Customer Reviews

Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book starts at the end and finishes at the beginning, and from the beginning of the end to the end of the beginning it spins a tale of two magicians that may or may not be true.

I liked it. I devoured it in a couple of sittings - Richardson has a very readable style that keeps the story moving forward (even when it's going backwards).

On the one hand you have Aleister Crowley and on the other, Dion Fortune. The sex maniac versus the prude (though one of the author's points is that Fortune was anything but a prude - she certainly worked sex magic, but most likely on the sphere of Yesod - whereas Crowley was Malkuth all the way.)

But I think he is onto something, putting them together in the same book (an act of magic if ever there was one) even if they never 'knew' each other (in the Biblical sense).

The author's bias favours Fortune as a teacher, but like Crowley he seems to enjoy salting the text with outrageous statements, like little land mines, placed just so to catch the unwary reader in a moment of complacency.

If you are interested in Dion Fortune and/or Aleister Crowley this is a book worth reading. You won't find much on either of them that hasn't already been revealed by previous biographies, but by putting them between the same pages Richardson makes an intriguing case - a what if ... that tantalizes.

The Singing Stones (Volume 1)

This review originally appeared on The Magical Buffet website on 1/7/2010.

"They died within two years of each other; she within the smog-enshrouded Middlesex Hospital, amid the massive bomb damage done to London by six years of war; he in the salt-sea air of Hastings, in a large and stately boarding house with the evocative and curiously apt name of Netherwood.

When the woman died, on 8 January 1946, taken by acute myeloid leukaemia, it had been quite unexpected. She was still young (a mere fifty-five) and had lived a decent life; eating healthy food, taking appropriate exercise in various dimensions, engaging in stimulating mental activity involving august spiritual beings, and she had once written a book about the nature of Purity.

When the man died of a lung infection, on 1 December 1947, unloved in any usual way, no one was at all surprised. In fact they marveled that he had lasted so long. He was seventy-two, had lived a life full of adventure, indecency, and excess; had wrestled with demons of the darkest kind; had been branded by the national press as the Wickedest Man in the World; and finally his drug-wracked body had just given up."

And so begins Alan Richardson's "Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age".

This book is described as a comparative biography of Crowley and Fortune (perhaps two of the best known occultists of the 20th century), and that's a fair description. However, I feel it doesn't do the book justice. The poetry of the writing, the nearly epic scope of the stories, the love, passion, and romanticism on the part of the author defy an easy summary, so forgive me for not trying. Richardson masterfully tells the stories of these two larger than life characters, all the while showing how their magical lives danced around each other; sometimes intersecting, other times diverging, but always close.

The book tells the stories of Crowley and Fortune's lives in reverse, starting at death and going forward to their births (homage to training the Magickal Memory, remembering events in reverse sequence). Therefore, the book begins with Fortune and Crowley's respective deaths in the Prologue, and then continues with seven chapters: Deaths and Afterward, The Wars of Their Worlds, Priests and Priestesses, Temples and Their Truths, Initiations and Other Awakenings, Falling to Earth and Other Trauma, and Past Lives and Similar Futures.

Although the author stresses that his book "is not meant as an exhaustive biography" on either of the subjects, I found (with my amateur level knowledge about Fortune and Crowley) that this book definitely hit all the marks, and certainly unearthed some extra information I had never heard before. At the very beginning of the book Richardson apologizes if the work seems to have a Dion Fortune bias, since he is an admirer, but stresses that he tried to treat both subjects with an even hand. I feel he succeeded. It is difficult to discuss Aleister Crowley. Generally, much like the man, people who write about him touch on the extremes of his character. I think fan and hater of Crowley alike will find the author's treatment enlightening. Also, despite his concern that his affection for Fortune will color his writings about her, here too Richardson succeeds in offering the whole person, strengths and weaknesses alike.

This book tells the fascinating story of perhaps two of the best known, and best beloved by some, occult practioners of our time. Yes, their lives were fascinating, but only the talent of someone like Richardson can make them mythic.

Much like the previous reviewer, I demolished this book rather quickly. It is a fascinating interpretation of arguably the 2 most proficient magicians of the 20th century, and, if you are interested in either, or both, well worth a read.

A lot of it you've heard before, but it does contain some new facts, sources, and little gems of information that were new to me.

I have been a fan of Fortune's for a long time. I knew rather less about Crowley, although I never bought into the "evil" hype that has surrounded him. This book first of all had so much factual information that I didn't know. Second of all, it recreates the melieu in which they both worked and what their relationship was to each other. I highly recommend this book for anybody to whom the Western Mystery Tradition matters.

What the author says at the begining of the book (section: About this book) is true: "This is a comparative biography ....it is not meant as an exhaustive biography so much as a series of essays on patterns....the biographical and historical details are therefore not given in the usual sequential way, and it tells the story of their lives from their deaths, back toward their births - and beyond".
This situation, especially the series of essays on patterns, makes hard to follow the story in a continuous way related to the themes. This biography is NOT recommended as a first one to know the lives of AC and DF. The book is well documented and includes very interesting references. We need to recognise the author's effort to be comparing and relating the different themes even though I did not like they were sometimes very short and different in each chapter.

Warning: english is not my primary language.

This is a great book, full of details, but at same time, quick and direct to the point. My only critic is that the author is trying to show that there was a rabbit living in the topper, but in the end, he show only his empty hands...
I will not reveal the main point of the book, but I have two anothers Dion's biographies and the supposition about the Dion Fortune's condition that could put her in Studley seems nothing except fantasy.

I mean, he has right, considering the cutural context and social and emotional PROBABILITIES. But if we believe in this, so all those girl there had the same problem? There were girls coming from Japan to learn in Studley! All they are trying had the same "problem" than Dion Fortune? Sincerely, I don't believe. And if they didn't have it, why she should have? Only because someone is trying to find some "normal problem" in her life? Is seems too much "right" to our "idiocracy"? Please, the books should point us only facts, because we are able to creates supposition without help. But is a great book, anyway!