Copies of the standard paperback edition of “I Called It Magic” will soon be available through Amazon and other trade sources. The limited edition hardback of 150 copies signed by me remains available, but only direct from Skylight Press (see their web site http://www.skylightpress.co.uk/). There has been a strong demand for these so if you want to get one as a Christmas present for anyone or as a financial investment for the future you had better get in your order quickly. I am down to my last box and there won’t be any more!
Response from those who have read it so far are very positive – the first being very heart warming from a fellow writer on the esoteric scene:
“Just finished your autobiography. Still thrumming with it. It’s wonderful. I won’t make you blush with superlatives that you probably wouldn’t believe, but it’s everything I hoped to read. You weren’t coy, you didn’t pull any punches, you gave the sort of hard detail that makes it all real – and added a dash of élan, too. That’s your inner frenchiness for you! Really, it is the best book of its kind. Perhaps the only book of its kind. But remember…you’re not finished yet!”
Whilst a blog review from Australia reads:
“The diversity of magical approaches and traditions worked by Mr Knight and covered in the book is staggering: traditional ceremonial magic, Qabalah, Tarot, Isiac Mysteries, Faery Lore, Rosicrucianism…the list is very long. In addition there are descriptions of non-traditional approaches to the mysteries via the mytho-poetic creations of Tolkien, Lewis, Noyes and others. And while few of the chapters are out-and-out teachings or instructional in nature, there is much to be gained from them – both from their content and the material between the lines. Indeed it is very hard to read chapter to chapter without some break, as there is much in each to stimulate the inner awareness and senses and I felt myself getting a little overwhelmed without regular breaks. The inner contacts and reality Mr Knight writes about live more than on the page, and some descriptions are very moving and very deep.”
To read more of this long review go to http://magicoftheordinary.wordpress.com
I might say that my book of letters YOURS VERY TRULY - GARETH KNIGHT published earlier this year by Skylight Press, covering the years 1969 through 2010 can act as a very useful and entertaining companion to the autobiography – literally spelling out what it all felt like at the time! In this respect it provides vivid illustrations of a non-pictorial kind to the later book – arguably more revealing than the photographs in the autobiography.
Whilst as a teaching vehicle, another old book of mine is about to be released by Skylight, THE ABBEY PAPERS, should go well in expanding the inner horizons of the above. Zapped by a trio of inner communicators when I was working on the war letters of Dion Fortune back in 1993 it contains a very full run down on practical magical working, whether individually or in a group.
It was first published in 2002 but the new edition contains a remarkable extra section by Rebecca Wilby working with one of these original contacts, which provides very direct instruction on how such contacts are made and maintained, and also throws a revealing light on that part of “I Called It Magic” (Chapter 29 ‘This Wretched Splendour’) that saw us ranging from rituals at Hawkwood, plodding through Flanders mud, my playing “Amazing Grace” on a church carillon over the old battlefields, to theatrical performances on the London stage, and an esoteric novel “In Different Skies”. All very moving and what the deeper forms and intentions of magic are all about.
One word of warning though – make sure you get a copy of the NEW EDITION currently being announced on Amazon, and not one of the old edition copies, a few of which are still knocking about.