Konstantinos

[Darius]

Anyone a fan of Konstantinos?

[coeur]

I am 'reading through' Summoning Spirits by him, but, I can't say I'm too impressed. Then again, I'm not very easily impressed by authors writing about magick because they tend to dramaticize it. But then, you gotta make your money any way you can, right?

My major problem about him is that 1) he oversimplifies and 2) he's overly dramatic. While I understand that Summoning Spirits is for beginners who want to evoke spirits, I am somewhat distresed with his 'here do this' attitude towards rituals like LBRP, mostly without explanation of what the motions mean.

I also get a good chuckle at his 'Goetic demons aren't really evil' and/or 'angels are all good and helpful' tone throughout the book. Goetic demons, though they can be nice and obedient once in a while, can be horrors to be around. The same goes for angels as well. And here Konstantinos is telling someone who doesn't even understand the history of the Golden Dawn properly to go out and have a nice conversation with angels and demons over a speck of tea.

Certainly not the ceremonialist take on evokation.

I would react to the book differently if he had taken a Satanic/left-hand perspective on it and just told people to evoke the little buggers without a circle and to barter with whatever shows up. I view this as a valid approach to a valid paradigm. However, I feel like his approach to the ceremonialist paradigm of evokation is skewed and certainly you won't be ready enough to evoke full fledge demons and angels (who can sometimes be even more destructive than demons) after a breeze through the book.

[David19]

I am 'reading through' Summoning Spirits by him, but, I can't say I'm too impressed. Then again, I'm not very easily impressed by authors writing about magick because they tend to dramaticize it. But then, you gotta make your money any way you can, right?

My major problem about him is that 1) he oversimplifies and 2) he's overly dramatic. While I understand that Summoning Spirits is for beginners who want to evoke spirits, I am somewhat distresed with his 'here do this' attitude towards rituals like LBRP, mostly without explanation of what the motions mean.

I also get a good chuckle at his 'Goetic demons aren't really evil' and/or 'angels are all good and helpful' tone throughout the book. Goetic demons, though they can be nice and obedient once in a while, can be horrors to be around. The same goes for angels as well. And here Konstantinos is telling someone who doesn't even understand the history of the Golden Dawn properly to go out and have a nice conversation with angels and demons over a speck of tea.

Certainly not the ceremonialist take on evokation.

I would react to the book differently if he had taken a Satanic/left-hand perspective on it and just told people to evoke the little buggers without a circle and to barter with whatever shows up. I view this as a valid approach to a valid paradigm. However, I feel like his approach to the ceremonialist paradigm of evokation is skewed and certainly you won't be ready enough to evoke full fledge demons and angels (who can sometimes be even more destructive than demons) after a breeze through the book.

I agree with you, i've looked through it in the shops, but i haven't been too impressed with it (but then i don't know much about summoning), like you i'd prefer it if he had gone for a Satanist or Left hand path approach (like Demonolatary).

[Semjaza]

I owned Nocturnal Witchcraft and Gothic Grimoire at one time, and gave them away. His intro to NW really killed my interest, something like "Do you dress in black? Like silver jewellry?" etc... And the "Good-Dark" "Good-Light" alignments read like a DnD manual... There were a few interesting exercises, but nothing I could really work with. Skim through them, leave them on the store shelf. Unfortunate, I wanted to like them... Perhaps Llewellyn's marketing plans skewed the books? (Ha ha)

Cheers,

Semjaza
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