'The Book of Black Magic' by A.E. Waite

As research for a piece of fiction, I've been reading about European magic. The extant manuscripts of the various Grimoires of Black Magic in the British Museum date from the 15th century onwards, though may have been written earlier. Black magic is strange, or to paraphrase the author of the book I've read, it is a mixture of the grotesque and the imbecilic.

The Grimoires teach that through the glory and power of God, one can summon and control infernal spirits. In popular culture we think of black magic as a godless deal with demons - it is strange to think those who practiced it believed themselves holy. There's a Jewish legend about King Solomon: God gave him the power to control demons, and he used demons to build his temple and help him out whenever he wanted. There are also Christian and Islamic versions of this legend - in the Islamic version, Solomon also has a magic carpet. Many of the Grimoires claim to be based on the magical writings of King Solomon, who shared the secrets of demon-control.

In Jewish mythology, demons are not fallen angels - they are creatures God abandoned bodiless and unfinished at sunset on the 6th day, to mark the importance of ceasing work to rest on the Sabbath. They are not inherently evil, though are jealous and spiteful of humanity's completeness. Thus demons are another of God's creatures on Earth, over which man is supposed to be the ruler, and so in Jewish magic systems the wizard sorcerer chap is hoping for God's assistance in placating one of his subordinate creatures - analogous to praying that your horse will carry you to your destination without rearing up and maiming you.

(I have a separate book on Jewish magic which I have not read yet.)

The Solomon-inspired magic was adapted to a Christian setting and audience. The wizard sorcerer chap calls on the power of God to help him summon and enslave a fallen angel to do his bidding. Jesus commands demons in the gospels (the Pharisees think he is in league with Satan because the demons obey him so quickly), and so a devout Christian should also be able to to command demons with Jesus' support. As the Pharisees thought Jesus was bad for his command over the demons, the Church authorities think the sorcerers are evil for their command over the demons. So the reasoning goes.

(While most Grimoires claim to originate with King Solomon, a few others claim to be the work of a Pope, who was holy enough to have been taught the magical arts by an angel of light.)

Most of the rituals concern personal and material gain: summoning a demon so it can lead you to treasure, or make a woman love you, or harm an enemy. Very cliche and selfish objectives. Not very holy. I was trying to imagine the sort of person who - hundreds of years ago - would have turned to such rituals. Poor, lonely, awkward, and yet with an ego big enough to think they were holy and great enough to get God's assistance in enslaving a fallen angel. I pictured a modern-day Internet Troll living in the pre-modern world.

In preparation for a ritual, the sorcerer is supposed to fast, refrain from social contact with other humans, and sleep as little as possible for so many days, presumably so by the time they carried out the ritual their mental state was sufficiently ruined hallucinations came very easily. Specific prayers must be repeated throughout the fasting days, and at the sorcerer must bathe in holy water and bless every item to be used in the ritual - his robes (white linen, embroidered with certain symbols depending on which ritual is being performed), the incense, the parchment or vellum, the candles, the magic circle, etc.

There is only one extant ritual which calls for a blood sacrifice for the sake of blood sacrifice. I'll spare you the details, but it involves killing both a black hen and a young lamb. A few others feature human body parts in their reagents list -
the author notes that human bodies would have been easyish to find back then, when mortality was high, life expectancy low, and the death sentence was a punishment for many crimes.

Curiously, the cliche of sorcerers sacrificing a goat as part of their rituals comes from a misunderstanding: the Grimoires teach that the magic circle should be drawn on virgin kidskin which has been carefully prepared. Sorcerers could not rely on the local tannery for this, and so would prepare their own. Obviously, since the goat's tanned hide was to be used in the ritual, the sorcerer would bless the goat repeatedly - before, during, and after slaughtering it - and so to any casual observer, it would look like blood sacrifice for the sake of blood sacrifice.

In case it's not obvious, I think this magic stuff is bollocks. At best a historical curiosity, at worst a way of seriously damaging your mental health. I tried to imagine how I would react to it, living hundreds of years ago. I found myself feeling sympathetic towards the Inquisition. If your worldview takes the existence of evil demons as a fact, and your holy books warn against greed and lust and malice, it is so easy to imagine these Grimoires having been forged by demons to trick the poor, lonely, and egotistical down a dark path. They are like the pre-modern equivalent of scam e-mails, promising 'EARN $5000 PER DAY - SUMMON A TREASURE-FINDING DEMON' or 'THE ONE TRICK WOMEN CAN'T RESIST - INFERNAL SPIRITS WOO 4 U', but rather than making you lose the contents of your bank account, you lose your soul too.

