The Black Toad – Gemma Gary

The Black Toad – Gemma Gary
Troy Books – 2012

I can’t remember what sparked my interest, but I have been meaning to read this book for a few years. The Black Toad is a collection of folk magic from South West England. There’s three sections in the book – a bit about general spells, a bit about spells that use plant materials and then a bit about black (bad) magic. I started off impatient to get to the naughty part, but in light of what I’ve read recently, I found some of the first parts quite interesting too.
gemma gary cup of toad tea.jpg The book has some really cool pictures and photographs. I love a nice cup of tea myself.

It was only last week that I reviewed Dark Rites & Encounters with the Devil by Marcus T. Bottomley. I was rather critical of that book because I thought that the author had just made up a bunch of crap. Unlike the Solomonic grimoires I’ve read, very little prepatory work was discussed, and the author would instruct the magician to do certain things without any explanation as to why they were doing them. I didn’t think I’d be writing about that book so soon after reviewing it, but some of the stuff it contained was rather similar to the spells in Gary’s book.

The difference between these books is that Gemma Gary makes it very clear that she is writing about a specific type of magic. I’m not sure of the nomenclature, but I’ll just call this strain “folk magic”. Folk magic then, as far as I understand, is a mix of pagan, Christian and grimoire magic. Gary’s spells use parts of the Bible, the Sacred Book of Abramelin and loads of traditional British witchcraft. Gary also provides explanations of the spells she is describing. One thing that struck me as peculiar when I was reading Bottomley’s book was the inclusion of worn shoes in several of his spells. This seemed rather silly to me – what use is a smelly old boot going to be? Gemma Gary explains that shoes are potent in sympathetic magic because shoes literally lead us down the paths of our lives. I get it now. If you attack the thing that leads a person down their path, you can obstruct them. That makes perfect magical sense. There were a few other noticeable similarities between some of the spells in these books, and my general takeaway was that Marcus T. Bottomley’s book, although poorly written, was probably a far more sincere collection of folk magic spells than I gave it credit for. I want to take this opportunity to apologize for calling Mr. Bottomley an “awful wizard”.

I’ve probably written more about another book than the book I set out to review. Don’t worry; you can find more focused reviews of The Black Toad elsewhere online. I’m not a witch, but I found this book to be quite interesting. I have The Devil’s Dozen, another of Gemma Gary’s books, lined up to be reviewed real soon.

Dark Rites & Encounters With the Devil – Marcus T. Bottomley

Dark Rites & Encounters With the Devil – Marcus T. Bottomley
Finbarr – 2010

I was going to start off this review by saying that this book is black magic for stupid people, but that wording might imply some kind of similarity with those Complete Idiots Guide to books. No, this is not merely black magic for idiots; it is inherently and entirely idiotic black magic. These “Dark Rites” are unrelated, silly procedures that have no spiritual, philosophical, or logical reasoning behind them. Marcus T. Bottomley is an awful wizard and a bad author. I can and will do better than him:

Sinister Rituals and Rendezvous with Satan by Duke De Richleau

1. If you want a person to fall in love with you, soak their toenail clippings in your urine for a week and then bury them under a bush. You’ll be shagging in no time.

2. If you want to become rich, go into the forest at night and squeeze out a turd on a bed of oak leaves. Smear the feces into a circle, using anticlockwise motions. Stand in the center of the pooey circle until a black cat appears and tells you where his treasure is buried.

3. To ensure that you get the new job that you’ve been interviewed for, eat nothing but baked beans and vinegary chips for 3 days. On the third night, visit a graveyard at midnight. Once you have found a quiet spot in the graveyard, push out a fart into your cupped hand and breathe it in through your mouth. Hold the breath for as long as you can. When finally exhaling your own brown gas, whisper these words:
“Lucifer, I hath paid thy stinky toll. Delivereth unto me the job that I desire. So mote it be!”
If the Prince of Darkness does not immediately appear and provide further instruction, take this as a sign that your breath was not brown enough. Push harder on the next fart and try again.

If you actually go ahead and read a copy of Dark Rites & Encounters With the Devil, you might be surprised at how little I have exaggerated here. Absolutely no effort was put into writing this awful book of absolute nonsense.

