Let me start this review by praising John Major Jenkins for his intense scholarship and dedication to the Mesoamerican culture. If there's one person who should be consulted in any effort to understand or speculate on the various cultures of Central and South America, it is he. Jenkins' opinion is highly thought out, scientifically tested and comes with a solid passion for the material. In many ways, he is more qualified than those scholars ...

The absolute best part of Jonathan Wells' Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design is the quote on the front cover from Ann Coulter: "Annoy and godless liberal; buy this book!" Coulter is the Howard Stern of political conservatism. I probably disagree with about 90-95% of what she says, but she's always fun to listen to. You have to appreciate political bluntness. It's so rare today.

As a disclaimer, this book was ...

Everybody loves a good apocalypse meme. That's why the 2012 one is so popular right now. The millennium came and went without even a harrowing Y2K glitch, so we have to hitch our self-destruction and self-loathing onto another upcoming event. 2012 just happens to be that event.

A while back I finished reading Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Though I have mixed feeling about the book, the cultural examination was fascinating ...

This is a tweener post, I guess. It could fit inside either the religion and philosophy category or in the pop culture category. Considering author Taylor Ellwood's knowledge and use of pop culture, however, I decided to settle on the latter. It seemed more fitting.

For those of you unaware, I occasionally write stuff; and no, I'm not referring to just this blog. Recently, Taylor Ellwood edited an anthology on pop culture magic ...

First, let me applaud Taylor Ellwood for his attempt at breaking through the "poor pagan" stereotype. I've always been rather curious about the perceived correlation between the occult and being poor.

It's true that most pagan systems come from the lowlands, and most of these belief systems termed as "pagan" originally come from poorer cultures and what modern science would erroneously call the "superstitious beliefs of primative cultures;" but this still doesn't ...

I was phenomenally impressed with Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head, so when 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl was published, I jumped on purchasing it as soon as I could.

It has taken me a while to complete the task of finishing up this book. I had started it several months afters its publication, but had to put it down as other things had occupied my attention. The enthusiasm to pick it back up ...

How can I put this lightly? Fallen Nation is like Neil Gaiman's American Gods on an ayahuasca trip, while rocking out to the noise of Mushroomhead, with the lyrical subtext of Steely Dan. To all those that thought Curcio's Join My Cult! was good, this is James Curcio to the second power... with spicey mustard for added kick.

There has been a lot of comparisons made between James Curcio and Robert Anton Wilson ...

Douglas Rushkoff's Get Back in the Box is more than a "business book." It's a powerful schematic that can be just as useful in every other venture of life, as it can for the business savy.

First, let's not draw any illusory lines. Cyberia was about culture. It was about the uprising of a new cultural generation brought up on technology. It was about the cyberpunk generation that wrested control of the ...

In an era of chaos magick, and more focus on individual attainment, it would initially seem like a book on maintaining occult groups would be obsolete. In most cases, this would be true; but Nick Farrell's light-hearted approach to occult groups is a highly recommended, refreshing look at group work.

This isn't a book about the O.T.O. or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This is about group work in ...

When Peter Carroll brought chaos magick to the forefront with such works as Liber Null, Psychonaut, and Liber Kaos he touched on some fascinating subject matter in the occult, but left the experimentation up to the reader, much to the dismay of armchair theorists worldwide. But where Carroll leaves off, it seems that the works of Taylor Ellwood pick up to take readers along an occult journey of experimentation and discovery.

Space/Time Magic is ...

Taylor Ellwood'sPop Culture Magick can best be seen as a transitional book taking one from the world of fantasy to the real magick that exists behind every doorway and in every shadow of our world. Popular culture may not be popular among many of today's occultists (with the exception of some of the Chaotes), but if Carl Jung was right, and humankind does play out its rite of passage in dreams - or ...

There are going to be a few occult types that will frown on this book, and might even regard its contents as fantasy fluff lacking the "real" occultism that other systems maintain. This, however, is nothing more than bias and disinterest on their part, and should be taken very lightly indeed.

To the contrary, Michelle Belanger has constructed a masterpiece of vampiric/gothic literature that includes an updated version of her Vampire Codex, which has ...

A narrative account of the mystic sixties usually isn't my idea of exciting bedside reading or a harrowing page turner. However, Gary Lachman's Turn Off Your Mind manages to surprise you in more ways than one.

First let me start with the negative... Lachman has a tendency of drowning his paragraphs with sentences. Long and wordy, sometimes, you as the reader, feel like you're getting lost in the shuffle of facts and ...

Reading Daniel Pinchbeck's psychedelic biography is like traveling down the same path with him. You're taken down a mystical pathway of initiation and retribution detailed in such a way as to spur your own rite of passage.

When we first meet Pinchbeck in Breaking Open the Head, he presents himself as a skeptical New York materialist that suddenly finds himself in need of discovering that there is more to this world than Wall ...

Every once in a while, an occult book comes along that refuses to conform to the status quo of the era that it loudly takes birth in. It it often the case, that books such as these are the books that become the classic occult literature of future generations. Disinformation's Book of Lies just might be the one to shatter this era's quiet, complacent "new age" aura and hurdle us into a future ...