The Wizard's Quill begins!

In the tower, the Wizard goes to his bookshelf, pulls down a dusty tome, blows a cloud of dust off, then places the book on his stand, opens the page, and begins to read...

You go to a secondhand bookshop, look for the metaphysical section (if the have one), and pull down a book entitled "practical" {withcraft, spellmaking, candleburning, tarot-reading, crystalhealing...}, and are immediately confronted within the curling paper covers, some sentimental tripe about floating rose petals in your bathwater to attract a lover. Somehow, the reality doesnt match the idealized image. You will never learn how to turn your next door neighbour into a toad at this rate. Yet there are indeed good occult books, on every topic, and at every level, if only you know where to look, and what to look for, and are (sometimes) prepared to pay a little, or even a lot, more.

There are genuine antiques, selling for thousands of dollars, available through specialist dealers; and there are rarities from the 20th century selling for hundreds; and there has been an explosion of new, limited edition leatherbound books, published in the last decade. I have discovered many of these hidden gems, and will be sharing my finds with you in these pages, yellowed with age, as I scribble with quill on these pages....