Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book has been something of a modern classic for years. Several generations of magicians have grown up with this book, and it does its job quite well. Like its earlier incarnations, this edition is a quality primer on the basic topics that any aspiring magician needs to know, from theory to ritual and history. The new edition adds new material and personal insights from the author as well as nice graphics and illustrations. For fans of the older book, you'll be happy to know that nothing was excised or removed; only new material has been added.

The book itself is quite large and it feels like holding an actual textbook. The lesson format, chapter quizzes and bibliographies reinforce that impression and aid learning.

A student who completes the entire course will have a solid grounding in magical practice and be able to go on to study more advanced topics safely and competently.

However, I must say, the book doesn't give much meat when it comes to the process of elemental initiations as practiced in the Golden Dawn. I recommend augmenting this course with Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation: A Complete Course to get the full experience of Golden Dawn-style elemental initiations and spiritual development.

Wth each edition of the books Donald M. Kraig puts out on Modern Magick it gets better and better. I can't tell you how many times I had to replace the 1st and 2nd edition of Modern Magick due to the books being stolen or just fell apart due to my constant reading of the books. I know this new edition will fall apart on me eventually like the others before it did. He is very descriptive; moreover, his subjects are very organized. This is one of the few books that I recommend to the novice and the advanced. I also like the fact that he is not cryptic or sophomoric. In fact he is very intelligent and this book shows that he is a seasoned Magician I have been a practioner of magick for more than 20 years now; therefore, I know Mr. Kraig knows what he is writting about. In fact Modern Magick is his magnum opus and like a fine wine it gets better with age. I wish I had this book when I first started out with Magick it would have made things a lot clearer and help me to appreciate what my teachers were showing me. In fact I see him as a golden author and this is coming from a Crowley fan. This book on Ceremonial Magick has been inspirational to this Wtch and Ceremonial Magician. A million praises for Modern Magick!

It was 1988 (if memory serves me correctly) when I found Don's original MM (Modern Magick) sitting on the shelf at a bookstore. Prior to buying it, I had purchased well over a dozen books on CM (Ceremonial Magic) because I wanted to be able to conjure & summon Spirits like every Novice wants to do. I had several grimoires, one of Manley P. Hall's books, Waite's heavy tome on kabbalah, Mather's work on QBL, Crowley's books, Regardie's the Golden Dawn, and a few others. The problem with these books is that they were written for individuals who are past the Novice stage. Enter Modern Magick...

I took a sabbatical from work during the Summer of 1988 while school (re: college) was out so I could spend time studying Occultism. I began to read MM and as I did so, many things became understandable to me. When I say it was like the Rosetta Stone for me, I'm not joking. I rapidly read through MM then re-read it slower so I could digest it better. Essentially MM is laid out to take you from Novice to less-than-Initiate-but-more-than-Novice status. It does this by explaining rudimentary concepts such as the various personal rituals like the Lesser & Greater Rituals of the Pentagram & Hexagrams, the Watchtower Ceremony, and others. It even includes one of Don's own designs on banishment of fears.

The work went along well & I spent much time devoted to this work as well as Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics as I tried to push myself to the stage where I could summon & control not only Elemental forces but also Spirits from grimoires. This worked well for me but the difference between me & thee is the work I did. Many who read such books as these end up just reading them & wishing they could do things. The key is to put into practice what you read in them! You have to learn how to attract power, wield it then focus it into what it is you desire.

What this primer did for me was help to unlock the ideas, theories & concepts of CM, basic QBL and how to work Magic without having to tie oneself down to a coven or lodge. It is geared for the private or solitary individual though a group could effectively use it as a study guide if they wanted to. The book is comprised of public lessons that Don had given some time earlier in the 80's I believe.

While not comprehensive (I don't think he intended it to be) it is an excellent primer. There are parts of it I disagree with today but in 1988, I didn't care about anything other than getting up to speed which I did. If you're planning on getting this, then you may want to study it in conjunction with W. E. Butler's "The Magician: His Training & Work", Franz Bardon's "Initiation Into Hermetics" and Alan Richardson's "Ancient Magics for A New Age" and "Gate of Moon: Mythical and Magical Doorways to the Otherworld". Together, these books will help you work on your own in a Ceremonial Magic framework and give you something to do with what you learn.

Of course there are other introductory books out there on the subject of CM but out of all of them (aside from the ones written by yours truly) Modern Magick is tops because it is competently written, well laid out and previously tested by many Novices not to mention used extensively by the author himself.

I give it four out of five stars simply because there are some things in here I no longer agree with & this is not the place to go over them. Suffice to say, if you are a complete & utter novice and your wish is to study modern CM literature, then this book will help you immensely.