Overall a good starter book for ceremonial magick lite, so to speak.
Like many books of its era, it suffers from fear mongering passages and lots of opinions stated as facts ex Law of Rebound as objective fact, projection of contemporary human morality on deities, very specific ideas on spirit elementals, bashing the left hand path etc
Other problems include ill-advised practices, such as suggesting one bathe with malachite, malachite being a toxic mineral that dissolves in water, as well as dripping perfume into a stream as offerings to Ondines, which seems more like a great way to piss off water spirits for polluting their streams with synthetic chemicals.
It is a very very very Eurocentric and dated understanding of the world and magic ex Asia referred to as the Orient , but if you can look past all that I have read above, it serves as a decent start on a variety of subjects.
I personally enjoyed the dissection of the various planes and their functions towards magical working, and most of the anecdotes the author shares about her experiences. It is nice seeing a book getting down to the nitty gritty of the actual doing process of magick and the struggles one might find on their journey, as opposed to just copy pasting a bunch of spells, giving you brief reasons for their addition and then moving on.
As is with most books claiming to be complete, this book served as a great general overview but was brief at best in section outside of western occultism. It goes into a range of a various talisman and amulet types ex. Egyptian, Key of Solomon, The Black Pullet, herb amulets etc... and provides some useful visuals. However, the sections that refer to culture and historical events are dubious as to their veracity, and the author neglected to give direct references for some of those instances, which made me question the overall legitimacy of this book. It also didn't help my confidence when a finalized book has a frankly hilarious typo such as quote waxing period of the mood unquote p.71 immortalized in it. I am willing to forgive it because it gave me a good laugh
Fortunately, it seems that the western occultism sections have been researched and better understood by the author, which gives me confidence in its accuracy. Overall, a decent book to refer to for beginners as a starting place and a quick guide for intermediate practitioners on western occultism.
My only complaint with the item itself is that the ink is not at all water resistant and bleeds very easily with only a minimal amount of water, hence the 4 stars. Must handle it carefully and never spill any liquids because it would ruin the pretty illustrations.
