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1.: On Pagan Copyright Violators From: gaia_d

2.: The Spirit of Magic From: francis dashwood!

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1.: On Pagan Copyright Violators

Posted by: "gaia_d" Gaia_D@yahoo.com gaia_d

Sat Jun 4, 2011 9:11 am (PDT)

Hello Everyone --

I just read a post by someone offering "free" access to Pagan books --
And as i told him, unless he requested and obtained PERMISSION from the
authors or Copyright holders, he is VIOLATING both the Law and Pagan
ethics -- and he, the Group or website Owners where this material is
posted, and possibly where it's advertised -- can be SUED - This has
already happened to many copyright violaters, Groups and Group Owners on
Yahoo!

This STEALING of copyrighted material by Pagans, has become such a
serious, ubiquitious problem on the Internet, that i feel it imperative
to provide the following Information:

Here (below) are quotes from three different articles by well-known (and
beloved) Pagan authors, explaining the problem in depth: I hope each
and every one of us will take the time and effort to read these,
prayerfully/ meditatively consider them, and resolve to STOP STEALING
material, and DISCOURAGE OTHERS from doing so, whenever and wherever
it's found.

~Most Sincerely -

~Gaia

Pagans And Other People's Rights"

By Ellen Cannon Reed, at http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys4/rights.htm
<http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys4/rights.htm>

We pagans on our various paths are, among other things, striving
for attunement with the universe, with its cycles, its life forms, with
the God and Goddess who contain all. We recognize that the Lord and
Lady are within each of us, and we work (most of us) to become more
aware of Them, within us, and within each other.

It should follow, then, that the recognition of the God and Goddess
within ourselves and others should mean that we treat each other in a
way that honors that deity within, that we should realize that
everything that lives is a part of ourselves. We should treat each
other as we wish to be treated.

That, of course, is the ideal, something we strive for, and in many
cases, it is true. Yet there is one area where pagans are very careless
of other people, and often even flagrant about it! That occurs in the
area of copyright.

I have seen this law abused over and over, usually in small ways that do
not really harm the author. Many of us have copies of rituals, etc. in
our Books of Shadows. I don't think the authors are worried about that.
Where I have seen wholesale abuse is on computer bulletin boards.
BBS'ers seem to think nothing of typing up material written by someone
else, and, without permission, uploading it to a bulletin board where it
is often echoed around the country. While it is true that these people
usually include the author's name, and a copyright notice, they are
still violating the author's copyright.

There is one particular file that is the epitome of this practice.
Someone typed up most of the second half of Scott Cunningham's book
'Wicca: A guide for the solitary practitioner" as a Book of Shadows, and
placed in into the BBS network.

Some months ago, this file was mentioned, even recommended on a bulletin
board I call. When I left a message commenting that this was a clear
violation of Scott's rites, I was very surprised by the reactions. Some
people felt the file was perfectly legal because no one was making any
money from its distribution on the boards.

Before I continue, let me give a couple of definitions. These are from
the Chamber's Concise 20th Century Dictionary:

Copyright: the sole right to reproduce a literary, dramatic, musical or
artistic work, also to perform, translate, film,
or record such a work.

Plagiarist: One who steals the thoughts or writings of others and gives
them out as his own.

Publish: to proclaim, to send forth to the public, to put forth and
offer for sale books, newspapers, etc; to put into
circulation.

Copyright means exactly what it says. The owner of the copyright,
usually the author, has the right to say who can copy it. It means that
just putting the author's name and the copyright notice is not enough,
*unless* you have the author's permission to copy it.

This file was illegal because it "put into circulation" a work that was
protected under copyright. (This file is still illegal. It comes to
mind because Scott has found out about it and expressed his displeasure,
not only at its distribution, but at the fact that, in some cases, it is
being presented as his personal Book of Shadows.)

"Well," you say. "What's the big deal? It doesn't hurt him. It isn't
like it's a violation of the Ethic or anything."

Isn't it? If it stops someone from buying a book, that hurts the
author. It means that s/he does not receive the money to which s/he is
entitled.

Another caller was indignant that authors of pagan material should
object to having their material distributed in this way, even if it did
lose them money. According to this caller, the most important thing
was that the material be distributed to all who wanted it. He seemed to
feel that pagans were entitled to this material because they were
pagans. He stated that if he wrote articles, etc., he certainly would
make sure that anyone who wanted a copy would get it, and he wouldn't
care about getting paid for it. (The key word here is "if." The caller
wasn't a writer.)

