The Rites of Magick is a documentary presented by the ceremonial magician Poke Runyon, it covers many of the magical arts including hermetic yoga, eucharism and alchemy. We're shown vintage footage of magical ceremonies and it also includes a short surrealist film called Alchemical Fantasy, plus more.

This clearly is not a horror related feature (i know), however i felt that some of our readers would probably get a kick out of this stuff so i decided to give it a go as a review.

Now I've got to confess right from the get go that I'm not the most magically knowledgeable, nor the most spiritually aware of individuals. Most of my spiritualism resides behind the bar, on shelf and has a label called Johnnie Walkers. However, i went into this with an open mind and I'm going to give it my best to be as objective as possible.

Whilst clearly The Rites of Magick is not everybodies cup of tea, it should be a good starting point for those who are starting out in magic or those who have a passing interest in it. The presenter/narrator of the documentary (Poke Runyon) certainly looks the part and he seems to have a deep knowledge of the magical arts. For approx 1hr 30mins we're loaded with facts, so many it's hard to remember all of them from one sitting. No question about it, The Rites of Magick demands more than one sitting if your going to take in all that it has to offer.

From an outsiders point of view most of the stuff here seems to be a mish-mash of different mysticism/magic from all around the world. As to how all this coalesces together is beyond me but Poke certainly seems to know what he's talking about.

The short movie Alchemical Fantasy is a very trippy watch indeed and even though a lot of the finer points were lost on me i could appreciate the visual/sonic experience that it had to offer up. It definitely makes for an interesting watch.

To conclude, just like i said before, The Rites of Magick is heavy on facts and if your not into this sort of thing you'll probably hate it. However, if you find this stuff up your street then i think you could do far worse than picking yourself up a copy. Recommended.

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