The Book of Lies

Every once in a while, an occult book comes along that refuses to conform to the status quo of the era that it loudly takes birth in. It it often the case, that books such as these are the books that become the classic occult literature of future generations. Disinformation's Book of Lies just might be the one to shatter this era's quiet, complacent "new age" aura and hurdle us into a future where magic is just as prevalent as science.

Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult is an anthology of essays from people of various disciplines (some examples include a comic writer, a computer programmer, and a cult leader) giving their own particular perspective on what exactly magick is and what exactly can be called occult. Edited by Richard Metzger (the devious mind behind the Disinformation alternate news series), Book of Lies contains its own mix of pop culture, scholarly insight, underground information, and sometimes, just plain hilarity. Metzger has assembled some of the greatest minds of the underground counterculture to produce a grimoire for the generation of identity crisis.

Leading off this anthology of madness is Grant Morrison's entertaining and highly enjoyable piece on Pop Magic. Unfortunately, Morrison's work is so good that it overshadows the rest of the excellent anthology. Nothing else lives up to the precedence established by this essay. It might have been better served at the end, but it most certainly did its job as an opener. It captured my attention and urged me to read on and see what other gems might lie within. Mark Pesce ruminating over the nature and usefulness of spells - coming from a programmer's perspective - forces one to rethink the subject in a new light, while the excerpt from Daniel Pinchbeck's book Breaking Open the Head found me traveling to the bookstore for a small purchase in order to read the rest of it. Phil Hine's essay, on the other hand, was a little bit of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, Hine is always at his best when writing about the subject of magic, but everything that swarmed within this essay can be found countless times in all his other works. I was hoping for something a little different and original, not a reprint. In an anthology, you can't always expect the best of everything. The book contains several hit or miss essays. Whereas Paul Laffoley, the phenomenal artist who gets way too little exposure, rants insanely about death energy, and leaves you wondering why this guy isn't a superstar being proclaimed a genius by the mainstream press; you wonder why the decision was made to include an essay from Terence McKenna that starts with a bang of intelligent conversation about DMT, and then fizzles with a conclusion about extraterrestial mushrooms that speak.

Book of Lies will never please everyone with its choice of content, and I'm happy because of this. Metzger's choice of artists, writers, and occultists is a wide reaching mix of Kabbalism, Chaos, Lovecraft, Drugs, and even a few things that you never thought were magickal (but when you're finished reading this book, you will). Metzger forces you to expand your mind, and just as chaos magick brought a new era upon the occult community, look for this book to shape the minds of future generations.

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