So, just because you are a pagan, you are entitled to get pagan
material. If you can't afford to buy the book, just download the file,
right? Wrong. To put it bluntly, my friends, this is stealing.

Pagans who would never consider stealing an object another pagan had
created seem to feel that the creator of a book or an article is fair
game. No matter that authors have invested time, and effort into their
work, that they may have spent money on research materials, that they
may have worked at a part time job in order to have time to write. No
matter that an author receives very little of the money a book costs.
Their rights mean nothing to someone who wants that ritual, that herbal
knowledge, that invocation.

……

….<snipped for brevity>

We fight for the right to practice our religion, to be who we are. Many
pagans fight for the rights of minorities, for a woman's right to
control her own body, and other such causes. And yet, so many pagans
are careless about stealing an author's work. Does this make sense to
you?

Many of us have written articles and such that are freely distributed.
This is our gift to you. If these have given you pleasure or
knowledge, all well and good. Please

Honor that by honoring our legal and ethical rights. It takes many
hours of work to produce a book, an article, or an invocation. Please,
don't steal those hours.

Give us the same consideration you give those pagans who produce
tangible objects.

Ellen Cannon Reed

Note: All that is legally necessary for a work to be protected by
copyright is the proper copyright notice on the work, i.e., "Copyright,
year, author's name."

Note: Copyright 1992 Ellen Cannon Reed.

· * * * * *

"Freedom of Information

And Supporting Pagan Creators"

- © 2001 By Isaac Bonewits,

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usny&c=fritz&id=3063
<http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usny&c=fritz&id=3063>

…I recommend good books by other authors because there are so few of
them, because I feel that authors deserve support from their colleagues
as well as from their readers, and because it is important to every
subculture (which Neopaganism still is) to support its own "economy."

Most readers have only the vaguest ideas of how authors earn their
livings, often assuming that published ones are naturally wealthy. They
get these ideas in part from news stories about "best selling" authors
getting huge book advances and/or selling movie rights for millions of
dollars or pounds; unaware that only one writer in ten-thousand ever
sees more from her or his writing than the original book advance of a
few hundred or thousand dollars or pounds.

I'm lucky in that my best known book, Real Magic
<http://www.neopagan.net/IB_Books.HTML> , has been in and out of print
for almost thirty years, generating a trickle of royalties three years
out of five. Yet with roughly 250,000 copies sold around the world, in
three languages that I know of (English, Dutch & Russian), my total
direct income from the book during those thirty years has been
….about ten cents per copy.

Another source of the myth that published authors are rich is the fact
that, for centuries, only those who were wealthy (or subsidized in some
fashion) could afford to spend their time writing. This has been true
even throughout the last several decades. I remember being told often by
my friend Randall Garrett, a science fiction author, that the three
things a writer most needed were, "a tweed suit, a briar pipe, and a
spouse with a steady income!"

"Ah, but what about those speaking fees famous authors get?" I hear
someone asking. Steven King, Danielle Steele, or New Age superstars may
receive thousands of dollars or pounds for speaking gigs or seminars,
but lesser known authors receive proportionately lesser fees (for mine,
see my Presentations <http://www.neopagan.net/IB_Presentations.HTML>
page). The reason you see so many Pagan and other authors dragging books
to festivals, or hawking psychic readings there, is because the usual
Neopagan festival or speaking event pays far less than the author would
have earned staying home and cranking out a few more pages. At the end
of most festival seasons, Neopagan authors and speakers usually find
ourselves having lost more money than we've received.

Some of the reasons for these results have to do with the "poverty
consciousness" so popular in the Neopagan community, which I've
discussed at length elsewhere. But many have to do with the basic
anti-intellectualism of American (and I suspect, Australian) culture.
After all, a speaker is "just talking," and anybody can do that! The
idea that printed or spoken words could have any real monetary value is
alien to most people, in large part because they do not perceive the
years of effort that go into learning the craft of writing and speaking
well, or the hours of painful sweat that can go into writing a single
chapter or one-hour speech.

So why do Neopagan creators keep writing and speaking? For most of us,
it's because we love our deities, our planet, and our communities enough
to live at a "lifestyle" far lower than we could earn otherwise if we
were, for example, holding down the kinds of well-paying "blue-collar"
and "white-collar" jobs that most Neopagans have. Many Neopagan clergy
who aren't writers, teachers or musicians make the same decisions,
literally sacrificing comfort and financial security for their vocation.

