The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts;Including the Rites and Mysteries of Goetic Theurgy, Sorcery, and Infernal Necromancy, also the Rituals of Black Magic

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A. Gilbert described him, "Waite's name has survived because he was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of western occultism—viewed as a spiritual tradition rather than as aspects of proto-science or as the pathology of religion. If we take the magical literature of Western Europe from the Middle Ages and onward, we shall find that it is exceedingly large. His books include "How To Be Famous" (Orion), the cult classic "Doktor Snake’s Voodoo Spellbook" (St Martin’s Press), "Cannibals" (John Blake), "Blood Rites" (Random House), and "Human Sacrifice" (Barricade). It is a collection and analysis of the majority of extant works on what would be considered “Black” magic.

So far as may be possible, the antiquity of individual Rituals will be determined in the course of their examination, but as this inquiry is based, with a single exception of undeniable importance, upon the printed literature, because it is that only which has exercised a real influence, it may be well, as a conclusion to this introductory part, to give some information regarding magical processes which have remained in MS. Which is funny, because when I read “Moonchild” (the 1917 novel by Aleister Crowley) he (Crowley) made a bunch of characters barely-veiled spoofs of real people he knew from the Golden Dawn, including A. Plus advice on reading the omens, such as an unexpected visitor turning up out of the blue, or a raven cawing on a wall you happen to be walking past.In Jewish mythology, demons are not fallen angels - they are creatures God abandoned bodiless and unfinished at sunset on the 6th day, to mark the importance of ceasing work to rest on the Sabbath.

There was a time indeed when Ceremonial Magic threatened to absorb the whole circle of the occult sciences; it was the superior method, the royal road; it effected immediately what the others accomplished laboriously, after a long time.Waite is best known as the co-creator of the popular and widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck and author of its companion volume, The Key to the Tarot, re-published in expanded form the following year, 1911, as The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, a guide to Tarot reading. Most of the rituals concern personal and material gain: summoning a demon so it can lead you to treasure, or make a woman love you, or harm an enemy. The long tracts of rambling incantations of supposed warlocks is rather hard going, I used it as a aid to getting me to sleep when I had insomnia, worked a treat. In the book there are clear references to the Occult Philosophy of Agrippa, the natural magic, the Goethia, theurgy, to Lemegeton, the infernal necromancy, and of course in black magic through gruesome rituals of evocation and devilish pacts. There, also, the dead live, and the hierarchies of extra-mundane intelligence are within easy communication, and become ministers or tormentors, guides, or destroyers, of man.

Here Waite tries to, and not too nonchalantly, prove any real black magic as uneducated superstition compared to "high ceremonial magic".After reading Strata, I did not believe any character class could top the absolute perfection that is the Inksmith.