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You are here: Wild Ideas > Temple > Library >
Crafting The Art Of Magic:
A Critical Review
By D. Hudson Frew (Morgann)
Copyright 1991 by D. Hudson Frew.
Used by permission of the author.
Update Continued
8. I sent a copy of my review to Aidan Kelly himself, who called me and left the following message on my answering machine:
(beep)... Don, this is Aidan. I just got your review today. Thank you very much. I like it. I think it's a Hell of a good review. I absolutely agree. What I'd like you to do is send a copy of it to Carl so that I can then hit him over the head with it. But if you can, give me a call back, `cause there's a couple of things here that are really interesting that I'd like to discuss with you. And no, you didn't piss me off. I think this is a Hell of a good review and I appreciate your hard work. So, talk to you later. Bye-bye.
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. I called Aidan and spoke with him for about an hour. He said that about 75% of my objections would be cleared up by the original documents. He had wanted to include copies of these in the book, but Llewellyn had refused. Aidan hoped that my review might prompt Llewellyn to do a new edition of the book, including copies the originals. Aidan said that he agreed with the majority of the rest of my complaints. He promised to send me a copy of the manuscript that he submitted to Llewellyn, along with xeroxes of the texts in question.
 The xeroxes arrived along with a letter from Aidan and the manuscript on disk. I have not yet been able to translate the disks into a form I can read, but the letter and xeroxes are very interesting. Aidan says:
Herewith are the disks and the xeroxed figures that are referred to in them... You can see from Gardner's spelling, etc. in these xeroxes that I am not being a perfectionist in saying that Gardner was at least marginally dyslexic.
The xeroxes (appended to this update, if you send for it by regular mail) consisted of:
- a page from a Book of Shadows, in Gardner's hand
- 3 pages of diagrams from the Mathers Key of Solomon
- a calligraphed page from a BoS, in Gardner's hand
- a handwritten letter to Mr. Gordon B---
- a typed letter to Carl Weschcke
- The Witches' Chant, typed
- part of an "Air Letter" to Weschcke, typed
- Forming the Circle, typed
- part of a ritual, typed with handwritten notes
The handwritten documents contain virtually no misspellings and are perfectly clear to read. The typed documents sometimes have misspellings, about half of which have been corrected by typing-over. All this proves is that Gardner was a lousy typist. However, we should remember that he also wrote in the days before wordprocessors. It is easy for us to forget those bygone days when you often let a few misspellings slide because it would be too much trouble to retype the whole bloody letter. None of the texts presented were intended for publication "as is", so there would have been no pressing reason for Gardner to "clean them up".
In relation to this, I could note that Aidan's half-page letter accompanying these xeroxes contains crossed out words and written in letters. Even in this age of wordprocessors, we still let simple little mistakes slide rather than go to the effort of correcting them.
Of more than passing interest: the letter from Gardner to Mr. B--- includes the following passage, apparently in reference to High Magic's Aid (Note: In a few places the combination of handwriting and many xeroxings make the text difficult to render):
Actually, I wanted to write about a witch & what she'd told me, & she wouldn't let me tell anything about Witchcraft, but I said why not let me write ---- to --- ---- the Witch's point of view. You are always persecuted & abused & ---- -----.
So she said I might if I didn't give any Witch's magic, & it must only be as fiction. So, as I had to give some magic, I simply copied it from Jewish Ritual Magic, chiefly "The Key of Salomon the King".
It was thought that King Salomon could command the spirits and make them work for him. & if you knew these words & sigils you could do the same. This Key is usuly [sic] in Latin or Hebrew, but there is an English translation by MacGregor Mathers. But personaly [sic] I don't believe that it works. It's all very dificult [sic] & complicated. & the Witch... [line missing]
This letter demonstrates several points: 1) Gardner was not dyslexic, 2) High Magic's Aid may not be taken as straight Witch practice, as Kelly has done when using it to "reconstruct" the Book of Shadows, 3) Gardner apparently did not himself practice KoS workings, and 4) Gardner freely admitted copying ritual material from the Key of Solomon. Why did Kelly spend so many chapters proving by deduction what he could have proved with a single page? Why isn't this letter even mentioned in Kelly's book? The only reason that I can think of is that it suits Aidan's purposes to lead the reader to believe that Gardner concealed the KoS origins of some of the rituals; a deceit seemingly undiscovered until Aidan's expose'. In fact, Aidan knew from the start that Gardner had taken texts from the Key of Solomon, but by implying that Gardner was hiding the truth about these Craft origins he can lull the reader into accepting that Gardner was lying when he made other claims.
Gnosis Magazine printed a copy of my review (reduced to four pages with Anna Korn's assistance) in its Fall 1991 issue (#21). We noted at the end of the review that:
The flaws in this book are so numerous that we have had to condense this review down from a sixty-two page rebuttal, a copy of which we sent to Kelly. To our surprise, Kelly said that he "completely agrees" with our rebuttal, though he asserted that the original texts would answer about three-quarters of our objections.
