From sentto-2153129-68-979201155-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Thu Jan 11 00:19:19 2001 Return-Path: sentto-2153129-68-979201155-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from c3.egroups.com (c3.egroups.com [208.50.99.225]) by sub.sonic.net (8.11.0/8.8.5) with SMTP id f0B8JII05977 for ; Thu, 11 Jan 2001 00:19:18 -0800 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-2153129-68-979201155-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.54] by c3.egroups.com with NNFMP; 11 Jan 2001 08:19:16 -0000 X-Sender: yronwode@sonic.net X-Apparently-To: occultism@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_3); 11 Jan 2001 08:19:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 35675 invoked from network); 11 Jan 2001 08:19:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 11 Jan 2001 08:19:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO marine.sonic.net) (208.201.224.37) by mta1 with SMTP; 11 Jan 2001 08:19:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 7691 invoked from network); 11 Jan 2001 07:19:12 -0000 Received: from sub.sonic.net (208.201.224.8) by marine.sonic.net with SMTP; 11 Jan 2001 07:19:12 -0000 Received: from sonic.net (bolt [208.201.224.36]) by sub.sonic.net (8.11.0/8.8.5) with ESMTP id f0B7JCI03756 for ; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 23:19:12 -0800 X-envelope-info: Received: (from yronwode@localhost) by sonic.net (8.11.0/8.7.3) id f0B7Ir306671 for occultism@egroups.com; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 23:18:53 -0800 Message-Id: <200101110718.f0B7Ir306671@sonic.net> To: occultism@egroups.com (Occultism Elist) Orientation: Arkaotika, Ville of the Forest, Kali Fornika, US -- Kali Yuga Organization: http://www.satanservice.org X-eGroups-From: nagasiva@luckymojo.com (nagasiva) From: nagasiva@luckymojo.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list occultism@egroups.com; contact occultism-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list occultism@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 23:18:53 -0800 (PST) Reply-To: occultism@egroups.com Subject: [o] "The 21 Lessons of Merlyn" (Monroe) and Occult Book Reviews Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO original date 50001215 Vom On "The 21 Lessons of Merlyn" and Reviews of Magical Books in General --------------------------------------------------------------------- my impression, without having thoroughly examined the book under discussion as of this writing, but having seen reviews of it by sources I trust, is that the response to it has depended upon three factors: 1) what the reviewer first took it to be ------------------------------------- DISAPPOINTMENT is difficult at times to sidestep for the purposes of a fair and even treatment. books which are promoted as grimoires, having been authored by legendary or even historic and authoritative figures (e.g. many religious and mystical texts like "Tao Te Ching" boast authors and origins that are disputed by scholars, some of these like Gamache's "8th, 9th, and 10th Books of Moses" become classics of certain magical traditions; also grimoires such as "The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy" supposedly but later agreed NOT to have been written by the widely-respected occult author Agrippa) carry with them a kind of challenge to be disproven or a propagandizing element which upsets those whose illusions are dashed by historical evidence to the contrary. if one takes "The 21 Lessons of Merlyn" to be an attempt at the construction of a grimoire, I wonder how this would affect the review, though I gather that the text is so rudimentary that this text would be classed "a meager effort on par with the Simonomicon." b) the depth and breadth of the experience and study of the reviewer ----------------------------------------------------------------- FROM the perspective of the rank newbie, this text might prove quite useful, depending upon the approachability of any exercises provided, the quality of knowledge obtained by the actual author(s), and what they appear to be instructing. typically the greater experience of the reviewer the more this will mellow out their response, and they will be able to provide something useful to anybody who might be interested in the text. the magician must often make due with very crude and mutilated sources, interpolating and sifting for that which she can apply toward hir own purpose. a bad review doesn't mean much to the dedicated researcher of magic who may obtain the text in some used bookstore at a cheap price for the purposes of mining it for anything unusual or unique. that said, the wise magician develops a system whereby the least expenditure of energy and resources may be outlaid for the greatest return. here are some ideas: I just used a computer (obtainable at any public library) to examine reviews of this book at www.amazon.com. what I found was intriguing, in that they reflected what I'd seen previously: a WIDE range of quality and position with respect to its content and author, from lauding him (Douglas Monroe) as "the last great druid of our troubled modern times!" to castigating him as a liar and poor editor and classifying his background as that of a "Chaos magician"; from describing the book as a poor attempt to mimic something called "The Book of Pheryllt" (for which I hope some of our more scholarly readers will provide a description) that was described as "a KNOWN