WEREWOLF MAGICK BOOK REVIEW
BY ANDRÉ CONSCIÊNCIA
SILVER STAR JOURNAL, Summer 2021, Publication of the Horus Maat Lodge
Preface – I will make my commentary on Werewolf Magick’s
preface my own preface to this review. First, it must be noted
that I know, to some extent, the author, and that I can, more or
less, tap into his flow. I do not think that, in the case of Denny
Sargent as an author, that matters, for he is the kind of writer on
which the reader, friend or stranger, can easily bath in. Denny is
bold and humble, simple and deep, and such alchemy is enough
when an author knows his words.
I teach shamanism and have a practicing group, my power
animal is a wolf. My deep connection with this wolf attracted
many difficult situations coming from “crimes of passion” but
also made me survive the stomach and intestines of Saturn itself.
I will, now and then, draw parallels between my methods and the
author’s methods. The way I tell it, there is an animal for the soul
and an animal for the body. The soul animal is of an inward and
meditative nature, the animal of the body connects with social
power, even if he is antisocial and somehow, in a beastly way,
introspective as my horned wolf is.
I have rolled on the floor countless times, I have howled and
growled in the deep woods and received the embrace of the
forest and its lively inhabitants, falling asleep countless times in
the wild, alone. I once conducted a ceremony with only other
wolves from my circle. At the forest around the cromlech we ran
on four legs for long, sometimes jumping in four legs from rock
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to rock, practicing our freedom and chasing small animals,
howling. We did it as a pack. At the end, we were not only empty
in the human sense, but filled with such ecstasy that we must
have laughed for an hour, a laugh that was muscular and had
nothing intellectual to it. To this day, this was one of the most
intense pleasures I experienced.
I know this author when he writes. His wolf showed him his
power as soon as he appeared with his three eyes. In this section
Denny Sargent or Aion 131 makes the introduction to the book
but also his introduction as a person, which is spot on as the
animal is generally more personal than the human. He speaks of
losing all and feeling like a monster, and of finally accepting that
monster, which realigned him with the world at once by virtue of
the werewolf. He tells of his first experience as a wolf in the
wild, of nature answering, of all signs of success that I know are
possible in this initation, including an immediate sense of
telepathy with the inner beast. The descriptions are vivid and, for
a moment, the reader, if he knows the call, may hear himself
thinking that such natural communion and its continuity and
practice is all that is needed. Denny himself speaks of the rituals
in this book as pouring out of him and the wolf. They came from
this natural, wild and fearless bonding. The descriptions transmit
the exhilaration of the experience, connecting the reader with it.
The preface is the golden treasure of a torch passed from hand to
hand, the heart of the book.
Introduction – The author speaks, among many things, of his
connections with traditional shamans, claiming that he is not so
proud as to call himself a shaman, but that he makes use of the
teachings of shamans he met. In particular, he talks of the
Siberian Ulch culture. He expands on the paradox of human
modern cultures who consider humanity as separate from the
animal, and on how this has led to ecological disaster. Where the
book begins to be promising in terms of bestiality, is in that it
separates itself from all those satanic works that refer to the beast
as a hoarding, tyrannical and selfish principle, as well as from the
thelemic tendency to make the beast something intellectual and
mostly arrogant. This beast reconnects with the land and makes
the human care for the Earth and for its ecosystem. This path of
the werewolf leads to being enlightened and also a better person,
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and opposes blind-hood. Some explanations are here given to
why wolves and werewolves, such as the major part of our DNA
being lupine, the connection between werewolves and witchcraft,
and hints on how the werewolf connects the psyche and the
physical body.
Chapter I – History, Lore & Werewolf Cults
Aion goes back to paleolithic times and cave art depicting
werewolves, and he goes on to explain how shape-shifting
practices were among the first spiritual manifestations and
disciplines of humanity. He expands on how werewolves are
present in cultures around the world, and on his discoveries
through his travels as a cosmopolitan. Then the author travels in
time in the company of the werewolf, from the werewolf in
Mesopotamia, to Ancient Greece, Scythia, Rome, the Norse
werewolf, and from the Celtic werewolf to the werewolf in
Medieval Europe. The author proposes to steal back such
wonders as described and to give them to modern times in
practice.
