Lon Milo DuQuette

I find Baba Lon's 'trickster' attitude a bit annoying, like it's more of a defense mechanism than a actual sense of humor. I also find his whole "Rabbi Lamed" persona and "Chicken Qabalah" vaguely culturally insensitive and again, defensive. That said the man is a scholar and impressive practitioner who tries his very best to lay some heavy concepts down. I always get something important out of his books.

In this little tome, Lon Milo DuQuette offers a palatable primer on the domestic practicalities of ceremonial magick. As is customary for this author's homespun style, there is a lot of autobiographical content to illustrate the principles he's setting forth, as well as simply to amuse the reader. In this particular case, however, the approach raises some opportunities for confusion.

Brother DuQuette is now an eminent senior member of the occult fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis, a fact about show more which he is humbly honest. His work as master of an O.T.O. lodge, and in coordination with other initiates, has been central to his development and history as a magician. And, as this book documents, most of that work was performed in his home. A reader could be forgiven for thinking that O.T.O. initiate bodies are supposed to be organized and operated in residential settings. In fact, as the Order has grown in the US over the last few decades, it has established non-residential facilities for lodges and oases, to the point where DuQuette's Heru-Ra-Ha was the last remaining US lodge of the Order to be sited in residential premises.

Still, most O.T.O. camps (the Order's most tenuous official level of local organization) continue to hold their activities in members' homes, and many other occult groups, formal and informal, operate mostly in residential spaces. DuQuette's account of his AMORC involvement is an important example in this regard, highlighting a different intersection of esoteric initiation and home ceremony. Ultimately, though, no one can become a magician if his or her magick is something that only happens at the lodge hall, the book shop, or the camping festival.

Anyway, read the book. Experienced magicians will enjoy the wealth of anecdote and personal history, while there is a lot of basic orientation to magical practice for beginners, and anyone can enjoy the glimpses of modern occult life. "There's no place like home" may be a sentimental tautology to the unthinking profane, or a profound insight into alienation for the neophyte. Meanwhile, for the adept, there's no place but home. show less

There sure have been a lot of books published on the topic of Enochiana--understood generally as the system of angelic magic derived from the work of the Elizabethans John Dee and Edward Kelly. I count over twenty in my personal library alone. Many of these are historical, focusing on the primary materials from Dee and Kelly; while others are practical, offering instructions to contemporary aspirants and practitioners. Never before has there been a book that combines the two in such an show more accessible and sensible manner.

Lon Milo DuQuette is a storyteller, and his understanding of magick demands, and thus offers, the narrative framework so often missing from not only the modern practitioner approach, but also that of the source text analyst. His tale synthesizes the confusingly atomized objects and texts of angelic magic, placing them in a developmental sequence, and assessing their importance in the origins and fulfillment of Enochian praxis. His story does not end in the 17th century: the book is full of anecdotes about his own work and that of other living magicians, characterized by the humor and humility that are DuQuette's trademark as an authority on esoteric subjects.

These stories are complemented by the necessary technical detail for anyone who wishes to use this book as a practical reference in actual work. And for those whose bent is toward research, the overview indicates all of the principal texts and topics of the angelic corpus, as the heads of so many fascinating trails. In my view, this book makes obsolete every previous "beginner" book on the topic, and is itself likely to hold a focal place in the bibliography for years to come. And along with its success as a primer, Enochian Vision Magick includes original reflection and inventive technique, so that veterans of the tablets and aires are sure to find food for thought among its pages. show less

The world is full (and fuller all the time) of grimoires, technical manuals on one or another school of esoteric technique, and primers on beginning magical practice. To the credit of author Lon DuQuette, Low Magick is none of these. It is instead a brief collection of mini-memoires, true stories of occult practice that demonstrate the contexts and motives for magical operation, as well as their means and effects. As such, it is something of a sequel to his earlier book My Life with the show more Spirits, although it presumes no familiarity with the previous volume.

The "Low" in the title is not to distance the work detailed in this book from the ceremonial style of magick, of which it is a signal, if slightly unorthodox, demonstration. It is rather "Low" in order a) to embrace an indictment once leveled against him by his mentor (15), and b) to place his practical engagement in counterpoint to the theoretical "High Magic" of Alphonse Louis Constant, one of his spiritual ancestors (9, 16-17). The magick in this book is the sort that gets its (suitably consecrated) hands dirty, and doesn't worry too much about what the neighbors think.

Consistent with his other recent books in the field, DuQuette here delivers both entertainment and sound instruction. This may be one of his best. show less