I loved this book!! It tells of the people practicing alchemy and sorcery. Tells also of the fears and beliefs of people back in the days of old. There are footnotes and websites listed so you can go on and do even more research to this amazing subject. It is true history and I was entralled to read it. I received this book from Net Galley and Llewellyn Publications for a honest review. The opinions expressed are my own.

This is an interesting and comprehensive guide to real wizards throughout history. This volume contains lots of information that I haven’t encountered elsewhere. This is a must-read for those interested in wizard history.

I just can't recommend this book. I really liked the premise, but the execution was just bad. It was rambling, boring, and tiring. The introduction was way longer than necessary. Then we got several chapters that just extol the drug highs the author has been on. This is all before even one Great Wizard of Antiquity gets mentioned. There was an interesting section that speculated on the Lion Man statue found in Germany, and then we move on to Orpheus. By that point, it was all so disconnected, rambling and full of big, flowery language that said very little, that I put it down.

In most fields, a serious course of study must necessarily include a comprehensive review of the field’s history. This is true in the social sciences, hard sciences, humanities, and literature. In my opinion, that is also true for esotericism.

There’s not a lot of accessible, well-written histories of the occult written from an interior perspective. This book manages to be just that, though. I would recommend it to any serious witch or mage. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a great start to what will no doubt be an excellent series.

The sheer level of detail in Great Wizards of Antiquity makes it more suitable for the intermediate to advanced student of esotericism. I don’t expect many beginners, fresh from their first occult experiences, will get very far into it.

This is mostly just because, without existing background, it might be easy to get overwhelmed by the complex, interrelated mythic narratives. I don’t believe this to be a flaw, though - while beginner materials are important, more nuanced works that address specific topics (like history, in this case), are important for the field’s progression.

This volume focuses entirely on antiquity, as the name suggests. The author seems to have plans for further installments in the series which will address the magic of later eras.

Antiquity (in terms of magical history) has never been my particular area. I’m not as knowledgeable about it as (for example) the Renaissance or 20th century. I do believe I’ve learned much more about it from this book, though. If you, like me, have an existing background in magic and want to know more about prehistory and antiquity in an occult context, this book fills that niche nicely.

Great Wizards of Antiquity isn’t without flaws, though. The book devotes quite a bit of time to anecdotes, and I didn’t think they added much overall. Beyond that, I was kind of shocked by the author’s references to Graham Hancock’s notoriously pseudoscientific work. A few other such sources pop up.

While most of the author’s sources are quite good, I recommend seeking outside perspectives on the topics, too. If you read this book with a critical eye, double-checking sources and truly engaging with the text, this isn’t as much of an issue, though.

All things considered, this was a worthwhile read, and will become a welcomed part of the existing canon in the field of esotericism in history. I await future volumes in this series, and other works by this author. I give this book four out of five stars, because it definitely gets the job done, despite a lot of meandering.

I was expecting a chatty, light introduction to these "Great Wizards" and the book started off strong. The information about the Lion Man was fascinating. As the book continued, the style became dry and pedantic, making it more difficult to read. I was left pushing my way through to the end, which was unfortunate given the potential this book had to be great.

I have to admit I was expecting this to be more biographical about the known magicians in history, but it actually turned out to be even more interesting.

The first part covers the prehistoric culture of the Lion Man and tribal magic, then it moves on to the Orphic and Dionysian cults and the great figures of myth, which I found very interesting. A lot of history and basically anthropology comes into it, then it moves forward in history eventually coming to mathematicians and alchemists, some of whom are better known like Paracelsus, though I have to admit a little disappointment that John Dee and Nicholas Flamel got left out as these are two of the most relevant personages in the history of magic. But then another reviewer said there was a series, so maybe we'll eventually see even relatively modern magicians like Crowley, Austin Spare, Jaq D. Hawkins and Peter J. Carroll!

The writing style might seem dry to some, but those of us who enjoy mythology don't mind that. The personal experiences of the author also lent interest. Altogether a fascinating and well researched piece of work.