Members of many mainstream religious communities, whether rich or poor,
would be deeply ashamed if their clergy lived at standards significantly
below that of the average member of their congregations. Yet this is one
topic on which most Neopagans seem willing to be "shameless."

In recent months, I've been reading articles in magazines and online
about the "freeware" and "shareware" movements among computer software
writers, as well as the arguments pro-and-con concerning the downloading
of music and video files on the Net. There are now major controversies
over the very concepts of "copyrights" and "intellectual property," with
creative artists, consumers, and corporations taking diverse and often
strident positions.

"Shareware," for those of you new to the Net, refers to computer
programs that one can download and try out before buying. The assumption
is that users who like the software will be willing to pay what they, or
the software authors, consider "a fair price" (or a small donation to a
worthy nonprofit cause), which is usually much lower than equivalent
commercially produced and distributed software would cost. Shareware
originally worked on an "honor system," and some still does. "Freeware"
refers to programs that are put out on the Net with no return expected,
other than perhaps postcards, user feedback, and opportunities for
programmers to improve their skills and earn reputations with which they
can later build professional careers.

Freeware authors generally had no complaints about a lack of money for
their efforts, and I suspect that most were and are subsidized in some
fashion, by their parents, schools or employers. Shareware authors,
however, quickly learned that honor systems didn't generate much income,
perhaps because individuals have such varying ways to define "honor." So
they gradually began to offer multiple versions of their shareware, with
additional functions, documentation, or technical support requiring
users to pay varying fees (I don't know if they got this idea from
commercial software publishers or vice versa).

Based on the concepts of freeware and shareware, as well as political
and philosophical theories (such as those of Richard Stallman
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/> ) of free information exchange, some
people on the Net began to say that all information should be freely
available, including digitized audio and video information -- hence the
controversies over the online trading of copyrighted music and video
files. These mirrored in many ways the arguments about photocopying of
books and periodicals in the 1980s and 1990s. Publishers weren't too
thrilled about the invention of the photocopy machine, while students,
researchers and collectors were delighted. Similarly, cassette and video
taping technology were controversial, at least until the music and film
industries figured out how to make money through using them. It's been
suggested that the music industry and its big name performers will stop
fighting MP3 technology as soon as they find a way to make significant
money from it.

Left out of most of these controversies, at least once they were
"settled," were the non-superstar creators whose books, songs, and
performances were copied, by individual "users," without a penny going
to those creators. Some creators weren't bothered at all, considering
unpaid copies to be sources of advertising that could build a following.
Others felt that at least their "out-of-print" works were still reaching
an audience (as I did during the years when Authentic Thaumaturgy
<http://www.neopagan.net/IB_Books.HTML> was available only in
photocopies). I strongly suspect, however, that most of us felt just a
little bit "ripped-off" each time someone copied our work because they
were simply too stingy to buy it (as distinct from being genuinely
poor). That dollar or pound of income per book, or half that per tape,
isn't much of a loss for a creator perhaps, but multiply it by hundreds
or thousands of readers and it begins to have a real impact on his or
her life. That missing money could have paid for new research materials,
new instruments, classes to gain new skills, travel to gain new
insights, or simply blessed time to think and create. For us "minor"
authors, artists, speakers, and performers, tiny losses add up over time
to big setbacks…. which kill careers and … limit the amount of
work we accomplish in our lifetimes.

Getting back to philosophy for a moment (away from that messy "real
world" stuff), it seems to me that many of the ideas now being discussed
about freedom of information contain some (deliberate?) confusion
between the different kinds of information that exist, some of which (a)
should be openly available to all, and some of which (b) needn't be or
even (c) shouldn't be. As examples of just these three categories (of
the dozen or so categories that could be delineated), I would offer (a)
basic scientific/historical information, or evidence of
corporate/government/military crimes, (b) medical techniques, poetry,
fiction, or personal memoirs, and (c) instructions on making weapons of
mass destruction. Remember, "all or nothing" arguments are rooted in
Christian Dualism, not the "real" world. The fact that subtle
distinctions may need to be made between differing kinds of information
and audience does not justify tossing those distinctions out of your
philosophy because they'd require work to define and teach.

