The Book of Smokeless Fire Review

[The God-King]

I received my copy of Nephilim Press's latest release titled The Book of Smokeless Fire by S Ben Qayin. Other than his chapter in Sabbatica: The Seas Of Death And The Arcana Of Deathbringer (which I was not a fan of) I was not familiar with this author prior to purchasing this book. Not much info on him is available on the internet, at least what I could find. The book covers the topic of Djinn evocation. The cover of the book is kind of cool; seems to be a new take on Solomon's Brass Vessel. Nephilim's site says it is based on a little known text called Miscelaneo de Salomon however, a quick Google search turned up little to nothing so I couldn't compare contents of the two books. The site also says it mirrors the Necronomicon. Unless I missed it I didn't see much resemblance there either. Qayin goes into discussing the magical system contained therein and starts talking about something rather interesting. The sigils, circles and triangles in the text are all angular and seem to be some form of Sacred Geometry (though Qayin never states this) and according to the author, angles contain special energy that when harnessed and manipulated can open "cosmic doors" which allow the Djinn to come forth and manifest within our world.

One of the only positives I can find with this book is, aside from the angle theory, is the interesting designs of the triangles, circles and sigils. Qayin offers several circle and triangle designs, not just one like most grimoires. He also states that you can mix and match the circles and triangles and experiment with them. He puts a lot of emphasis on personalization with this system. As previously stated, the triangles, circles and sigils are all angular and something that I've never seen before. The circles and triangles are of special interest as they do not resemble the sort of circles or triangles that one may be used to in Grimoire Tradition. Here are a few pics of the circles, triangles and a sigil or two:

One of the Triangles




One of the Circles:




One of the sigils and description of a Djinn:




Another Djinn sigil and description:





Another interesting thing the text describes is something called the Lunate Script which is a sort of planetary alphabet I'm assuming. I didn't read this chapter yet so I can't go into much, if at all but here is a pic:




Then we come to the actual evocation ritual. This is where I lose interest in the book. It just seems so......made up, to me. It seems to mirror Koetting's Evoking Eternity in some respects. I just can't get behind it. Seems like some new age hokum mixed with some LHP and chaos magic terminology. I can't speak on the evocation ritual's effectiveness as I haven't tried it but I can't see it working. So, I'd rate this book 50/100. The angle theory, circles, sigils, triangles and Lunate Script are all interesting and unique but the evocation rite is where, for me, it all goes downhill. If you're a modern type magician who doesn't mind UPG or free-form evocations. On the flip side if you're a grimoire fundamentalist or purist you might not take much away from the evocation part of the book. The DJinn descriptions are pretty cool as well. Has anyone else purchased the book? If so, what are your thoughts?