I decided to read this book, knowing nothing of the author, or having heard of the book itself. It was lent to me by a friend who wasn't an occultist, and I figured, why not? The book follows the history of western magick and occultism from speculative Mesopotamian sources, through Egypt, the Hebrews, the Greco-Romans and finally into the Christian Europe. For the most part the book was accurate from what I could tell (though the author didn't support the Tarot from Egypt notion, he didn't deny it), it was poorly written. The style was dry, and would lead your through the history of a belief era, only then to jump back to the beginning and talk about the interesting people of note who contributed in that era. Through the book I tried to understand the author's point of view, were they an occultist, or historian? I felt much of the early history and belief was not treated with respect, yet the author spoke highly of such things as physiognomy, chiromancy and the tarot. He even referred to the origin of metoposcopy as "empirically collected knowledge." The book trying to cover all of history, obviously is lacking in many areas, and though poorly written, does serve to give someone a basic handle on the past. ( )

A neat, old history of magick of all areas, times, and stripes. Good stories thrown in, good illustrations, and all referenced (though dated). ( )