So, I recently came into possession of a whole trunkload of witchy
books, some good and some bad. I've been working my way through them,
and thought I would share my thoughts.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
"You may have noticed my brain is no longer pristine."
This morning, I finished Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, a novel about a private investigator hired to track down the secret Constitution of the United States of America. It was... well. Warren Ellis.
Ellis has two settings: weird, and rant. These sometimes combine. I was introduced to Ellis first in the 90s, when he had a brief run on an Image series called DV8, the darker, aborted parasitic twin to the popular superhero book Gen13. Later, I would read Transmetropolitan and further cement my love for the insane old fuck. (I would also go on to get my third and fourth tattoos in honour of perhaps his most well-known creation, the fictional journalist Spider Jerusalem.)
Warren Ellis' work is populated by reprehensible characters, drugs, booze and ludicrously perverted sex acts. Crooked Little Vein is no exception. I read it in two days - it's only 275 pages or so - so it's rather like injecting some sort of vile concoction of amphetamines, LSD and cat-piss directly into your brain. That's a positive review, by the way. I very much enjoyed it.
Speaking of foul perverts...
Tonight it's La Fête Corsette. It's been quite some time since I've been to a Sin City event, but a friend organised a ladies night so it should be fun. As I understand it, a few of the girls are coming over to mine and Voodoo's house first to get ready, as some of them have never been to a fetish event before. (I always manage to bring virgins to these things.)
I've no idea what I'm wearing. Over the past couple of years I've gotten rid of most of my uber-gawthic garb, which used to be my default for such events. My good corset is black and underbust (I just cannot rock an overbust - I need support, not something just mashing my tits together) so I think I can pair it with one of my dresses or a pencil skirt and blouse to create something with this sort of feel. You know, rather femme fatale and glamourous. It may be odd for a burlesque performer to say this, but I do prefer coverage over prancing about in my underthings.
Okay. I'm going to stop this channel and clean my house now that my hair is set.
Ellis has two settings: weird, and rant. These sometimes combine. I was introduced to Ellis first in the 90s, when he had a brief run on an Image series called DV8, the darker, aborted parasitic twin to the popular superhero book Gen13. Later, I would read Transmetropolitan and further cement my love for the insane old fuck. (I would also go on to get my third and fourth tattoos in honour of perhaps his most well-known creation, the fictional journalist Spider Jerusalem.)
Warren Ellis' work is populated by reprehensible characters, drugs, booze and ludicrously perverted sex acts. Crooked Little Vein is no exception. I read it in two days - it's only 275 pages or so - so it's rather like injecting some sort of vile concoction of amphetamines, LSD and cat-piss directly into your brain. That's a positive review, by the way. I very much enjoyed it.
Speaking of foul perverts...
Tonight it's La Fête Corsette. It's been quite some time since I've been to a Sin City event, but a friend organised a ladies night so it should be fun. As I understand it, a few of the girls are coming over to mine and Voodoo's house first to get ready, as some of them have never been to a fetish event before. (I always manage to bring virgins to these things.)
I've no idea what I'm wearing. Over the past couple of years I've gotten rid of most of my uber-gawthic garb, which used to be my default for such events. My good corset is black and underbust (I just cannot rock an overbust - I need support, not something just mashing my tits together) so I think I can pair it with one of my dresses or a pencil skirt and blouse to create something with this sort of feel. You know, rather femme fatale and glamourous. It may be odd for a burlesque performer to say this, but I do prefer coverage over prancing about in my underthings.
Okay. I'm going to stop this channel and clean my house now that my hair is set.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Bag Of Tricks.
Well. It's possible I'm losing my mind - I've signed up for the Pagan Blog Project. Belatedly, since that's how I roll. What the hell, I enjoy writing prompts and it will be a nice way to connect with other bloggers besides my usual tactic of lurking on their well-written pages.
BOOK REVIEW!
The Witch's Bag of Tricks: Personalize Your Magick & Kickstart Your Craft
I finished this one a while ago, having picked it up prior to the holidays. I was excited to have a book that seemed to go beyond the '101' level of witchcraft, and in that regard it does not disappoint - the author assumes one knows the basics of spellcraft. The aim of the book is to help the reader make her/his magic more effective, and to help the solitary eclectics get out of magical ruts.