Panparadox – Vexior 218

Panparadox – Vexior 218
Ixaxaar – 2009

This is a book of gnostic Satanic black chaos magic about the Greek god Pan and his counterparts, Loki, Grimalkin and Lucifer. It was a pretty enjoyable read.

I often mix up the details of the ancient Greek myths (the Greeks did too in fairness), and I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the mythological information on Pan in this book. That being said, most of it did sound like the kind of stories about Greek gods that I’ve read before. I wasn’t bothered comparing the stories in this book to the ones told by Ovid and his mates. Vexior, the author of this book, may well have twisted a few strands of information here to suit his own ideas, but realistically, that’s how myths work. Doing so does nothing but pump new life into Pan and his mythology.

panparadox baphomet This book contains some very cool art.

I breezed through this book in one day. It doesn’t get bogged down with Qabalistic nonsense, and there’s only a bit of magical instruction at the end. Most of it is mythology/philosophy. The philosophy stuff gets fairly obtuse though. Pan is a god of contradictions. He is everything while also being nothing. Therefore everything is nothing, and nothing is everything. Yeah, yeah. I’ve come across this idea in lots of other books. I get it, but whenever I read this kind of thing, I find it hard to take anything else in that book seriously.

Panparadox has awesome pictures, and it would look real cool on a bookshelf. Also, maybe I’m wrong, but I think there’s a couple of jokes in this text. This makes sense really – Pan’s Nordic counterpart Loki is a trickster god, but I wasn’t expecting jokes (however small) from an Ixaxaar book.

Pan is one of the coolest gods from the Greek pantheon. (Isn’t he the one who taught humans how to masturbate?) Reading this made me want to reread Machen’s The Great God Pan. I’d love to own a copy of Panparadox, but like most Ixaxaar books, it’s rare and rather expensive.

baphometic effigy

The Necromantic Ritual Book – Leilah Wendell

wendell necromantic ritual book.jpg
The Necromantic Ritual Book – Leilah Wendell
Westgate Press – 2005 (First published 1991)

Here’s a short and sweet grimoire of necromantic death magic. I was fairly surprised with this one. It’s probably the grimmest book of magic I’ve ever reviewed.

The first part of the book deals with “getting comfortable in Death’s presence”. It explains how the prospective necromancer must spend a night of contemplation in contact with a corpse. At this point, alarm bells were going off in my head. If this was just the preparation, what would the more adept rituals entail?

A lengthy portion of the text is spent describing how to make “a sculpted talisman for necromantic rites”, basically a physical body for a magical entity. Unlike the “anchoring base for an artificial spirit” from The Dark Arts of Tarantula, this talisman must be physically made by the magician; a Dungeons and Dragons figurine will not do. And unlike the Genies created in The Hallowed Genie, Wendell’s talismans must be composed of as much dead matter as possible. Oh, and they’re supposed to be life sized too, so Wendell suggests using an actual human skeleton as the frame. This frame is then to be covered in a thick paste of festering dead matter. Pulped roadkill and hideously rotten human remains are to be ground up with graveyard dirt for this task. Once this is done, the stinking mass of death sausage is to be wrapped tightly in a winding sheet that has been soaked with glue. This putrescent monstrosity is to be kept hidden, presumably in the shadows of the magicians house.

I mean, that sounds like the beginning of an amazing horror story, and I wonder if anybody has ever actually gone through with it. Imagine the stench. You’d probably contract all types of horrid diseases from in the process. Imagine having friends or family over and one of them finding your stinky friend. You’d end up in a mad house.

wendell necromancy angel of death
Ok, so after the creating a rot-golem section, I knew that Leilah wasn’t just your average witchy magician. She was clearly a real freak, but I was still a bit surprised at the end of the book.

