I was really intrigued when Carroll released a new book on chaos magic. The Apophenion is the introduction to a goddess, more space/time specualtation, theory, and practice from Carroll, an exploration of the multi-mind and much more. It is a book worth picking up if you're into chaos magic or experimental magic, or if you're curious as to how someone who has training in math and science is applying that training to magic.
What I liked about the book was Carroll's succinct explanations of his theories about time magic and the multi-mind. I also liked his explanation of Apophenia and how one can work with her. I already consider her a deity of space/time workings from his description of her. I will note that the Apophenion is mainly a book of theory and that it assumes that readers already know a good deal about magic. Any practical applications of it, are left entirely in the hands of the readers to produce.
With this book, Carroll charts new path for chaos magic, while also updating readers on his own work. I highly recommend it as an inspiring and thought-provoking read.
The Inner Smile is a book entirely devoted to the inner smile meditation technique developed by Mantak Chia. Chia discusses some of the basics of chi and Taoist energy work and then proceeds to describe how the inner smile technique works. His perspective is that using the inner smile can be used to bring emotional happiness to the internal organs of the body.
While I think this is a good book, my main problem with it is that pretty much all of the material can be found in his more advanced books. While he does seem to go into a bit more depth about the inner smile meditation technique in this book, it doesn’t, in my opinion, justify a completely new book to explain the practice. It feels like he’s trying to milk these topics for everything he can get, when he might better serve his readers by combining some of the related topics into a larger book. The consistency of how much he repeats his other works diminishes the value of this book and his other writing.
I’d recommend this book for someone who’s just learning about Taoist breathing and energetic techniques and wants a light introduction to it. However, I can’t really recommend it to anyone else, because the majority of the information is available in all of this other books.
This book really impressed me. I liked Palmer's style of writing, which was direct and to the point, but also very approachable. His use of anecdotes to explain his various experiences, both good and bad, with different styles of leadership also made me very comfortable with the subject material of the book. Additionally, he wasn't afraid to use the stories that other leaders had to offer.
However what really makes this book work is Palmer's diverse experiences with different styles of leadership. From his suggestions about academic leadership, to the rigors of being and entrepreneur, to corporate leadership, Palmer shows what works and doesn't work in each style of leadership.
This is a very valuable book for anyone who wants to be a leader or is a manager. Additionally, it is useful for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to gain insight in how to best direct their efforts when deciding to lead others. Pick this up book and you'll get some good perspectives to consider in your journey to succeed with your business.
For the most part I enjoyed this book. The author impressed me with using footnotes, which is definitely a step up from the majority of occult books out there. A lot of his advice and ideas are practical and useful for beginning magicians. All of the exercises in the book are ones I'm familiar with, as it's written for a beginner to intermediate audience, but they are useful to work through. I particularly liked the invent your own magical language exercise, which reminds of TOPY speak, and also Spare's alphabet of desire technique. The questions at the back of the book were handy and useful for processing information and extending the ideas in the book further, which is again a rarity and something I applaud Mr. Dunn for doing.
The author's focus on semiotics and symbolism is a fresh perspective and will offer readers food for thought and action, should they follow through on doing the exercises. Also Mr. Dunn does a good job of covering a wide range of occult techniques and presenting them from a symbolic perspective.
However, while I did like this book, there are some issues with it, which I find problematic. I would have liked to have seen an integrated system of in-text citations such as APA to get a better sense of the sources he draws on. Also he does not, imho, draw on enough available sources. As an example his paradigm piracy in chapter one doesn't cite Josh Wetzel's work, which given that Mr. Dunn lives in Illinois, is surprising, since Wetzel's work is available there, although in limited print. He never defines the term postmodern, which given the title of the book, is rather important. Also beyond providing his own definition of semiotics, he doesn't draw on any semiotic theory. A brief introduction to semiotic theory complete with some references to semiotic theoriticans for curious readers would have been nice as well as drawing on the most updated semiotic work. His influences seem to draw more from Saussure's work than anywhere else, but again without a reference list, that's only a guess.
The other issue I had was his focus solely on magic as a symbolic reality, with him throwing out the energy/spirit models because they couldn't be "proven". Given that he is drawing on a social science background, his focus is ultimately on what he knows as a social scientist, and yet his stance as a social scientist frequently seems to take the magic out of magic. Ironically at times he comes off as contradicting his view that magic is entirely and only a symbolic reality that can be worked with. As an example he worries about whether cutting a tree would hurt it, and yet earlier argues that everything, even a physical cat you look at is just a symbol. If that's the case, the tree is just a symbol, so why worry if it can be hurt? The argument that symbols and reality are one and the same is intriguing, but also dangerous in terms of leading a magician toward solipsism.
In the end, the book is worth checking out and reading for some intriguing ideas. Keep a bit of salt and skepticism on hand and try his paradigm out, but also do some further research into semiotics on your own. I'd give this book 3 and a 1/2 stars out of five.
Overall, I was fairly impressed by this book. I think Dunn does an excellent job of explaining a lot of the theories behind language and magic, as well as showing how theories can be made into practice. He explores concepts of gematria, glossalia, metaphor, semiotics and much more and in the process makes all the concepts approachable and easy to understand. In fact, I think that's the strength of this book. It's written so that anyone can pick up the book, read about the concepts, and put them into practice, though at least in the case of gematria, readers will probably need to have a decent familiarity with Quabala.
I also liked his explanation of the semiotic web and the Defixio. In both cases he not only explains the theory, but also provides personal anecdotes and suggestions for how the reader can incorporate those practices into his/her work. I think his latest book is a good introduction to linguistics and magic, and he provides the reader some other works to explore once they finish his work.
I did have two minor issues which made this book a four out of five for me. The fourth appendix of the book has a bunch of practical exercises for the book. It seems odd that the exercises are placed at the end of the book, instead of incorporated into the book. I'm not sure if that a decision of the publisher or the author. The other issue is that while he does cover a lot of the connection between linguistics and magic, he doesn't cover much of the contemporary work occurring with linguistics or magic. He dedicates only a small section to the contemporary work. That said, this a good primer for linguistics and magic and how the two disciplines can be brought together. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in branching outward from more conventional approaches to magic.
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