I’v heard that there are some magickal books that have booby traps. You know, like an author replacing the sigil of a certain spirit with maybe an astral parasite. Any examples books or experiences ya’ll like to share…
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I think most of the pirated Gallery of Magick books have incorrect sigils in them. And I’ve read of various authors who enchant their books so that any magic performed from a pirated copy will be ineffective or have negative consequences for the caster.
Would recommend just picking up a copy of the ebook. Usually you’ll pay less than $10 and the books are basically worth their weight in gold. When I first read Demons of Magick I stayed up all night to finish the entire thing cover to cover, and I felt like someone had basically handed me the keys to the universe.
Edit: also just from personal experience, I used a “free PDF” version of New Avatar Power a few years ago and found it extremely ineffective. Recently bought the updated ebook version. It’s like night and day.
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I can attest to the wards on certain books. I dont engage in book piracy (in fact I just recently bought the Ba’al cloth compendium from the balg main site) but I have come across pirated copies of grimoires online while searching for those books and I could feel a huge negativity behind the duplication, almost like you are going behind the authors back. So I just buy official copies, it feels much nicer to have the book in hand imo and know you are helping someone who is imparting priceless knowledge upon you.
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Yeah, I’m aware of the author of the Shifters Bible booby trapping his book.
I downloaded free pdfs of several protection magick books but I plan on deleting them as sufficient information is available online.
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Veil wat is the difwrence the update version,?
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I have a collection of ebooks that I sift through and work from often without issues. One thing I want to point out are texts and books over a certain age are legally open to public domain by creative commerce laws. At least in canada, if a book is over x years it’s okay to have digital copies and share them for free.
In this matter I find my need often outweighs the prevention magick.
As for new stuff, I find it’s worth the asking price. I feel that it is the authors total right to do whatever they can to prevent abuse of their work, but sharing is caring.
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It was edited and re-released by the author’s daughter, it no longer contains all those exaggerated stories/testimonials like “how Mary got $20,000 in one week” or “how John got 10 girlfriends”. It’s much more straightforward.
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I got a paper I buy long time.but the kindle seems to cut,orissing something.no same vibe.thamks
How about downloading a free copy to have a better feel what the book is about and then buying it if I see that it’s what I want? I have some free copies sitting in my computer, but I always buy if I intend to use them. Would that be a problem?
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@Cruella Personally, i do not think so because i think almost all occultists are guilty of piracy. It is just natural for dabbling, because we all dabble either for comparison or simply to see a different way of doing things. I don’t what the whole rant is about concerning dabbling. If i did not dabble in my earlier times, right now i would have been in shit because i was reading through some very vampiric currents earlier. Dabble man, it’s alright. Actually i commend it because sometimes you may buy a book that is completely useless and regret later. As long as you do not perform the rituals, you are safe. Though amazon has done a good job with book previews where they allow you to see some of the content before buying. This has reduced piracy btw because at least you know what you are buying instead of relying on some Youtube ad. Technically, true magickal books protect themselves and as long as you are serious with the work, the spirits being of an amoral nature will not harm you for using stolen materials. Because most powerful books are not really meant for solely making money, they have a higher cause. Of course if you like the authors work, please support the guy/gal because people need to put food on the table. I also do not agree with piracy but at the base level, it does not matter if you do it. Paying for a book shows devotion and you will have a much easier time with the work as opposed to just pirating the books. Besides, you will help another human being put dinner on their table. It is courtesy, So don’t get caught up with the idea that GALLERY OF MAGICK will curse you or some shit @Veil …provided the book is genuine. I agree with you, they are cheap and i would also buy (btw, i own a copy of wealth magick) I don’t think they can enchant their books, that seems bullshit to me. Unless they are creating their own eggregores for spirits, i doubt actual spirits would give two shits if people pirated their books or not. i mean VK Jehannum has rituals that are far more powerful than you would get from that group and guess what…it’s fucking free! They are just doing that to scare people.
My real concern was authors literally changing sigils in order to feed off of their readers. People may wonder why they do this but i think maybe they got involved in some sort of pact that instructed them to do so. You know, 100 souls and i will offer you this knowledge. That shit actually happens and i feel bad for the neophytes who buy books without realizing that sigils have been changed.
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So if i buy a book in amazon. Tey autnor still feed from everyone,?