In describing the culmination of an act of “high necromancy”, she explains that the magician will experience “an erection (in males) or sensuous expression (in females)”. She then instructs the magician, “At this point, do not suppress your desires. Give into them and follow their lead.” I ask you, my dear reader, how do you interpret that advice? It sounds very much to me like she is advocating necrophilia. In the following pages she seems to issue a solemn warning against doing so, but if you read this passage carefully, you’ll see that she only warns against having sex with a corpse if you’re not in love with death. She never says that it’s wrong for a true death lover to love the dead. Also, at the end of this book, there is an advertisement for another book of hers titled “Love Never Dies – The Journey of a Necrophile“. This book is described as “a collection of Leilah’s “personal” encounters with Death, via the dead.” It contains “necrophilic erotica, not for the squeemish” (sic). I found an interview with her in which she says that she draws the line at full-on intercourse with the dead, but she might just have been saying that to protect herself. Draw your own conclusions on whether or nor ol’ Leilah has ever ridden a corpse.

I didn’t expect the darkness and depravity of this book. I thought it would be a witchy manual for drawing magic circles in a cemetery. I’d like to read more by Wendell, but her books seem fairly rare, and I’d worry about ordering copies of her work to my house. I don’t know about the legality of owning necrophilia porn, and I’d be a bit apprehensive even looking up the details.

It just occurred to me that over the course of the past two weeks, I’ve published reviews of books on necrophilia, Satanic Ritual Abuse and Sadomagical techniques. I’ll be in big trouble if my mom ever finds my blog.

The Dark Arts of Tarantula

The Dark Arts of Tarantula – Tarantula
MolochSorcery – 2010

Do the people who write this crap believe in it themselves, or is it just a transparent attempt to take money from simpletons?

This 59 page, poorly formatted piece of garbage might be a contender for the worst drivel I’ve ever reviewed. This is seriously bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

The physical book is hideous. This looks and reads like like a half-assed high-school project. The cover is ridiculous, and the text inside is an absolute mess. I thought that this was a result of the book being digitalized (as in book to .doc), but on closer inspection, the PDF copy I was reading was actually a scan (as in book to jpg). If I had paid the cost price of 25 dollars for a hard copy of this piece of utter shit, I would hang myself out of shame.

The lad who wrote this nonsense claims that he is able to put the spirits of demons into Dungeons and Dragons figurines. According to him, he keeps these little plastic toys in fancy boxes and feeds them his own cum in return for magical favours. I’m not making this up.

sigil of serylyth This is the sigil that Tarantula created for his demon. I didn’t edit this.

He claims that a member of his occult order ended up having his neck broken by some of these spirits because he wouldn’t feed them enough of his cum. The lad’s friends only found out that demons did it because they were able to chat with his spirit after he died.

Towards the end of the book, the author describes his experience of being bitten by a huge spider and soon thereafter meeting a spiderheaded woman in a crystal castle. The woman’s husband shows up later using a pair of crabs as jet-skis and gives the narrator the power to speak to insects.

The author claims that he has been involved with an occult order for more than 30 years, so it can be assumed that he is an adult. It’s not surprising that he uses a pseudonym.

dark arts of tarantula back

I again pose the question: do these authors actually believe their own rubbish? There’s no coherence or sense to any of this crap. The stuff in this book is so childish that the only adults capable of believing it are the kind that need to have their nappy changed three times a day.

Nox Infernus: The Book of Black Amber – A. W. Dray

Nox Infernus – The Book of Black Amber – A. W. Dray
Dark Harvest Occult Publishers – 2011

Ever wanted to become a vampyric sorcerer but didn’t know where to start? Complete with instructions on self burials, self harm, feeding your shadow and choosing a spooky name, A.W. Dray’s Nox Infernus is the book for you!

Most of this book is about using your imagination to make yourself think you’re a vampire. Part of the central idea here is that if you dream about being a vampire, you will be a vampire. I thought people grew out of thinking like that at about 8 years old, but Dr. Dray claims to be well over one hundred. Hahaha.

Speaking of retarded mental development, A.W. Dray is self admittedly stuck in the anal phase. He prefers bum love over everything else, claiming that “Sexual union between a vampire and servant is best done through anal copulation and with the proper use of the corresponding qlipphottic tunnel energies.” I’m not one to judge people on their sexual proclivities, but Dray’s preference is a peculiar one. It’s not men’s anuses or women’s anuses that he’s after; by his own admission, it is the essence of anus itself. Without the risk of coming across as homophobic then, it can be stated that A.W. Dray is, in fact, an anal intruder. He is a bumbum man.

a.w. dray I likes to frown and my dick is brown.

