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.

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

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

This book looked at the so called wizards of history- famous figures and more obscure trailblazers who by using what we would consider occult practices attempted to unravel the mysteries and secrets of life. The first section explored ‘Prehistoric and Mythic Magic’ specifically focusing on the Lion Man which was very interesting and something I never knew about prior to reading this book. Section two examined ‘Pre-socratic Sorcerers of Ancient Greece,’ which was a dryer section but still interesting nonetheless. Finally, the third section looked at ‘The Western Alchemical Tradition’ which I found to be the most fascinating, especially the stories about the Islamic alchemists and the chapter on James Price. A good portion of the book focused on philosophers whose theories about the existence of humanity are in many ways considered magical, for how they were able to come to such conclusions is truly astonishing.

The book contained some personal magical experiences of author Guy Ogilvy, which were a little eerie, but certainly helped to bring a sense of realism to the overall book. This book was also well sourced and I liked that large sections of primary sources were included in the chapters as well. I jotted down many notes and obscure facts that I want to research further which is quite exciting.

Overall this was a fascinating book and even though I never would have called Pythagoras or Epimenides “wizards,” if a wizard is someone who is wise, than yes, after reading this book, I also agree that these individuals possessed so much wisdom, that they were indeed magical.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

The Great Wizards of Antiquity is a journey through the world of magic starting from pre-history all the way to now. I really enjoyed many things about this book. The chapters about the Lion man and Orpheus are my favorite. I love mythology, so all the details involved around Orpheus and the cults to him and Dionysus are definitely my favorite parts. We also learn so much about Pythagoras who I never really knew much about except what I learned taking math courses in school. We spend a lot of time in the realm of the Greeks and finally towards the end of the novel fly through the history of Alchemy. I really liked the attention to detail and some of the overviews the author discussed. I also really enjoyed aspects like breaking down words to discover their meanings as a way to understand the topic more. I even enjoyed the personal stories that the author discussed as a way of backing up his points.

The problems I had with this books are that sometimes I felt like the author discussed things too in depth for the length of the book. We get one chapter on pre-history. Then over half the book is about the Greeks. We get nothing from Egypt or Mesopotamia or other ancient cultures. Egypt is alluded too some but I wanted more. Also we get a tiny chapter about Islam and Alchemy and then fly through the rest. Just made the book feel rushed toward the end. The author alludes to another volume about Great Wizards, maybe there we will get more discussion of other cultures and the balance will be better.

Overall I feel like this is a really strong book for anyone interested in the topic of history, magic, alchemy or Ancient Greek mystic cults. I enjoyed the experience. 3.5 Stars