Exactly, and I think magic can actually contribute to disappearing up one’s own bottom and thinking oneself to be superior, instead of having more compassion for fellow beings. If you want to get closer to nature, go do some conservation volunteering.

Thing is, the immense majority of Llewellyn readers are self-taught; that means people who think a 101 book on Wicca, for example, contains basically everything there is to Wicca. And considering they expect to fulfill most readers’ expectations, just what will they publish? On the other hand, it’s scary enough that their numerous books on Enochian magic are all actually 101 books…

I had the misfortune to buy Llewellyn’s McCoy book Advanced Witchcraft years ago, and that book merely tells what the author thinks an advanced practitioner MIGHT learn and do, but is completely useless, misinformed and an outright scam in itself. McCoy’s earlier “basic” books were far more useful and basically coherent than this one. If those are the advanced technologies they will flood the markets with, I’ll pass.

Given the lovely hatchet job that Llewellyn did on Chas Clifton’s fourth “Modern Craft Movement” anthology back in 1994, where they cut five chapters, (more than a third of the manuscript,) on the grounds that the excised material was either “too controversial” or “not really of interest to our readers,” I’ve no confidence at all that the books published under this new initiative will be anything more than a different take on the same material we’ve been seeing for years.

One problem here is that the advanced techniques that Carl Weschcke says he wants to publish books about require the practitioner to have already undergone a process of growth and development that is neither simple nor easy. And Carl has already made it pretty clear that he isn’t interested in publishing books about the hard parts. So he’s going to be publishing things that aren’t really going to be useful to the people who are interested in buying them.

Not a good plan, in my humble opinion.