A Guide to Stellar Magic and Astrological Mysticism - A Magical Study Series: Volume 3 (Hardback)

Wonderful addition to the series! This book explores the heavens beyond the classical planets, and captures their light; placing it into the lap of the reader who is then given a way to read said light.

I have reviewed a lot of the sections of this book and I will say that the quality is no doubt undeniable, but there are also flaws that I am not too fond of. So I will provide as unbiased a review as I can.

The Good:
- The book does deliver on its promise to expand on a lot of the material that was given in KTQ, especially on the things that Bardon left out. This includes the names of the Uranian intelligences, the names and descriptions of the Mars intelligences, and a lot more information on the Saturnian judges, especially the sigils of the so called sub-judges. All of this is a welcome expansion of PME.

- The overall material goes far beyond the "solar system" spheres of planets that Bardon introduces in PME and delves into the mysteries of the "outer spheres" beyond the 7-9 spheres that Bardon mentions. Especially material on the Andromeda galaxy is quite nice to see and understand.

- Overall, there is a lot of information about things such as correspondences, practices, and descriptions derived from history and other works which give a much more profound and lucid view into the astrological framework of Bardon's world.


The Bad:
- I found the book relying far too much on quoting passages from PME for my liking. If you read this book, you will find a lot of the content stands on previous quotes from Bardon's work rather than trying to expand fully in a new direction in its own words. I found this to be more of an attempt at being a bit of a space filler in some areas.

- The descriptions of different passages within the book is quite thin compared to the first volume on elementals. The first book, from my own reading, contain quite a lot of detail in many different parts, but you will find that multiple sections are in fact quite thin in this book by comparison. Again, this feels like a somewhat different approach that may have been done to fill in some space to stretch the book out.

- There is somewhat of a lack in coherence in certain parts of the book. Overall, the book does have a definite structure, going from historical + practical sides of different astrological traditions before turning to Bardon's astrology, but there are still some strange sub-sections that seem out of place. For example, in the chapter containing sections such as the "astrological medicine of Jupiter", the "sun / moon evocations", etc, I feel like these sections do not have a central train of thought weaving them together. I.e. why are these in the same chapter and what do they have to do with each other?

- My final gripe goes with the usage of numerous paragraphs and inclusions from Andre's previous works such as "The Way of Abracadabra" and "The Path of Ipsos". I can understand that these are included for relevance and to supplement the overall narrative, but like the quoting of Bardon's PME, there are multiple places where entire ritual extracts are given here. I.e. it feels like I am paying for recycled material in some places rather than something new.


Of course, let me say that I am overall happy with this work and I would recommend others to buy it. It is in many ways vastly superior to your average work on "magic" and is far more profound than 99% of the material that is on the market. However, I hope these flaws are also noted, especially when in comparison to the first volume which I felt was a 5/5 product for sure.

These books from Andre are so deep and complete it makes me wonder how he as time for it all. It is that good and a wonderful addition to the library of any active practitioner. I think this is the value they are absolutely scholarly classics, but this stuff is to be done not to be studied, and Andre gives you everything you need. This series really is special.