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A review by historyofjess
The Little Work: Magic to Transform Your Everyday Life by Durgadas Allon Duriel
1.0
I gave this book some time, but then I started skipping around because I quickly realized that this was not for me. I had thought this would be a nice little guide to incorporating magic practices into your daily life. But...not really. What I found was a volume of soft self-help platitudes threaded through with quotes from Aleister Crowley and lots of references to The Golden Dawn.
There were just so many red flags throughout the book. The author frequently references their time in "magic school" and then, in the last chapter talks about leaving it and how everyone there told him it would terrible and that everyone that leaves has bad things happen to them. ... My dude, you were in a cult.
The point where I was really certain this was not for me was when the author, a white cis man, decided to tackle cultural appropriation and did NOT get it. He basically said that if you don't engage in culturally appropriative behavior publicly than it's fine. NO!!!!! And then, of course, he goes on further in the book to share things like a "Native American prayer." There's so much bad here and I do not like it.
There were just so many red flags throughout the book. The author frequently references their time in "magic school" and then, in the last chapter talks about leaving it and how everyone there told him it would terrible and that everyone that leaves has bad things happen to them. ... My dude, you were in a cult.
The point where I was really certain this was not for me was when the author, a white cis man, decided to tackle cultural appropriation and did NOT get it. He basically said that if you don't engage in culturally appropriative behavior publicly than it's fine. NO!!!!! And then, of course, he goes on further in the book to share things like a "Native American prayer." There's so much bad here and I do not like it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cultural appropriation