This book is an overdue contribution from a man who has had a deep but quiet influence on the practice and development of Thelemic magick. It is not directed toward the merely curious but uninformed; it is rather aimed at sincere aspirants who already have some acquaintance with the nature and importance of Thelema.

Gunther is highly conservative in his exposition, stalwartly defending two of Crowley's most fragile and difficult positions: the khabs and khu readings of Liber Legis I:8-9, and the "heh-tzaddi switch" interpretation of I:57. In the case of the former, he nearly persuades me. His philology certainly takes advantage of more knowledge than Crowley could muster. He is not a hidebound orthodox however. Although in an early passage Gunther seems to accept a superficial reading of the aeons of Isis, Osiris, and Horus as positive history, he later points out (albeit in a footnote, 166 n. 13) that a scientific approach cannot validate and should not accept this narrative on that plane.

The dependence on theories from "depth psychology" was a bit dismaying to me. While I will happily admit the overlap in subject matter between that discipline and magick, I believe it is the proper role of initiates to explain profane theories in terms of esoteric principles, not the other way around.

There is a praiseworthy amount of original interpretation of passages from the non-AL Holy Books, and (most delightfully) The Vision and the Voice. But the great number of long quotes from the Crowley corpus means that there is even less of the author's own prose than one might at first suspect in this 222-page book. Some of the most provocative and original material for practical purposes can be found in an unremarked diagram showing ritual postures (74), and an appendix tabulating "Some Useful Attributions" (214).

Gunther's writing in his own voice concludes: "And with this, Speech is done with us for a while." And yet he seems to have been on a rather extended lecture tour in the many months following publication. More to the good, I think.