscapes may, worryingly, not have been entirely imaginary. Perhaps inevitably the reader discovers that much of the so-called New Age movement carries resonances with magick and magickal practises highjacked and disguised as contemporary mores such as Indigo Children and similar phenomena. Finally the much argued matter of UFO’s appear, but are they vehicles from other star systems or manifestations of something infinitely more profound. All of this is here and much, much more, prepare to blow your mind