Butler Books

This is such a great story and the cast is of the finest quality, especially Jodie and Gerry - what a pair! I can hardly wait to get the DVD for my G. Butler collection. Abigail is turning out to be quite a talented young lady who is not afraid to tackle demanding roles. Good family movies are few and far between, but this movie will delight the entire crew.

The photogarphy in this book is so vivid, it demands your full attention to the plight of those pilots and crewmen involved in the incidents depicted and described. One can almost hear the voices and feel the heat of the fires often encountered in mishaps of this nature. I found it a one-sitting, hold-your-breath sort of presentation. I've returned often to absorb those photos and to try to imagine what led up to each of the awesome and sometimes gruesome events. Having been a Navy pilot for over two decades with carrier experience; some in the beloved F6F-5 Hellcat, I find myself feeling a very close kinship with those in this perfectly outstanding book. Many kudos to Mssrs, Keeney and Butler for putting together a very much needed reminder that in carrier aviation there are, indeed, No Easy Days.

This second part of Eliza Butler's trilogical survey of Faustian Literature is rightfully established as an incomparable classic in historical/scholarly works of ceremonial Magic. In words set to atone for the whole, she remarks: "How tenacious those ill weeds that have grown apace on the field of magical ritual, that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower"...I, mere Dedicated Literary Servitor, feel blessed to have been fortunate enough to have come across the blazened trails wending strange ways through those fields Butler charted herein while composing my own work setting out to establish the origins of Gothic Literature, & malefic fictions in general. Having found their incubation chambers within the Renaissance Malefic compendiums of the Witch-Hunters, and innumerable fantastic works in response, respect, or revolt against the remnants of Medieval superstition, Butler's works provided the missing arcane key to "What constitutes the Science of ceremonial magic which its devotees call the Art"...so essential if one is to ever makes sense of divers historical arenas such as Art History or Intellectual & Esoteric History.
"For the inventors & practitioners of the rites/often gave proof to Art/to the advantage of the Literature which has survived/its means show evidence of highly creative instincts, poetical imagination and great feeling for beauty & drama/This is what makes the study of Ritual Magic so interesting today"
Butler speaks with a respective authority that avoids disrespect of her human, all too human subjects; all the while exacting the magical crux of the ritual matter without sacrificing the scholarly critical outside-looking-inside perspective. She writes with a surgeon's sharp intelligibility, without becoming cold as the over-scrutinizing scalpel she wields like a pro. A more profound exegesis and wider span of written works of Ritual Magic is to me, inconceivable. Voluminous quotations from original first & critical second-hand sources graces Butler's pages, revealing the odd often monstrous apparitions that people mankind's collective psyche, which have found a wide deep harbor in the texts and treatise' Ritual Magic, whether they be of Nec-Romantic, Goetic & Theurgic persuasion.
From Akkadian Tableture & Greco-Egyptian papyri; to the great Epic Poems of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome,& even Iceland; to the Hebrew wisdom of Old-testifying Clavicles of Solomon along with Cabalistic Magic tomes; and of course the French Grimoires (those infernal Grammar books of the underground crypts); and finally, into the very heart of Butler's work: The Germanic works of both Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis, as told of FAUSTUS & MEPHISTOPHELES and All the progenitors, Disciples and Poets of each of these categories and sub-categories; from olden times to new.
Butler's works is..."as subtle and as rich as Sprenger, Bodin, Wierus or de Lancre ever imagined; a whole world of wicked spirits, whose personalities are carefully distinguished, their attributes precisely determined, and their hierarchy learnedly classified" (Lenormant's work on the Magic of Chaldea; Butler,5).
Elizabeth Margaret Butler fearlessly summons all the Harrowings of Hells, the Raising of the spirits of Cain. Spanning through brilliant biographical summations of all variety of Black Magi, she treads on Holy and Accursed grounds. From the Wiley likes of Casanova, the Infernal court records and murderous inhuman charges against poor suffering Bluebeard of Orleans; the penultimate renaissance man of viceful passions Cellini and that Nigromant of Norcia; Dee and that earless rogue Kelly and all exponents of the Dark Arts until finally, after extending her hand carefully into the epitome of more modern times she draws many insightful conclusions from the works of LEVI, Francis Barrett, Mathers, Waite, and even Crowley; until laying a stake through the heart of The Myth Of Satanism, she sets the stage for part three. There the Origins of Faustian Literature in Ritual Magic shall have the same genius applied to them in an equally brilliant exposition on the MAGIC OF LITERATURE----having just come in this work from the dangerous adventure of surmising the LITERATURE OF MAGIC---and as pt.2 was to Occultism, exploring Ritual Magic by means of generous quotations and examples drawn from historical and biographical detail; so shall the next work, The Fortunes of Faust, bring Butler's trilogy round full circle, that snake eating itself continuously, the Ouroboros of the world's magical History, which is Our Own.