At one point, a reader and I were discussing the Freenet
<http://freenet.sourceforge.net/> and its system of decentralized,
distributed file storage on the Net. That system essentially makes it
impossible to ever suppress information once it's loose. Unfortunately,
it also makes it impossible to ever enforce a copyright or patent
anywhere in the world. As an author, this means that any of my work on
the Freenet would never go "out-of-print," and I would never again have
to deal with a publisher in order to get my thoughts shared with the
world. It also means that anyone could impersonate me and publish items
under my name, or plagiarize me, and I would have no recourse. Also, I
would not necessarily ever see a penny of payment for my works, no
matter how many people downloaded and used them.

As I told the reader I mentioned earlier, "Letting the authors get
ripped off by readers instead of by publishers isn't much of an
improvement. From what I know of the Freenet idea so far, it provides no
financial incentive at all for writers to write, and thus is a backward
step to the days when only the idle wealthy could afford to write."

To which he replied, "I have optimism and faith in humanity. People will
give you $1 when they read an essay (I would). Of course, it's my faith
in humanity that gets me in trouble..." So I decided to take his
suggestions and give them a try. In early October of 2000 c.e., I gave
visitors to my website the option to click a graphic and donate small
sums of money to me, assuming that they had found something on my site
that they thought was worth that amount to them. This required them to
have a credit card and an account with PayPal.com
<http://www.paypal.com/> , but I figured that most visitors already had
cards, the account set-up process takes very little time, and they could
always snailmail me a small sum if they preferred. With over 1,500
visitors to my site daily in October (250+ visitors daily in the other
eleven months), even a one percent response rate would generate more
than enough income to justify setting the system up.

How well did it work? Since I put the donation boxes up my website
(especially the Real Origins of Halloween
<http://www.neopagan.net/Halloween.HTML> essay) has received nearly
100,000 visitors. As of late January 2001, the 0.02% --
one-fivethousandth -- response ratio and average amount (of roughly $1
per 1,000 visitors) donated has remained steady. Unfortunately, I can't
afford to keep this website going for much longer at that rate.

I say this not to whine, nor to embarrass anyone, but to point out that
there are some unseen holes in anti-copyright theory. Most Westerners
(some would say, most humans) use money as the rock-bottom measure of
all value. Things that are a high priority in our lives are the things
we spend money on, or give money to; things that aren't, we don't. I've
often suggested that we could build or buy Neopagan temples in every
city in the U.S. and Canada, if we simply collected one piece of silver
jewelry from every Neopagan at every festival for one year. Yet, the
very same people who "can't afford" to donate to a Neopagan temple or
community center or other organization on a regular basis, have no
problem buying science fiction books, videos, comics, beer, pizza,
jewelry, fancy ritual tools, robes, etc., etc. This is not a pattern
unique to Neo-paganism -- almost every nonprofit organization or
movement tells the same tale. People generally have money for those
things that bring comfort, pleasure and ego-gratification. Everything
else has to wait in line and hope for the best.

I suspect that most people on the Net, whether Neo-pagan or not, if
given a choice between giving small sums of money to deserving strangers
they will never meet, just because it's the right thing to do, or else
keeping the money to buy toys or gifts for themselves or their friends,
will do the latter. This pattern will become even more evident on the
Net as going online becomes ever easier for the foolish, uneducated and
shortsighted -- after all, most of the people intelligent and wise
enough to understand long term consequences have already been on the Net
for a few years. Yes, I know that's terribly un-P.C. of me to say, and
no, I'm not thinking of those of you who are genuinely poor and were
only able to get a computer, and hence online, recently because you had
to wait for them to get cheap.

We Neo-pagans like to think of ourselves as smarter, more creative and
more complex than those who belong to more conservative religions, and
by and large most of us are (another un-P.C. fact). Multi-model
theories, pluralism, ambiguity, and polytheology are not easy for most
Westerners to grasp, which is yet another reason why we frighten
fundamentalists of all persuasions. But the dualism which underlies
mainstream Western culture still influences our daily thinking and
feeling patterns. We still fall into habits based on the fantasy that
matter and spirit are separate, and that artistic, creative, and
spiritual activities happen in a different world than rent checks and
grocery bills.

I'm not the only Neopagan leader or author to notice all this. Fritz
Jung, who with his partner Wren runs witchvox.com, spoke about this in
an essay called, "Community Support, Does it Exist?"
<http://www.witchvox.com/fritz/community_support.html> a couple of
years ago. As he said in last year's update, "Not much has changed... We
all still struggle to find the cash to do this kind of work. As
predicted, several good folks that used to do this work, simply went
away." Also on the witchvox.com site is an essay by author Maggie
(Benson) Shayne called, "Writers, Farmers, Witches and Copyright"
<http://www.witchvox.com/fritz/plagiarism.html> , in which she focusses
on the casual plagiarism that so many Neopagans engage in, saying, "I
would like to see the Pagan community take a stand against the wanton
abuse of its own best and brightest."

