Philip Carr-Gomm

Philip starts the entire concept as a physical journey through the various aspects of his local landscape. Adding to this journey is the manner of processing the deaths of two people that he had great respect for. Further into the journey comes the addition of a newborn child to his family - completing the motif of endings and beginnings that comprise the concept of making a journey. Interspersed throughout the chapters are various concepts on religious belief, local history, and Philip's show more own insights into weaving the daily processes of life with the mysteries that we all carry philosophically deep in our own being. Not only was it an enjoyable read for me -- it also helped me process an understanding that life's journey has endings and beginnings strewn throughout it. Personally, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. show less

I cannot praise this book enough both for its content and its style. It is a hefty tome at over 500 pages but beautifully bound and (once you get over the odd use of a lighter typeface for 'practitioner' contributions) designed. It may not be cheap (£25) but it is excellent value.

The structure is worth commenting on because, quite simply, it works and it puts to shame a lot of the shoddy editing that you currently get in the publishing industry.

Carr-Gomm and Heygate tell the story of show more English magic in twelve successive roughly chronological chapters, each with contemporary resonance, taking us from (in simplistic terms) earth magic, druidry, Anglo-Saxon magic, the arthurian tradition, the folk magic of the pre-modern era, alchemy, the world of John Dee, the cunning folk of rural industrial England, freemasonry, the magical orders of the late ninetenth century, Crowley (and his more benign contemporaries like Dion Fortune) and, finally, the contemporary world right up to the emergence of chaos magic.

Each chapter contains a narrative that introduces you to the contemporary manifestations of the historic experience and then intersperses this with practical magical insights (for example, how to hunt for ley lines or the basics of magical numerology or the tarot) as well as extended interviews with practitioners in each field. These 'insights' will give you sufficient flavour of a practice for you to decide whether to investigate further.

On top of this, the authors provide exceptional and up to date resource materials - fiction related to the era, biographies of key figures, information on where to go and how to get more information, including access points to current magical schools, even those with a bit of a health warning attached. There are, of course, useful further reading lists, advice on bookshops and internet sites and even lists of publishers and academic and specialist courses.

Finally, the overall tone is measured, balanced, fair and thoughtful. There are even periodic health warnings against misunderstanding or misusing magical techniques or expecting too much or the wrong thing.

This book exists well within the contemporary culture of British (not just English) paganism - humane, tolerant, eclectic. There is a certain national pride that England has Wicca as its global contribution to the major growing religions (though Druidry may claim some status here) and the argument that England is the most magical country in the world certainly seems to hold water as each chapter unfolds.

There are many views of what magic is and what it means and the authors are fair to all of them - whether there are really existent realities or whether the phenomena are psychological is all the same to them. They take no sides. There is an amusing passage where the authors compare the 'styles' of serious pagans, new agers, wiccans, freemasons and the thelemites and chaos magicians at the harder edge of the game so that 'choices' to dump Judaeo-Christian restriction and plump for an alternative have very many options that will fit many different types of personality.

Personally, I am a pagan-sympathetic observer with thoroughly chaotic and thelemite tendencies who is just a little resistant to the professionalisation of the latter. For me, this is a book of many possible techniques (and of many more in decades to come) by which persons, individuals, find their own ethical and 'spiritual' paths without benefit of authority.

Of course, there are traditions that do have hierarchies and grades (with freemasonry probably at the most extreme end of imposed order and secrecy) and weak personalities can be overwhelmed by strong personalities but the general trend of English magic is embedded in that very English blend of individualism and pragmatism that makes us strangely passive yet supremely stubborn if our Ancient Liberties are threatened.

My recommendation to the reader is to relax and let the book flow through you, taking notes of those techniques and cultures that most appeal to your nature. You can lay the book aside a bit better informed about what is on offer if you ever need something to give you meaning or explain the world better than scientific positivism (though intelligent magic, as the authors frequently suggest, is not incompatible with science by any means).

Or you can take up one of the traditions, follow through on a reference until it has served its purpose - and then find another for a new purpose later. Basically, make your search a pleasure not a chore - though the best results clearly come from immensely hard and focused labour. This is the real point of magical thinking - although the authors end the book with no less than 16 uses of magic, in essence the primary use is self development, finding your true nature and working it in the world.

Magic represents a radical democratic and yet oddly conservative tradition of resistance to being told who you are by authority of any type and yet it is not anarchic even at its most chaotic. It constructs an ethic from experience, an understanding of difference between persons (tolerance) and of what makes us all so similar (nature). It is certainly not a tradition for those who can think only in terms of either/or or in all-encompassing universals that dictate what roles we must play in the tide of history or before some fearsome patriarchal (or matriarchal) judgemental deity.

