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Unless it's training methods are effective and actually work, and that's the only kind of book I would bother putting out. So it would be best not to take any chances. So I think the "luck" would come before the book, as I would have to be lucky enough to master the occult to such an extent.
Honestly, if someone has real occult abilities, they are actually robbing themselves if they write a genuine book that teaches other people how to really practice magic. It would be an act of altruism, a charity. Keeping the knowledge and power to yourself is much more beneficial.
I mean think about it. If you really found a training method to learn how to read peoples minds, would you write a book teaching everyone how to do that for money, or would you just simply use that ability to make the money anyways (high stakes poker or something)?
Anybody can put out an occult book that's mostly theory and untestable claims, and yeah, that kind of book will fly under the radar.
The kind of book I'm talking about is a "be all end all" kind of book, a nail in the coffin for any doubt about the existence of magic and the optimal way to begin practicing it. Something that "just works".
This is what I meant by - "universal textbook for magic". In the same way that you can pick up a math text book with the confidence of knowing that the formulas inside are "standardized" and accurate, and most (if not everybody) can use them and get the exact same result.
I'm not thinking about A book, I'm thinking about THE book. The book I always wished existed so that I could be using it right now. The book that changes history forever. The book that turns magic from "myth" and "niche hobby" into "undeniable fact".
That is the only kind of book I would be interested in writing and if I don't have the knowledge or the skills to create that book (one day), then I wouldn't bother writing anyways, so the end result would be the same (me not creating a book).
I actually do think such a book probably already exists, but it's just not going to be available to everyday people, it's kept in secret by some individual/group.
But I guess we'll never know, because all I see here is a metric buttload of excuses for not applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and actually writing.
"Oh it would be the best book ever but I'm not going to write it"
Part of this fantasy is that once you've written this amazing book, people will instantly be queuing up around the block to buy it.
"Build it and they will come" only works in Field of Dreams.
The unfortunate truth is that no matter how amazing and mind bending THE book might be, the great majority of people are not that interested. You can write the best book ever about, say, quantum physics, and you will never sell anywhere near as many as, say, Harry Potter, because very few people are interested in quantum physics.
Once you have learnt how a spell is cast, the effect of the spell will cease to appear to you as magic. It will become mundane. Everyday. Boring. This is the cost of magical knowledge.
Flicker, Felix. The Magick of Matter: Crystals, Chaos and the Wizardry of Physics (p. 2). Profile. Kindle Edition.
I think that's the definition of progress. In the far past only wealthy people had remotely usable sanitation facilities. Now today, even the average peasant has a toilet, running water, a shower, tooth paste and a toothbrush, etc.
I'm not sure that, in effect, giving guns to monkeys is progress. See today's thread about "binding a man forever" in today's posts. Then multiply that by every unbalanced high-school girl on 5 continents.
There's a Terry Pratchett quote in one of his non-Discworld books: "One true magician would be two too many" for exactly this reason.
Luckily for us, I don't think it works like this
There are a number of outcomes from a particular event (in this case unbalanced high-school girl attempting to magically enslave one bloke). All possible outcomes have to be included in this list, and for any particular aspect of the outcome (in this case, all outcomes where one unbalanced high-school girl successfully enslaves one bloke) this will only represent a small section of the complete list.
So, finding an outcome set where ALL the unbalanced high-school girls successfully enslave ALL their targets would be like shuffling a pack of cards for a week and dealing it out in suit order - only even more unlikely.
There's a Terry Pratchett quote in one of his non-Discworld books: "One true magician would be two too many" for exactly this reason.
Luckily for us, I don't think it works like this
There are a number of outcomes from a particular event (in this case unbalanced high-school girl attempting to magically enslave one bloke). All possible outcomes have to be included in this list, and for any particular aspect of the outcome (in this case, all outcomes where one unbalanced high-school girl successfully enslaves one bloke) this will only represent a small section of the complete list.
So, finding an outcome set where ALL the unbalanced high-school girls successfully enslave ALL their targets would be like shuffling a pack of cards for a week and dealing it out in suit order - only even more unlikely.