Postcryptum: Part one of Butler's Faustian work is entitled 'The Myth of the Magus', and is presently available at the Amazonian encampment through Cambridge press Canto editions. Pts.2 & 3 are (re)published by Penn State's Press's extraordinary 'Magic In History' series, perhaps thanks to the Societas Magica, an entirely scholarly unsecret society dedicated to the discipline and adventure of assessing honestly, and finally, the History of Magic.

Really cute little book w/ drawings depicting funny scenes from things you've probably encountered before while golfing. Cute enough to copy into a card, flyer, bulletin or etc. Covers silly etiquette topics such as slapping mosquitoes, psychology on the green, helping your opponent lose. Gives funny definations on the duffer, a Mulligan, a Gimmie, Sandbagger, Sand Traps, Divots, Bunkers, Out-of-bounds, Waggles, Addressing the ball, bad lies, Yips, Rub of the Green, Fore, Teed Off, Woods, Handicaps, Double and Triple Bogies, Pars, Birdies, Eagles, Hole-in-One's, Windmills, Honor, Drives. Uses rules in scenarios such as agreeing to waive rules, unimprovable situations, impaired vision, superstitions allowed, lost balls, disputes-decisions-doubts, discouraging jogging on the green, throwing golf clubs in extenuating circumstances, alligators-mad dogs-bee hives, entitlements by being hit by the ball or nearly hit, sizing up the caddie (Eager Beaver/Ancient Mariner/ or Pro's Son), and rights of Spouses. Lots of laugh for the serious or not-so-serious golfer.

From the San Jose Mercury: "A delightful balance of historical, personal and architectural background...that will please both old-timers and newcomers." "Phyllis Butler has given us stories, superb stories, to go with architecture...hopes, dreams, passions of men and women." Kevin Starr

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1-When Little Hedgehog's nest blows away in a snowstorm, he retrieves his hat, scarf, and mittens and makes his way to his friend Badger's house. Along the way, he meets shivering field mice, an otter, and a doe and her fawn. He generously passes along his garments to these creatures and weathers the storm, safe and warm, with Badger. When the skies clear, the two of them make their way to the spot where Little Hedgehog's nest used to be and find a newly rebuilt, cozy house decorated with his winter accessories. The illustrations of the red and orange winter woolens have a feltlike fabric embedded in them to give readers a tactile experience. Macnaughton's soft and gentle full-page and inset pictures hold their own without this gimmick, complementing Butler's simple, sweet, and subtly didactic text.-Rachel G. Payne, Brooklyn Public Library, NY
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This book is AWESOME, a wonderful story about making new friends and fitting in. In the story Owen has to make some tough choices and the reader gets to choose with Owen. Each path shows the reader the consequences of their choice.
A beautifully written and illustrated book about real life situations. I can't wait for the next in the series!

This is the shame that the Butler's "Paleomagnetism" is out of print. The idea of paying some $175 for a used copy is simply ridiculous (unless you're a collector). The PDF vesion of this book can be LEGALLY dowloaded at [...] and is absolutely FREE.

Beautifully written about a young girl's life during the Depression. Meg is a wee bit lazy working in the fields, but inside the house she finds a mystery. Her Papa left a trunk and its contents draw Meg like a magnet. Does she find a way for the family to rise above the devastation of the Great Depression or a treasure for the family's soul? Her determination to find out, pushes the reader forward to the last page, hoping this little girl and her family find the gold at the end of the rainbow.

Meg and her brother, Pod, capture hearts and minds, bringing joy in the middle of one of America's darkest hours.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity). This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical). The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction. The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it. Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God. Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul. That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others. This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things). It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.