David Rankine relaxing at Llantony Priory (Monmouthshire)
Helpful votes received on all
contributions:
95% (224 of 238)
Location: Monmouthshire, Wales
Birthday: July 24(Saved Remind mePlease RetryPlease Retry)
Biography:
David Rankine is an author, researcher, Qabalist and magician who lives & works in Monmouthshire (Wales) with his partner, Sorita D'Este and baby son. David has been writing and contributing articles to a variety of publications and has given talks, lectures and workshops since the early 1980's. His personal passions include the Qabalah, Medieval & Renaissance Magick, Heka (Egyptian Magick), The… Read moreDavid Rankine is an author, researcher, Qabalist and magician who lives & works in Monmouthshire (Wales) with his partner, Sorita D'Este and baby son. David has been writing and contributing articles to a variety of publications and has given talks, lectures and workshops since the early 1980's.
His personal passions include the Qabalah, Medieval & Renaissance Magick, Heka (Egyptian Magick), Thelema and Witchcraft. David also has a thing for Crystals and their use in magick since men emerged from the caves wearing their first bits of occult jewellery, but stresses "Sadly this subject has been largely hijacked by people with their heads in the clouds, which is fine as long as you have your feet on the earth, which is where the crystals are! (Well apart from meteorites, but that's another story altogether!)".
In the 1980's and 1990's he edited the magazines "Evohe!" and "Dragon's Brew". Additionally he has also contributed articles to many other magazines like Chaos International, Nuit-Isis, Talking Stick Magazine, Pagan Dawn, Withcraft & Wicca (CoA), Enhancing Your Mind Body Spirit (D'Agostini) and the Watkins Review.
David has something of an obsession with numbers, which he blames on the Qabalah, though he is happy to report he has not sunk to the level of doing Gematria on bus numbers or car number plates. During a period of excessive numerical study he came up with a system of Gematria for the English alphabet based on the prime numbers and known as Prime Qabalah. Details of this system can be found in his book "Becoming Magick" and at his website www.ritualmagick.co.uk.
Since 2003 he has been working with occult legend Stephen Skinner on the corpus of Renaissance grimoire material, making rare and previously unknown or inaccessible material available to the magickal community. This has resulted in the "Source Works of Ceremonial Magic" published by Golden Hoard Press. So far three books in the series have been released, these are:
* Volume I - The Practical Angel Magic of Dr. John Dee's Enochian Tables
* Volume II - Keys to the Gateway of Magic
* Volume III - The Goetia of Dr Rudd
* Volume IV - The Veritable Key of Solomon
|
|
Contributions
Classic Reviewer Rank: 15,490
|
Joseph Lisiewski is an author people tend to love or hate. I am in the former category, as I respect his refusal to pander to any sort of fashion, and his insistence on excellence over mediocrity in all things. His manner of writing is as precise as his scientific background, and does not take prisoners; rather he reports with a clinical objectivity, even when describing his own involvement. And this is where the book is unique, for Joseph Lisiewski was in the unique position of forming a triumvarate with Frater Albertus and Israel Regardie for many years, united through a shared love of alchemy, arguably the most esoteric of the magical sciences.
This book has four threads… Read more
|
|
|
Mogg Morgan is one of the great invisible pillars of the modern magical revival. He has contributed continuously and over a wide range of fields for the last thirty or so years, always producing quality, be it as magazines, events, groups, lectures or books. This book, Tantra Sadhana, is an excellent example of his work. It is full of practical, interesting, and more enjoyably, exciting material which you want to try out.
The material is divided into two main sections, with the second building on the first, and then a wealth of rewarding material follows in the appendixes. The author starts by laying the foundations, explaining the nature of Tantra, and then moves on to… Read more
|
|
|
This is a joy of a book to read! The author has chosen a group of significant magical figures and influential fiction writers and turned a spotlight onto the shadows of their worlds. The result is a veritable smorgasbord of fascinating facts, interesting speculations and unveiled purposes. I enjoyed the selection, which at first might seem mismatched, but all demonstrated diverse threads of inquisitive exploration through their work, which is set against the backdrop of the science and magic of their times.
The figures covered are the magician Paracelsus, Grand Master Pinto of the Knights of Malta, and the authors Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker and… Read more
|
Total Helpful Votes: 81 of 88
Many of the most useful books for learning about magick are those which challenge perceptions and cause the reader to expand their perceptions, rather than blindly subscribing to the status quo. This is a list to push those boundaries and expand the horizons.
The journey of the soul in ancient Egypt was a specific metaphysical and theological experience resulting in either destruction or eternity with the gods in the Field of Reeds. There was no reincarnation, so you had to get things right, hence the texts of spells and grave goods!
Total Helpful Votes: 26 of 27
One of the simplest ways to to divine is with six-sided dice. Dice divination, also known as cleromancy or astragalomancy, is an ancient system of divination found in many cultures in a range of countries, including ancient Egpyt,Greece and Rome, Hinduism, Tibet (Sho Mo) and Africa.
Dice&hellip Read more
The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) is not only a very effective ritual, it is also a very versatile one. There are a number of different uses that it can be put to. These include preparation of magickal sacred space for ritual, and clearing the space afterwards, as a devotion to&hellip Read more
Favorite Items
What a nightmare trying to reduce it to five. I contented myself with the knowledge that many of my favourite books are on the lists I have created! A lot of my favourite authors just didn't make it because of space, like William Gibson, Philip Pullman, Charles DeLint, Gene Wolfe, Louis de Bernieres and Patricia Geary. Special mention should be made of the Magic in History series published by Pennsylvania State University Press though, it is one of the top highlights of recent years in esoteric academic publishing. Also I must include Aryeh Kaplan as one of the great Kabbalists of recent times.
This was a hard choice to make, there are so many other singers and bands and musicians I like! Shriekback had to be at the top of the list, but selecting five pieces of music meant leaving off so many fantastic albums by artists like Captain Beefheart, Faith & the Muse, Afro-Celt Sound System, PWEI, Rickie Lee Jones, The The, Aimless, Kate Bush, Zone, Death in June, Jimi Hendrix, Popol Vuh, The Doors, QNTAL, Cyndi Lauper, The Infinity Project, the list goes on and on!
Another set of nigh-on impossible choices. Malpertuis is just amazing, particularly if you can get the full version, it has some of the qualities of Cocteau, combined with Greek myth! I am also a fan of classic oldies, and had to resist the temptation to put films like Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Left Hand of God in this list. And of course as is obvious I love horror. There was a huge list that could have gone in here, but I chose a couple of films that had their own classic twists.
|
