The Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn
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So I read about half of this book at the request of a friend. I'm not planning to finish it because I'm not particularly fond of it, but I've got a pretty good bead on the nature of the book. Here's a quick sketch of what I think based on the first half:
Pros:
- The author's pretty ecumenical and eclectic; he doesn't seem to have many deep metaphysical commitments so he just kind of pulls from all over the place and even contemplates that some readers may be coming from an atheistic background (plus points for tolerance/lack of dogmatism)
- He strongly emphasizes practicing magick, in the sense that he doesn't believe in occult "bloodlines" or initiation as a gatekeeping function, but rather believes that magickal skills are just that: skills that can be developed through practice and he provides tons of exercises. That spirit of experimentalism is crucial to constructive engagement with the occult (plus points for encouraging healthy ideas about self-development)
- He clearly actually makes his living doing psychic readings and he talks about his work, but other than a link or two to his forums/website, I haven't seen any gross or blatant self-promotion; the book mostly seems genuinely focused on helping people who want to get into psychic activity/witchcraft (plus points for limited self-promotion at least in the parts I read)
- He seems, for lack of a better word, relatively sane for an occultist. He devotes meaningful space to describing techniques for staying grounded and avoiding burn out/obsession, which he frames in terms of self-care rather than as protection from marauding spirits, which I think is salutary (plus points for having a healthy attitude towards the occult).
Cons:
- The book leans hard into new age woo; there seems to be no weird new age trend he's not willing to dip into, and that kind of entirely uncritical "all you can eat" approach usually turns me off (e.g. binaural beats, auras, astrology, energy manipulation, all the way down to remote smelling aka "clairalience"). Not that some of those things can't be useful either as metaphors or directly integrated into an occult system/praxis, but some of them seem ridiculous even by occult standards. He also doesn't really do a lot of the needed integration work, he just sets all this stuff out on the buffet and suggests you try it, even though some of it seems obviously inconsistent with other parts. In short, the author doesn't seem to have a very coherent theory of how any of it "works" or even fits together. While the exercises are generally pretty interesting and some are pretty good, some of them seem less productive to me (minus points for taking the "Herodotus approach" to occultism)
- He's deeply focused on "psychic" phenomenon as much or more as he's focused on traditional magicakl/sorcerous activity. In my personal view occultism that focuses on divination or psychicism rather than actually trying to make change tends to be less useful and way more likely to make people weird. But that may just be an outflow of my own theoretical commitments and/or personal anecdata based on occultists I have known (minus points for focusing on occult seeing rather than occult doing)
- He has an iffy grasp of history and science and it shows when he engages on those subjects. That's hardly unique to him, it's a major problem with almost all occult authors, but depending on how developed a reader's grip on history/science is, some parts of the discussion may be misleading or confusing. I didn't see anything outright dangerous, just goofy. He does try to cite his sources, which is nice, but they're frequently other occult authors which is fine when he's discussing the theory and practice of witchcraft, but less fine when discussing history (minus points for intermittently talking out of his ass)
My bottom line:
This book is not my cup of tea, personally, but I don't think it's an Info Hazard either. It's easy to read and has some good exercises that might spark a deeper interest in the occult. While some parts are pretty questionable, it has a relatively healthy attitude about it all and encourages a "try for yourself" approach (rather than a "trust me" approach), which means it is, at worst, probably harmless.
Not recommended.