And one footnote about the English tradition. In much of the world, the new paganisms have grown because they have to say something to the unsure and disempowered (and this is clearly so with the spread in the US of neo-pagan ideas) but, in the UK today, the simple egalitarianism of the pagan revolution is expressed in the breadth of intellect and achievement that leavens and assists the paganism of the street.

As you read through the many testimonies in this book, you will see people with serious academic accomplishments rub alongside people whose status in society may be 'lowly' but who are accomplished in their abilities to see things the rest of us do not or in giving some sort of 'spiritual' service to others. The respect of each for all and of all for each is in marked contrast to cultures that 'look up to' priests, rabbis or imams and leave their spiritual thinking at the door of the church, mosque or synagogue.

This is not to denigrate the latter - they have their role as community religions which contain many strands of deep intellectual engagement, mysticism and consolation - but the structural difference (despite the High Priestesses and Grades of some advanced magical and pagan traditions) is that power comes from below instead from above. The wicked tantric Crowley was seeking to liberate his followers, even from their allegiance to him!

Highly recommended and enjoyable - a book I shall keep close by my desk for reference. show less

Philip Carr-Gomm is co-author of the excellent 'The Book of English Magic' which has been reviewed elsewhere by us on GoodReads. This is in the same vein - a measured and sympathetic account of what might be regarded as a human eccentricity that, on closer examination, suggests that it is the clothing convention and not nakedness that may be odder still. It is, as the title suggests, a history of nudity and nakedness but not in high art or in commerce (adult entertainment) or as sexual show more pehenomenon but as a spiritual, political and self-expressive tool, including comment on its use in the arts outside the academic tradition.

Like his book on magic (which is a masterpiece of its type), it is descriptive rather than analytical or theoretical but with a considerable number of good quality photographs. It avoids the prurient and each picture is directly relevant to the text. While not afraid to show the naked body beautiful where relevant, the book is heartening in showing the essential ordinariness of most expressions of the naked. Though not perhaps common in life except in the fantasy world of publishing, cinema and erotica, nakedness is multifaceted and filled with meaning for many people in their private lives, and in their occasional calculated 'outrages' in public life, as a form of liberation and defiance.

Carr-Gomm is a kind man with an open nature - or so this book and 'English Magic' would suggest - so the motives of the naked are mostly taken at face value as courageous and honourable. At one point, perhaps without realising precisely the import of what he is saying, he produces a devastating argument against the theoretical approach towards 'objectification' of the grumbling and humourless ideologues of post-68 feminism and Marxism. The fascinating short description of the the sense of empowerment given to life models and others who choose to make themselves apparently vulnerable by their nakedness suggests that, under certain conditions, objectification is positively liberating - and, of course, it is for free persons to decide what those conditions are. He confirms this as his own experience with all the diffidence of the true eccentric Englishman finding that transgression is a path to freedom. The general picture of the popular nude and of the naked is one of fun and wit rather than deadly purpose.

He also briefly explores the self-objectification by which people use a mirror to understand themselves better, referring back to Uwe Ommer's photography. What is apparently narcissistic is nothing of the kind if the observation is contemplative and meditative, sweeping away both negative body images and, ironically, the obsession with one's own looks in society. Mirror observation of the naked self has even, it would seem, been used in spiritual meditation. This book is thus another quiet blow for free individual choice against theory. Ordinary people have highly personal approaches to their own bodies. While many or most would prefer to stay clothed, those who do not clearly gain great psychological benefits from their freedom from restriction and display and are neither necessarily exhibitionist nor libidinous in doing so.

However, culture is everything and enforcing nakedness as humiliation is not forgotten either. Many examples from the Axis forces in the Second World War might have been chosen but to demonstrate the point, Carr-Gomm does not choose these or just the criminal thuggishness at Abu Ghraib but a grim photo of the victors of 1945 (that's us, folks) humiliating a Japanese prisoner of war by forcing him to scrub the deck of a battleship in front of the entire crew with photographers coldly relishing the moment for the 'folks back home'. A third photograph shows Corsican 'patriots' stripping and cutting the hair of a prostitute who made the mistake of earning her living from the occupiers - though we doubt if those who sold eggs and milk or conducted services in the local church were similarly treated. The lesson is that, while we expect totalitarians to act viciously, there is a callousness in humanity that knows no ideological boundaries.