Chapter 2 – Principles of Werewolf Magick
The author states that this might be the most important chapter in
the book, as it will permit the practitioner to understand and have
a proper reading of the practice. As we go on reading, we realize
that he may be right, and that Aion has perfected his transference
of consciousness into the animal, tracing the anatomy of its inner
and outer perceptions, and rearranging it according to words and
descriptions that are close to the regular human self. Outside
structures of perception are things such as wildness, the wyrd and
the way. The inside structure he divides between instinct,
intuition and insight. By Aion’s means, one can remain deeply in
his animal-self and still in use of his rationality through werewolf
balance. The Double and the fetch are also explored in further
detail, as well as the lord of the forest and other aspects that add
to the magick of the werewolf.
Chapter 3 – Werewolf Magick Tools
A myriad of talismanic items are given suitable to werewolf
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magick, followed by appropriate symbols. My take on the
symbols is that, even they being proper to any witch or magician,
they work especially well when seen and applied from inside the
wolf’s perspective. These are symbols that work instinctively to
the wolf. Denny follows to the Lingo, the non-intellectual present
of the werewolf evoked by wordless physical expressions and
sounds such as howls, growls and barks. At neoshamanism,
dancing and vocally expressing oneself through the power
animal is also the first step after having found him during trance.
At Werewolf Magick the author examines each kind of growl,
and goes from non verbal applications to its application with the
verb. He even goes to such lengths as to explain in detail how to
howl and the best body postures in which to do it. This is
interesting, for every time I have made people engage with
shape-shifting, they come back, at first, very disoriented and
blown away, as if they have just been hit by a truck. If
neoshamanism applied the methods of this author, explaining the
process step by step, the cortex would not be so wounded.
A simple exercise is then given that is the first synchronization of
the reader with the wolf, it uses meditations, swaying and
growling, and I find it similar to that feeling when, at
neoshamanism, one comes back from the deep world after
having embraced an atavistic force, the body warm with fiery
breath, and starts swaying and vocalizing while walking around
in circles. The amazing thing for me as the reader, someone
engaged both in magick and in shamanism, is how this book ties
the two together, teaching different wolfish expressions
according to the four elements, so that the magician can bring the
wolf to any ritual of ceremonial magick. The senses are also
engaged, and I experienced something with my physical body I
think I had only done while inside my wolf Double in the astral: I
could now know all objects around me, as masses, by smell
alone, and such made me see in the dark.
A full rite of consecration is given after, meant for the
consecration of the tools. In reality, this teaches the practitioner
how to direct the astral fluid through the Animal-self, and is the
first magical step given. The proof that it is well crafted is that
my body did all the steps down to the last one even though I had
forgotten the sequence right at the start.
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Chapter 4 – Freeing Your Inner Wolf
This chapter starts with a description of each kind of wolf to
exist in nature, including the extinct and endangered. The soon to
be werewolf magician follows on to call the wolf spirit, the
collective consciousness of all wolves, in order to have his
blessing in the path to follow. I will not go into detail, but this
rite initiates the practitioner into the current, and the current will
flow. These rites are simple in shape, but efficient in practice.
A «Dream Spell» follows, so that the practitioner can dream that
he is the wolf or riding the wolf. Here one is not only playing
with irrationality but with the storing house that is the
subconscious, awakening the wolf in there and giving it
expression and a voice. I had a dream that I was a baby wolf
awakening near my mother wolf, there was a big white egg with
us, and a white serpent at a tree. I came to drink from a
minuscule lake and the snake drank with me. When I woke up I
knew that snake was Wyrd, the snake in which everything in
time intertwines. This dream is funny because my wolf is usually
solitary or protective if it happens to like someone. This time he
felt innocent like an infant and being taken care of. My dream
aside, this exercise is similar to shamanic path-working when
someone walks in light trance between all four seasons of the
year trying to get to know the imaginary of his animal from
inside him. Such exercises usually start with the shaman going to
a place where he used to play in his childhood, a special place
that made him fear or marvel in awe, then he enters a dead end, a
passage or a hole into the deep world. At Denny’s exercise, the
reader is also encouraged to remember his body when he played
as a child. While an experienced “butterfly”, as Carlos Castaneda
would put it, can trigger a dream at night at any conscious
moment of the day, newcomers may find it hard at first. My
advice to the newcomer is for him to keep working with the
previous steps simultaneously.