'Dark Benediction' by Walter Miller Jr

A short story collection that deserves its place in the SF Masterworks collection. Miller's short stories focus on character and emotion rather than technology, and so while the imagined futures are quite retro and a bit dated, they still make compelling reading. There is some very memorable imagery which makes the stories feel quite cinematic; I could easily imagine them being adapted into an impressive anthology TV series.

The titular story is a post-apocalypse with some similarities to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, though with better drawn characters and a far stranger plague. My favourite stories were 'The Big Hunger', a history of human space travel and galactic conquest written in a somewhat biblical style, and 'Conditionally Human', about a man whose job is killing animals who have been artificially granted intelligence through genetic engineering - the story has many layers, touches many subjects, making a very impressive 58 pages.

Subject matter is varied, though is sometimes quite typical of the time period. Two stories explore 1950s anxieties over increasing automation: 'The Darfsteller', which won a Hugo award, about an aging actor who can't move with the times when theatres become automated - while I could tell it was a well-constructed and well-written story, I didn't find it especially engaging. 'Dumb Waiter' is a post-apocalyptic story in which the protagonist explores an abandoned automated city: it's all still functioning and running as normal, but there are no people. 'The Will' is a simple and uplifting time-travel story. 'I, Dreamer' is about a sentient spaceship. 'You Triflin' Skunk!' is a jokey alien invasion tale. 'Anybody else Like me?', about human mutation, packs a surprisingly powerful emotional punch for only being 18 pages. 'Blood Bank' is a far-future space opera.

Two stories are set on Mars: 'Crucifixus Etiam' and 'Big Joe and the Nth Generation'. These were relatively weak, though still entertaining: Mars colonization has been done to death in SF, so the subject feels quite cliche now.

'Vengeance for Nikolai' is set during an invasion of Soviet Russia by American fascists ('blueshirts') who greet each other by saluting and saying, "America first!" 

Anthologies tend to be hit and miss, but I only actively disliked one story here: 'The Lineman', which featured truly appalling misogyny. This is 50s SF, so the gender politics is obviously quite dated: the female characters in most of the stories were badly drawn, and the male characters were often casually misogynist, but 'The Lineman' took it to another level. Minor spoiler: (view spoiler) I do not think this story should have been included.

Overall though, I thoroughly recommend this collection if you're wanting some good retro SF.

I've given the collection a 4 star rating. I rated each of the stories separately as I was reading:

'You Triflin' Skunk' 4/5
'The Will' 4/5
'Anybody else Like me?' 4/5
'Crucifixus Etiam' 3/5
'I, Dreamer' 4/5
'Dumb Waiter' - 4/5
'Blood Bank' - 4/5
'Big Joe and the Nth Generation' - 3/5
'The Big Hunger' - 5/5
'Conditionally Human' - 5/5
'The Darfstellar' - 3/5
'Dark Benediction' - 4/5
'The Lineman' - 1/5
'Vengence for Nikolai' - 3/5

Average rating: 3.64
Average excluding 'The Lineman': 3.85

'The Island of Doctor Moreau' by HG Wells

While simple in terms of plot structure - the protagonist ends up on a strange island where strange things happen - Wells packed a lot of thematic elements into his short 3rd novel. Adam Roberts says in the introduction that the novel is so richly layered it is possible to get too carried away in interpretation; Margaret Atwood listed ten different interpretations in her introduction to another edition. My review focuses on what I think are the three most obvious thematic elements.

The novel is a tale about the dangers of unethical scientific research; Moreau is driven by his research, his attempts to create humans from animals, and cares for nothing else. He is the classic mad scientist, experimenting with lifeforms and indifferent towards the suffering he causes - his operations are carried out sans anesthetic, his home becomes known as the House of Pain. Published in 1896, before animal rights activism really took off, Wells' novel articulates our cultural anxieties about scientific knowledge being pursued unethically, about the suffering of animals in experiments, and remains relevant in our modern world of biological and genetic engineering.

Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy" - it mocks attempts to combine Darwinian evolution with belief in a deity. Moreau is playing God: he is creating imperfect humanoids out of animals, commanding them to resist their animal natures (to uphold 'the Law'), and becoming frustrated and wrathful whenever his imperfect creations do not live up to his high standards. Evolution - 'nature red in tooth and claw' - is a brutal process, full of suffering and death: Moreau the creates his Beast Men through vivisection sans anesthetic, a brutal and painful process. Wells is not kind to Moreau the deity-figure.

And it is about human nature, crafted from the bestial over millennia of evolution. The final chapter is particularly effective on this subject, after the protagonist has returned to civilization:

I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert, to show first this bestial mark and then that.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a short novel with a simple plot but compelling symbolism. It has obviously been hugely influential on science fiction and popular culture. I wasn't blown away by it and at times the simplistic plot did bore me - I considered giving it 3 stars rather than 4 - but I'm glad I've finally read it, and would recommend it for a quick read.