Llewellyn's Complete Book of Ceremonial Magick: A Comprehensive Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition (Llewellyn's Complete Book Series, 14)

93!This book is a must-have for anyone interested in Ceremonial Magick. The authors and editors herein are some of the best and brightest in the field. It has everything from a quick rundown of the history of Hermeticism and Ceremonial Magick, as well as an excellent introduction to theoretical and practical Qabalah, to rituals to get you started towards the Great Work. And sources are well sited for when you're ready to dig deeper. Best of luck on your magickal journey!Love is the law, love under will.

Update 4/11/2020 - The Kindle book has been updated and the issues have been resolved. I am changing my 1 star review to 5 stars. If you have the previous version with the issues below and are having trouble downloading the updated version, you may need to contact Amazon customer support and ask them to update the copy in your library. My preferences are set to 'Automatic Book Updates' but I did not get the updated version. Amazon customer service pushed the new version to my library without any issues.Preliminaries: This review is for the Kindle edition of Llewellyn's Complete Book of Ceremonial Magick: A Comprehensive Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition. Read on Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle for PC app.Review: The Kindle Edition is full of formatting issues. Some of the tables are unreadable. The Hebrew characters are almost squashed flat in some tables as to be unreadable - examples the Athbash Cipher and Aiq Bekar tables.There are numerous instances of numbers and words that run together without spaces. The numbers seemingly have no meaning in the text - examples “39Sepher ha-Bahir”, “200Who Wrote the Book of Abramelin”, etc.There are words that run together without spaces - some examples in the Kindle table of contents include “Book2: Qabalahby Anita Kraft & Randall Bowyer”, “Book 4: Alchemyby Dennis William Hauck”, “Book1: Foundations of Western Magicby Sam Webster”There are also blocks of text that are strangely formatted throughout the book. The block it seems is formatted around the text instead of the text being formatted to fit the block - so the block either expands or contracts based on the font or length of the text - example the header in each block is of a larger font so this gives every text block in the book a “T” shape.There is a special character in the section on Demonology & Spirit Evocation that is not sized correctly and takes up the entire screen. This character was probably inserted as an image. This error is a showstopper.There are too many formatting issues to list them all and I am sure there are more that I missed. When I came to the character that took up the entire screen I pretty much gave up on a detailed reading as it was too frustrating, so I scanned the rest of the book. I believe this book has great potential. Book 1 Foundations of Western Magic by Sam Webster is almost worth the price of the book alone. I have other books by almost every author included in this book and for some of the authors I have several. They are all experts in the field, so this book has potential to be a fantastic resource. The only thing holding it back is it’s poor formatting. Again this review is only for the Kindle edition of this book. I have not seen the hardback - it may not have any of these issues - therefore I would not hesitate to give it 5 stars. I do not recommend buying the Kindle Edition because of all the formatting errors. When the digital version of this book is corrected and I receive the update on my Kindle. I will be more than happy to come back and update this review.

This is a huge luxurious book full of authors I listen to in interviews so I was quite happy that it was on sale earlier this year. I'm not into ceremonial magic but I'm fascinated by the subject and the history behind it. But if I ever attempt to try, this book provides some secret information by the experts you won't find in other books. This book as a reference book and tip book can still be very useful towards what I do though. It's been a while since I read it though since I was busy with university courses and other aspects of life, so this review is quite late as I read it during the month of March of the year 2020. For any serious magician, I think the price is worth it for how much content you get. I didn't know that the hardcover would be signed and have a limited print number, with a tassel bookmark. I try to be extra careful with this book because of how expensive and valuable it is, which is extra difficult when living in a small apartment. This is the only book from the series I own because I would need some mad money to complete the Llewellyn collection, but this is also the only book that is full of authors I'm familiar with. The rest of the collection looks interesting though. I think this book contains some advanced tips for the experienced, but also useful for the beginner to know. It's like practical expert advice in the form of a high level introduction. It's actually difficult trying to describe this book but I would compare it to an introductory college textbook, huge and comprehensive to enable the success of the beginner but it's not entry level like the high foundation it would expect you to have gotten. It's also highly giftable of course. What I also like about this book is that it feels like a major step forward with new content, instead of just serving as a compilation of previous information. I'm not familiar with half of the authors though, so it was a nice way for me to get introduced to all of those new people for me through this companion guide. So I highly recommend this book as it is like the premier introductory textbook on ceremonial magic as you've got all of the best authors coming together in one book.

This book does an amazing job at breaking down ceremonial magic and provides a lot of information and there are also great tables with all sorts of correspondence.. this book is perfect for absolute beginner to ceremonial magic and is also a great read for someone that's been practicing for years

A refreshing overview of the many systems, their histories and correlation with other systems.Top authors.Wish i had this book 20 years ago

This was my first book on the subject (officially). Much of the material will be familiar to someone who already practices earth-based paths. The roots of modern witchcraft may be found in Ceremonial Magick. Of course, most of Ceremonial Magick is based on Kabbalah and the Judeo-Christian tradition. The section on pagan Ceremonial Magick was interesting. You have to appreciate the work and time put into the study and production of this material. As with all books of this type, you can adapt what you need to your own practice, and leave the rest.

The book is great. It would have five stars had it been properly packaged. Looks like someone manhandled it, or that it was used. Overall the book is good, just wish the packaging was done better.