Question: The Elemental Encyclopedia Of 5000 Spells, Is it reliable Options

I just got a copy of The Elemental Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells and was wondering if it is reliable.
Link:http://www.amazon.com/Element-Encyclopedia-5000-Spells-Reference/dp/0007164653

I'm a complete beginner with magick (been browsing the forums for information) and was wondering if this is a good book to practice out of and get a feel for magick. What other books might you guys/girls recommend for a beginner (i've heard good things about Modern Magick)?

I have this book, for a beginner I wouldn't recommend it necessarily because the author’ s recipes and spells rely and were influenced heavily by Herman Slater, who is known in the occult community as a huge fake.

He even announced that he concocted his oil recipes out of thin air with no basis on known truth, for example a cursing spell that contains lavender and rose (two herbs which have no possible cursing attributes).

For a non-beginner it’s a neat book because one would be able to fish through the bull shit. She also has a spell that includes a square from the Abramelin, that sleeping with it written on your chest will allow you to fly during the night.

Supposedly she tested and verified all the spells in her book, yeah right. Anyways it does contain some good myths and historical knowledge.

I think Aphrodite is referring to a different book. I have the Element Encyclopedia of 5000 spells. It is an elegantly designed and well-marketed book and probably made lots of money for the author. It might be OK for a beginner who wants to "play" with spellcraft or get some background or inspiration, but I didn't like the book that much. Presumably a lot of the spells are from traditional folk culture. This is interesting on the one hand--but no real information is given on the source---little info is provided "in context"--and nothing is referenced, although there is a long bibliography at the back of the book . So the spells seem to be little bits of hearsay that the author accumulated from maybe picking things out of books she's read here and there(The bibliography looks more like a list of all the books the author ever read whether they have anything to do with spells or not--I've read some of 'em myself). Maybe teenagers or suburban housewife-witches like the short, unaccredited version of things, but I need more--and if the author went through the trouble of writing out her impressive bibliography, you would think she might 1)share some real academic info that she's gotten from those books and 2) specifically cite the book from which she got what information in the text. The fact is that she copied spells out of a couple of books and added a bunch of other books in her bibliography list to make it look very important. Also note that many of the spells include ingredients and instructions that a modern person would be hardpressed to put all together. A better approach would be to give instructions on the basics of spell casting --the underlying psychology instead of spell "recipes." What particularly burned me about the book is that pages and pages are dedicated to spells and potions from Hoodoo that can be found online at www.luckymojo.com OK, so it is compendium of spells. Like I said, it may give someone inspiration about how to put a spell together.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/book.gif)