Product Description

For the practicing Magician, there is no more crucial working knowledge than the Kabbalah. This complex structure serves as the backdrop against which the magician's thoughts, ideas, ritual and ceremonial work are placed, and is the archetype which breathes life into secret occult practices. Yet, none of the numerous books on 'Qabalah' give those 'on-the-spot' attributions, correspondences and key concepts in a 'user-friendly' style. Until now. And The Kabbalistic Handbook gives you even more. It includes never-before-published techniques that enables Western Magic---including Golden Dawn Magic---to work flawlessly every time! Never again will you need to wade through voluminous chapters of many different books looking for the Kabbalistic information you need. In addition, you will have a course of instruction that will enable that knowledge to work for you as never before. The field is cleared for your main objective: the realization of your desires, manifested through properly executed ritual and ceremonial work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #589749 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
This is the first book every aspiring magician should study. --Mark Stavish, Director, Institute for Hermetic Studies

Mark Stavish, Director, Institute for Hermetic Studies
This is the first book every aspiring magician should study.

About the Author
Joseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D. is a noted physicist involved in the study of the Relativistic SpaceTime Continuum, and the new physics that is exploring possibility of physical time travel. A personal friend and student of both Israel Regardie and the famous Alchemist, Frater Albertus for many years, his numerous published papers on both of their teachings, and on his own forty years of practice in both Magic and Alchemy, has helped many along their own Paths. His long personal and professional association with C.S. Hyatt is also well known in Occult circles.

Customer Reviews

Essential reading, regardless of exaggerated credentials
Despite my criticisms of Lisiewski's methods of self-promotion (exaggerating his credentials as a "noted physicist", boosting his book's ratings with positive reviews using fake accounts), nonetheless his work itself has some merit, and this book in particular, because it demonstrates very lucidly the process of Kabbalistic analysis, or for that matter, of the education and growth process in general.

This book presents a basic framework for developing the intellectual foundation necessary to work effective ceremonial or ritual magic, both coordinating it's insights with a number of other essential books (Agrippa's "Three Books", Griffin's "Ritual Magic Manual" etc.), as well as summarizing the basic information about the Sephira, Paths and attributions on the Tree of Life. It truly poses as both a basic instruction manual and a working handbook to refer back to constantly in your process of analysis and ritual construction.

The prose is extremely dry, and Lisiewski has a habit of repeating himself without sufficient variation that one often bores of his particular turns of phrase; he also has a pretty misanthropic overall attitude and tone - one often gets the feeling he not only hates most everyone he met before, but probably would hate you too, unless you do exactly as he says. He's sorta the polar opposite of Lon Milo Duquette (another of Christopher Hyatt's publishing buddies, and someone I am personally acquainted with and like), but not in a good way. If those two could collaborate on instructional material... then we might have something!

But if you can ignore Lisiewski's attitude problems and questionable integrity in how he markets himself, then at least this book "Kabbalistic Handbook" will provide significant guidance and insight for building up your own practice.

Magical Sourcebook
This book is a veritable sourcebook of knowledge relating to ritual magic. Aside from the great amount of information relating to a number of areas (including an amazing practical use for the tarot trumps), this book covers indepth a system of ritual analysis that will add an unbelievable amount of power to all that is lacking in GD type magic. Armed with this analysis the magician is able to gain a deep understanding of the ritual to be performed and greatly enhances their own subjective synthesis as a consequence. The "Kabbalistic Handbook for the Practicing Magician" should be on the bookshelf of every true magician!

Flawed approach to ritual analysis
Thank you to Dr. Lisiewski for emphasising to all the need for detailed analysis of rituals. Too many practitioners often have holes in their understanding or have never taken the time to perform a detailed analysis of rituals they perform every day. Lisiewski uses the analysis of Symbolism as the approach but for the record this it NOT the only approach. Analysis of Function is also a legitimate approach, which was advocated by the likes of Whare Ra.

Using Lisiewski Symbolic analysis of the LBRP as an example he wanders down the path of making asserting like: "we use banish Earth Pentagrams therefore they are using to banish Earth", "Pentagrams are blue therefore they are related to Chesed". His logical reasoning is flawless however both these assertions are incorrect. Everything in Golden Dawn rituals has a very practical function and there is very little which is Symbolic. This is well understood within Golden Dawn circles in the UK, New Zealand and Australia - less so in the USA.

I suggest you read authors like Pat Zalewski or Nick Farrell for more no this point of view.
My honest opinion as to why Lisiewski failed as a GD magician is because his approach to rituals was flawed and so he had "no results".

Good book :)