Cecco d'Ascoli (1257-1327) was by all definitions applicable to reputation a narcissistic asshole, but he made an interesting contribution to astrologically based demonic magic which likely helped to influence and shape the grimoire tradition. Generally he is known for his public attacks of Dante Alliegheri, mainly in a similar manner as Crowley v. Yeats. Cecco held the professorship of astrology at the Universtiy of Bologna where he lectured and published a commentary on the Sphaera Mundi of John de Sabrosco, an important medieval cosmological work. In his lectures, Cecco obliquely promoted his views of "hard astrology" - that is, it is completely deterministic and you cannot escape fate, and this was very much at odds with Catholic theology, which courted suspicions of heresy. However, he pushed it further in hinting that he knew how to use astrological timings to conjure demons and had done it himself. This was during the reign of John XXII, probably the most anti-magical Pope to sit on the chair of St. Peter. Cecco didn't seem to care though, because according to his interpretation of his own birth chart, he was indestructible.
Cecco would be arrested for heresy, stripped of his professorship and forced into a life of pennance. He left Bologna and went to Florence where he almost immediately picked up his old habits of lecturing on astrology and demonology. He was arrested again as a "relapsed heretic" and sentence to be burned alive. According to legend, he wasn't worried because his horoscope indicated he would die somewhere between Campo de Fiori in Rome and Africa, so Florence was too far north. But as they tied him to the stake and realized this was for real, he asked one of his executioners if there was anything nearby named "Africa". He was told there was a small river named "Africco" just behind him. So with Florence (the City of Flowers) in front of him, he may have realized a new interpretation. Thus he was burned at the stake in 1327.
A generation later walks in the mysterious Antonio di Montalmo, who wrote a short work on astrological necromancy in he which he openly claimed to have conjured demons. Obviously risky... This is called De Occultis et Manifestis, which I would very much like to read but have so far only found an introduction to the untranslated Latin, which I guess is not published. In this work Antonia describes the sublunar nature of demons, how they are rooted in stellar influences, jealous of humans because we have souls, their asexuality (you need to be a virgin to actually see them), astrological timings and some of his own experiments. Apparently common wisdom at the time was that you had to conjure on a clear night with the stars visible - but he claims to have done it while raining. What is further interesting about him is that he occupied the same professorship of astrology in Bologna as Cecco! The difference between Cecco being here is that Antonio got away with it, perhaps because he was more low key, but very little is known about his life and movement. He moved onto other positions in different parts of Itakly and died, apparently without Church censure around 1396.
If one wanted to apply the case of "Anna Kingsford reincarnated as Dion Fortune", one could say lessons were learned in successive lifetimes, unless...
In 1548 the "Sphaera" (not the book) gifts history with "the Nolan", that is Giordano Bruno, who seems to reflect back in some eerie ways to Cecco d'Ascoli. This little man, a drooling disciple of Agrippa's Three Books, the holder of a magical memory art capable of unlocking superhuman powers, a perennial smart ass beaming with personal vanity and, as some say, the true "Hermetic Messiah" - well, enough has been told of him, I suppose, that we know of anyway, so I will cut it short. My fixed image of him is as a man speaking with his back to an open door, waiting for someone to throw a chair at him while he prattles on about nearly indecipherable prophetic mysteries. I don't think I am the only one who thinks it's a ticklish coincidence that he was burned at the stake for heresy at the Campo de Fiore in 1600. I mean, I guess that smacks of transmigration, which was one of Bruno's colorful heresies according to a list of them that I read - though most seem to focus on the whole "multiplicity of worlds" thing mashed with magicalized Copernicanism. Tyson-Degrasse's reboot of Cosmos had a fun little cartoon about him with the disclaimer, "Now, he was not a scientist...but..."
Now, to rank these three, as approximating the OP, I guess I would vote up Antonio as there is enough to be intrigued but not disappointed. Anyways, I got inspiration from Sledge on the first two, Yates and one or two others from the last. I had read Lynn Thordike's treatment on Cecco years ago, but it just seemed to brush over him - probably I was skimming.
Not really portraits, just some old snapshots that I find have interesting threads - again no ranking here, but influence is interesting.
I make reference to:
Cecco d'Ascoli (1257-1327) was by all definitions applicable to reputation a narcissistic asshole, but he made an interesting contribution to astrologically based demonic magic which likely helped to influence and shape the grimoire tradition. Generally he is known for his public attacks of Dante Alliegheri, mainly in a similar manner as Crowley v. Yeats. Cecco held the professorship of astrology at the Universtiy of Bologna where he lectured and published a commentary on the Sphaera Mundi of John de Sabrosco, an important medieval cosmological work. In his lectures, Cecco obliquely promoted his views of "hard astrology" - that is, it is completely deterministic and you cannot escape fate, and this was very much at odds with Catholic theology, which courted suspicions of heresy. However, he pushed it further in hinting that he knew how to use astrological timings to conjure demons and had done it himself. This was during the reign of John XXII, probably the most anti-magical Pope to sit on the chair of St. Peter. Cecco didn't seem to care though, because according to his interpretation of his own birth chart, he was indestructible.
Cecco would be arrested for heresy, stripped of his professorship and forced into a life of pennance. He left Bologna and went to Florence where he almost immediately picked up his old habits of lecturing on astrology and demonology. He was arrested again as a "relapsed heretic" and sentence to be burned alive. According to legend, he wasn't worried because his horoscope indicated he would die somewhere between Campo de Fiori in Rome and Africa, so Florence was too far north. But as they tied him to the stake and realized this was for real, he asked one of his executioners if there was anything nearby named "Africa". He was told there was a small river named "Africco" just behind him. So with Florence (the City of Flowers) in front of him, he may have realized a new interpretation. Thus he was burned at the stake in 1327.
A generation later walks in the mysterious Antonio di Montalmo, who wrote a short work on astrological necromancy in he which he openly claimed to have conjured demons. Obviously risky... This is called De Occultis et Manifestis, which I would very much like to read but have so far only found an introduction to the untranslated Latin, which I guess is not published. In this work Antonia describes the sublunar nature of demons, how they are rooted in stellar influences, jealous of humans because we have souls, their asexuality (you need to be a virgin to actually see them), astrological timings and some of his own experiments. Apparently common wisdom at the time was that you had to conjure on a clear night with the stars visible - but he claims to have done it while raining. What is further interesting about him is that he occupied the same professorship of astrology in Bologna as Cecco! The difference between Cecco being here is that Antonio got away with it, perhaps because he was more low key, but very little is known about his life and movement. He moved onto other positions in different parts of Itakly and died, apparently without Church censure around 1396.
If one wanted to apply the case of "Anna Kingsford reincarnated as Dion Fortune", one could say lessons were learned in successive lifetimes, unless...
In 1548 the "Sphaera" (not the book) gifts history with "the Nolan", that is Giordano Bruno, who seems to reflect back in some eerie ways to Cecco d'Ascoli. This little man, a drooling disciple of Agrippa's Three Books, the holder of a magical memory art capable of unlocking superhuman powers, a perennial smart ass beaming with personal vanity and, as some say, the true "Hermetic Messiah" - well, enough has been told of him, I suppose, that we know of anyway, so I will cut it short. My fixed image of him is as a man speaking with his back to an open door, waiting for someone to throw a chair at him while he prattles on about nearly indecipherable prophetic mysteries. I don't think I am the only one who thinks it's a ticklish coincidence that he was burned at the stake for heresy at the Campo de Fiore in 1600. I mean, I guess that smacks of transmigration, which was one of Bruno's colorful heresies according to a list of them that I read - though most seem to focus on the whole "multiplicity of worlds" thing mashed with magicalized Copernicanism. Tyson-Degrasse's reboot of Cosmos had a fun little cartoon about him with the disclaimer, "Now, he was not a scientist...but..."
Now, to rank these three, as approximating the OP, I guess I would vote up Antonio as there is enough to be intrigued but not disappointed. Anyways, I got inspiration from Sledge on the first two, Yates and one or two others from the last. I had read Lynn Thordike's treatment on Cecco years ago, but it just seemed to brush over him - probably I was skimming.
I was just razzing on Gio - I had originally intended no ranking but it was a long post so I forgot myself, lol.
Gotta admit, he took to the stake like a man.
ok though Pico came off like a bitch in my studies, but why we always bashing on my dudes?
My verdict remains, Bruno soloes them all. Better magician all-over.
Better speaker, Better notoriety, better quotes, and if the statue is any signifier- Better drip as well.
Dude's statue looks like the archetypical magus. Coldest mofo out there they had to light the pyre twice.
Y'all just jelly.
ok though Pico came off like a bitch in my studies, but why we always bashing on my dudes?
My verdict remains, Bruno soloes them all. Better magician all-over.
Better speaker, Better notoriety, better quotes, and if the statue is any signifier- Better drip as well.
Dude's statue looks like the archetypical magus. Coldest mofo out there they had to light the pyre twice.
Y'all just jelly.
You're not getting my theme here though! If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, slash him, burn him, scatter his bones, and then walk a little farther up the road, turn around and see he's still fuckin sitting there!
Also, I think it was Evola under one of his guises who said, "If you are going to kill, kill with love!"