Now if all A.W. Dray wanted to achieve with this book was getting dumb goth girls to go ass with him, I’d tip my fedora in his direction, but this book contains some far nastier ideas. I know this is supposed to be a book of black magic, but yikes, some of this is quite scary.

At one point, the author suggests making friends with a person who suffers from an addiction of some kind. Prospective vampires are then told to lead that poor individual back and forth to their addiction and to nourish themselves on the ensuing suffering and misery. A.W. Dray, what the hell is wrong with you bro?

Later on, when discussing ways to live on after death, the author suggests transferring the soul of a vampyric sorcerer into the body of an unborn baby. The baby is then to be raised where the vampire lived and exposed to all the conditions of their former life. When you picture the kind of low-life morons who could possibly swallow this nonsense and then seriously consider the results of these idiots heeding this advice, it is difficult to imagine a resulting scenario that does not involve serious child abuse. Bury yourself in a box and cut yourself up to your black heart’s desire, but don’t mess with kids, you delusional fucking creep.

This book is cringeworthy twoddle. Despite being a book of evil black magic, the single biggest influence on the ideas in here is Carlos Castaneda, the father of new-age, dream-voyaging, chakra-ass nonsense. This book reads like the result of a smelly hippy watching Twilight after being dumped by his girlfriend.

Books of Qliphothic Black Magic

thomas karlsson Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic – Thomas Karlsson
Ajna – 2009 (First published 2004)

Before picking this up, I had read an introductory book about Qabalah/Kabbalah/Cabala and encountered the topic in many more general books on the occult, but I had never fully got my head around the concept. Years ago, I heard somebody say that this was a good book on this stuff, and I was hoping that reading it would clear things up.

It didn’t. Honestly lads, this is rubbish.

Qabalah is a complicated way of trying to provide unintelligible answers to impossible questions. It’s based on the naive assumption that the human mind can grasp and comprehend the divine. Human beings, Kabalists and wizards included, are little more than machines that turn food into shit. To believe that they can comprehend the true nature of anything is pathetic. Our brains and mind are structured to ensure the survival of our species, that’s all. Just as a hamster’s mind is incapable of understanding the concept of dramatic irony, neither can the mind of a human being possibly comprehend the emanations of God. The arrogance required for a person to take this stuff seriously must be monumental.

There was a chapter on the nature of evil that I found a bit hard to stomach. There was also a bit on Goetia. Heap of shit if you ask me.
adam eve lilith Part of the appeal of this book was that it was written by a guy who is involved in heavy metal. Thomas Karlsson has been the lyricist for the symphonic metal band Therion for more than 20 years. Therion used to play death metal, but they have since put out some of the worst music that I’ve ever heard. Seriously, watching this makes me feel like doing a poo.

book sitra achra The Book of Sitra Achra (A Grimoire of the Dragons of the Other Side) – N.A-A. 218
Ixaxaar – 2011
Jesus fucking Christ, this one was another slog. Written by the same individual who wrote Liber Falxifer, The Book of Sitra Achra is “the first complete and completely Qliphothic Grimoire”. What that means, I have no fucking idea.

I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but this book was completely over my head. As a sensible explanation of an esoteric order’s set of beliefs, the Book of Sitra Achra is useless, but I suppose it might be enjoyable if you were to approach it as a book of abstract philosophic poetry. There’s lots of dark imagery in here, but none of it makes any bloody sense. The sentences are hilariously long and complicated, occasionally taking up entire pages, and I feel like I understand less about the Qliphoth than I did before reading it. Are they monsters or ghoulies what? Honestly lads, what is this bloody mumbo jumbo!?

You might read other reviews of this book that speak of how incredible it is. Let me tell you something though. There’s a few different editions of this book out there, and they currently go for anything between 1000 and 21,000 dollars. Anyone who spends that kind of money on a book is either going to write a glowing review of it or look and feel like a stupid tit. I feel embarrassed enough admitting I wasted my time reading a pdf of it.

