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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1482
This is a clumsy edition, over double wide and almost impossible to read. The lines run on to a hundred characters and the cover needs to be bent and folded to properly read each page. It would have been better to make the book thicker and the width narrower. And there's a dumb-ass advertisement at the bottom of the preface for an online fortune telling website...
That over with, another great read, more, as you get into it, a conversation with a fabulously well read and traveled eccentric uncle whom your parents would never allow to babysit you...
He begins by summarizing some other books upon the topic and then comically and scathingly critiquing the authors and their sources - his are undeniably the best, for he reads the original manuscripts and quotes them verbatim only occasionally deeming to provide a translation (presuming that like all educated people you can read Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Serbian, etc etc.). Much of the material is the same as in "How to Recognize and Destroy Real Vampires" but much (if formatted correctly this book would run over 500 pages) of it is new, and this is but one book, he promises others on the Vampires of Europe, of the UK, etc etc. Clearly more than an interest. And there is no one more qualified. Properly filled with anecdotes and "evidence" he draws upon traditions and folklore worldwide to substantiate his argument that - in 1928 - Vampires are still real and a proper scourge to Southern Europe especially and the world in general.
What I find curious is the commonalities in the folklore and treatment - how different cultures - widely separated by time, continents and oceans - should so often agree both as to the cause and creation of Vampires as well as their extirpation.
This is curious. Even if I don't accept the "reality" of Vampires as such - corporeal manifestations of evil, I have to acknowledge they're speaking to a deeper metaphorical truth, and the rituals and lore associated with them is not merely embellishment but speaks to something else. Only I haven't yet figured out what...
That's OK. There's still another 400 pages to go and the epiphany might well happen before the end. That or I'll start sharpening some stakes...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1490
More than halfway through this one and it's great, everything I expected. Well, not EVERYTHING, Montague seems to have left off with the Latin and everything seems to be in English - which might be how he wrote it, or it might be an edited version by the publisher. That said, while I love the author, this edition sucks. It seems to be - well, I've never seen such a cheap edition of a book - pages end on the next hanging chapter heading, other slight flaws in spacing and layout which are a bit off-putting, like a home-published book. I'll upgrade when I find an older edition, for the meantime this is great Cafe Reading...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1430
I've been looking for these forever, no luck. So after years of searching I went online - tried to support the locals, but they were far more expensive, with shipping prohibitive, so onto Amazon where I discover that I have a gift card outstanding - and today they arrive:
I love this guy. And soon enough I'll be in business...
To those of you who laugh, I ask you - who do you think lives HERE:
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1399
This was a gift book, so I was obliged to read. He's formidably well versed on his subject matter, has done his research, and from this drawn his conclusions as to the challenges we'll face.
It's good to see another point of view. While I disagree, fundamentally, I think we'll be going a long ways down the road of cultural apocalypse before we get to those stages, I'm not the authority.
In any event it's good to read a different, more "optimistic" (??) prediction of the future. He's at least well informed.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1487
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...