FORGERY" (their emphasis). from these descriptions I was able to ascertain that the text pertains to the spells and rituals of Druids, that the author is described even by his supporters as mixing fantasy with facts, movie-charms with magical lore, and may be quite plain-spoken in his caveats at the book's introduction one reviewer commenting that the first paragraph in the book was a description of the book as a fictional story designed to convey a point). secondarily, I happen to know that the publisher of this book (something no scholar or mage should omit in an examination of a text they are trying to evaluate!) is Llewellyn Publications -- a company well-known in the magical and occult community for the variability of the quality of its products. therefore complaints at Amazon.com about the book's lack of editing are probably warranted, its sourcing and reliability (as regards historical veracity, for example, or actual relation to traditional mystics and religious) is probably unfounded and questionable. and yet this doesn't necessarily make its contents unusable or worthless to *everyone*, just to those who have certain standards that books like this won't meet. reviewing it as a cheap occult tidbit, the beginner may find something of value. even in this small selection of Amazon.com reviews, however (and in those mreviews and commentaries I've seen since the book was first published), many complain that the text is *horrible* for the beginner, with apparent beginners claiming that it is wonderful. something reviews of the Simonomicon (another replica-of-a-hoax- becoming-grimoire) mistake and fumble is that grimoires are quite often of spurious origins, unknown or obscured authors, sometimes being composites of archived copies, and contain unusual, even ridiculous claims, poor grammar, and little to no documentation in support of their main theses. the premise behind a grimoire, from what little I've been able to glean in a preliminary study of them, is that they are the record of magical exploration, are at times presumed to be the expository summaries of experiment or discovery, and the methods for achieving some kind of feat of magic -- whether directly in a provided spell or through the agency of some being one is instructed to summon. not only are grimoires difficult to review (because quite often so little is known about what remains, let alone who composed them -- we may be conservative in assuming that some lapsed or imaginative member of the clergy was the source as in the context of Medieval Europe), but they are sometimes horrid examples of *art*, given prestige by virtue of age and reputation (e.g. the Lemegeton, or 'Lesser Key of Solomon', whose author was of limited literacy or imagination). whereas we have the present capacity to comparatively immediately obtain a reliable set of reviews on any supposed book on magic and its sources, we have the advantage (and DISadvantage) of having more easily and quickly the fallacious origins and contents of any single tome. I say "disadvantageous" because there is a certain value to most grimoires, however contrived, purely on the basis of the stimulation of imagination and intrigue. the ritual value -- a question of practical applicability -- may be entirely different and derived more slowly than some evaluation of historical and social connections. and the last factor I can think of which may influence a review of this book is c) the reviewer's fondness for and familiarity with descriptions of Myrddin/Merlin through Arthurian lore and legend ---------------------------------------------------------------- there are seminal Merlin tales, and those of wide renown, regardless of anything historical. they vary from the various sources identified by Tolstoy's "Search for Merlin" to fictional recompositions like Mary Stewart's wonderful series on the life and adventures of Myrddin Emrys or T.H. White's inspirational and well-known charicature of the mage that has been the delight for children and adults alike (in such media retellings as those by Disney in film -- "The Sword in the Stone" comes to mind). the identification of Merlin as a Druid is only one popular strand of these legends and lore. some will consider it irreconcilable with their knowledge of the wizard Merlin. some will have definite ideas about what Merlin was about, what Druids did and perhaps (despite the activities of authors like Isaac Bonewits to fully inform them of the paucity of remains of this Celtic priestly class, sending us to sources such as Piggott and others) still do today, and set about about attempting to correct our perceptions or those of Monroe. whether we appreciate what the author has done will depend upon the flexibility of what we accept "legitimately" or "meaningfully" contributes to the corpus surrounding this much-loved figure. books by authors like R.J. Stewart on Merlin and the Arthurian Mysteries (so called) are more likely to draw compliments, in my opinion, not only because they are probably better written and have been published by more critical publishers (the editions I have of Stewart's were by Arkana Books), but also because they proceed from a deeper comprehension of the occult world and what it is likely to appreciate. who knows? maybe Monroe knows exactly what he is doing -- having precisely named his book and selected a publisher indicating he may not have spent much time crafting it and hoped to make an easy buck and