ANNOUNCING: Pearls of Wisdom
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My copy arrived this morning, I can't wait to really sit down and get started with it. My bookshelf feels a little more worthy now it has a signed book!
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First impressions: Only a fifth of the way through this, but already it has proven to be single best book on both the basic and advanced concepts and practices of Thelema, Magick and Hermetic Qabalah since Regardie's work (perhaps even since Crowley's own publications). It's a joy to see often seemingly complex concepts explained so clearly, and to see certain practices laid out without the usual blinds and mistakes in place (I can think of some profoundly essential Magickal techniques [e.g. LBRP] which appear in incorrect forms in pretty much every single publication available to the general public [even Regardie's books!] - this volume is one of the very few exceptions to that [the only others that I can think of - beside the Black Pearl pdfs - are 776 1/2 and David Shoemaker's Living Thelema], and pretty much the only place where the reader will find correct, clear, and unambiguous information on certain topics outside of confidential orders). No blinds, no bullshit, at last, amazing! It will be of profound value to those involved in the practice of the topics concerned, and I certainly will be giving it my highest possible recommendation.
Chapters 000, 00, and 0 are a fantastic introduction to Thelema, have you at all considered making that material available to as wide an audience as possible, perhaps online like the Ethics Of Thelema compilation?
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bdc, thank you very much.
Wow, that's a great way to start my day 
Yes, I've considered making the opening material available more widely and haven't had time to think about how to do that without harming our ability to continue publishing; so it probably won't happen soon, but something like that likely will happen eventually.
There is a practical considerations that we have many thousands of dollars invested in making the book available, and these chapters are part of what we think will drive sales of this particular book. In order to keep publishing material, we have to keep selling material to pay for subsequent publishing. We give a lot of material away for free. Giving this particular material away for free could make this the last book we ever publish.
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I understand completely, I've gone through the Black Pearl pdfs many times, but I do love actual books so much that it's an absolute pleasure to re-read some of this material again - the physical format makes all the difference to me. I'll certainly be recommending the purchase of this to anyone I know interested in Thelema and Magick.
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Tank you very much
If you have the opportunity... an Amazon review could go a long way.
BTW, I've been working for the last year on another book that I think is important and will have a tiny audience, so the plan is to give it away as a free download. (No details until ready to announce, though.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"an Amazon review could go a long way."
Will do!
"BTW, I've been working for the last year on another book that I think is important and will have a tiny audience, so the plan is to give it away as a free download. (No details until ready to announce, though.)"
Yay!
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Tank you very much
If you have the opportunity... an Amazon review could go a long way.
BTW, I've been working for the last year on another book that I think is important and will have a tiny audience, so the plan is to give it away as a free download. (No details until ready to announce, though.)"
I bet it's called "Tarot Tips for Truants"
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I have to concur with bdc's assessment of the introductory section. It is excellent. Being relatively new to Thelema, it has taken a good amount of effort to grasp certain concepts, but this book presents the material in very clear and concise way that really resonates with me, and for that, I'm very appreciative. Also, I found the LRP section useful in rectifying a couple points I wasn't entirely clear on (or perhaps, slightly misled).
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Just received my copy today.
Skimmed through it real quick,
Found more than a few golden nuggets of wisdom.
The book is also a lot larger than I expected. -
@dillanh said
"Just received my copy today.
Skimmed through it real quick,
Found more than a few golden nuggets of wisdom.
The book is also a lot larger than I expected."Yeah, somewhere between 450-500 pages as I recall. - Thanks for the kind words, I'd love an Amazon review if you have the opportunity.
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Reviewed!
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Jim, have you considered offering the Pearls (and other publications) in e-book format?
Kindle edition would be a good choice.inri
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@Frater INRI said
"Jim, have you considered offering the Pearls (and other publications) in e-book format?
Kindle edition would be a good choice."I have yet to see a commercial (rather than "just giving it away") ebook format that properly handles fonts, illustration, etc. In the long run, we'd like to offer it that way on Amazon, but Amazon has to do a lot of work on getting Kindle formatting upgraded before that's feasible. - If I find myself writing a book with no illustrations and no serious concern with fonts or layouts, then we'll probably start with that one.
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I see.
I assumed it is doable.
The 7°=4⡠from Germany seems to be willing to do it rather well in his new e-formated book The Angel & the Abyss.I can only imagine how much time had to be invested in such a project.
Tnx
inri
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I think it's more possible on Kindle if you recode the entire book in HTML and then convert. Possibly someone has ways to automate this. I've hand-coded HTML for over 15 years and it would take me far longer to convert a book to HTML than it would take to write the book in the first place - after which you could commit me to a mental institution for fried brains
Besides - one of our specific secondary goals is to further people's commitment to physical books. The theory is that if we make the book well enough, people will see reason to have the physical book. And one of my primary goals in writing these books is to leave a revenue stream (however small) for College of Thelema when I'm dread and gone. Even in a protected commercial environment like Amazon, going eBook route basically means giving the book away. If one sells a million copies, it's worth it; but the occult market isn't that large.
I think we're generous with information, including answering just about anything for free on this site, giving away all of our historic periodicals digitally, etc. I'm not going to work two years to write a major work and then just give it away for not enough revenue to take a couple of people to a cheap dinner. (That would amount to abandoning physical publication forever, since our business model is to recover enough money from one book to pay for publishing the next one.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"I think it's more possible on Kindle if you recode the entire book in HTML and then convert. Possibly someone has ways to automate this. I've hand-coded HTML for over 15 years and it would take me far longer to convert a book to HTML than it would take to write the book in the first place - after which you could commit me to a mental institution for fried brains
Besides - one of our specific secondary goals is to further people's commitment to physical books. The theory is that if we make the book well enough, people will see reason to have the physical book. And one of my primary goals in writing these books is to leave a revenue stream (however small) for College of Thelema when I'm dread and gone. Even in a protected commercial environment like Amazon, going eBook route basically means giving the book away. If one sells a million copies, it's worth it; but the occult market isn't that large.
I think we're generous with information, including answering just about anything for free on this site, giving away all of our historic periodicals digitally, etc. I'm not going to work two years to write a major work and then just give it away for not enough revenue to take a couple of people to a cheap dinner. (That would amount to abandoning physical publication forever, since our business model is to recover enough money from one book to pay for publishing the next one.)"
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Jim. I understand.
Contribution of your team is huge as it is.
T
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Xinri
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Thoughts on this from a Newbie:
Firstly, thanks for a great site Jim
Normally I do most of my reading on Kindle because it's easy and portable - I can't actually remember the last time I bought a 'real' book. That said I prefer reading books the old fashioned way but time, space and my impatient nature usually get the better of me.
BUT with this book I'm more than happy to buy the physical version (on Friday, payday, hooray!) for a couple of reasons. The most important reason is the generosity of this site in the information it gives away and the fact that every post I've read of Jim's has been considered and very helpful. I appreciate people doing stuff for the greater good like this so I'm more than willing to help by buying a book that has obviously had a lot of effort put into it.
Secondly, a hard copy is a lot better for learning the Occult etc from - I'm not sure why but for reference purposes they always just seem more useful.
So.... Friday here we come!
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