Regarding The Vodoun Gnostic Workbook Options

Does anyone have the vodoun gnostic workbook(the new release) by Michael Bertiaux? The reason I ask is I would like to know if it's a good book? Is it solely about voodoo(vodoun)? Anything else you can tell me about it would be very helpful.

I have an electronic copy here and while I havent given it any real study it seems like a bit of a hodge podge.
I think its a 5 year course and to be honest i dont know enough about Voudoo to know how authentic it is.
Glancing at the index it covers among other things:
Voudoo (spells etc) Angelic geometria, I-ching, Aiwaz, Gnosis, Egyptian deities, Atlantis, Hinduism, Magnetism, Elemental sorcery, Shintoism, Sex magic, Choronzon.and more
I would recommend trying to get your hands on a copy and having a look through it as the writer has a distinct style which wont be to everyone's tastes
(ie-not mine LOL -on page two he has you swearing to serve the wonderful spirits of the dead ones and the magicians who live under the sea.)
good luck in your search

My understanding is that it is something of a classic amongst chaos-types, but of no real interest to genuine Voudon practitioners (aside from being yet another book for them bitch about in terms of how westerners don't understand what they do and insist on buggering about with it).

Nevertheless, I am not a genuine Voudon practitioner and look forward to checking it out. We have some on back-order at my local store.

of no real interest to genuine Voudon practitioners

Agree.

Have had the book for sometime now although I've only skimmed through it, its not much to write home about, bits and pieces of wisdom here and there but I wouldn't compare it to the religion.

Didn't take well to the author either, wouldn't read and quote it put it that way.

Does anyone have the vodoun gnostic workbook(the new release) by Michael Bertiaux? The reason I ask is I would like to know if it's a good book? Is it solely about voodoo(vodoun)? Anything else you can tell me about it would be very helpful.

I have it, and I think the best way to put it is the quote from J.M. Greer they have on the back "Its weirdly brilliant and brilliantly weird". Its definitely got some good stuff in it, but I would say it is mostly certainly NOT a book for beginners. The type of Vodou and lwa it draws upon are among the most extreme in the pantheon. If you take a look at the intro book "The Haitian Vodou Handbook: Protocols for Riding with the Loa", the author has a list of all the really dark and extreme spirits he's NOT going to discuss, and its pretty much a straight-up list of the spirits that Bertaiux specializes in.

Bertaiux is Haitian, but his tradition is that of the zobops - the dark sorcerers, and his patrons are Saturnine deities (Binah, Kronos, Dark Wisdom, Black Madonna, etc). Its very much a left-hand path kind of system. This isn't to say its necessarily bad or evil, although it certainly borders on it strongly and is constantly pushing you to the limits of propriety and decency. It is much more extreme and demanding than most magical work and definitely NOT mainstream. Bertaiux acknowledges as much in the book. It offers a lot of potential power, but at the cost of great personal sacrifice and a willingness to face down and have intimate knowledge (in the BIBLICAL sense) with the forces of fear, life, death, sex, poison, and corruption. Its kind of like the Necronomicon mythos in that it will scare the hell out of you, but if you survive and brave it, you can win great rewards. Some people feel really called to this kind of thing, but others are repelled by it, so its left to your own conscience and Divine Guidance. Bertaiux encourages you right off the bat to just offer up your soul and spirit in service to the various spirits, and that's something you may not feel comfortable doing.

The other thing is that the book is probably the most extreme example of eclectic mish-mosh you will ever see. Bertaiux adopts and draws on the most disperate systems for things, including Japanese Shinto, Golden Dawn, Crowley and Aiwaz, the Atlantis mythology, and more. He has a personal understanding of the universe that guides his own kind of cosmology and phenomenology, but most of the time when he's drawing on things it seems like he might be taking them out of context. He also just assumes you're familiar with these various systems automatically, and he throws around the most bizarre kinds of terminology drawn from everywhere, and then again in FRENCH! A lot of times, to me, it seems like he could have said something much simpler, but instead, in Crowley's tradition, had to same in the most obscure gibberish possible.

That being said, there's still a lot of useful and interesting insights to be found in there. Its been helpful as I study and practice the magic of Abramelin to compare and contrast different ways of working with the spirits, with different means and different moralities. A lot of times it has inspired me, and even if I won't go with the ways Bertaiux has done it, I'll appreciate his experience and perspective. Sometimes though, its just flat out hillarious! The 'homework sections' are the funniest: "When did you first feel the calling to become a were-spider?"

I would suggest not to read it alone, but in conjunction with other research. Especially, don't read a section until you are already familiar with the magical systems, philosophies, entities, and terminology he's throwing out like crazy. For example, being familiar with Hoodoo, the first section was pretty understandable to me. But having almost no prior knowledge of Vodou, the second section that jumps into dark sorcery, were-spiders, zombis and poison, just had my mouth open and my head shaking with an inaudible "WTF??!!!" floating through the air.

Emet Eli.