The «Deep Wolf Scrying Exercise» goes from dream states to
actually deeper levels, where, even awakened inside the body,
for a period, the magician forgets that he ever was a human and
remains the wolf. This is called the art of the Diablero, in
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Mexican shamanism. In order to do that, he regresses in time and
in his DNA and RNA back to the canid and the wolf. He
maintains this trance by growling mantras, the reptilian brain
changing even his image in the mirror. I saw myself as a fierce
and focused black wolf standing in a cremation ground, but when
I shifted my attention to the mirror I was my own gray horned
wolf.
The «Finding Your Wolf Self Spell» is similar, but clearer in
what concerns the aspect in the mirror. This is intended to fix the
image of one’s own wolf form consciously. At neoshamanism,
following the traditional Siberian methods, one learns out of
body experiences, then goes into a light trance at the sound of the
drum, descending to the deep world. There he discovers his
animal through certain tests and signs, he carries it back, and
experiences the animal in his own body. The author of Werewolf
Magick has imaginatively managed to recreate such effects
without the practitioner ever feeling that he has left the body.
This is important, for it works with and from the roots since the
first step to the final.
The «Awakening Your Inner Werewolf Spell» is, the way I see
it, the first exercise that taps into the body of light. It is an
interesting approach, as it comes in the form of a banishing rite,
but what is being banished is the human in all its negativity, so
that the wolf is empowered.
Finally, the «Werewolf Restrictions Release Rite» is meant to
balance the wolf when he starts to feel trapped and enraged.
While generally at neoshamanism the power animal seeks an
auxiliary animal to help him find balance in a human social
world, the approach in Werewolf Magick has the wolf seeking
release in nature and working on himself.
Chapter 5 – Shape-Shifting
This chapter starts with the «Wolf-Power Exercise», teaching
how the magician can create the astral and sensory image of a
wolf-man in his own body. While this kind of astral shape
shifting is essential to any magician, it can be hard to the
beginner, but the warm up is well crafted and with patience the
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practitioner will get full results.
The «Praxis Shifting Rite» is next. It adds to the «Swaying and
Growling» learned before the astral shape of the previous
exercise, and brings further movements and sounds, so that in the
end the werewolf is walking on four legs and shining with
moonlight. The trance is fairly easy to keep once it is activated,
and also not very hard to dissipate if one follows the instructions.
This trance will truly give you the powers and enhanced senses
of the werewolf, as well as some new extrasensory abilities. One
has here to highlight the capacity for auto suggestion, and for
speaking truth while creating truth, something a well trained
magician will acquire as a second nature. This book doesn’t focus
or specialize on that kind of training, although it does teach you,
in a way, how to become a child, which will do the trick.
Anyway, if you are having a hard time giving this rite its full
power, you might want to check and expand on such disciplines.
The powers are real, but to obtain them you must be the master
of your mind and convince your thoughts just as Pan convinces
all nymphs with his flute.
Wildness Shape Shifting Ritual
Here you deepen and intensify your shape shifting, using most of
what you’ve learned before and making a better use of the
wildness and of the wilderness. Direct engagement with the Lord
of the Forest takes place. In my case there was a gathering of
light, then a shape, and then an actual figure occupying the
senses. He looked like a tree, but hooded on the top, the face in
darkness except for a ring of light at the region of the forehead.
My wolf felt very connected to him, as if he was His direct child,
the horns testifying to that.
My wolf-man looked exactly as the werewolf I was writing about
as a teen, in the dark, under the moonlight of the attic window,
but while it now felt natural and integrated, it felt sick and
delirious at the time. Now, my eyes could detect very small
shapes that I wouldn’t normally be capable of, a negative of these
shapes radiating around them and amplifying them as my eyes
passed by. As a piece of advise, memorize the way in which to
return from the trance of the present ritual, for this one is not so
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easy to return from without direction, and it may exhaust the
body until you fall, defenseless, asleep, somewhere where you
don’t want to. I was reminded of a 15 hour pilgrimage I did with
Peyote and Ayahuasca. The amazonian shaman lost half of our
pack, he was in the lead, but I was always in the rear. We had
started in the early morning and now it was late night and
freezing. We were in the wooded hills. At day I was terrified that
my wolf would literally show in my body and cause panic and
havoc throughout the group. But at night I embraced him. I could
hear some silent animals and dogs kilometers away and have a
clear map of what was going on. I could hear everything around
me and always chose the right track to lead the second half of the
pack in safety. Also my shadow under the moonlight touched the
ground and tasted the path ahead.
