My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician

This author has served as a national and international officer of one of the most influential magical societies of the 20th century, and he is an acknowledged authority on Aleister Crowley. MY LIFE WITH THE SPIRITS documents DuQuette’s personal experiences as a practicing magician, which are amazing.The well-written, articulate memoir begins in 1967 with DuQuette, age 18, and his older brother Marc tripping on LSD in the Mojave desert and vowing to become “holy men.” Marc eventually becomes an Eastern yoga ascetic and chemical dependence counselor, while the author chooses a path that Marc and many others consider patently evil. Today DuQuette communicates with angels, spirits, and demons, and worships “strange and terrible gods,” he says. He readily professes to be a practitioner of “black art.”DuQuette describes his Nebraska childhood in terms both hilarious and sad. Little “Lonnie” became an alar boy at age nine, but inwardly, the boy never bought into organized religion. When DuQuette graduated from high school, he moved to California to attend college in Costa Mesa, where he embraced psychedelics, music, and yoga, and pursued enlightenment. DuQuette dropped out of college, married love-of-his-life Constance, and together they “plunged into the primitive world of rural hippiedom.” Paranormal experiences soon followed, including a ghostly visit from DuQuettte’s recently passed father. The mysteries of Rosicrucianism and esoteric Freemasonry subsequently became the focus of DuQuette’s life (his father was a Freemason). As I read about DuQuette’s visions and Enochian magick rituals—and their results—I felt myself drawn into another reality. This man has ventured into realms of behavior and consciousness that few others are willing to explore. Reading his memoir expanded my mind and what I believe is possible. Be warned: I enjoyed that expansion, but it’s not for everyone. You have to trust that, as a powerful magician, DuQuette works toward constructive ends, as he claims.

Singer, composer and recording artist Lon DuQuette is a scholar, teacher and practitioner of the magick he writes so capably about and is also the author of over a dozen critically acclaimed books on numerous facets of materia esoterica. He is among the most respected and entertaining lecturers in the field of the Western Mystery Traditions and is responsible for the education and training of a generation of fellow initiates.Reading "My Life with the Spirits: Adventures of a Modern Magician" affords the reader an unparalleled glimpse into the fascinating, frightening, and often very funny world of a modern ceremonial magician. Reading this bounteous treasury of engaging anecdotes is the next best thing to visiting personally with the charming adept over a nice glass of wine and his esteemed wife's (and fellow initiate's) legendary broccoli quiche, the metaphysical properties of which the writer is convinced and manages to convince his reader.Mr. DuQuette paints an absorbing picture of his background, his family life and youth and upbringing, and explains how his parents' choices failed woefully in meeting his personal needs and answering for him what were burning questions of ethical and existential import. Growing up in rural America in the 50s and 60s and propelled by the revolutionary spirits of the time, he eventually seized the opportunity to seek out his own spiritual path, in line with his belief in the supreme spiritual "sovereignty" of each person and the responsibility of each to work out his and her own path to growth in total liberty and with diligence."My Life with the Spirits" is an intimate, straightforward memoir/autobiography, and an often painfully honest set of revelations by a contemporary individual attempting to make sense of the way the universe is put together, determine how it works, and see if it cannot be made to work in a fashion more consonant with one's true will.I thoroughly enjoyed "My Life with the Spirits" and only regret that Constance Duquette's recipe for broccoli quiche was not in an appendix. Absolutely essential reading for any "sorcerer's apprentice"!

If you are familiarized with Duquette's scriptures i bet you will enjoy the reading. To be honest, the beginning of the book is quite boring, but the major part of it is incredibly attractive and captivating. I really recommend this one. I saw a bad review saying '' i really don't care when someone just talks about himself''. Well it's a autobiography, what else do you expect besides the author talking about himself??

Cómo siempre Lon Milo Duquete nos cuenta sus experiencias mágicas con los espíritus durante su vida, contándonos de una manera sencilla, humilde, e interesantísima. Reí en distintas ocaciones recordando y sintiendome identificado en muchas de sus historias, pues a todos los que buscamos el camino de la gran obra les será de gran ayuda.

This book is a great read. Although I’m not a ceremonial magician, I am a Witch aligned the the Reclaiming tradition so there are SOME alliances. Nevertheless, the author kept my interest throughout the book with some fabulous stories that defy belief. However, I do believe them because weird things like that have happened to me. But also, some the the stories were absolutely hilarious where I burst out laughing. I’m now onto another of his books ‘Low Magick’. I imagine this bishop would be a lot of fun to study under. Thank you for having the bravery to tell your story.

This was the best book of magick i ever read. Milo explains telling his own history and experience, complex magick theories in practice. The evocation of Orobas, his first Goetia Demon evocation, the exorcism of sharon, his discovery of enochian system, the chapter "never share a fiend with a friend", when Milo talks about a personal and bad experience with a friend, making Goetia more and more understandable, all this, make a indispensable book in the library of anyone who want to learn Magick, Thelema, Goetia etc. Great book. Great Master.

Engaging and entertaining - it takes skill for an author to make one actually *want* to read about their teenage years in Nebraska.It does have "quality issues" in the form of a few misspelled or wrong words, and could have used another look-over before release; however, the author is clearly literate and the book reads well.The main reason why I was willing to "buy into" the book (in the sense of actually buying it) is that I heard the author speak on a program on YouTube, and, being able to "place" him and having a sense of what he was about led me to think "maybe this would be an interesting read".I learned a lot about his subject area, and it was worked in seamlessly enough that I didn't feel I was reading a textbook.It may not have been the author's intent, but, seeing as I wasn't alive in the 60's, it was interesting to get a perspective on the hippie movement and the political environment of the time, which had changed drastically by my day.Two suggestions for improvement:* I wish to be as tactful as possible, but it seems to my untutored mind that taking psychedelics and having visions might be related, i.e. they may do something to the brain to make it more likely to "see" things in the future. I am not casting aspersions on his visions (if someone tells me they have a vision, I tend it take it at face value), and it is not my intent here to weight in on the debate over drugs and spirituality... but this was my thought.* Organized religion. I respect that the author had a bad experience with organized religion growing up, and, after reading the book, I can see why. However, I just want to make a note that his derogatory comments about otherwise intellectual and educated people who adhere to organized religion are both off-putting, and also quite generalized. Certainly, Christianity takes myriad forms, and is not all the same as what he saw in the church in Nebraska. That is setting aside the world's other vast religious traditions. Sweeping statements like that should be backed up with evidence that one actually has deep awareness of the diversity and details world's religious traditions, rather than generalizing from one's own life experience or what one hears on the media. Some of us intellectual, educated people DO actually take "historical and mythological" events seriously without compromising our sanity or intellect.