Prolific Neopagan author Patricia Telesco wrote me, "It amazes me that
people forget we work for every cent we get in royalties. They don't see
us in front of our computers or scouring over research books for upward
of 500 hours to write just 200 pages of text. They're not in our kitchen
when we blurily make coffee after being up late so we can write when the
little ones don't want fruit, snacks or a story. Our families, friends,
and co-workers often give up a great deal of time with us just so we can
pursue this passion -- and give something lasting to the community.
...The bottom line comes down to serving those that serve before we
loose our teachers, our leaders and our elders to burn out. If we value
their wisdom and insights, we will begin to share the load."

Sisters and brothers, your authors, musicians, speakers, webmasters,
organizers and clergy can not live on blessings and goodwill alone.
Please, buy their books, tapes, CDs and videos instead of stealing
copies. Donate to those groups and websites who provide valuable
services. Go to your high priestess' house and do her dishes once in a
while, or watch her kids for an evening, or in some other fashion give
her the gift of free time --

-- Which in some circumstances can be even better than money! And
please, stop criticizing authors or teachers for the "crime" of reaching
out to "newbies" and "Baby Pagans" -- it's a lot more work than it
seems, and we were all beginners, once upon a time....."

(End quoted material by Isaac Bonewits, at Witchvox Articles -

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usny&c=fritz&id=3063
<http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usny&c=fritz&id=3063>

* * * * *

The Internet, Paganism & Copyrights.

© Patricia Telesco, - http://www.witchvox.com/fritz/tipe.html
<http://www.witchvox.com/fritz/tipe.html>

Author: Patricia Telesco [a WitchVox Sponsor]
Posted: April 17th. 2004

Ok, let's face it - Pagans are pretty trusting folk. We love to network.
We love to share and exchange information. So, it's not surprising that
the internet seems to be our media of choice. Within moments a piece of
neopagan news can travel the world. Sadly, within those same moments
pieces of intellectual property can also be stolen -- sometimes
knowingly, sometimes with good intentions, and sometimes not.

"Knowing" examples are the worst offenders. They'll grab things from
anywhere, including brand new pieces posted here at vox, and slap them
on their site. When called to task they claim "no harmful intention" or
that "they didn't know" it was a copyright issue. The reality is that if
any website is surfing for information on a weekly basis and taking it
without proper permissions or credits -- the word is STEALING, plain and
simple. And it should not be tolerated. Unfortunately this is happening
so much that it takes a lot of eyes and hands to monitor the internet
and alert people to potential problems. It takes even more eyes and
hands to resolve that problem.

The Knowing without good intention is typically a power-hungry person
looking to cast aspersions on a person or organization with whom they
have issues (or worse of whom they're jealous). Person or group A or B
have a falling out, and all of a sudden items are taken out of context,
reposted, and all hell breaks loose. Folks, this has ruined communities
and people's lives. If you don't have viable proof of what you're
stating - don't post it. Going one step further -- Before you expose
everyone in and around a group's or person's life to your ire try and
handle it privately. This is a whole new type of witch war, and it's
nasty.

The "Good Intentioned" site is one that's trying to educate, but either
doesn't realize the legalities involved, or feels that so long as no
money exchanges hands -- "it's all good." Well, it's not all good; in
fact, it's very very bad. You're not only exposing yourself to potential
litigation, but you're also robbing people of credit, and often their
hard earned money. Dispite rumors to the contrary, authors on and off
the internet are not making a fortune. Many are barely paying their
bills like everyone else.

With the internet growing at leaps and bounds it seems prudent to remind
ourselves of netiquette (not to mention laws) that govern the use of
material on a website (no matter the source of that material). I have
some basic GUIDELINES that I use:

1. If you wish to link to a site - ask first, and find out what logos or
descriptions are acceptable.

2. If you want to quote a book or a site - ask first and find out what
permissions and notations are required.

3. Building on two - make sure you find out HOW a person wishes to be
quoted in terms of their name and bio (not everyone can be out of the
broom closet).

4. If you're copying things off the net into your BOS or other
notebooks, please write down the source of your materials with due
dilligence. There have been hundreds of times when people take something
from a "friend's BOS" - post it - and then the firefight ensues because
it belonged to someone else.

