I was recently sent a copy of Sex Magic For Beginners by author Skye Alexander. My blog is quoted several times within the book, and I’m listed in the works cited page.
Most of the books on the market dealing with sex magic concentrate on the sex aspect, and they usually ignore the magic aspect. Some of these books are nothing more than compilations of dirty pictures, and almost all of them seem focused on increasing sexual performance and enjoyment. I’m all for increased sexual performance and enjoyment, but if that’s all you want, you might as well just buy an issue of Cosmo.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Ms Alexander’s book isn’t about how to have great sex, but how to use sex inside of a magical operation. Some of what’s in the book doesn’t even directly deal with sex, but instead focuses on theories and techniques centered around energy manipulation and magic. That isn’t to say that the book doesn’t ever talk about increasing sexual pleasure, it does, but that isn’t the real focus of the book.
The book’s cover says that it’s the ‘Easy & Fun Way to Tap Into the Law of Attraction’, and that’s really the sort of magic this book tries to teach. This is a book about manifestation magic, or how to bring things into your life, whether that be material objects like money, or people like romantic partners, or even events, like winning a court case; and as the title suggests, the book’s method of producing this manifestation is through sex.
Ms Alexander has written several dozen books on a wide variety of topics, including Wicca, spellcraft, tarot, reflexology, and erotic fiction. This has made her somewhat of an expert on a lot of different spiritual subjects, and one of the cool things about the book is that she’s able to incorporate techniques pertaining to all of these other subjects into the realm of sex magic. Often times there’ll be a few paragraphs dealing with utilizing something like the tarot, or the I Ching, or reflexology.
She’s also managed to bring together techniques and ideas from a lot of different systems, including Western systems like Ceremonial Magic, Paganism, and Chaos Magic; and Eastern Systems like Buddhism and Taoism. She’s also included a lot from the New Thought movement. The New Thought Movement is a system that even many of the most open minded Ceremonialists and Pagans want nothing to do with, but it’s also one of the best systems to incorporate into this sort of magic. Manifestation magic is the thing that New Thought is centered around, and its the one kind of magic that it’s really good at.
Being an eclectic magician, I really love books like this that don’t solely concentrate on one system, but instead take the best parts from a lot of different systems and put them together into a workable, and more efficient, model.
This review’s probably too long already, but there’s one last thing I want to bring up. A good portion of the book is dedicated to different magical acts that you can try and different exercises to improve your magical abilities. A lot of books on the market are filled with theory, morals, spiritual speculation, personal accounts, and if you’re lucky some associations. The books I like, the books I find useful, and the books I think new magicians will get the most out of are books like this, which don’t just talk about magic, but give people instructions for real things they can go out and do after they’ve read it.
I don’t agree with everything in the book, but I agree with most of it, and the theory that the magic is based on is solid. It’s a great book for anyone interested in incorporating sexual acts into operations centered around manifestation magic. The book targets beginning magicians, but it’s also a useful book for more experienced magicians that are looking for some new ideas (I found a few things in the book I really want to try). My only real complaint about the book, and it’s the book’s biggest flaw, is that like sex, although there are some things that you can do by yourself, for the really cool stuff you need a partner.
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