Phil
Absolutely magnificent translation.
Reveals what surely must have been the true spirit of Homer, as rip-roaring tales, but told with high ideals and fine language.
I’ve tried several translations, and this is the first time I’ve got past about 20% of the book. Unputdownable.
Hmm. Even though I have Emily Wilson set as the “current edition”, this review seems to show up against some other edition.
The translation I’m talking about here is that of Emily Wilson.
Very disappointing I’m afraid. I thought that SRIA was a serious Rosicrucian order, and this is a supposed to be a collection of the best papers by its members. Sadly, they are mostly (though not entirely) nonsense.
There are no citations in the vast majority, and there are many, many unfounded claims, such as that it has been “scientifically proven” that people can see into the future.
It hasn’t.
And there are many, many such claims about the most ridiculous matters. It’s also full of “it is said”… it is said by who? Where? When?
It’s just a collection of lose fantasist new age Mumbai jumbo in the large. Terribly disappointing.
2 1/2 stars because there are one or two items worth a quick read.
a book with interesting content, but that reads like a first draft, and in some places like preliminary bullet notes. Extremely repetitive, awful grammar, no table of contents, and despite claiming academic rigour, not a single reference to sources in the text. It also claims that all quotes wil be properly cited, and there isn’t a single quote in the entire work
A good and potentially significant work seriously marred by the downsides of self-publishing. A professional editor could move this from one and a half stars, to five.
This is currently a “Did Not Finish”, but only because there is no way to pause a reading in Hardcover.
It’s a good book, with a lot of very good exercises to ease a newcomer to the ideas of meditation etc. into a very sound practice based on the symbology of Freemasonry.
However, I’m only just about to take my initiation into the first degree if Entered Apprentice, so I don’t want to read further until I have done this, as I don’t want any spoilers.
So it’s four stars for now, but this is a book to come back to over time, not one to simply read through start to finish, so my rating may change as I eventually work through it.
I first read this book in about 1987, and thought it was good.
Reading it again now, it seems largely quite poor. It rambles. It makes unsubstantiated leaps of “reasoning”. It makes mistakes of basic attributions to try to to get ideas to fit into a schema. It prints quotes passages without reference. It also references the Book of Dayan as if it were real, talks about UFO religion as if it’s valid and indulges in apologetics for Scientology
But by far the worst thing, though, is the authors brief excursion into bigotry and homophobia, with no apparent reason other than to make it clear that he is a proud hater of homosexuals.
I wish I’d not re-read it, as I’ve ruined a good memory from my youth. But then again, I’m glad I did, so that I can avoid ever recommending it.
Two stars for the facts that are accurate.
The only reason that I DNF’d this book is that the modern editions have extra content by the Cicero’s after the text of the original book. Whilst I’m sure this will be of high quality, it’s not what I’m interested in right now, which was simply to refresh myself in Regardie’s original work.
I will almost certainly come back to the rest at some future point.
I found this disappointing in the end. For years people in the occult community have mentioned it, and I'd been saving it for a time when I felt like some ocult fiction, for more than 30 years. Possibly more than 40.
It started well, and it showed some hope, but then it turned out to be only marginally occult-adjacent, and it felt like the author just ran out of steam and ideas, and wrapped it up in a 'mysterious' way, because he couldn't think where to take it.
When this book came out a few years ago, it indicated that the Golden Dawn tradition is actually still going strong... somewhere, somehow...
The contents are essential reading for anyone serious about the tradition, either from a historical or practitioner perspective, or both! The series is made up of individual contributions from a selection of prominent current day practitioners who are building on the original order work in a respectful and effective way. These people are the real deal, and it's well worth hearing what threy have to say.
I'm not one of them! And I don't personally know any of them (it's a secret society, after all), I'm just an enthusiastic reader.
I'm afraid I was disappointed and irritated by this book.
Disappointed because it started with promise. It was recommended to me on the basis of having re3ally enjoyed The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and the early-revealed future death of a key character, and academic setting, both seemed to hint at possibilities. The writing also, at first seemed promising. Sadly, it didn't quite turn out this way for me.
Unfortunately, what seemed amusing at first - the references to other works from all ages and genres - become incredibly irritating, and eventually seemed to be come the point of the novel - especially as it seemed to have little other point to it at all.
I'm afraid that where Tartt gets us (or at least got me) invested and interested in her characters as they grew (and shrank in various moral ways) throughout the book from very early on, the characters from Pessl remain vacuous and thin. By the time I reluctantly decided that this would become a DNF at bout 45% completion, I still didn't have the slightest bit of feeling for any single one of the characters.
Sad to say, the same can be said about the plot. For my personal enjoyment, a book must necessarily be strong in at least one of two areas: character development or plot. I'm afraid that where Pessl's characters are thin and underdeveloped, plot is simply non existent. Surely something other than 'geek has a hard time at school' should happen by mid way into a book that hasn't made much effort in character development?
Having said all of this, I actually suspect there is an audience who will absolutely love this book. The main character is obviously some kind of genius, and the genius she expresses no doubt is actually that of the author. Her (take that as either the character or the author) acquaintance with a staggering amount of reading, and ability to retain and recall the contents of that reading, is simply astounding. The explicit references that sprinkle the text are just the start of it. There are many subtle references also, that are not called out, and I suspect I'm only getting a relatively small portion of those.
So, it you enjoy books provide an exercise in reference-spotting, where you take the challenge posed by the author and revel in the battle, then this book may well get four or five stars from you, because this is full of such challenge. And if you do like that sort of thing, the characters and plot may well provide enough of a backdrop to keep things moving along for you. whilst you indulge in your primary interest of puzzling.
That's not for me, but it may well be for you.