For advanced magic users, Beyond the Book of Shadows by Lynden Clarke is a book for those who are comfortable in their magic use, and are interested in advanced ideas about Wiccan mysteries. That being said, I would be hard pressed to recommend this book to anybody, as it is a difficult read; though not due to its advanced subject matter. It’s a hard read because there are typos, long, convoluted sentences, and paragraphs one must read several times due to extra words and words with missing letters.
If one still decided to read this book though, they would encounter interesting theories and ideas about Wiccan mysteries and advanced magical practices, though the author seems to use Wiccan and Witch interchangeably. Taken from several mythologies including Garnderian Wicca, Vedic mysteries and Greek mythology, Clarke describes ritual practices in an easy to follow, broken down format. Beginning with advanced circle construction Clarke goes through everything from elemental guardians to invocation and then breaking down the circle. Also included is how to create your own elemental guardian, charging ritual tools and discussion about coven initiation versus self-initiation.
Should you be interested in advanced magical practice and can overlook the difficult-to-understand sentence structure, extra words and misspellings, then I would suggest read an excerpt first before purchasing this book. Otherwise, unfortunately, this book is just too difficult to read and the sentences and paragraphs too long-winded and wordy for anyone to truly get the meat and gist of what Clarke is trying to explain. And it is most certainly not for a beginner to Wicca or any other magical practice.
~review by Jessica Elizabeth
Author: Lynden Clarke
Publisher: Green Magic, 2010
pp. 167
