Complete Magician's Tables

Five stars for content, one star for execution, three stars for presentation.(TLDR: see the video review on my YouTube channel - search for Foolish Fish)The sheer breadth of the equivalences presented here make this book indispensable to anyone working in Western esoteric tradition. Google just can't compete. But I wish it could!There are 3 (no less) tables of contents. The first has one listing per letter of the alphabet (!). The second lists topics in alphabetical order, but then has those lists broken up under seemingly random headers (looking for angels? Try M for Magic! Unless it's Enochian angels, in which case it's D for John Dee...)Finally there is an index of columns listed... in order of appearance 😂.The look of the book is... well, cheap. It's not a beautiful book by any means. It's a tool.If you spend time familiarising yourself with where to find what, it's without peer. And the accompanying notes make the tables even more educational if that were even possible.So a diamond in the rough. In its 5th edition. And I couldn't live without it.

This is a comprehensive set of Qabalistical correspondences for spheres and paths - Skinner includes many additional tables than the standard 777 etc. Some very intriguing information in here concerning all aspects of esoteric paths including oriental occultism. Personally I believe this is the most comprehensive set of tables of its sort available on the market today - and highly recommended for every practicing magician.

Like Crowley’s 777, Hulse’s Eastern & Western Mysticism and Bill Whitcomb’s Magicians Companion this large volume attempts to provide magical correspondences across numerous different systems. As such it is fascinating and quite often inspiring, triggering intuition so the symbolism becomes more real.However in many ways this feels like a cheat. When such chains of correspondence are revealed through meditation, pathworking or contemplation, they have more validity and use.Furthermore, by providing these tables, the false impression is given that symbolism can be codified in a precise or definitive way. However traditions vary in how they use symbolism, for example in cold climates compared to warm climates the virtues of heat and coldness are often different. In Occult terminology, no 2 eregores are the same. On a personal level, symbolism can be quite idiosyncratic. Even within one tradition, use of symbolism can change, for example is Binah symbolised by a triangle or circle?It could also be said that attempts by Levi, Mathers, Crowley etc. to tie the tarot to the Hebrew alphabet and then to the tree of life, diminish the meanings of each. Furthermore if (in the material world) Chesed is Jupiter, why bother with Tree of Life symbolism at all?Some of the correspondences are precise, such as those from the Grimoires, but these too prove that the Grimoires contradict each other. Some correspondences are extremely subjective; while the Arthurian archetypes could be mapped Skinner’s way, other attributions fit much better. Though none fit perfectly.It is curious seeing villains attributed to Sephirot, attributing Uther Pendragon to Chokmah almost seems blasphemous, though I understand the reasoning.I accept Sknners critique of 777, though still find these tables less intuitive to quick look up than 777, Whitcombe or Hulse. Though I guess it will become more familiar.Comparable to an encyclopaedia of dreams, these chains of association may work for you, but not without tweaking. My concern is that these tables facilitate a lazy arm chair Philosopher approach, rather than allowing the would be magician to discover their own keys through personal work.However, I do not wish to diminish Mr Skinners accomplishment. The librarian in me loves pouring over such tables and it is emotionally satisfying to pretend that the inner worlds have been fully mapped (even though they have not).

I am just finishing off my copy of the Complete Magicians Tables by Stephen Skinner. The publishing blurb can be found here: [...]This is really good, and whilst I do have a few quibbles about the book I think that it is a worthy successor to 777 and of a great deal of interest to many people in the occult field.This book does not and cannot provide tables fore every possible magickal correspondence and consequently it is not so strong on correspondences regarding natural magick. These are the associations' behind plants, precious stones etc and a "compleat book of natural magick" would be as large as this book. Such an imaginary (and possibly impossible) book would be made ever more complex when we need to consider Hoodoo as well as other folk traditions which have been so long divorced from the stream which leads to modern western natural magic. When we consider astrological and elemental correspondences which in turn do lead to the Qabalah and the Magicians territory covered by Skinners book we see the task of creating a truly complete reference to be truly Herculean.There are some strange omissions to this book which I cannot explain, however the pedantic bastard running in my soul screams to point out. On a macroscopic level I am curious as to why he included the second version of the Great Table from Enochian magic without mentioning the original version (or even Tyson's version). During the vast bulk of the communications with the Enochian Entities, both Dee and Kelley were present. However the account goes that one morning Dee got up and found that allegedly Kelley had been visited in the night by the Archangel Raphael (who crops up again below) who told him to modify the table quite substantially and also that Dee and Kelley should hold their wives in common.An influential Enochian scholar once made the point to me that there are some good alchemical reasons for this modification with regards to both the tables and also the wife-swap (essentially concerning the comparison between Fire/Water, Air/Earth, Fire/Earth and Air/Water which correspond to Fire (Kelley), Air (Dee), Earth (Jane Dee), Water (Joanna Kelley)) and he does make some very sound points. However to me it sounds a bit like Kelley was having a laugh. Anyway for some reason many commentators and later users of the system such as the Golden Dawn take the later version despite questions being raised with the origin of the story oddly despite the urge many magicians have of going back to the original source materials.On a more detailed level his tables contain the odd perplexing omission again raising my pedantic heckles. For example, let us check his table on Islamic archangelic correspondences on page 126 (of the deluxe). He lists the Arabic names for various archangels such as Jibril (Gabriel), Mikal (Michael), Azrail (Azrael) etc but misses off some of the Qabalistic equivalents of the names. - For example he mentions Israfil but neglects to note that this one corresponds to the Archangel Raphael, which I feel is a rather fundamental point.However my biggest quibble is the arrangement of the tables. We see blocks of tables arranged in groups and these groups sorted alphabetically, however there is only one group per alphabetic letter. So there is only one A group (Angels - Biblical, Apocryphal and Gnostic), only one B group (Buddhist Meditation), etc. This strikes me as rather artificial and forced and makes some things harder to find.For example I might expect to find Enochiana under E, but no this is sorted under D (Dr John Dee's Angels). E was assigned Emblems and Alchemy, etc. U is assigned "Uniform timeline". In these examples why not put Alchemy (which is clearer than having a forced "Emblems and Alchemy" under A, Enochian rather that Dr Dee. under D, Timelines under T, etc.Whilst we are looking at 2 dimensional tables the problem space is certainly not 2 dimensional and Skinner has done an admirable job in organising the information. It therefore strikes me as strange in that the final level of sorting was done in such a forced way making the task of finding the tables one requires that little bit more difficult.Having got all this off my chest, I do think that the book is excellent and worthy of five stars (out of five). We see lots of correspondences and tables which are really useful but not really well known. For example these tables are very strong in Oriental systems such as Chinese Taoist Alchemy, Grimoire and Solomonic magic and a useful magical timeline. When modern magicians start combining this valuable information into their systems I think the book will really begin to come into its own and we will see how it surpasses 777.I found his comparison of the Goetic system particularly useful. I remember about 18 months ago getting interested in the number of legions each demon commanded and going through the Crowley/Mathers edition getting the list - how I wish I had this book on hand then. Also of interest is his comparison both of the Harley 6483 and Wierus/Rudd versions of the Goetia. His list of the differences in ordering places emphasis I think, on the important historical point that these grimoires were notebooks and magicians were expected to fill in the gaps, hence the differences. I also suspect that his mentioning the Wierus/Rudd version was a sneaky advert for the forecoming Skinner and Rankin book on the Goetia which I am looking forward to with a great deal of interest.I highly recommend this book and think that it is a fantastic resource