If you're looking for a highly detailed discussion of magic in antiquity and your focus is on the Western world, Guy Ogilvy has a book for you. The Great Wizards of Antiquity: The Dawn of Western Magic and Alchemy is intense. I will admit that of the people chronicled, I had heard of maybe one of the wizards and magi written about in this book. The book acts as both a history and is filled with foot notes galore. If you're like me, there's quite a few figures of the magical arts you've never heard of. The Great Wizards of Antiquity is at times incredibly dense, just because there is so much to know before getting to the heart of the figures in the book.  This is not an innocent Summer beach-read and is going to take some time to get through, but it is well worth it if you're interested in the subject.The Great Wizards of Antiquity is now available from Llewellyn Publishing.

This was an interesting read. I enjoyed hearing about different wizards throughout history. I was not super invested in this book though therefore I had to lower my rating.

**Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a review**

DNF - 52% complete

This is not at all what I was expecting and while I am willing to take some heat for not perhaps doing more research into the book prior to requesting it from NetGalley, I have never been lead down a path of lies before from just reading the synopsis provided on their site.

Now, however, after this experience I may have to change the way I handle things.

What I was expecting was a historical novel about famous historical people being "mistaken" for possible magicians/wizards. This is what the synopsis promised, or so I thought.

What I got instead was a rambling notebook of intermixed ancient and Greek mythos stories that rarely touched, if even mentioned, anything to do with magicians or magic. There was the one time the guy mentioned getting high in the mountains, but I think I can honestly say that doesn't count.

I won't know if it ever gets back to the subject at hand, namely WIZARDS, because I just can't bring myself to read any further. It is almost impossible for me to not finish a book, especially one given to me by NetGalley, but I just can't do it.

This book's only magical power was it's ability to make me feel sleepy when I wasn't even tired. The writing is stale and boring and sluggish. I feel that had I continued it would have taken me the rest of the year and with my TBR list piling up I couldn't let that stand.

I am moving on.

I enjoyed the first part of this book the most. The history behind the Lion Man was very interesting, but sadly after that my attention was lost for most of the book. The end was also interesting and more of what I was expecting the whole book would be like.

This book delves into the history of magic, how it differs from illusion, and the emergence of alchemy. A great deal of focus is placed on Greek mythology and its role in the history of magic. Full of history and mysticism it is interspersed with the authors own tales of his experiences with magical trips. Although it is full of interesting information regarding the history of wizards, this wasn't really what I expected.

I love the premise of this book! Magic as a concept has largely been abandoned by the modern world; its legacy seems to be as an archaic tool that human beings used to perceive the universe. The ability to learn archetypes of human thought throughout history seems like an interesting lens to view facets of culture still present in the modern scientific age, and why popular culture still seems to be so obsessed with the idea of ‘magic’.
This book can at times be very pedantic and dry, which does tend to overpower the fun premise. The lay person will get bogged down towards the middle of the book.

A book about fictional and real practitioners of alchemy and magic from throughout history. A good overview but I found it hard to read at times but did enjoy reading it

Guy Ogilvy is a researcher, writer and practitioner of alchemy and this is the first book of a trilogy looking at the Great Wizards of History. Ogilvy in the preface points out that traditional magic is as old as human history and has been practiced by all peoples in all times throughout the world. Differentiating what he defines as magic from trickery and stage illusions he documents how once the world was steeped in magic and mystery.

You will be taken on a journey that at times may seem slightly uneven and if you are looking for a more structured approach then you may be disappointed for the author weaves history, biography, archaeology, Greek mythology and science with his own personal experiences of his encounters with the mysterious world of magic. After defining the words that we use to describe the various practitioners of the art (wizard, adept, sorcerer, kabbalist, witch etc) the book begins with the discovery of the forty thousand year old Lion Man and its place in pre-historic culture. From there we travel through Ancient Greece via the Islamic World and the Middle Ages to the time of The Enlightenment where we witness the final replacement of the previously dominant subject of alchemy by the new science of chemistry.

There is a lot of ground covered in the book both physically and metaphysically and at times it veered towards something of a travelogue which for me added to its appeal. Ogilvy is consistently at variance with some generally accepted scholarly interpretations of the past and he believes that our belief derived largely from the time of The Enlightenment that Ancient Greece can be held up as an inspiration, founder and a model for rationalism was deliberately distorted with all traces of magic expunged.

Epimenides, Parmenides, Jan Baptista Van Helmont, Zosimos and the more recent and bizarre The Comte de Saint-Germain are just some of the characters that will be encountered. This is at times a challenging read but overall it was well worth the time invested and I for one would be interested in reading the second part of the trilogy.

