The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic

This edition is particularly valuable because it's printed in nice large print on very good paper, with sturdy (though paperback) binding. The printing is crisp, so the illustrations, woodcuts, line-drawings, and sigils and Magical Seals, are sharp enough to read so you can copy them in every detail.

The numerous color plates are on heavy foolscap, bright, shiny and true-color.

As for the content -- The Tree of Life is to Magick as the Periodic Table is to Chemistry.

Where did I get that idea? Well, I'm a chemist & sf/f writer who got so "into" Tarot I wrote a book called "The Biblical Tarot: Never Cross a Palm With Silver" which you can buy on amazon.com, and have more to write in that series. Over the 25 years prior to writing that book, I taught Tarot.

And I discovered that I could lecture for three hours and at the end ask the students to define "Tree of Life" and they had no clue. So I hit on this way of explaining it -- by relating the function of the Tree of Life in the study of Torah and Magick to the function of the Periodic Table in the study of Science.

Chemistry being a branch of alchemy (as science is a branch of Magick) people can usually see immediately that the Periodic Table (that underlies all science) must be a branch or subset of something larger that tabulates the components of Magick. That something larger is the Tree of Life -- the Bible itself.

The link between Tarot and the Bible is the Tree of Life. "Etz Haim" is an appelation of the Torah which is the first Five Books of Moses. In other words, the Bible is the Tree of Life to us, and as a tree's sap nourishes the leaves, so the Tree of Life brings us (the leaves) the pure Energy of the Eternal.

If you're just starting to learn Cabbalah and want to start with Regardie, there are several things to take into account before you decide to buy this book or before you read it first.

Regardie was a member of the Golden Dawn -- a Secret Magickal society in England around the turn of the 20th Century. Dion Fortune and Alistair Crowley were also members -- they all knew each other. Regardie admired Crowley.

Crowley betrayed his oath and broke the Group Mind of that Secret Society. Then Crowley taught Magick in a way that would tend to unleash the power and Will of any hapless initiate -- without the safeguards many practitioners deem necessary. Then he died a very sick and ugly death -- many say because of his practices. Hence he has become connected with Black Magick which always destroys the practitioner -- and I personally do not recommend any beginner get anywhere near any of Crowley's books, or his Tarot Deck, or any of his desciples.

And Regardie is connected to Crowley.

That said, this book is still a piece of scholarship that belongs on the reference shelf of a wide variety of professionals, not just those interested in Magick.

It is a writer's handbook (I also teach writing online) of Magick and the alleged connections with "Egypt" -- some of which are valid and actually refer to the real historical Biblical Egypt (at least as the British conceptualized it around 1900 or so. In the early 20th Century, much of what we think of as archeology was done by wealthy amateurs not by scholars. So they missed a few points here and there).

Regardie's book is a reference for the Magickal concept of how the Universe is structured. People writing stories set in Medieval times need this book -- it's a whole different mindset than we are used to. If you want your fictional characters to seem real, they need to think like Regardie, not like you and me. (If a character thinks like a real Medieval person, no 21st century reader would understand him.)

The book contains extensive discourses on Theurgy and Abremalin the Mage, and a wide range of topics -- and it even touches briefly on the Tree of Life used as a Pagan focus for ceremonial and meditation.

There are diagrams of the Tree Glyph in color and some line diagrams that show the relationships among the parts of the Tree.

In other words, this book -- like much Golden Dawn literature -- ranges far and wide among the most pagan and most monotheistic of Earth's religious traditions, as if there were in fact no difference among them.

This may reveal to you an eclectic and higher Truth -- or it may only seem philosophically confused beyond redemption. But taken within the Golden Dawn's historical and social context, it makes perfect sense.

There at the turn of the century when the wealthy of England were holding Seances led by famous Mediums, it was socially unacceptable but yet absolutely necessary to explore The Unseen. In that England, the Church of England held sway absolutely.

Therefore, these well educated and well to do people banded together to try to break the chokehold on their subconscious minds that Christianity had gotten. They became convinced they were not Christians.

Yet, if you are not Christian, you can read what they have written and see how very, very Christian their brand of Paganism was. Their denial of Christianity was strident and very strained, and nowhere is that more evident than in Dion Fortune's (wonderful and highly recommended) books and in Regardie's writings -- "The Tree of Life, An Illustrated Study in Magic" being a good case in point.

