Magic Island

I must admit that I am drawn to musty, old books like a moth to a flame. I hapharzardly ran across a 1929 hardcover edition of Seabrook's "Magic Island" and was immediately struck by the dark and brooding illustrations as well as the marvelous old black & white photos within its yellowed leaves. A brief thumbing through the chapter listings announced its topic to me: voodoo and black magic in Haiti.Seabrook was a well-travelled journalist and author of numerous newspaper articles, short stories, and books. "Magic Island" finds him living in turn of the century Haiti and takes you deep into his search for information about voodoo and black magic as practiced among the locals. You are not only stepping back into early 1900's society and ways, but into the unspoken underbelly of Haiti that few "white" men were ever allowed to see.This book is simply fascinating from front to back, but best to take into consideration the time period this was written and do not expect a rip-roaring-Indiana-Jones-style adventure that Hollywood has seemed to fill the current public's minds with. The book is indeed slow, as much of Seabrook's writing is of his conversations and meetings that ultimately lead him to the secret society and its practices. Have patience, though, and you will arrive to the "juicy" center and the voodoo rites Seabrook was allowed to witness and sometimes even participate in as an initiate. I would suggest getting an early edition of this wonderful book as I did. By literally holding in your hands something that is as old as the story itself, it seems to somehow bring you a sense of proper time displacement and aids with the immersion into Seabrook's journey. I look forward to reading other books by Seabrook as his life was as fascinating as it was sordid: author, world traveller, acquaintence of Aleister Crowley, chronic alcoholic, cannibalist, sexual sadist & masochist, and finally an institutionalized patient of the Rockland State Hospital up until his untimely suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills.Perhaps his quests into the "other" side of human nature were merely a preamble to the bigger question of his ownself and his many demons that followed him. Regardless, you'll have fun going along for the ride.

If you know Seabrook, and if you're halfway interested in magic, you should, you know how really well he writes. Most people are going to be interested primarily in the first section, which deals with "voodoo." He was much more open than most people of his era, and took as fair an approach to "voodoo" as was possible for a white man. If it doesn't look much like modern descriptions, that's because the religion is evolving.Of real interest was his observation of the administration of Haiti. I was fascinated.If they ever, ever reissue his "Witchcraft," snatch it up. I have an old copy, and it's wonderful.