QUOTE(Nero @ Oct 6 2006, 08:45 AM)
Lyam,
if it is not too much trouble would you mind giving us a few details about each chapter? Nothing too deep, just an overview of what topics each one covers. I believe it would be very helpful.
BTW, I think it was very brave of you to post a link to the review. JWMT is a very reputable online magazine of the western mysteries and I am sorry that they panned your book. I believe the views orginated from what they perceived as your attempt to "water down" the golden dawn system. Everyone has their own opinon but I for one believe you have contributed a great resource for beginners and seekers alike.
I think your readers can see what was happening with that review. It's actually a fairly good advertisement.
Heres the overview that I used to propse the book to the publisher. It's a little flashy, but it is a sales pitch afterall:
Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation brings between two covers three increasingly popular genres: Kabbalah, the occult, and fantasy. For the first time on the book market, a secret Kabbalistic method will be applied to the grade system of the Golden Dawn, making the vast landscape of Rosicrucian symbols and spiritual development accessible to the once perplexed student of magic. The book presents itself in an easy step-by-step format, interwoven with a narrative of the birth of the universe, human evolution, and a history of magic. In one package, the reader will find a Kabbalistic mythology, a suspenseful story of the struggle between good and evil, and a well-mapped plan of action—all of which combines into a manual for spiritual transformation.
The multi-level appeal of the book will surely make it a must for every occultist’s library. Writers today not only must offer substance, but must very notably keep the reader’s interest locked to the page, cover to cover. Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation employs the fantasy of Kabbalistic myth to raise a sense of drama and suspense. It portrays life as a “battle” between sparks of light and shards of darkness that are seen as scattered invisibly through the world. The individual spark of light, or Higher Self, has fallen into the confusion of matter, and the broken, fallen shards of darkness, characterized as the many faces of necessity and conformity that all-to-often smother the dreams of youth, work to obscure its purpose. In this Kabbalistic context, the book reveals the struggle of the individual to awaken within the setting of an evolving Western culture. A hidden history of spirituality is revealed, showing the reader that there are invisible currents at work behind our culture, and that the individual, properly trained, can learn to better navigate them in his progress through life. Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation reveals a modernized Hermetic vision of the universe as it takes the reader both mythically and scientifically through the following periods:
1. The “Big-Bang” and creation of the Universe (discussed in terms of physics and Lurianic Kabbalah)
2. A story of the evolution of life, humanity, and civilization (scientific and Kabbalistic accounts of the process).
3. The development of ego-consciousness, the fall from grace, and the human predicament. The decline of the Goddess.
4. The seeds of Hermeticism in the Babylonian, and Egyptian, and Judio-Christian worlds. The development of Kabbalah.
5. The Renaissance, the re-awakening of the Goddess, and the Kabbalah of the Renaissance man.
6. Rosicrucian Kabbalah, modern-day Hermeticism, and the Golden Dawn.
Most importantly, each of the these periods of mythological and historical suspense is paralleled by one particular level of the student’s development. As he reads about the stages of history, he proceeds through the grade system of the Golden Dawn using a never-before-revealed Kabbalistic technique. The mind of the student is thereby linked to greater powers via the correspondences that exist between stages of the individual and the stages of the universe. Microcosm is linked to Macrocosm; consciousness is linked to collective unconscious; the individual finds his place in life.
Not only through this process does he experience increasingly exalted states of consciousness, but the Hermetic vision of the cosmos that unfolds allows him to bring the highly esteemed system of magical correspondences used by the Golden Dawn into the context of his own life and world-view. Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation contains insights, deeper than have been published before, of Golden Dawn’s key symbols: the pentagram, hexagram, rose cross, and Tree of Life.
If the student is successful at marrying within himself the different realms of theory and practice, of myth and science, of archaic and modern, he will create a transformed consciousness that is capable of utilizing almost all of the published practical magic of Kabbalah, Paganism, and other schools. Such a synthesis makes Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation a gateway to the understanding of almost all occult lore. Not only is it a special type of book-learning that makes magic possible. A well-planned, disciplined series of rituals and exercises must be utilized to transform the individual and flesh out the intellectual skeleton of Kabbalistic theory. Kabbalah, Magic, and the Transformation brings myth, science, and spiritual practice together in one dramatic, highly readable package.
Kabbalah, Magic, And The Great Work Of Self-transformation
Nero Kabbalah, Magic, And The Great Work Of Self-transformation May 18 2006, 10:23 AM
May 18 2006, 10:23 AM