I have to admit I was disappointed in this book. I thought from the title and such that it would more so contain biographies and anecdotes of historical figures who have contributed to this idea of 'wizardry' but that is not at all how it read for the most part. I also found the author's personal stories kind of all over the place and not always necessary. I stuck with the book for quite a while, but finally had to give up. I would prefer to not give the book a star rating, because I did not finish reading it. However, I must in order for NetGalley to accept my review.

This book awoke two very opposite feelings in me. The first two chapters of this book were the most interesting to me even though they are the ones more loosely related to the title of the book and what I was expecting to read, focusing more on mysticism than magic, gods than wizards. They were amazingly informative and I enjoyed learning about the Lion Man and the engravings found in European caves. By the third part of the book though, the language starts to be a lot more complex with a lot of excerpts from Classical authors and due to several incarnations from one particular “wizard”, the chapter just becomes incredibly confused and unbearably long. It is only towards the last part of the book that the reader gets that list of wizards that we had been expecting.
That being said I did enjoy the first part of the book and learned a lot. It was a pleasant subject to read about, with the author making it feel more like a conversation than a lecture.

Guy tries to be funny, breaking the monotony with several jokes, some of them quite funny, others that don’t necessarily land.

It is obvious throughout the book that the author endeavored in a tremendous amount of research in a theme that not only he loves but believes. I applaud the explanations at the end of every page, that were of great help. Thank you to Net Galley and Llewellyn Publications for this ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Great Wizards of Antiquity.

When I selected this book, I thought it was going to be about historical figures from the old timey fun timey past whose intellect and passion for knowledge and magic would be discussed, including famous literary characters like Merlin and Gandalf.

But The Great Wizards of Antiquity was a bit of a hot mess. And read more like a vanity project for the author.

He spends most of his time discussing Greek mythological figures, delving so much into Greek mythology, padding the book with anecdotes and writings from famous Greek philosophers. The first half of the book itself reads like a love song to the Greek god, Orpheus.

Then, the author enjoys peppering the book with his personal hallucinogenic experiences from his travels to far and distant lands, either to demonstrate he's open-minded or 'cool' about stuff like that, I'm not sure, but the narrative jumps back and forth constantly, which distracted me.

Also, I don't think its wise to ingest any strange and foreign substances in a strange land, but that's just me.

There are tons of quotes and literary anecdotes sectioned from numerous sources, nearly all of which went in one ear and out the other.

This was boring as heck, bland and uninteresting. If I wanted to read about Greek gods and goddesses, there are better books out there to read.

"Unlike the real wizards of this book, all the most skillful illusionists I know are card-carrying atheist who scoff at the notion of higher powers or inherent meaning at play in the universe. If, gentle reader, you are also of such mind, fear not; your time may not be entirely wasted. There are plenty of splendid tales to amuse you here. which you may find fascinating even if you believe them to be founded on nonsense."

A great read for a person who is a mix of the non-believer to believer like me. I enjoyed very much reading about all these people who are so clever that it really could be called wizards. Guy Ogilvy's writing is very immersive and I enjoyed from the preface to the end reading it all!

This book was really not what I was expecting, and not in a good way. I had hoped it would be a collection of biographical portraits about historical people who could be considered wizards in one way or another, and indeed, the book is loosely structured like this. The last section of the book is the only one that really met my expectations, as it discussed some of the men who had been crucial to the history of alchemy. However, the rest of the book was extremely disappointing. The author digresses constantly and at length, flitting from topic to topic in a way that makes it incredibly hard to take in any information. Two of the wizards he chooses to discuss are fictional characters from Greek mythology, which leads to long tangents about the nature of Greek mythology - interesting enough, but not exactly what this book is supposed to be about. More often, the author digresses into describing both his trips and his 'trips' - there is a heavy focus on the use of entheogenic/psychedelic/hallucinatory substances, and unfortunately, like describing dreams, this is deeply uninteresting. I felt like what the author really wanted to do was write a travelogue of 'places I got high and had visions', so he forced that into what should have been a really interesting history book. I'm deeply disappointed.

A very good book that I like.
The representations of the mythical of magic and alchemy practitioners are lively and engaging.
It was like meeting them again for the first time and discovery new things.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Llewellyn Worldwide and Netgalley for this ARC