Advanced Wildness Shape Shifting
Maybe if you read this book without practicing it, it will feel as if
Aion is playing around. His language and symbology is simple
and accessible enough to lead the academic fool to such
conclusions. But truly put your hands in the dirt, and you will
know this book shows exactly otherwise.
And yet, this is the time where even the language doesn’t fool
you. The imaginary warns you that some serious business is
coming. The rite has you shape-shifting even more firmly, with a
greater connection to the wildness, the wyrd and the way, and
finally engaging sexually to fully materialize your wolf. In this
doing you engage with your wolf to the fullest, you know him so
intimately as to having had sex through his body, uncovering all
his beastly erotic dreams, nuances, rages and frailties. I saw
myself as my wolf in copulation with a she-wolf, in many ways,
as if yearning to go deep into the flesh of her body however
possible. The moon was a strange glowing matrix radiating like
an insane jewel. Then there were other wolves. An orgy of
wolves. Finally the moon was down, down as a naked woman of
the purest white. She watched over the orgy with jade eyes
beneath the fire. She was erotic at first, but then she was also
hunger, her snowy rosy flesh and red blood devoured by teeth
and claw and at the same time tendered and nourished, preserved
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intact like a golden child. After some time it all vanished, I was
back at the body, the body trembling and the throat growling
with breath. Every muscle burning and almost destroyed by the
heat of the wolf. At the orgasm, the wolf settled in. But his fiery
red vision was so intense that one could not distinguish between
the different senses. There was a blindness to his drive that made
him wise and impossible to compete with. A funny thing that I
noticed after this exercise, is that for a while I, as a smoker, had
no desire to smoke.
Chapter 6 – Fetch Work
This chapter is funny because, in my path, the wolf fetch or
familiar was the first thing I worked on. From there, I worked the
animal self as a wolf. In his book of werewolf magick Denny has
it the other way around. It is probably a sounder method.
The first work is the same as creating an elementary and from it
an elemental made out of the wolf-man in us, as we shape shift
and transfer all the wolfish astral components to an astral bolt,
then allowing it to take its own living shape and baptizing it or
rather, we are asking it things such as the name and symbol
instead of giving them to the fetch. The way I used to work, one
asks what the special physical characteristic is and what is the
special spiritual power, instead of asking for the name and the
symbol. While I already had the symbol, I only learned my
Fetch’s name through this practice. That is because I never
thought to ask. Finally, one prepares a physical house in which to
anchor the fetch, such as a talisman.
Then it’s time to feed the fetch unless it fades. The way I teach it,
one has to invoke him and, the back bending lower and lower,
dance him, make him offerings and, most importantly, go on
long walks once a month all the while one is with half his
consciousness in himself and half his consciousness in the fetch
beside him, constantly transferring the nervous strain between
one and the other, taking challenges that the wolf fetch yearns
for, eating things the wolf asks to eat so that it feeds through you,
while sometimes the wolf eats things from his astral world that
you can also taste. Then noticing and smelling by-passers,
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judging characters, and all the remaining little things. The wolf
will feed on the details and also on the wild physical energy of
your own body as a savage pilgrim, while generating a fluid of
himself that will strengthen you back. Denny has a different and
maybe more logical approach, you turn into the werewolf and the
werewolf feeds the fetch through his own means. As I try to
reproduce this exercise according to the instructions in the book,
it doesn’t work as expected, my fetch being well built over the
years and beyond my shape-shifting abilities. If my werewolf
tries to feed him as a master to his puppy, the fetch looks back
with honey-wild understanding in his eyes, as a master to his
pupil and my werewolf surrenders to his gaze and absorbs his
visions instead.
Further instructions are given on how to build a shrine for the
fetch, making some sort of pact and agreeing to feed it regularly
in exchange for closer cooperation. The relationship keeps being
between the werewolf and the fetch. Information on what kind of
things can be offered to the fetch is deepened. While the fetch
grows and becomes well fed, it finally starts to take the position
of the teacher.
The author proceeds to give instructions on how to dream work
with the fetch. In my shamanic group we do a vigil, we sleep in
turns while one is in werewolf trance, dancing and playing the
drum and opening the dream tunnels. The others fall asleep.