So the lad who writes Therions lyrics wrote Qabalah, Qliphoth and Goetic Magic , and the lad who wrote lyrics for Dissection wrote The Book of Sitra Achra. I like Dissection a whole lot more than I like Therion, but one book was just as bad as the other. Qliphothic black magic is a load of wishy-washy rubbish. The only times these books will ever come in useful is as props for when you’re dressing up as Voldemort for your local cosplay convention.

Grimoires: A History of Magic Books – Owen Davies

grimoires owen davies Grimoires: A History of Magic Books – Owen Davies
Oxford University Press – 2009

Normally, when I review an occult book or a book on occult books, I spend most of the review criticizing the book’s claims and/or the author. Grimoires by Owen Davies is a no bullshit history of magical books, and thankfully, I don’t have much to criticize. This book was clearly very well researched, and it never gets bogged down in speculations on the efficacy of the books its discussing. This is an academic work, but don’t let that scare you. The actual history of grimoires is almost as interesting as the ridiculous back stories that these books so often include.

I’ve read and researched a few of the books discussed in here (The Lesser Key of Solomon, The Grand Grimoire, the Abramelin text, the Faustian Grimoires, the Necronomicon, the Satanic Bible) so some of this was revision for me, but there’s also a tonne of stuff that I had never heard of. I added a few books to my to-read list while reading this.

I thought I’d have way more to say about this one, but I don’t. It’s pretty good though. I’m quite sure I’ll be referencing my copy again in the future. If you want to read a book about the history of books of magic, this is yer only man.

Black Easter – James Blish

Black Easter – James Blish
Equinox/Avon Books – 1977 (First published 1968)

This is definitely one of the better novels about black magic that I have read. The particular nature of this story renders it difficult to discuss without giving away some fairly crucial plot details, so if you’re like me and like to know as little as possible about a book before reading it, maybe you should come back to this review after reading the book itself. If you were hoping that this review would help you decide whether or not to read the book, know that I loved it. If you have any interest in the other books that I’ve reviewed on here, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

Spoilers start here:

The plot of this novel could be charted with a single ascending line. There is no falling action, denouement or resolution; it ends with the climax, and a rather climactic climax it is too. I like when books are gutsy enough to have brutal endings (unless they’re love stories), and finishing off with the ultimate victory of evil over good as brutal as it gets. I was expecting the priest to do something to thwart Baines and Ware, but I was delighted that he didn’t.

The ending was both shocking and abrupt, and for the first time that I can remember, I wanted to reread a book as soon as I had finished it. There is a sequel though, The Day after Judgement, so I’m going to wait till I get my hands on that before I reread Black Easter. To be honest, I was so happy with the ending that I am a bit worried that the second part of the story will ruin the first. I don’t want the characters to get a chance to fix things.

The final revelation of Black Easter, the claim that God is dead, is particularly chilling given the nature and timing of his death. He has died at a time when Earth is infested with demons, demons that have hitherto been under the guidance of ceremonial magicians using the dead God’s names as their instrument of control. By creating this scenario, Blish calls into question the inherent conflict of ceremonial magic as noted by A.E. Waite. Black magicians using grimoires such as the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Grand Grimoire, both of which are alluded to in Black Easter, need to ask God for his help in controlling the demons they conjure. Why would a loving God help an individual who was intent on massive acts of terror, and, in this case, why would an all knowing God accommodate his own destruction? Could it be that God is so upset with his creations that he wants to die? There’s a depressing thought.

While Black Easter and The Day after Judgement make up one larger work, that combined work (sometimes called The Devil’s Day) makes up a single part of Blish’s After Such Knowledge trilogy. The other books in this thematic trilogy are A Case of Conscience and Doctor Mirablis. I have a copy of Doctor Mirablis on my shelf, and I’m planning on picking up the other two books soon. It’s been quite a while since I finished a book and wanted to read more from the same author.