5. Look at websites before you even think about copying anything
elsewhere. Most will have specified rules of conduct that govern the
site. Treat it like you would someone's home -- follow the rules... and
if you mess up, you clean up!

6. Never, never assume and always try to get to the first source of a
piece. Witchvox is a great example. They request that articles provided
to them (like this one) remain uncopied for one month. After that time,
the writer can post the piece on the web or anywhere else they wish. So,
you need to contact the writer NOT witchvox for permissions and credit
info on this point. In fact, witchvox can't grant those permissions at
all! Such is often the case on other websites as well.

7. With point six as a jump-off point - KNOW YOUR SOURCE AND TRUST IT. I
have sometimes had to go through dozens of emails just to get ONE
confirmed reply from the right person or persons. To me, ethically, this
is well worth the effort. It honors the source and it respects
everyone's intellectual property.

8. Groups: if you're hosting a group at Yahoo, MSN or whatever - know
their Terms of Service (TOS) backward and forward. Know who to contact
in times of trouble. Know how to resolve problems. If you have read the
TOS and understand it, you're far less likely to make any of the errors
that could get you in hot water in the community or legally. As a side
note, if you can develop a relationship with someone in those
Administrative group roles, resolving problems becomes much simpler.
Usually a little professionalism, saying please, and thankyou go a long
way to making this happen (you have no idea how abused these people
get).

9. If you see potential copyright infringement - first as the moderator
or owner. Find out if they have permissions (now, some will lie about
this -- so also take step two). Also ask the perceived owner of the
piece if they have granted permission and if the proper credits were
provided. If you don't know how to reach them, find someone who can help
you. When it turns out that there is a breach of the TOS report it
yourself, knowing however that the OWNER of the piece must lodge a
formal complaint for anything (usually) to get done.

10. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Many times when copyright is an
issue people just hope no one will notice or just give up after a while.
Dilligence is the key to "fixing" this issue in our community.

In Service.

Patricia Telesco,
Pagan Author
April 19th., 2004 c.e.
Email: trish@loresinger.com <mailto:trish@loresinger.com>
WebSite: www.loresinger.com <http://www.loresinger.com/>

Bio: Patricia Telesco is the mother of three, wife, chief human to 5
pets, and a full-time professional author with more than 30 metaphysical
books on the market. These include Goddess in my Pocket, the
Futuretelling, The Herbal Arts, Kitchen Witch's Cookbook, Little Book of
Love Magic, Your Book of Shadows, Dancing with Devas and other diverse
titles, each of which represents a different area of spiritual interest
for her and her readers.

Trish consideres herself a down-to-earth, militant Kitchen Witch whose
love of folklore and world-wide customs flavor every spell and ritual.
While her actual Wiccan education was originally self trained and self
initiated, she later received initiation into the Strega tradition of
Italy, which gives form and fullness to the folk magic Trish practices.
Her strongest beliefs lie in following personal vision, being tolerant
of other traditions, making life an act of worship, and being creative
so that magic grows with you.

ABOUT...

Patricia Telesco

Location: Amherst, New York

Author's Profile: To learn more about Patricia Telesco - Click HERE
<http://www.witchvox.com/vn/vn_detail/dt_pa.html?a=usny&id=99809>

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Messages in this topic (1)

2.: The Spirit of Magic

Posted by: "francis dashwood!" francisdashwood@hotmail.co.uk the108steps

Sat Jun 4, 2011 9:11 am (PDT)

The Spirit of Magic

`…..I held a new sword in one hand, and in the other the ritual. I kindled two fires…and began reading the evocations of the ritual in a voice at first low, then rising by degrees…and as the flame again burst up, I beheld distinctly before the altar the figure of a man of more than normal size, which dissolved and vanished away…'

(Levi: `Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie')

Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant) is famous for his exquisitely written works on the history and practice of High Magic. In the middle of his career, in July 1854, he was invited to London to perform a magical evocation of a phantom, that of Apollonius of Tyana the ancient Greek magician and philosopher.

Given as a lecture at the Hell Fire Club, this is an account of the legendary Apollonius and the nature and origin of the obscure ritual used by Levi over three weeks isolated study, prayers and intense fasting.

First edition limited to:

36 copies bound in quarter black goatskin with emerald cloth, scarlet title label with Eliphas Levis pentagram, scarlet endpapers.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0050NQSB2

777 copies bound in French navy cloth with a scarlet title label bearing Levi's pentagram design and scarlet endpapers.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0050NRWM6

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