This was excellent. A well written history of Magick and it's adherents, less credulous than Montague Summers, and a lot more accessible, but no less informed. Familiar names from history, people I know of well enough to know, Yeats, Crowley, Bulwer-Lytton (think: "A Dark and Stormy Night..." by Snoopy, or the contest by the same name), the formulas - in general and by example in specific, the importance of tradition, the strengthening and prevailing of will, the Magick, often, little more than an avowal of commitment.
There are anecdotes - some quite humorous, for example St. Germain: "There is a pleasant story of him describing a dear friend of long ago, Richard the Lionheart, and turning to his manservant for confirmation. "You forget, sir,' the valet said solemnly, 'I have only been five hundred years in your service.'" and Arthur Machen - "The Astronomer Royal of Scotland, and an elderly clergyman who had succeeded in making the elixir of life thirty years before, but had always been too frightened to drink it. Now that he really needed it, it had evaporated."
And then there is the damning crossover of Magick and the Church, however bad the Satanists were, the Church always managed to outdo them - and very often with their own priests and in their own halls.
It is - as the author asserts - more about poetry and metaphor, the forever evolving and changing currents of thought of which our current "age of reason" - if you would call it that, is just another. There is much to ruminate on here, the author, well reasoned, agnostic, and there are dozens of ideas, scraps, things to be gleaned and winnowed, an excellent history or guidebook if you're inclined to dig deeper...