Part of the appeal of Blish’s writing, and I’ve already alluded to this, is his attention to accuracy. While this is a fantasy novel, much of its content comes from real grimoires. Blish addresses this in a note at the beginning of his book; he states, “All of the books mentioned in the text actually exist; there are no “Necronomicons” or other such invented works”. Despite this, he later quotes from The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup, a fabled tome, similar to the Necronomicon in that the first references to it appeared in works of fiction, two novels Talbot Mundy. (This wasn’t the only time that elements of Mundy’s w ork managed to will themselves out of the confines of fiction.) On top of all this, there are those who say that Theron Ware, the central character of Black Easter, is based on Aleister Crowley. Ware certainly resembles the kind of person I’d imagine Crowley to have been, but I had read of this comparison before reading the novel, so I can’t be sure how much of the similarity was legitimate and how much of it was projected by my expectations.

Like I said, I’m planning to read the sequel, so I’ll doubtlessly come back to this book. In the meantime, make sure you eat loads of chocolate for the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

The Satanist – Dennis Wheatley

dennis wheatley the satanist The Satanist – Dennis Wheatley
Heron Books – 1972 (Originally published 1960)

While trying to infiltrate a gang of communists responsible for the death of his coworker, Barney Sullivan, an Irish Lord working as a spy in England, falls in love. Unbeknownst to him, the woman he falls in love with is both a) the vengeful wife of the man he himself has set out to avenge and b) a former lover of his own. One thing leads to another and pretty soon, Satanists get their evil claws on an atomic bomb and plan to use it to bring about the downfall of civilization.

Much like the rest of the plot, the means by which the antagonistic force of the story transforms from Communism to Satanism is complicated, confusing and a bit silly. Just know that it involves a disgusting Indian man with an upset tummy, a pair of psychic twins and week’s worth of casual rape. Sensible, believable plotlines weren’t what made Dennis Wheatley a best selling author though, and, silly as it is, I really quite enjoyed the story. The real problem with this text is the writing itself.

the great ram satanist Like the other Heron editions, this book has a few illustrations thrown in here and there.

At 440 pages, this is the longest Wheatley novel I’ve read to date. It is not generally considered to be one of his better books, although I reckon that it would have been if he had spent a few weeks editing it and trimming it down to the 270-300 page range. As it is, this book is painfully wordy. The story will get to an interesting bit and Wheatley will proceed to dampen the excitement by giving two detailed paragraphs on how the characters had to go back to their apartments to shower, eat and spend a few sleepless hours tossing and turning in bed before rising to action. This really could have been a lot better.

the satanist to the devil a daughter

A few years ago, I reviewed To the Devil – a Daughter by Wheatley. If you look online, you will come across suggestions that this book is a sequel to that one, but that’s not really the case. I know that books in Wheatley’s other series don’t depend on the reader having read the previous entries, but the books in those series at least feature the same protagonists. Both To the Devil – a Daughter and The Satanist feature Colonel Verney as a fairly important character, but he’s the protagonist in neither, and aside from a couple of brief references, the two texts are quite separate. I was a little disappointed with this as I hoping for the Crowleyesque Canon Copley-Syle from To the Devil – a Daughter to make a return. Speaking of Crowley, The Satanist includes repeated allusions to the “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” mantra of the Devil worshippers. It seems that Wheatley didn’t differentiate Thelema from Satanism. It should be noted though that Wheatley was personally acquainted with Crowley and probably knew more about him than you do.

Like Wheatley’s other novels, The Satanist contains lots of old fashioned racism. There’s a part in here where he describes the revulsion that any white woman is bound to feel after touching the skin of any man that isn’t white. It’s still a bit weird to see words like nigger and chink being used so casually in literature. The two protagonists of the story are Irish, and although they let out a few Bejasuses when they’re excited, they don’t come across too badly. That being said, Mary, the female lead, is a former prostitute. At first I thought this depiction might have been an attack on the loose morals of Irish women, but Wheatley is surprisingly sympathetic towards her. He makes it very clear that she only has sex to get ahead when it is absolutely necessary, pretty progressive stuff for our Dennis!

It’s been almost 2 years since I read a novel by Dennis Wheatley, and after reading this one, I’ll be in no hurry to return to his work. I mean, I will eventually get through all of his Black Magic novels, but I don’t think I’ll bother with much (if any) of the other stuff he wrote.