inspire a few beginners. on the other hand, those who have positively reviewed "The 21 Lessons of Merlyn" (as well as the Simonomicon, interestingly enough) and had something substantial to offer in its defense tended to focus on the *spells and rituals contained in the book and their efficacy*. of course whether the individual making these claims knows anything about spells, rituals, or how they ought to be constructed, sound, or be performed, would tell us more about the value of the book as a magical source. too often reviewers pass off as "hoax" and "rubbish" what might otherwise prove as imaginative fodder for the curious occultist. comparatively often the beginner is wowed by a mediocre text that every beginner will not find so rewarding to obtain. what I have attempted to do in the above brief essay is to display for those who have little familiarity with occult texts, and with grimoires and spellbooks predominantly, how reviews of books can be limited and downright misguided even while providing correct information about the text's limitations (e.g. the Simonomicon is based on Accadian ritual texts rather than being a truly masterful attempt to reproduce a Lovecraftian grimoire by the standards set out by HPL and his fans -- note: I have recently rarefied what I think are a justified set of rational standards which any attempt to compose a convincing Necronomicon must resemble if Lovecraft himself is to be seriously regarded as an authority on a text he evidently imagined and for whose existence and history he provided some ephemeral and otherwise admittedly fabricated evidence; I'm going out of town until the 15th of January so if you're interested in this please give me some time to respond ;>). > why is this book so upsetting to everyone? i didn't read it yet, > but now am curious. I'm curious enough too after having written the above to take a trek up to my library. I think I acquired the book many moons ago and will now provide some reflections on this particular question.... nope, I couldn't find it, so I must have looked at the text and decided that it wasn't worth what was being charged for it at the used bookshop. it seems to me that the central issue in an evaluation of the text from a *scholarly* perspective would be the likelihood that a) Merlin was an historical individual and was involved with the Druids in some way; b) a text he had written would have survived (or been astrally 'discovered' by visionquesting mage); and c) that this text is a genuine and intact article. with respect to the Merlin-Druid issue, other than some amusing and entertainingly critical quotes from T.H. White, I figured I'd provide the summary paragraph from Nikolai Tolstoy's chapter in the book I mentioned above examining Myrddin's relationship to Druidry: All in all, therefore, the evidence indiates that the survival of druidism in Highland Britain, a region largely untouched by Roman civilization, is intrinsically likely in the early Dark-age period. The poem *Armes Prydein* alternates the authority for its prophecy between Myrddin and the druids, and may it not fairly be asked whether Merlin himself was a surviving druid? What has been conjectured of his refuge in the Caledonian Forest certainly accords with druidic practice. Roman writers describe them as 'meeting in secret either in a cave or in secluded groves', and declare that, 'the innermost groves of far-off forests are your abodes.' {Author's note: [T.D.] Kendrick, op. cit., pp. 87, 88, 105, 138, 147, 148.} It has been suggested that they sought out these remote woodland haunts only as a result of Roman persecution or disapproval, but such circumstances would in any case apply to Myrddin's condition after the battle of Arderydd. Perhaps the most that can be said is that if Merlin was not a druid, his inspiration was very much in the druidic tradition. {Author's note: Bards, *ollamhs* and *fili*, on both sides of the Irish Sea, did much to preserve Druidic traditions and beliefs ("The Growth of Literature," i, pp. 469-71, 492, 607; James Carney, "The Irish Bardic Poet" (Dublin, 1967), pp. 8-12.} __________________________________________________________ "The Quest for Merlin", Nikolai Tolstoy, Little, Brown and Company, 1985; pp. 86, 277. ------------------------------------------------------ the author is described as holding "an MA in Modern History and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Associate Member of St. Anthony's College, Oxford." [dust jacket] my impression is that he is prone to minor sensationalizing (for example asking questions in a leading way rather than merely presenting the evidence), yet does provide a good deal of citation to back his assertions. comments upon the source welcome. the preservation of any such text would seem improbable, even if somehow it were historically-based, though I am not qualified to make such an assessment, knowing nothing about "The Book of Pheryllt" and nevering having conducted a thorough analysis of the book in question (which I hope to be pointed toward at some URL or inspire if it has yet to be done in a scholarly fashion). that Llewellyn would be the ones to offer such a text to the book-buying public is *highly* unlikely, and though some of their texts are valuable for scholarly reference (Tyson's edition of Agrippa for example), I would not trust the book based upon their reputation. better to obtain it used or from a library sale (ebay?). nagasiva@luckymojo.com