The book, for me, started off promisingly enough. I think the first place it lost me was when it had a mini lecture on avoiding eating meat in the third chapter - I understand the horrific conditions often faced by commercially raised cattle and poultry, but I'm not sure I buy that my evil meat eating ways are fucking up my magic, sorry.
Personally, I found the entire book, though aimed at 'eclectic' practitioners, to be still very much based on a Wiccan worldview. That's really not a bad thing, but it IS something to bear in mind, as the author's personal biases creep in to certain topics. (Like the evils of meat. There's a chapter on love magic that had me rolling my eyes too - the author is of the "don't target a person" school of thought, although earlier in the book there was a section entitled "the cause for cursing." That seems sort of... contradictory?)
Some chapters are definitely stronger than others. The magical cooking chapter feels cursory, for example, but the chapter on magical mistakes and how to avoid them was interesting and useful.
So. Parts of it made my head explode, and other parts were actually food for thought. This is one of those books that you take the best from, and ignore the rest depending on your practice. I certainly didn't agree with all of it (especially if ethics or 'this is how magic works' was involved) but I enjoyed many of the questions and experiments throughout. I'd recommend it to people who are either Wiccan-esque or who have a background in such. I wouldn't throw it at a Chaos Magician or anything like that, but I think folk magic practitioners could also get some good shit out of it.
I've plunged into Protection and Reversal Magick and am enjoying it immensely. I'm only just on chapter four. I tested out Miller's offering process the other night and it was awesome. I'm not really one of those people who expects/gets a lot of paranormal phenomena - drop me in a haunted house and I'm the one busy fucking around with the camera while the real psychics are freaking out over emotional bleedthrough. But during the offering ritual, I observed my candles doing some odd things and heard a low, persistent noise that lasted the duration of the rite. It was a little spooky! I'm half tempted to wander over to his blog and be like, "dude, awesome!"
Big intellectual, me. As you can tell.
I have a shit ton more books to get through still, so I'll keep you posted on them all.
BOOK REVIEW!
The Witch's Bag of Tricks: Personalize Your Magick & Kickstart Your Craft
I finished this one a while ago, having picked it up prior to the holidays. I was excited to have a book that seemed to go beyond the '101' level of witchcraft, and in that regard it does not disappoint - the author assumes one knows the basics of spellcraft. The aim of the book is to help the reader make her/his magic more effective, and to help the solitary eclectics get out of magical ruts.
The book, for me, started off promisingly enough. I think the first place it lost me was when it had a mini lecture on avoiding eating meat in the third chapter - I understand the horrific conditions often faced by commercially raised cattle and poultry, but I'm not sure I buy that my evil meat eating ways are fucking up my magic, sorry.
Personally, I found the entire book, though aimed at 'eclectic' practitioners, to be still very much based on a Wiccan worldview. That's really not a bad thing, but it IS something to bear in mind, as the author's personal biases creep in to certain topics. (Like the evils of meat. There's a chapter on love magic that had me rolling my eyes too - the author is of the "don't target a person" school of thought, although earlier in the book there was a section entitled "the cause for cursing." That seems sort of... contradictory?)
Some chapters are definitely stronger than others. The magical cooking chapter feels cursory, for example, but the chapter on magical mistakes and how to avoid them was interesting and useful.
So. Parts of it made my head explode, and other parts were actually food for thought. This is one of those books that you take the best from, and ignore the rest depending on your practice. I certainly didn't agree with all of it (especially if ethics or 'this is how magic works' was involved) but I enjoyed many of the questions and experiments throughout. I'd recommend it to people who are either Wiccan-esque or who have a background in such. I wouldn't throw it at a Chaos Magician or anything like that, but I think folk magic practitioners could also get some good shit out of it.
I've plunged into Protection and Reversal Magick and am enjoying it immensely. I'm only just on chapter four. I tested out Miller's offering process the other night and it was awesome. I'm not really one of those people who expects/gets a lot of paranormal phenomena - drop me in a haunted house and I'm the one busy fucking around with the camera while the real psychics are freaking out over emotional bleedthrough. But during the offering ritual, I observed my candles doing some odd things and heard a low, persistent noise that lasted the duration of the rite. It was a little spooky! I'm half tempted to wander over to his blog and be like, "dude, awesome!"
Big intellectual, me. As you can tell.
I have a shit ton more books to get through still, so I'll keep you posted on them all.
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