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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 90
While confirming the fashion of Seances and Mediums our Author takes us in quite a few other directions.
HIs adventures - and some are adventures indeed, border on the absurd, preposterous imaginings that might inspire an "Indiana Jones" movie. Amusing, but hardly to be credited.
Read it online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/75900/pg75900-images.html
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 75
40 Years of notes on the Occult Renaissance in Hungary, with travels to a variety of European Capitols.
Mostly his research consists of attending Seances and examining the Mediums, all the fashion in the day, and he dryly recounts the list of "Apported" objects, objects materialized from the Spirit world with the assistance of the medium, such materials include beans, crabs, mice, nails, insects, fish,, gramophone needles, lizards, etc, etc. You name it, provided it was small enough to be swallowed or concealed it would later be produced or regurgitated and held as "Proof" of life beyond.
While Seances were big, he also considers "Graphology" an occult science (not so anymore), hypnotism the same, and recounts a great deal of miracles that have taken place thereby, there's telepathy, PSI, PK, dreams and premonitions, apparitions, he often rejects one supernatural explanation in favour of another supernatural explanation, he talks about dowsing, astral-travel, lucid dreams, the anecdotal strings of incredible coincidences that may, in fact, be just that.
In his travels and adventures he meets Freud, Thomas Mann, Rhine (who invented the ESP deck), and many others.
A curious book that describes well the fashions of the time, less "Evidentiary" than simply a man with a taste for curious people and events.
He was murdered in 1944 by the Hungarian Nazis. The book was posthumously translated and published by his son.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 200
I can't really review this - I mean, it is what it is.
But the ending, when the treasonous Count Ganelon is tied to Four Horses that are set free upon a lusty Mare, and so he is drawn and quartered, and the execution of his followers, well, ...
There's something to be said in how we used to punish treason. In Alberta they elect traitors to Premier.
When all this separation nonsense is done we'd do well to take a page from this book.
And Smith and Kenney and all the rest of the UCP members can be drawn and quartered for our amusement as well, and every wing-nut separatist hung. We'll be better for it.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 203
“The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practitioners”
Having a pretty fine understanding of the craft in the more abstract and universal sense, from reading Levy & Others, this was an easy read filled with recipes and some background on the practice.
Some notes:
The Importance of Symbolism & Ritual - the preparation of the supplicant, the items selected and their usage, the time of day, month, year, the circumstances of the ritual to be performed (is the fetish to buried or cast into a river or in a specific direction), the points of the compass, the use of magnets or lodestones for sympathetic magic, red cloth (usually flannel), biological ingredients - eg Pubic & Armpit hair, menstrual blood, semen, urine, etc (there might be something too this above & beyond magic - in love philtres they might have the effect of “familiarizing” the love object with your scent & dna), noteworthy was how all the spells adhered to what I now would understand as "Universal" general rules of magic.
Treasure - that you must wear a cross when digging for treasure to prevent it from sinking further into the earth. I've seen so many similar charms and rituals you must obey before searching for treasure that I'm thinking it might be time for me to come up with a few myself.
Ingredients - In this little attention is paid to the obtaining of ingredients. Generally every ingredient itself would or should require some ritual to be observed before it's acquiring, in this the many of the ingredients can be store bought throughout the American South by various Hoodoo supply shops, the act or practice of Magic being reduced to the assembly of store bought ingredients that oft are not even what they purport to be.
This is a short list of some of the doubtless endless supplies one can acquire via these shops:
This reduces the act of Magic to basically a recipe and formula, readily assembled from such store-bought ingredients as
- Graveyard Dust
- Jinx Killer Incense and Oil
- Drive Away Evil Incense and Oil
- Compelling Power Incense and Oil
- Holy Power Bath Oil
- Goofer Dust
- Love Drawing Power Bath
- Strong Love Cologne, Hearts Cologne
- Make Your Wish Sand
- etc, etc,.
A lot of these "recipes" balance home grown ingredients and those one can find locally - things like hot peppers, salt, a knotted string, etc - with the more exotic ingredients (still easily acquired) - such as toads, frogs, lizards, snakes and chickens. Sadly the last few creatures on the list rarely survive the magic. It does make me wonder though, as the recipes shipped with ingredients usually recommend proprietary ingredients - would you be able to substitute "Jinx Killer" for "Drive Away Evil" incense and oil? What about "Strong Love" and "Hearts" Cologne?
Now while I have great skepticism of Magic done with store-bought materials obviously the hoodoo practitioners that endorse all this don't. And some credit must be given to the people who make up the ingredients and spells - they have to somehow - subconsciously - "ring true" - to the client for the magic to have any endorsement or success whatsoever.
TO conclude, this was a light read that in it's details confirms a lot of what anthropologists and psychologists already know. As a guidebook to practitioners of the craft, well, I'll leave that alone.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 153
A somewhat entertaining view of the Klondike told via the letters and conversations with the women who had lived there.
Novel, in that most of accounts focus on the gold, whereas a goodly portion of the infrastructure and services (legit & otherwise) were provided by women, without which a lot of the prospecting would not have happened. And a few of the more savvy women became claim holders and mining bosses themselves.
Still, as happens, there were enough accounts of the gold in the creeks to re-inspire me to try and get up north for a summer...