Good Stuff in Self-Publishing

I’m working on a couple of things, and a fairly big announcement in a week or so.  In the meantime there are some opportunities to buy valuable magical books at a reasonable price right now at Lulu.com. There have been some discussions about the relative merits of self-publishing, and I’ll just point out some serious folks who use on-demand self-publishing (and some good deals available now). I use Lulu.com, and that’s the catalog I notice things in...

(Incidentally, Lulu has a free Shipping offer right this minute, until sometime 2/21/14.)

1: Western Magic Classics: For the Western Magic folks somebody is reprinting the complete Golden Dawn collection of Israel Regardie, in two hardback volumes for prices reminiscent of 1990. Likewise Crowley’s ‘Equinox’ is available in 10 volumes plus the ‘blue’ volume, for $30 each in hardback. Great deals. I assume these must be public domain, or that they won’t be there forever.

   Also, Francis King’s “Secret Rituals of the OTO” is available at a very modest price.

2: Celtic: “Dance of Oak and Wren: Rites of Draiocht” is a collection of ritual material by Celtic Reconstructionist Robert Barton. I just received it, but a quick look reveals a table of ritual phrases in each and all modern Celtic languages that, alone, is worth the book’s modest price. What, no hardback?

   Morgan Daimler has been prolifically generating short Celtic and Druidic books for Moon Books, but has a selection up in self-pub land as well. I just enjoyed her fantasy-romance novel, Murder Between the Worlds quite a lot. She’ll be a guest as the Wellspring Gathering this year.

3: New Western Material: In my own continuing commitment to self-publishing I am pleased to see a big-name like Nick Farrell using a direct service like Lulu.com. He has recently published what looks like a core work on Cabalistic angelic magic, “The Shem Grimoire”. While I’m entirely removed from that mythic system these days I am interested to see the results of a modern magician’s own research and practice.

That’s the exciting part to me. The ‘occult revival’ has been cooking in the west for some 60 years. People my age (I’m a young Boomer) have spent our lives doing occult work, devising new rituals and revising old ones. The technology available now allows us to begin writing this stuff down and sharing it. There are many more (a quick search reminds me of IAO131, Denise Alvarado, and Jason Newcomb) All of those are producing professional publications with content of value. I’m sure there are many more. I think that we’re in a golden age of occult research, development and publication right now. Sure there’s lots of dross, but we must keep panning.

4: Don’t forget Me. My work attempts to fill in some blanks in modern Pagan occult techniques with material from late-pagan high magic and its inheritors.

And just to add some socially redeeming value to this chat, I’ll encourage you, dear reader, to pursue the same path if you have the inclination. In the old left-wing days we used to say “Read; Think; Write; Speak.” For a magician we must replace ‘think’ with ‘work’, I suppose, but the general formula still stands. Take notes, write down your rites, think about the results and write something for the rest of the occult world. The worst that will happen is that you’ll get a book with your name on it.