By Names and Images: Bringing the Golden Dawn to Life Paperback – 21 Mar. 2012

This book has really rounded out, or in fact fertilised, my understanding of Golden Dawn practises. Since applying the inner work described in Pergrin Wildoak's book to the rituals he describes, the transformative power of my daily devotions has increased greatly.I found the book an easy and absorbing read start-to-finish: something I cannot say about certain other wonderful and necessary tomes for this path, such as Regardie's Golden Dawn. Names and Images works extremely well for me when used in conjunction with those sorts of books: it truly brings the Golden Dawn to life.

Very grounded help for students. Peregrin manages to make complex subjects much easier to absorb through his clear writing. This is really an essential companion for anyone studying Magick, Hermeticism, Qabbalah, Tarot and the Golden Dawn. Cannot sing the praises high enough for this book.

For me a one of best books about Golden Dawn techniques. This book explains not only technical site of rituals but a inner site. This book is less psychological and more magical :)

The book looks a bit unedited after a while. It is often hard to quote from this book due to verbosity. For example, when Wildoak explains the ontology of spiritual entities using the phrase 'as above, so below, as within, so without'. His explanation includes four pages and THREE diagrams as a way of distinguishing between three positions; 1. the banal intellectual class of Jungian psychobabblers who believe that everything is unconscious doodah, 2. the superstitious people who believe that Archangel Michael, for example, is literally a talking figure of light with wings and 11 foot stature and can talk to you with a literal Briatic voicebox or something, and 3. the magicians with cosmological understanding of the above mentioned Hermetic axiom who believe, for various reasons that are hard to summarize, that one contacts external/macrocosmic entities (beings in the objective astral and spiritual realms) by looking "within", so to speak. It is a hard idea to explain because it is an advanced idea that really requires study of various subjects to begin to grasp. But ultimately, the phrase "as within, so without", and the third diagram which Wildoak provided, do a good enough job for the reader. It doesn't need 4 pages for people to grasp the distinction on a basic intellectual level.Wildoak gives solid information about the Golden Dawn tradition except when he brings in Wiccan ideas. This would be fine if the book was a synthesis like Greer's Druidic Golden Dawn but it's not. This book pruports to be about the Golden Dawn so there should be no mention of Wicca regardless of Wildoak's spiritual affiliations. This issue leads to some information being incorrect despite Wildoak's clearly in depth knowledge on the Golden Dawn tradition specifically, which is a shame. For example, Gaia, an earth Goddess, is said to correspond to Kether, THE impersonal Divine source. This is a very false analogy, notwithstanding the Kabbalistic idea that Makluth exists in Kether and vice versa.Overall, it was good for a first work but seems a bit rushed and like the publishers/editors were not harsh enough in their criticism when making corrections.

I rarely write reviews much less critique the reviews of other readers. However for the sake of redressing the balance and having considered the analysis of the one star reviewer and having accepted that the remarks within the one star review do carry some weight I would definitely include Wildoak's book within those recommended by the one star reviewer. It follows that in my opinion the one star review is too harsh and I would suggest that people interested in this subject matter purchase this book and make up their own minds.

Its not a bad book, but the Author is definitely a feminist, you will have to read the book to understand what l am saying...... why would a male author keep refering to the Magician in terms liks " when the magcian is reads she will.." the magcian must cleanseher area" it just makes tge book feel like a book for women only.... only a feminist could suck the magic out of a book about magick