Booknote: Llewellyn's Complete Book of Ceremonial Magic

Lon Milo DuQuette and David G. Shoemaker, Llewellyn's Complete Book of Ceremonial Magick: a Comprehensive Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2020. ISBN: 9780738764726.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: Magic, Magick, Pagan, reference works, history
Format: e-galley
Source: NetGalley

I will start by saying that I read Llewellyn's Complete Book of Tarot, which I liked and enjoyed (link to my review), so I had high expectations for this new volume on ceremonial magick. This one was not as good. To be honest, it felt a bit flat.

The book is arranged into eleven books (chapters) on various topics of ceremonial magick. Each chapter is written by an expert or experts on that particular topic. Some topics include:

• Foundations of Western Magic
• Planetary Magic
• The Golden Dawn
• Thelema and Aleister Crowley
• Magician's Tables

The main issue with this book is that it is basically a dry textbook. The history of Western Magick, and it is Western European Magick, can be interesting, but after a while that seems to be all this book offers. The books feels more like a history textbook than a "complete book" on the topic. I am a bit puzzled how the editors managed to get such a good line up of experts and practitioners and turn out such a dry, slow reading book.

The other issue with the book is that one cannot be sure who is the audience for the book. Advanced users and experts have likely read and studied many if not all of the sources presented and discussed in the book. They probably know the history too. For beginners, aside from the names, dates, and titles of various books and sources, there is very little. If a beginner was hoping to get some ideas on getting started or supplementing a budding practice, they'll need a different book. There is not much that is actually practical here. What a beginner can do is make note of some of the sources listed throughout the book, find them, and study those instead.

The book does offer a lot of sources in the chapters. There are some good footnotes, so if the readers want to learn more and explore further there are plenty of sources.

I need to make an additional note for this review. I am reviewing it from a NetGalley galley. Unlike other galleys, for some reason the publisher decided to provide a galley "that contains partial sections of each individual book." So as a reviewer I have no real sense of what was left out. In addition, when I got to the end of a couple of chapters, the cutoff could be a bit abrupt. I cannot say if some of the material missing might be included in what was not provided. The bottom line is, as it stands, this is not that good of a book.

Overall, I found the book to be just OK. Text is pretty dry, mostly names, dates, and sources. I enjoy reading history, but this was just too plain. I may borrow it once it gets published just to see what was missing. However, I am not recommending this for libraries. For public libraries that collect pagan materials and similar works, this is optional; I'd say wait to see if a patron requests it before ordering it if at all.

2 out of 5 stars.