Customer Reviews

The Sorcerer's Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magick

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Overall, I felt that The Sorcerer's Secrets offered something most books on the occult don't: solid strategies for successful magic without pretense or froofroo theory. Miller focuses on techniques and strategies more than on spells, and he draws techniques from sources both magical and mundane. He's also eclectic without falling into the hard relativism one so often finds in eclectic works. I found a few of his techniques unique -- they clearly derive from someone who does real magic rather than someone just fantasizing about what they would do. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how magic can cause practical changes in life.

Two flaws mar the book for me, though. First, and most seriously, it cites its sources rather haphazardly. There's a Greek invocation, for example, with a transliteration that will be of no use (as it doesn't distinguish vowel length), yet there's no citation for the original to look it up. There's a footnote, but it's not a proper citation, merely a thanks to the translator. Such lapses are common and a serious flaw for me. A less serious flaw is the apparently complete absence of an editor. Sentences will often have multiple verbs (one, usually the second one, more precise than the other, which tells me that this is an artifact of hasty revising); verbs will not agree with subjects; apostrophes are sprinkled in with no regard for any grammatical convention. Most people might find that trivial, but it drives me nuts, and in more than several places actively interferes with the reading process. In one place, he intimates that the book went from writing to the shelf in eight months. That's fast, and it shows. The book still gets four stars, because the information is that good, but it needs an editor.

I loved Jason Miller's first book, Protection & Reversal Magick: A Witch's Defense Manual (Beyond 101), because it provided immediately useful solutions to problems that are extremely common in our world. This book takes it to the next level with strategies to accomplish most of what one could imagine using practical magick to do.

Whatever your background in magick, or even if you lack any formal training, you will find things in this book you can use. Drawing on over 20 years of experience in magick from all over the world, Miller puts together the best from many traditions, along with NLP and a healthy dose of common sense.

If you are someone who wants to achieve real world results with your magick, this book will show you how to do that. And beyond that, you'll find tech you can start using right away. While Miller includes excellent advice for developing a practice that will strengthen any spell work you choose to do, he includes lots of little tricks and tips you can try the minute you put down the book.

I like the no-nonsense way that Miller approaches magick in both of his books. If you don't have a lot of time to waste but you want your magick to work -- and especially if you're facing some pretty serious challenges and aren't finding the tech you need in other books -- pick up this book, read it, and get to work!

Persephone

I liked this work. But, I do have a few problems with it. First it is not for a beginner, there are topics and techniques that are assumed the magician has already developed and has a good grasp of the underlying magickal process. The second problem: Though the spells and excerpts are great and given in another language, there is no pronunciation key. I think someone else mentioned this. The third is not so much a problem as a lacking. It lacks depth. This should have been a much longer book for the amount of information he covers. It almost seemed like he wanted to put his entire practice into a single book and only managed to give an overview instead of an extensive commentary. I do like how he takes magickal as well as mundane advice and weaves them together. Some of the techniques are also not detailed enough to really work them. I wish Miller would have taken a little longer before releasing this book, perhaps he will add a second or volume 2 for this one, one that delves further into explanations and answers the questions this one creates.

If I had found this book when I was first learning magic I'd have found it very useful and learned a lot. I've been practicing about 3 years or so, however, and at this point everything in it was stuff I already knew and had learned on my own -- the author even cited most of my favorite books on the topic of magic. On the whole I'd say this is a good book for beginners, but it's nothing a person who's been practicing folk or other utilitarian magic wouldn't have likely figured out on his own within a year or two.

I am a huge fan of the author's first book, Protection and Reversal Magick, so when I found out that he had a book coming out on just practical magic, I was very excited. Having waited for this book for over a year now, I must say I was disappointed when I finally did get to read it.

