Rosie Amber, an avid reader and reviewer on “The Osiriad”.
This is a delightful book which looks at the role of stories throughout history and their purpose in explaining day and night, the seasons and life and death. By looking at the Egyptian Gods, Sue retells the birth of the Egyptian world through the eyes of the God Isis. The Egyptians are known across the world and the stories of their Gods are echoed in many other religions. In fact Sue adds her own thoughts at the end of this book about the importance of stories and their use in explaining life through pictures and images. She draws together beliefs that we still learn from stories if we can engage with the writing and share the messages. In fact a story can be a many layered article depending on the reader. I really enjoyed my own lessons from the book, it was a delight to read about the Gods in a short easy to read style and then to think about the messages that the Egyptians were giving their people and handing down to future generations to come.
G. Michael Vasey, author of The Last Observer and many other books reviews “The Initiate”. He blogs at Asteroth’s Domain and The Magical World of G. Michael Vasey.
Firstly, this is a deeply unique book and very few analogies for it spring to mind. I like analogies, because, deep down inside, I like to classify and label things up neatly. Those analogies that I can think of would be books like `The Zelator’ and perhaps even `The Da Vinci Code’, but it is a stretch. `The Initiate’ defies being boxed, labeled or classified and probably rightly so, as it is a work of brilliance.
The book follows two partners in crime – Wen and Don – as they visit some ancient sites in a rural part of England. Engaged in the formation of a new school of consciousness at the time, their minds and souls are open to the spiritual and the miraculous. As they conjecture about the function and usage of various ancient stone circles, white horses or dragons, and mounds, they begin to notice birds of prey – namely Kites. The behavior of these birds leads them to a small church and then another and another. In each of these chapels, they discover symbols, artifacts, and windows with shared themes, which they spend some time attempting to unravel. However, it is the discovery of the `light’ in these chapels along with the Kites that frequent the locations of these ancient sites that begs for answers on both a spiritual and energetic level. Don and Wen attempt to answer.
Intertwined with their journey of discovery is a variety of almost `path workings’. These are deeply poetic narratives that are interspersed with the main text to shed more light on the antics of Don and Wen and their discoveries that work very effectively. One begins to gain hints of concepts and ways of thought that have been largely lost to humanity via these narratives. Indeed, in a sense, they pull it all together and present to the consciousness a picture of times when the land’s energies were sanctified, defended and protected as precious channels of power to other worlds and to other states of consciousness.
As Don and Wen work their way through these sites of wonder, their insights and discussions are shared with the reader and there is a level of inner knowledge of the Mysteries that does remind me of The Zelator. The quest itself from place to place, always guided by the Kites, with the discovery of various symbols and potential meanings along the way is a little reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code. However, this is a work of Art and it is very definitely unique. I will need to read this book several more times, as I suspect that there is much more to unlock and ponder about between the words and bound in the poetry and riddles placed throughout it too. The book is illustrated beautifully with color photographs in which one can really see the tints of colored light that speaks to the presence of a precious energy that still lights the heart of Albion like a network of energy motorways.