Altogether this is an edition well worth it's cover price if you are at the right point in your studies or need a reference for the anti-Christian or for the mindset of the Pagan just being converted to Christianity.

If you're looking for a place to start studying the real Tree of Life and Cabbalah, you might do better to visit the School of Philosophy in the WorldCrafters Guild at simegen.com and explore some of those links first.


Crowley's "sedulous ape"   January 3, 2003
B. Erickson (Overland Park, KS United States)
57 out of 109 found this review helpful

How does this - how CAN this happen, you ask yourself despairingly, wringing your hands, rending your garments, beating your head on brick walls until bloody. How is it possible that such rambling, barbarous diarrhea of the antique fountain pen as Israel Regardie's "The Tree of Life" manages to survive and accrue praise for decades?

There can only be one explanation: the interested demographic must be at least one notch duller than the author. Indeed we are justified in assuming as much when our topic is "magic(k)," the traditional foil of the half-baked dilettante. Nobody knows anything about magic; therefore every smart-aleck off the street is an expert; and the more convoluted, tedious, and prolix the patois in which he couches his ramblings, the more obscure his fundamental bankruptcy of meaning - the greater his addlepated following.

"The Tree of Life" is described on the back of my edition as "the most comprehensive introduction available to the numerous, complex and sometimes obscure mystical writings of Aleister Crowley."

Now say what thou wilt of Aleister Crowley. I by no means intend to commit the mortal sin of apologizing for anything he wrote or said or did. This much may justifiably be remarked, however, with reference to his literary output: he demonstrates therein an absolutely remarkable tenacity and consistency of thought over the decades of his long life. The question of whether his seminal 1904 "revelation" objectively occurred as he describes is irrelevant even if it could possibly be settled (but I doubt it!); the fact remains that he devoted his every last resource to the propagation of "Thelema," that he nurtured it with his own life in the face of impossible odds, and that he maintained its fundamental tenets (many of which he claimed were antipathetic to his own point-of-view at reception) until his dying day. I can only concur with his detractors that certain of these tenets might easily be construed as "Satanic," "wicked," "perverse," "inconvenient for the corporate American," or take-your-pick; but who cares anyway - ethics and morality are arbitrarily enough defined. We cannot responsibly describe them as "false" or "insane," however, because these terms essentially imply inconsistency and incoherence, and "Thelema" is nothing if not coherent and consistent.

Crowley is likewise generally a lucid, passionate read. At the other end of the literary spectrum, however, there's Regardie, one of the more garrulous essayists ever to butcher the language. In his Introduction to the Second Edition of the "Tree," Regardie himself humbly admits the "flamboyancy and tendency to adjectivitis which were the hallmarks of my youth." What an ironic occasion for the understatement of the century. Charles Nodier on hashish reads like an eye chart in comparison with the interminable wildernesses of tangled and confused ideas which constitute Regardie's literary legacy. But don't take my word for it: let me indict the opening sentences of the aforementioned work: "A common expression on the lips of many is the reiteration that mankind to-day with all its ills and aberrations, flounders blindly in a terrible morass. Death-dealing and with octopus-like tentacles of destruction, this morass clutches him more and more firmly to its breast, albeit with great subtlety and stealth. Civilization, curiously enough, modern civilization, is its name." Ugghhh. If you can conceive of sifting through a couple hundred pages of similarly pitiful attempts at eloquence, well, you're quite the morbid personality yourself, aren't you.

Personally I was surprised, although I probably shouldn't have been, to find that other readers have often suggested that Regardie is the "best introduction available" to "obscure, complex" old Crowley. If his (Regardie's) work possesses any value at all, it is indeed owing to his restatement of concepts obtained from the Golden Dawn and from Crowley; but he has basically only garbled what was once crystal-clear (or at least semi-transparent) like an illiterate medieval scrivener. On the same analogy, he has added nothing original of any consequence. At least half his text consists of lengthy quotations, and a good portion of the balance is directly [used] from "The Beast" - save it's been "neutered," all potentially offensive trivia tucked away, and the grammar altered just enough to render it redundant. It's not that you can't "get the point" - eventually - with Regardie, or that he doesn't in fact have a point - somebody else's - to make. But why bother with him at all?