This is not an uncommon or new practice actually. In medieval times, scribes would write curses in the first page of their books. These were mainly geared to guard from thieves. Considering there were no printing presses at the time, the curses had to be written the slow way (as writing with a quil is not a fast method) and likely involved quite a bit of emotion as well as the author’s imagination. I can imagine they hold quite a bit of power behind them. Some were written as prayers, others as poetry, and some where just straight up declarations. I actually continue the practice in my own journals, as each have their own individual curse if stolen.
Here are some great examples of book curses from Medieval times
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Some material by Aleister Crowley, who did it as a joke for the higher grade Magicians. Bits and pieces of Magick in Theory & Practice come to mind.
Al.
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I can’t condone book piracy on an author’s forum but there are books that are pretty much in the free domain like from Crowley, other materials etc that have warnings about using it without purchasing it and people have been using these books without harm, to me, from experience it all depends on the person using the book and their will of dismissal. Even if a sigil might be wrong, it can still work because you’re making it work. It’s like the debate between which sigils are correct and which is not, like lucifer’s and like Crowley’s sacred oil that he used for years that wasn’t made with the correct ingredients but the users of it, believed it worked. Plus, a lot of the magick in the books themselves, especially in Gallery of magick aren’t that great, but all the pages before the magick, explaining magick and how it works, is way more important.
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But what if the sigil is calling forth a different entity all together. You know, a copy cat.
Then many people have been calling copycat spirits for years since with many reworks there’s sigils people realized were incorrect or pronunciation were wrong. So many things people do not understand about magick itself but one thing we do know is magick is strongly based on intent, desire and your will to achieve what you want. People have used egregores, the real entities, servitors for years and got what they wanted. It sometimes doesn’t matter as long as you work it correctly, respectfully and mostly just show whatever spirit you conjured that you really mean it and want it. It’s something that’s harder to achieve in a gallery of magick book however if the system they use is locked and can only be worked one way since it’s for beginners mainly.
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Hiya OP! IME, books don’t even have to be cursed by their authors to carry malefic magic. They don’t even have to be magic books! I used to break curses on books for fun, especially those places by self-proclaimed “black magicians” (ooo, spooky) and most of them didn’t even amount to much. They’re more bite than bark, for the most part! The strongest one only made a glass break. 
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I knw a italian guy who put curses on his books, and hes real. Bcse nobody cant afford 11,euroes.but some complain tat he no do kindle, or ship to the World, so there, he stop doing tat, besides, his company make it hard, and some guys do living doing pdf of him. Nut he dnt ship. His loss, i feel bad but hes losing money,
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I feel that it is really insulting when people put curses in books. You can’t control how someone gets a book. I also think it’s insulting when people remove knowledge specifically because the knowledge was pirated, as if that even fucking matters in the long run.
I was part of a large occult library, and there was this lady who was friends with the owner, and she was given the power over the library’s ownership. It had thousands of pdf’s and Epubs of material on Money Magick, and other things, and the stuff worked.
This lady proceeds to save all the documents for herself and her inner circle, and then announces that the library is going to be purging books within the next few days because they are pirated.
Now, the library has like 100 books, and most of them are still pirated books.
Then another occult library rose to prominence, and this bitch decides to make war on this new library, and nearly gets it wiped off of facebook.
I’m like, “This bitch…”
So, we pushed back. And pushed her all the way back to her funky part of the universe.
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I remember my days of downloading lots of pdfs, (some public domain, some circulated by the author or publisher and some pirated) most of which I never put into practice, particularly the ones that had a list of difficult to acquire ingredients or were just a rehash of other books already out there. Some were merely personal antidotes, that in retrospect, were probably the most interesting, but also the least useful, because they didn’t really give instructions on how to get from A to B to C, but only one person’s experience. I liked Crowley because some of the very basic works didn’t require a bunch of tools and crap. Heck, I even got some results from the stuff, but it was really more focused on mysticism and less on practical magick.
Now I look back on it and think, now that I have a working practice, what do I need all that for? Sure, it could be improved, but I’m not sure I really want to make a career out of being a black magician, I mean, last time I tried to do spells for someone else, it really backfired, so even those I’ve wised up about things like divination and communicating with spirits, I still wouldn’t put myself in the pro category.
Maybe I should write a book. It probably wouldn’t be any worse than anything else out there,
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