Customer Reviews

Practical Planetary Magick : Working the Magick of the Classical Planets in the Western Mystery Tradition

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I bought this book a year or so ago. I had a lot of books to go through and somehow this dropped to the bottom of the pile. However, I started going through it and found it extremely useful.

If you're looking for a large 500+ page follow these steps exactly, type of text... well this isn't it.

This is what I expect magickal text to be about - to give insights that I can add into my own personal work.

So... I did. To give an example of how I used this book, I recently created a Talisman for a specific entity within the book. I crafted the Talisman using some methods I learned elsewhere... and placed it upon the center of my working area - which happens to be an Enochian based working area.

I used Rankine's ideas and formula within my own paradigm. I found his unique Pyramid visualization to be very valuable to establish a connection at the beginning of the work, with the energy I wanted to contact.

The room was decorated to the appropriate correspondences (which a better reference of that might be 777), and proceeded with the sigils found in the book. The Talisman had already been prepared, crafted in pure silver - with the Zodical attributes Rankine listed for the Administrator Energy I was hoping to connect with.

I penned out my own invocation, following loosely, the rules by Crowley in Liber Astarte... however the ritual took on a different direction or went in it's own way once the Energy came about.

The results were a charged Lamen or Talisman (the difference in this situation is not so clear) for this being and the energy bound to it is quite strong.

The point of this is to say - if you can take something someone teaches, add it to your own regime and get the result you're looking for - it's a success. For me Rankine's book is a success in that regard.

Its contains references on each of the ten celestial bodies (the standard 7 plus trans-saturnian 3) including planetary deities, fanciful meditations, planetary spirits, sparse section on planetary circles, planetary pyramids, and how to charge talismans/amulets. Its decent as a reference book. In my opinion this book doesn't contain everything needed to utilize planetary energies in a ritual. A bit exspensive for such a small book.

This book has opened up many new avenues of practice for me. Every page oozes experience and knowledge gained by the authors in their many years of practice. This book has something for both beginner and experience practitioner alike.

Not only does it provide clear and practical reference material for each of the seven classical planets, it also provides additional material on the trans-saturnian planets, which is a rarity in western mystery traditions. For me personally the basic, planetary meditations have been of great use. Likewise the Planetary Pyramid exercises, as well as the unique magick circle constructions (both subtle and physical) and the Ritual of the Heptagram are fantastic. In fact I would recommend the Heptagram Ritual presented in this book (constructed by the authors) as a daily practice for newcomers to ceremonial magick, as well as those who want something outside the GD and Crowley mould.

There are much more to this book. The Kameas and information on their use, the planetary correspondences, inter-planetary relationships, consecration ritual, tables and information on the different planetary creatures and planetary intelligences is not something which can be found in any other books on the subject that I am aware of. Likewise the information on the invocation of the Olympic Spirits was very useful as I am considering undertaking a few such workings in the near future.

In short this book has all the basics which you would expect, but it likewise filled full of additional research which would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The real treasures for me however is the wealth of original practical exercises, rituals and meditations provided here for the reader and practitioners keen to push the boundaries.

The book did not include an index, reducing its usefulness as a reference. Also there is a brief 2 page reference glossary with only four definitions. The authors also included meditation guides to each of the seven planets, and an appendix with Golden dawn Rituals, angelic invocations and various other references.

There were only references to Angels and typical gods in association with the planets, while any darker aspects of the planetary energies were ignored or only glossed over briefly.

A discussion of the astrological aspects of the planets would have been helpful in this book, along with a discussion on their retrograde effects. You would expect a book on planetary magic to have some info on astrological assns.

There is nothing practical about the contents of this book the title is completely misleading. I was expecting a hardcore breakdown of planetary work, instead I found new age musings from cover to cover and a general lack of magical knowledge. I should have been suspicious that they did not have the "look inside" option. Nothing in this book cannot be found in other better books in a much more comprehensive format.