Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Inside Solar Lodge, Outside the Law: True Tales of Initiation and High Adventure by Frater Shiva. There has since 2012 been a new and expanded edition released, available at extortionate prices or a reasonable price.

This book is an invaluable addition to the history of Thelema, providing a previously-unavailable level of detail on the principal group in the US that believed itself to be perpetuating a magical catena from Aleister Crowley during the late 1960s. It is quite readable, and mostly credible. Still, practicing 21st-century Thelemites with no particular interest in history may find it somewhat shallow and uninteresting.

The account is certainly worth the read by students and researchers of the phenomena of New Religious Movements, as it offers an insider’s view of the full developmental arc of a ceremonial magic cult from inception to drug-addled senescence. [via]