Let any unbiased third party sit down and read both "The Tree of Life" and Crowley's "Magick in Theory and Practice" and objectively weigh their relative merits as literature. It ought to be incidental to his conclusions, but he might then reflect that "Magick" predates the "Tree" by more than a decade (though they treat of identical subjects in an eerily similar way), and that in spite of this, the style of the former work is lucid and modern and laconic, while that of the latter is old-fashioned, bombastic, and rambling.

...

Yes, I'm being too hard on ole Israel, but only because I know this literature and most of what he has to say has been said previously and better.


best intro to magic i've ever read... theoretical and practical   February 21, 2006
Michael Herman (Toronto, Canada)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book is absolutely amazing, after reading it I went out and bought several of Regardie's books. This is definitely the best introduction to magic that I have read, and it definitely seems to be a major source that many contemporary introductions to magic are based on. I would, nevertheless, recommend people approach this book with: 1) a bit of familiarity with the basic premises of the Qabalah and Tree of Life (Dion Forutne's "The Mystical Qabalah" is a great place to start), and 2) an ability to decipher long and wordy sentences.
Other reviewers have complained about Regardie's writing style. I definitely agree the first chapter is a bit over the top, but throughout the rest of the book I fell in love with his style. It makes readers use conscious effort in order to gain understanding, because Regardie wraps many layers of meaning into what he writes. After the first chapter, I found the writing style extremely poetic and beautiful, although I definitely feel it could be simplified. Regardless of the writing style, Regardie's treatment of the topic is straightforward and clear... especially considering the veil of secrecy that cloaked discussion of magic in previous centuries.

The book is divided into two major sections. The first is basically more theoretical, covering the theory of the Tree of Life... a topic that perpetually reveals more and more depth intricate layers. The second (and much larger) part is more practical, though it really deals with the theory behind magical practices. This section really helps to demystify the meanings behind magical practice, and has helped give me a more clear direction in my own path.
Particularly valuable are the treatments of WILL and IMAGINATION, the two key ingredients in practical magic... many exercises are weaved into the text, and the reasons as to why these and other elements are essential is very clearly covered. The best part of this book was definitely the chapter on the astral plane and exercises to develop abilities for astral projection... I would have paid for this chapter alone!

This book has immense benefit for both the "armchair magician" (stuck in theory with no practice) and the practicing magician. It is a great overview for aspiring magicians, and I sense it would only reveal more as readers become more experienced. I will come back to it again and again...

Regarding the connection with Crowley... although the back of my edition says the book is "the most comprehensive introduction to the... writings of Aleister Crowley", I find this insulting almost. i am a huge fan of Crowley, but Regardie relaly stand on his own, he does not need to piggyback on others' reputations. the publisher probably put it on to increase sales, because the book really has very little to do with Crowley, although it does explore many concepts found also in Crowley's book, but in a much more straightforward way.
At the very least, reading The Tree of Life helped expand my perspective and open my mind. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!


Regardie's Tree of Life well-laden and fruitful.   April 19, 1999
18 out of 21 found this review helpful

A book that does not seem to be among the first-mentioned classics of the genre, and I cannot imagine why. Syncretic presentations of magical philosophy and practice are numerous, borrowing from sources such as this, but this book has the unmistakably organic flow and seamlessness of form and substance that mark a deeply considered and eloquent utterance with the ring of mastery. Not a book in quite the modern style or tone, but in a literate, though unostentatious idiom, that does justice to the matter, and serves as an admirable introduction to the Art for such as would as soon not be spoon-fed with more or less predigested material. As an introduction to this subject likely ought to, it leans rather more to the theoretical and expository than to the practical, but makes the point as well and convincingly as I have ever seen that in this endeavor, "practical" exercise undertaken without a deeper understanding of its meaning, is of limited value. And certainly the book is not all as forbidding as the above might suggest, but a well-flowing and engaging volume. Very recommended to whoever welcomes an intellectually and spiritually rewarding challenge.


Regardie's book is invalueable to the student of the occult.   July 21, 1999
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

Regardie's Tree of Life is invalueable to the student of both Qabalah and magic, introducing us to the methods employed by Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn and the Goetia. Regardie has extensively studied rituals of the Ancient Egyptians and Greeks and outlines simple formulas for performing the most complex rituals founded upon ancient knowledge. Also outlines the Augoeides working.