Carr-Gomm is also effective in showing how innovative acts of nakedness by ordinary citizens and artists become manipulated by the PR industry into 'stunts', political as well as commercial, that diminish the meaning of individual choice and challenge. He does not dwell on this - perhaps wishing not to give them the oxygen of publicity himself (although Tesco's stunt in Hastings shows the inauthentic cowardice and shallowness of the marketing communications industry at its worst). The message is, however, clear that economic interests effectively steal creativity from the general public and create a sort of bored fatique with what should be something that is culturally more important than this. Commercial interests jade our palates with manipulative novelties that liberate no one ... and, indeed, the parade of naked bodies in this part of the book does raise a bit of yawn when compared to the preceding and fascinating section on spiritual or lifestyle nudism.

However, beyond the manipulation and exhibitionist self indulgence lies a more genuine struggle for the right of an individual to stand up to convention and choose not to cover their bodies. Carr-Gomm is on sound philosophical libertarian ground in implicitly defending these rights throughout the book. Indeed, one starts to wonder after a while why precisely even an erection should be regarded as intrinsically obscene if it just stands full and hard without harming anyone.

Authority throughout the world seems determined on doing more damage to the naked than the naked do to the world - unless an image in itself is counted as an assault which raises all sorts of questions in turn about what is public and what is private. If I arrest your body, I have to act with force in some way and clearly do harm so the harm that is done by me must be greater than mine to justify the force. But what is the harm in nakedness in itself except to 'feelings', sentiments, customs, habits and tradition? If I only strike your mind, simply by standing passively naked before you, then surely you striking my body to end the striking of your mind is a worse assault. It might be bad manners to stand naked before you but then might it not be bad manners to stand clothed before me. Bad manners, however, are a matter for social negotiation and not the law.

Similarly, Carr-Gomm raises the issue of what is exhibitionism, leading to the question of what precisely is wrong with it in its milder forms or, indeed, with voyeurism, if they are both 'worn lightly' and are not obsessive or pathological. Of course, in law, exhibitionism and the 'peeping tom' are disturbing to the 'victims' and perhaps we are in territory where the law does have something to say and with some force. People do have rights to privacy and perhaps to being not shocked inappropriately and out of context. But a lot of 'shock' is in the eye of the beholder and some shock shocks a person in a positive way, changing their world view in ways that open their eyes to their own manipulation and received ideas. A culture that avoids shock is like the dead hand of excessive health and safety legislation - a defensive anxious communitarian culture fearful of risk and distrustful of others.

There is a line to be drawn but perhaps we need to think about whether we draw it too tightly on the passive nudist and not tight enough on the crass commercial or special interest exploitation of shock to sell goods and services or manipulate the political process (although even here, commercial and political shenanigans can have creative and positive cultural effects). The book is recommended. show less

The Book of English Magic has languished for several years on my shelves, I picked it up once and began and put it down, who knows why. This time I persevered and I'm glad I did. Nowhere does this book plumb the depths, but that is not their purpose. The authors visit every kind of magic ever practiced in England (this is exclusively England, not Wales, not Scotland). Gradually one begins to see a country that has only ever uneasily accepted either pure religion or science (and the never the show more twain shall meet mentality). (Neighboring Wales and Scotland and Ireland too are similar, but they have their own traditions and histories re magic.) From pre-history to the Middle Ages the authors lay out the progression, from the scant leavings of the first residents, then Druids, Anglo-Saxons, the Arthur legends (which begin as a slender shoot, hardly more than a suggestion and grow and grow and grow until you have an immense many-limbed tree of myth and story). Around then practices of magic begin to take shape, black and white, herbal, alchemy, the quest for power, scrying, dowsing and on until you get to the late nineteenth century which blossomed with societies and factions and dramatic characters like Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley and ending with mention of some of the modern societies and some of their own words from practitioners, living or long gone. After each chapter the authors offer further reading, often fiction, and also places you can visit, things you can do, a way to make a charm, or the first steps of tarot reading . . . tastes. They make the point that magic as it is practiced today, attempts to (or seems to) fill the void (chasm?) between the bloody-mindedness of the pure scientific method and the rigidity that plagues (most) religions (I'm the right one, all you others have it wrong). Magic, too, offers so many choices to the person who is looking for a route to transformation -- there is no one right way, indeed, some are gifted in one area, not another, and for some of us there is choosing to be an armchair magician -- that is the person (like me!) who, while interested, is not drawn to any practice or any one mode but fascinated nonetheless, particularly by magic as a spiritual practice and route to transformation and to explore the dimensions of the human mind. For us, there is a huge bibliography. So this will be a reference work for me. Anyone interested in writing fantasy should avail themselves of the book and get busy reading the book and then the books in the bibliography. You can bet your booties that J.K. Rowling and Susannah Clarke did their homework.

I'll be back to tidy up, but for now, here you go! show less