Book Review: The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema
- Author: Lon Milo DuQuette
- Publisher: Weiser Books (an imprint of Red Wheel Weiser)
- Publication Year: 2022
- RRP: US $24.95 / UK £21.99
- ISBN-10 : 1578637880
- ISBN-13 : 978-1578637881
- Reviewed by: Marco Visconti
Lon Milo DuQuette’s Classic Handbook Still Deserves its Reputation, but This Edition Needed More Lon
Some books become classics because nobody supersedes them. Others arrive at the right moment and solve a problem so thoroughly that their original necessity becomes difficult to remember. Lon Milo DuQuette’s The Magick of Aleister Crowley belongs mostly to the second category. It remains one of the most welcoming and useful entrances into Crowley’s ritual world, yet its principal limitation in 2026 is inseparable from what once made it so valuable.
The book first appeared from Samuel Weiser in 1993 as The Magick of Thelema: A Handbook of the Rituals of Aleister Crowley, a 270 page Crowley primer. In 2003, Weiser published a corrected and substantially enlarged edition under the more intelligible title The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema. That revision grew to 304 pages and added a new introduction, a preliminary chapter answering common questions about Crowley, and a chapter on the Rites of Eleusis centred upon the Rite of Sol. The present volume appeared in late 2022, in anticipation of the original book’s thirtieth anniversary, as part of the Weiser Classics series.
That series is exactly what it says on the tin. Weiser uses it for foundational works and established guides drawn from more than sixty years of esoteric publishing, refreshed with new prefatory material and issued in a durable format. This is a canonising gesture. By placing DuQuette beside Dion Fortune, Peter J. Carroll, Gerald Gardner and Frater Albertus, Weiser has declared that his handbook belongs to the modern occult curriculum. The publisher is entirely right.
The new edition is credited with forewords by Jason Louv and Hymenaeus Beta, although only Louv’s is new. Hymenaeus Beta’s foreword appeared in 2003. The anniversary volume also adds a retrospective introduction by DuQuette, distinctions worth making when its main text remains untouched.
Neither foreword affected my assessment. Jason Louv has, in my view, become a rabid conspiracy theorist, while since 7 October 2023 his commentary has hardened into some of the ugliest Zionist apologetics and genocide denial found in occulture. He has explicitly declared his support for Israel and argued that responsibility for Palestinian civilian deaths lies with Hamas and its supporters. I regard that posture as morally indefensible and have no interest in accepting him as a guarantor of contemporary Thelemic relevance. Hymenaeus Beta is William Breeze, the Frater Superior and Outer Head of Ordo Templi Orientis. After my own years within O.T.O., I regard Breeze as the failed leader of a failed cult, and quite possibly the person most responsible for the sclerotic, litigious and culturally exhausted condition of institutional Thelema. Fortunately, DuQuette’s work depends upon neither endorsement, and both pieces can be skipped without loss.
I should also disclose that Lon and I have never met in person, although we have been on good terms online for years and he has generously supported my work. Such kindness became rare after my departure from O.T.O., when many who remained seemed to regard me as a heretic, a traitor, or worse. Gratitude does not require an uncritical review, but fairness requires its acknowledgement. It also explains why I wish the publisher had asked more of him instead of repackaging what he wrote three decades ago.
DuQuette is offering neither a biography nor a complete account of Crowley’s thought. His subject is the ritual grammar of Thelema, presented through a practical handbook and intelligently arranged sourcebook. Beginning with Will and The Book of the Law, he moves through the pentagram and hexagram rituals towards the Holy Guardian Angel, Liber Samekh, Liber Resh, the Mass of the Phoenix, Liber NV, Liber HAD, the Rites of Eleusis, the Thelemic orders and the Gnostic Mass. Primary texts, including Liber AL in full, appear alongside the diagrams, gestures and explanations needed to turn Crowley’s compressed instructions into something a reader might perform.
That combination was invaluable in 1993. Crowley’s writings were inconsistently available and often expensive, requiring specialist bookshops, mail order catalogues and patience. A beginner might find a ritual in one volume, its rationale in another and an indispensable diagram somewhere else, with Crowley assuming familiarity with the background connecting them. DuQuette gathered this scattered material between two covers and supplied a route through it, creating a map, portable ritual library and helpful phrasebook.
Its enduring strength is DuQuette’s refusal to treat obscurity as evidence of initiation. His humour never trivialises the work, while his learning demands no genuflection. The prose conveys someone who has performed these rituals, made mistakes, taught others and watched students become paralysed by seemingly clear instructions. He preserves Crowley’s strangeness while removing needless intimidation, and it’s his approach that informed mine when I wrote my own books on the subject.