The book itself is divided into two parts. Part one, "Basic Training," has four chapters. Chapter one is about "the gift" that some people have for magic. Personally, I think this chapter was a waste of space. Chapter two talks about the concept of three levels: divine, astral, and physical. This is a useful concept in magic but I wouldn't say it's anything more than that. The rest of the book assumes that this is the model/world-view the reader has chosen to follow and it can get kind of annoying. Not every magician believes in gods or spirits, but in this book we are treated like we do. Chapter three introduces the reader to some "subtle keys" that are useful in practicing magic. Breathing, gazes, and hand gestures are discussed. The only one I personally found useful was the section on breath. Chapter four, "Regular Practice," was probably the most problematic for me personally. Here we are introduced to meditation (nothing wrong with that), spirit offerings (good if you're into that sort of thing), daily invocations of the holy guardian angel or "Invocation of the Bornless One" (quite lengthy verbal incantation with not much else). I'm not a huge fan of the concept of the "holy guardian angel" and even if I was, I wouldn't be reciting a two page invocation every day to get into contact with it. Finally, we are introduced to a ritual he calls "The Pillar and the Spheres," which seems like a stripped-down and re-vamped version of the Middle Pillar Rite (google it), without the Hebrew names. I'm actually a fan of the MPR because it is very useful for powering-up before spells and such. I use a simplified version that doesn't involve reciting any names of god and it works very well. His version doesn't really speak to me because it's very specific in what to recite, and only a magician who has the author's exact beliefs would find it useful. It would have been better to give the reader a technique that was more secular.

Part two, "Strategic Sorcery," is the meat of the book. Here we find chapters on divination, influence, money, protection, and love. There's also a chapter that discusses court case magic, health magic, and on becoming a professional sorcerer. Personally, I skimmed through the chapter on divination. It's not my area of interest at all. The other sections of the book provide very "strategic" ways of going about things. There are interesting techniques and spells introduced that can be very useful. He talks about psychology and NLP, hoodoo spells, summoning of planetary energies and spirits, and then putting it all together strategically. To be honest, what he calls "strategic" most of the time, I would call "overkill." Most of the time you don't need to attack a problem from every angle to be successful in resolving it. Less is more, KISS (keep it simple stupid), and all that. Another complaint I have about this section is that most of these techniques and spells were not new to me. As someone who has studied hoodoo, I knew all of the spells and techniques he shared from that tradition. The only new techniques I've learned from the whole book are the ones from Tibetan mysticism, but those were few and far between unfortunately.

Some other things that I found annoying:

"Contrary to what people in the `it's all in the mind' school of magick think, purely mental magick tends to generate purely mental results." - The Sorcerer's Secrets, p. 29

As someone who is very much into direct/mental magic right now, I know that this statement is false. In fact, the only reason I am so interested in mental magic right now is that I noticed that my spells were starting to manifest while still in the planning stages (i.e. they were still just thoughts in my head). I've done further experiments and my mental magic has definitely produced results in the physical plane.

Another little thing that bothered me about this book is the editing. Or the lack there of. The whole book is littered with errors that the average reader can spot pretty easily. I've read self-published books that are better edited than this one. It's pretty embarrassing. I guess someone just fell asleep on the job.

In conclusion, while many of the techniques and spells in this book are useful, the author's opinions get in the way most of the time. The author says in the introduction that he does not want this book to be either a training manual or a spellbook, but a "field guide." I myself would have preferred a spellbook, because the spells were the most useful part of the book.

So do I recommend this book? It depends. If you're new to magic and don't know anything about hoodoo, this book will have a wealth of knowledge that you will find useful. But I recommend taking a lot of what the author says with a grain of salt. And many of the basic training techniques will probably not speak to you since they are so specific to the author's own personal system. If you've been around the block a while, this book is not a must-have but it still does have some interesting tidbits that might be new to you.

Overall, this is not a bad book at all. It's just that for me personally, I already knew most of the stuff in it. That, coupled with the author's slightly preachy attitude, did not make this a very enjoyable read for me.

When I bought this book, I was looking for something a bit different. While some of the exercises are good information and there is practical advice throughout, the spells and rituals are far from my style and so aren't remotely useful to me. It's a useful book if you don't mind ceremonial technique and advice on long term work with goetic spirits.

In this book, the author presents practical ideas and strategies for people who are just starting out in their magical practice. This isn't a 101 book, but its safe to say it's a 102 book that also offers some insights to magicians with more experience. What I appreciate the most is that the author takes the time to focus on considerations such as finances and explains that while magic can help, it's also important to learn practical mundane skills.

I also appreciate the author's choice to draw on a wide variety of sources that fall outside the traditional bibliography usually found in books. The author illustrates the importance of developing a well-rounded strategy by exposing readers to alternative sources.

There are two reasons this book gets a four instead of a five, however. One reason is because the author doesn't address the value of doing internal work as a practical and strategic solution. while knowing how to do practical magic to solve a problem is important, being able to identify your participation in the problem and making changes is even more important, and more practical. The other reason is that while the author does draw on non-traditional sources, he doesn't address the topic of innovation and how it can be used to develop practical magic.

All that said, this is an excellent book to read, and one I'd recommend to someone just starting out.

Not a bad basic tome for the would be sorcerer, but biased somewhat towards WMT in the writing (Western Magickal Tradition) barbarous names and all that. Spell poetry is rather dull, too. Yes, the author has a background in the East but percentage wise, you'll eat this with a fork, not chopsticks. Who ever proofread this work must be from the Industrial Home for the blind--they should evoke the spirit of correction fluid. Want much better stuff? Psychonaut & Liber Null and Liber Kaos from Peter Carroll, Initiation into Hermetics by Bardon (For the exercises, not the morality) and Real Magick by P.E.I. Bonewitz for the fun and sanity of it all. Nice concept of "offering" to the spirits, never saw that anywhere before except in maybe dozens of books. Comment on mental magick only working on mental plane? Maybe for the author. This has an odor of self publishing about it, but what the hell, give a sorcerer a break and buy the thing.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have known this author for several years and have had the opportunity to both actively work with him, and see him teach in several venues. This perspective has allowed me to observe the connections between the author's recommendations on paper, and his actual practice. This experience will bias the following review.

Jason Miller as an author is unique in many respects. Foremost, he is a professional sorcerer. This, in itself, places him at odds with large parts of modern pagan ideology, which shuns an overt connection between spell casting and money. It does not, however, place him outside the "New Age" movement which in many ways is defined by the commercialization of spirituality. In respect to being a professional, Mr. Miller does have history on his side, and he literally practices what he preaches. In addition, Mr. Miller has in depth knowledge and experience in several disciplines: Tibetan Buddhism, Hoodoo, Thelema/OTO, Sangreal Sodality, and Christianity. This background provides him the ability to intelligently survey the modern esoteric scene. His familiarity with these paths comes across in this text, as in his first book "Protection & Reversal Magick", where he combines elements from differing traditions into a single working.

Working, in many ways, is the theme of the book with an emphasis on the practitioner maintaining an active connection with spiritual entities. A "working" relationship if you will. The text maintains a very practical focus from the start, using a straightforward friendly style. The book is well organized in a step by step manner so that the novice can easily grasp the individual components to spell casting & intent, while understanding how they fit together into the sorcery as a whole. He does not short change the importance of consistent personal discipline, and he discusses the most common errors and obstacles confronted by the beginner. Mr. Miller provides both original and classical formulas to attain spiritual contacts. Some of his original exercises combine different languages and paths (e.g. Tibetan & Greek; Greek & Hebrew; Greek & Hoodoo).

The second part of the book targets techniques useful to the practicing sorcerer ( professional or not). The strategies needed to implement these techniques in order to manifest positive results in daily life are explored. The message in the Financial Magick section regarding perspective is worth holding fast, especially to those swimming in a "New Age" culture populated with compatriots suffering from the disease of entitlement.

There is a long history in occultism of collaborative relationships between writers and artists. Far too often the artists' work does not get the attention it deserves. A very positive aspect of this book is the artwork of Matthew Brownlee. The sigil which appears on the book cover is beautiful. The original sigil renderings in the body of the text are stunning. I would have hoped for more, and look forward to seeing how this collaborative relationship progresses.

As good as this book is, it was marred by the consistent appearance of typos in the text which occurred so frequently as to be jarring. One would hope that New Page books could take the time, and spend the money for a good editor.

All in all a worthwhile read, and good value for the money. I picked up a number tips to refine my own practice. This book is recommended.

You can take it two ways.

On one hand, this is a brilliant demonstration of Chaos magic techniques. The author created his own paradigm combining Esoteric Buddhism, Hoodoo, and Western Ceremonial Magick into a system he claims grants him great success.

On the other hand, did this really warrant a book? The techniques described here are mostly wholesale borrowing of older techniques or putting a spin on them. "Hekas Breathing" read like an elaborate form of zazen to me, he recommends Bardon's pore breathing technique, and his metaphysics were the usual phoned-in diatribe about levels and energy. The worst infraction, especially for a book billing it's self "simple", is that the explanations of these techniques and ideas are rather convoluted and vague. In the great tradition of most books on magical techniques, the author describes the method and alludes to the result. As if the readers are already supposed know how the intended effect is experienced.

On a side note to the author, I wouldn't recommend putting financial advice in a book on occultism nor recommending some shysters financial rehab dreck in your bibliography. It shifts your credibility towards used car salesman or Salem healing crystal hawker.

Like I said, it's a great example of the postmodern approach in action. Outside of that, I didn't get anything from it that I didn't already know.