Kelly responded in the Winter 1992 issue of Gnosis (#22). Among other things, he said that:
...A History of Modern Witchcraft, 1939-64... was my original title and imparts some information to the reader, whereas Crafting the Art of Magic (Goddess only knows what that's supposed to mean) is the glitzy commercial title that the Llewellyn staff thought up. Probably your readers do not know that authors are not allowed to choose their own book titles these days....
... the negative review by Don Frew and Anna Korn really doesn't rank much higher than a gratuitous insult.
Don did send me his sixty-two page "rebuttal." I told him the major problem he has with Crafting the Art of Magic, Book I (from here on, CAMI) is that he was expecting a scholarly book -- he has this bizarre idea that Llewellyn publishes scholarly books -- but what he got is a trade book....
... I spent most of the last fifteen years failing to persuade Carl Weschcke of Llewellyn or any other publisher that there was a market for [a scholarly book]....
I did not tell Don that I "completely agreed" with what he said. I told him that 75% of his complaints were about the points in CAMI where the argument is not watertight.... In order to make the book more palatable for the general reader, I had to leave out such boring things as the twelve pages, with figures, that analyze the typing [etc.]... even though this information was necessary for the argument.
The Spring 1992 issue of Gnosis (#23) carried my response to Kelly:
Dear Jay and Richard,
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Aidan's rebuttal to my review, that is "Aidan's Offer" (Gnosis #22) in response to "Or Was It..." (Gnosis #21).
Aidan admits that Crafting the Art of Magic I (CAMI) is not a scholarly book (and I wholeheartedly agree). He then asks the reader's indulgence, arguing that CAMI is a sort of watered-down version of his real, scholarly text Inventing Witchcraft. That text, Aidan says, would have proved his arguments, but it was apparently unpublishable. Well, I have read Inventing Witchcraft, and I believe that the bulk of my objections apply equally well to that work as to CAMI. Aidan is never able to prove his main points: that Gardner was dyslexic, that he was sexually addicted to scourging, or that there was no pre-1939 coven to which he belonged.
Aidan calls the accuracy of my reporting into question when he states: "I did not tell Don that I `completely agreed' with him. I told him that 75% of his complaints were about points in CAMI where the argument is not watertight." In fact, this is misleading and a misrepresentation on Aidan's part. Having received and (presumably) read the full 62-page version of my review, Aidan called and left the following message on my answering machine:
(beep)... Don, this is Aidan. I just got your review today. Thank you very much. I like it. I think it's a Hell of a good review. I absolutely agree. What I'd like you to do is send a copy of it to Carl so that I can then hit him over the head with it. But if you can, give me a call back, `cause there's a couple of things here that are really interesting that I'd like to discuss with you. And no, you didn't piss me off. I think this is a Hell of a good review and I appreciate your hard work. So, talk to you later. Bye-bye.
(Transcribed verbatim from the tape dated 7/11/91.)
This in response to the same review that Aidan calls a "gratuitous insult" in his letter to Gnosis? Evidently, Aidan's memory is as faulty as his scholarship. Anyway, I called Aidan back that evening and we discussed my review. As I explained in "Or Was It...", he said that 75% of my objections could be answered by the original texts in question, which he promised to send me. I have received and examined these texts and as far as I can tell, they only add more support to my arguments, rather than Kelly's. Any reader can examine a few of these documents as reproduced in Doreen Valiente's The Rebirth of Witchcraft (Phoenix, 1990). Gardner may have been a poor typist, but I see no indication that he was dyslexic; and in any case, how is Aidan qualified to diagnose dyslexia?
I have no desire to get into a debate with Aidan in the pages of Gnosis. Readers interested in acquiring and reading the full text of my review (currently 80 pages and still growing) are welcome to send $5 to cover copying and postage to P.O. Box 4243, Berkeley CA, 94704.
I agree with Aidan when he says that "lots of people want genuine scholarship on the Craft". Unfortunately, Crafting the Art of Magic isn't it.
The same issue of Gnosis also carried a response from Nancy J. Mostad, Acquisitions & Development Manager for Llewellyn Publications. She notes:
... with regard to the title, Crafting the Art of Magic: A History of Witchcraft 1939-64: it was this which appeared on [Kelly's] original proposal for the first book of this two-volume project (with the exception that "magic" was spelled with a "k"). Though it is true that the publisher reserves the right contractually for titling a book, such was not the case in this instance....
With regard to his comment, "he has this bizarre idea that Llewellyn publishes scholarly books," I can only say that "scholarly" is a relative term.... a number of our... books are being used as required reading in several university programs....
It was not suggested that [Kelly] leave anything out of the book that might not be "palatable for the general reader," since such technical material (warts and all) could have appeared in an appendix if it was not suited to the main body of the book. In this case, the author did not elect this option.
Kelly's memory appears not only to be faulty, but selective as well!
  
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