Heka: The Practices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual and Magic Paperback – January 1, 2006

Very informative.

Books great

I have over 128 books been collecting past 35 years, and This book "HEKA" is my favorite in all aspect of Heka/KaBuy this book, you will not regret it.

It’s less new info. More condensed info that covers years of Egyptian history. If you’ve already studied this history this won’t be new information. That said, there is a few instructions for not readily available details around heka in practice. Difficult to confirm however entertaining still.

Nice book mark included.

Mr Rankine'sbook is a non frill andbare bonedbook coveringwhat is presently known about Egyptian magic and is certainly a workable tool.

Excellent book and I think it's an excellent buy but the shipping was misleading and the package looked like it had been stomped on.

The coverage of ancient Egyptian magic is superficial and the book itself is very cheaply produced. This might be a useful resource for a ceremonial magician but the actual information contained in it is minimal and much better sources are available elsewhere. The author doesn't go into a deeper understanding of the nature of heka (or the god Heka) or known historical practices of magic in ancient Egypt. The one good role it could fulfill is as a compendium of knowledge about the subject but I think it's too shallow to be useful for that purpose.Most of the book is listings of things and their correspondences. That's interesting for planning workings but the style makes it look like he's copied things out of his notebook (I keep voluminous notes of a similar nature myself) without any further explanations or deeper understanding of the subject. Listings of the Neteru (gods) just give the name and a brief description with a listing of an amulet, animal, color, concept, and associated symbol. Each Neter is listed on a separate page with lots of whitespace at the bottom, most likely to pad out the slim volume. The information is brief but basically correct in most cases, with the prominent exception of qualities syncretized into Hathor and Isis in late times when they absorbed the qualities of many other goddesses. Two pages on 'composite deities' are downright annoying in their incompleteness and list Sekhmet-Bast-Ra as Mut-Sekhmet-Bast, which is baffling but probably based on visual confusion in the vignette of chapter clxiv of the Papyrus of Ani.Some of the listings are clearly based on other works. For example the color and number associations on pages 76 through 82 are obviously cribbed from Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art.The illustrations are laughable. Take a look at the cover image. That's as good as it gets.All-in-all I'd say this book might be worth a look if you're looking to work with the Neteru in ceremonial magick but doing research in the many other books available would be much more rewarding.