Another way to do it is by shamanic journeys, experiencing all
kinds of things with the fetch in the middle and in the deep
world. But if you are looking for a more ceremonial magick
approach, “Werewolf Magick” is the right place. Aion prepares
the space ceremonially, works with lunar phases, makes use of
visualizations, animal mantras and sexual magick in the liminal
state before falling asleep.
On riding or wearing the fetch, Aion and myself seem to have
been using exactly the same methods. In essence, it is the work
of astral or mental travel but either transferring your
consciousness to the fetch, or literally riding it. Instructions lay
in the book, as well as more advanced information.
Chapter 7 – Werewolf Rituals
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This chapter has a number of eclectic rituals that can be
performed by the werewolf. Consider it a sort of grimoire written
by Denny’s specific werewolf to the advantage of other
werewolves.
There are, for instance, rituals to deities of the Moon, to the Sun,
to the Dog Star, and rituals to fight nefarious entities and
sorcerers. While the topic of training werewolf shape-shifting,
itself, is rarely depicted as much in detail as in this book in the
magical sense, this topic is even more uncommon. You are
reading about ritual magick not to become or call in or out the
werewolf, but of ritual magick for established werewolves. This
will make your animal self as complex as your human self
without your animal self ever losing its characteristics.
Chapter 8 – Werewolf Magick With The Dead
This is a continuation of the grimoire, but exploring the practice
of necromancy as engaged by the werewolf. How is the werewolf
connected with necromancy and the dead, you may ask? The
author gives some archaeological and mythological examples
and concludes: «Wolves and werewolf magick have had a close
relationship with death and the underworld because they share
the reality of liminal states.»
Here the werewolf is given techniques to learn of the past or
future from the dead and to travel the death-ways with the fetch
and meet with the shades of the dead. A connection is made
between the werewolf and the Egyptian wolf-god Anpu to guide
the dead.
Chapter 9 – Werewolf Magick Spells
The grimoire goes on. One learns how to invoke the Lord of the
Forest in its wolf form, the Faunus Lycan, some fire magick with
the aid of sexual fluids, blood, spit and incantations, how to
prepare lunar holy water, there is even an interesting spell for a
werewolf to attract another werewolf romantically, with all
werewolf flowers enlisted. There are methods on how to attract
the friendship of a fellow werewolf and on how to use your
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werewolf eyes to frighten an enemy or influence a human into
trance, as well as to communicate feelings directly or paralyze
someone’s vocal cords. I have known a fellow werewolf who
could do anything by using his “blue eyes” as he used to say. If
we were going for a ritual, he would enter a bar or a coffee or a
restaurant and ask to be offered chalices, knives, an egg and all
necessary items. «I need this item for a ritual», he would say, the
item being given without question. Once we were were-wolfing
on an abandoned farm and the police came in. My friend didn’t
have his papers with him and was asked for them, so he just
activated his “blue eyes” and asked the policeman to go in peace
and that all was good. The agent left and forgot about the matter
entirely. Once, a guy was messing with me in a bar and starting
to get on my nerves, my werewolf friend sat in front of him and
gazed at the man in the eyes. The man became nervous and
started talking rubbish while my werewolf friend kept looking
him in the eye. Our foe fell asleep, his head on the table, in three
minutes.
But this is not all. In this section you will also learn to invoke the
animalistic power and the animalistic strength and skill of the
berserker as well as opposite techniques of magical lupine
stealth. You learn how to use eclipses for werewolf purification.
To summarize, this chapter is about developing your werewolf or
fetch, and the spells are but indications of abilities natural and
possible to the magical werewolf. Take it as paths and skills that
you can bring to perfection along the way.
Conclusion – The Final Howl
This section exhibits, as the name indicates, the last thoughts of
the author concerning the theme of his present book.
I will choose a couple of quotes, as I believe they can describe
the spirit and objective of the book through the words of the
author himself:
«We must regain the instincts of wolves and live consciously
within nature or else we’ll continue to destroy nature beyond
repair. Our Animal-self is the key to this.»
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«We must remember who we are. This book
«We must regain the instincts of wolves and live consciously
within nature or else we’ll continue to destroy nature beyond
repair. Our Animal-self is the key to this.»