A.e. Waite Options

I've seen in many post the mentioning of "The Book of Cerimonial Magic", IMHO, it is utter garbadge. This book was designed to be unusable. As for the writer himself, his destruction of the Golden Dawn was moronic with his bizarre ideas of seniority over ability, with his jelousy and fears put upon others because of his inadequaties. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sculacciata.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/butcher.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/diablo.gif) Redhand (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sport_boxing.gif)

This post has been edited by redhand: Oct 23 2006, 04:58 PM

I think you are being a little overly harsh on Waite. His book of ceremonial magick or book of black magick or whatever current title the text carries depending on publisher is really not that bad of a book.

If you are looking to this text as a guide book then yes you will be disappointed, it was never intended as such. It does give a wonderful overview of most of the more prominent grimories that are at our hands and gives several exerpts from those texts. Which doesn't seem like a big deal now but you have to keep in mind at the time people didn't have ready access to these texts. You couldn't find the pdf's online, there were no books discussing them, and very few of them had decent translations much less mass distribution as we do now. If you owned even one grimorie then you were lucky and spent a small fortune on it. So many things in waite's book now may seem silly or useless since we can now go to the source material but at the time waite's book was very significant.

I wouldn't call waite's book unuseable but it was never intended to be used as such. It is valuable to explore sweeping themes throughout the grimories. I have found it very useful to refine my own techniques but if you are trying to nail down one method of one book then no it will be mostly useless. Also I have to agree that some things have been corrupted or left out. Any rituals involving animal sacrifice or harm to animals in any way have been left out it seems on purpose. Also double check because many of the sigils of the demons such as those from the Goetia are incorrect. Many books have errors such as these due to blinds, corrupted source material, or errors in the printing that were never caught. But in this case it seems to be on purpose because I haven't seen any errors in the seals and sigils of the angels contained in the book. So I can only assume Waite did it on purpose.

I think you are being a little overly harsh on Waite. His book of ceremonial magick or book of black magick or whatever current title the text carries depending on publisher is really not that bad of a book.

If you are looking to this text as a guide book then yes you will be disappointed, it was never intended as such. It does give a wonderful overview of most of the more prominent grimories that are at our hands and gives several exerpts from those texts. Which doesn't seem like a big deal now but you have to keep in mind at the time people didn't have ready access to these texts. You couldn't find the pdf's online, there were no books discussing them, and very few of them had decent translations much less mass distribution as we do now. If you owned even one grimorie then you were lucky and spent a small fortune on it. So many things in waite's book now may seem silly or useless since we can now go to the source material but at the time waite's book was very significant.

I wouldn't call waite's book unuseable but it was never intended to be used as such. It is valuable to explore sweeping themes throughout the grimories. I have found it very useful to refine my own techniques but if you are trying to nail down one method of one book then no it will be mostly useless. Also I have to agree that some things have been corrupted or left out. Any rituals involving animal sacrifice or harm to animals in any way have been left out it seems on purpose. Also double check because many of the sigils of the demons such as those from the Goetia are incorrect. Many books have errors such as these due to blinds, corrupted source material, or errors in the printing that were never caught. But in this case it seems to be on purpose because I haven't seen any errors in the seals and sigils of the angels contained in the book. So I can only assume Waite did it on purpose.

" Very well put", but its just been my oppinion of the man himself. As I had stated previously other books from the time are a better choice. Of course I do understand the point about availability, I myself remember searching before the internet. Oh, and Pilgrim Child I don't see any thing wrong with his tarot its what I started out with, one of my favorites is the Morgan/ Greer which is based on the Rider/ Waite. The BOTA not bad, though as a black and white deck I perfer the Hermetic Tarot, which by the way is back in print as of this month by U.S..Games. Redhand (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spider.gif)