Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Sorcerers by Jacob Needleman.

Author Needleman is not known for his fiction, but rather his popularizing efforts on religion and philosophy, as well as academic work in the same fields. Sorcerers was his first novel, and the substance would mark it as young adult literature–a short, digestible coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old protagonist–but the packaging seems to be directed to an adult audience. The story is concerned with magic of at least three kinds: the stage magic of the illusionist’s craft, the magic of supernatural power, and the magic of spiritual realization. 

There is certainly an autobiographical component: Needleman has put his central character Elliot Appleman in the 1950s Philadelphia where the author himself grew up, but the supernatural elements of the story suggest that it is quite fictional. Thaumaturgical characters with names like Irene Angel and Max Falkoner lend it the sense of allegorical fable, which the naturalistic setting helps to ameliorate. 

Needleman’s works are often informed by his embrace of the teachings originating with G. I. Gurdjieff, and that seems to be the case here as well. In particular, the lessons that Elliot receives from Max are concerned with using disciplined bodily movement to break free of psychic automatism, and the ethic emphasized is one of conscience and awakening. But the presentation of these ideas is free of sectarian baggage, and the same story might be read as a Thelemic parable, with a focus on gradual initiation and True Will.

The narrative highlights of Sorcerers are distinctly initiatory in character. There is a quite affective (and effective!) ceremony of Elliot’s induction into the Sorcerer’s Apprentices club for teenage stage magicians. His private instruction from the adult magicians Blake and Falkoner is also a combination of transformative ritual and spiritual filiation. The climax and denouement in the book’s fourth part could be read as a single event in which various characters are undergoing different initiations peculiar to their own grades. 

Unusually, but not inappropriately, the story ends with a benediction on the reader.