The chapters on the pentagram and hexagram rituals remain especially useful because they show how Crowley transforms the inherited Golden Dawn structure. The photographs and diagrams give the body somewhere to stand within the symbols. His treatment of Liber Samekh is perhaps the finest example of his practical intelligence, reorganising Crowley’s directions into a study version and working script. His account of injuring himself while taking the Mass of the Phoenix too literally communicates the difference between ritual gravitas and practical stupidity better than pages of warning, while his discussion of the Rites of Eleusis restores the collective and ecstatic dimensions of magical work.
The book’s reputation is deserved. Its reception remains stable, hovering around four stars across nearly a thousand Goodreads ratings, while favourable reviews praise its clarity, humour, diagrams and ability to explain Crowley without domesticating him. Much of the book consists of Crowley material now available elsewhere, yet DuQuette’s notes make those reprints worth owning.
This is where the missing half star resides. In 1993, collecting The Book of the Law, the Star Ruby, Liber Samekh, Liber Resh, the Mass of the Phoenix, Liber NV, Liber HAD, the Rite of Sol and the Gnostic Mass in one instructional volume was a genuine service. Today these texts can be found online within seconds, while printed editions and modern commentaries have proliferated. The book therefore derives less of its value from containing Crowley and more from the presence of DuQuette himself. Unfortunately, there is not quite enough of him.
The original balance reflected the need to make difficult primary sources available. The disappointment is that this anniversary edition does not reconsider it after that need has changed. DuQuette admits that he would write a different book today, then explains that he has not altered the existing format or text. His honesty exposes the missed opportunity. An afterword or retrospective notes could have placed the two Lons in conversation, showing what thirty additional years of practice changed in his understanding of Will, the Holy Guardian Angel, the Star Ruby, Liber Samekh and the Gnostic Mass. The new introduction reveals how valuable that conversation could have been. Then the old book resumes.
I must also qualify DuQuette’s crediting of O.T.O. with making Crowley widely available. Important editions and genuine archival work certainly appeared under its auspices, often through the labour of gifted individuals. Yet the Order’s own announcements reveal a less flattering record. In 2008 it described a restored Confessions as half complete and appointed an editor for an unabridged Magick Without Tears. In 2013 it presented an extensive programme of diaries, Holy Books, commentaries and backlist titles as completed, in proof or nearing publication. Years of delay followed, while many definitive editions failed to appear when most needed. The present abundance of Crowley material owes as much to commercial and independent publishers, scholars, librarians, archivists and anonymous digitisation projects as it does to O.T.O. To my mind, the Order failed at one of the few cultural tasks that might have justified its custodianship of much of Crowley’s literary estate.
None of this diminishes DuQuette’s achievement. A beginner can place the book beside Book Four and emerge with a coherent understanding of Crowley’s ritual system, while an experienced practitioner can appreciate how much DuQuette clarified with little fuss. Its warmth, practical intelligence and freedom from the inflated sacerdotal voice that has ruined so much Thelemic writing remain intact. Most importantly, it encourages practice. The reader closes it wanting to clear a space, draw the pentagram and discover whether any of this is true.
I therefore give The Magick of Aleister Crowley four and a half stars out of five. The deduction is for an anniversary edition that declines the opportunity to show us what its author learned during the intervening thirty years. This remains a classic, an excellent introduction and a book I am happy to recommend. I simply wanted more Lon, because the passages in which he steps out from behind Crowley’s texts remain the reason to own it.
Author Bio:
Lon Milo DuQuette is a bestselling author and lecturer, whose books on Magick, Tarot, and the Western Mystery Traditions have been translated into ten languages. He is currently the US Deputy Grand Master of Ordo Templi Orientis and is on the faculty of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and the Maybe Logic Academy. Among his many books are My Life with the Spirits (Weiser 1999), Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (Weiser 2003), and Tarot of Ceremonial Magick (Weiser 1995). He lives in Sacramento, California, with his wife Constance. Visit him on the web at: www.lonmiloduquette.com
Reviewer Bio:
Marco Visconti has studied and practised Thelema since the late 1990s, with experience in the A∴A∴ and O.T.O. traditions as well as Freemasonry. He is the author of The Aleister Crowley Manual, Aleister Crowley’s Mysticism, and Black Stars in Dim Carcosa: the Necronomicon Field Notes, and currently writes, teaches, and lectures on Thelema and Western esotericism. He has consulted for Discovery Channel’s Expedition X and collaborated with major YouTube channels including Sam & Colby and ESOTERICA. For more on Marco, please visit him here:
