Books like Real Magic — picked by fans

This is an easy-to-read introduction to magic for people who don’t want to join organized groups or participate in spiritual traditions in order to learn. It allows readers to experiment with practices and techniques on their own and includes everything a beginner needs to know about the art and craft of magic, including visualization, ordinary ethics, ritual practices, and vital safety measures.

If you want to know about some of the earliest forms of magic that originated in America, this book is for you. This book focuses on folk magic, with an emphasis on Hoodoo, the magic of enslaved black people, with practices that include nature and the elements as sources of power. The text provides botanical information on magic plants, and spell recipes for healing and protection. As a plus, the book is lavishly and beautifully illustrated with extensive how-to guides on creating your own charms for good luck and fortune.

The title of this book says it all. It is about effective, practical magic with an emphasis on manifestation. Six ways an incantation that is as simple as it is powerful. The book goes into detail about different styles of magic that are available for readers who want to learn more about sorcery, witchcraft, chaos magic, and spirit work. I like this book because it takes one deep into the inner world of magic that exists within the recesses of the mind, opening up the practitioner to spiritual possibilities that have the goal of improving the self. Techniques such as meditation, trance, spiritual cleansing, and dreams are dealt with in an easy and straightforward way.

Another book on American magic, but with a focus on the folk magic practices of black people. This is an immensely readable guide to the venerable tradition of African American magic, a gift made possible only by the perseverance and determination of those who maintained the old ancestral ways. This book contains gems of wisdom, wit, and lots of information for readers who want the basics on how magic is applied for well-being and happiness.

I have been praising this book for years and have no plans to stop anytime soon. Using investigatory skills and a keen sense of human pathos, journalist and NPR producer Horn tells the full-circle story of the parapsychology lab founded by the Rhines. She doggedly and accurately presents the “unbelievable” findings of the Duke lab and the struggle of its founders to swim against a tide of orthodox reaction. As a work of history, it is significant—and as a piece of dramatic historiography it is enthralling. 

For me personally, this is one of the best works on spontaneous psychical and extrasensory experiences. The accounts are drawn from rural Finland, and the expertise of the late Professor Emerita Leea Virtanen is brought to bear upon the narratives. I love how Virtanen connects the modern accounts to the old beliefs and traditions in her country and makes comparisons between her sample and others much further afield.

This work is a much-needed bridge between psychical research and folklore. It is full of apparitions, visions, dreams, and other supernatural occurrences that happen simultaneously with a distant event—what Virtanen calls “simultaneous informatory experiences.” I absolutely recommend this for any student of psychical research, folklore, or ordinary human experiences in general.

Kelly takes apart paranormal phenomena case by case, debunking pretty much every episode of The X-Files in doing so. From spontaneous human combustion to ESP to The Bermuda Triangle and certain famous cryptids, Kelly provides background information, the holes in the story, and the most likely explanations. The strength of this book is simultaneously its weakness, and that’s its specificity. Readers won’t take away as much about the scientific method and concepts of zoology or archaeology that can be applied to other mysteries, but they will come away with the knowledge to debunk some of the most famous tabloid claims. They’ll also come away with some interesting cocktail party conversation topics.       

While not explicitly written from a witchcraft point of view, The Psychic Energy Codex by Michelle Belanger is a highly approachable book for awakening your psychic ability and learning how to manipulate energy, which are very crucial skills for the psychic witch. Despite being a world-famous psychic and an occult researcher with encyclopedic knowledge, the way Belanger breaks everything down in this book makes the information easy to understand for even the absolute beginner. In addition, the book provides foundational techniques that are essential for any energy worker, witch or not. One of the brilliant aspects of this book is that Michelle emphasizes that everyone is wired differently energetically, perceiving and working with energy differently. As such, the author provides impressive guidance and insight to help you tailor practices to suit you so that you can effectively engage in psychic and energetic practices.

A whole agency of supernaturally gifted investigators… oh, yes, please! This story focuses on Aidan, who is able to read people and objects through touch. He’s been disgraced after failing to find a missing child and has come to Savannah to nurse his wounds. The heroine, Lexie, is a reporter and believes a serial killer is hunting in their city, but no one believes her. She enlists Aidan’s reluctant help and the two of them develop a romance as they search for clues. This story has adventure, romance, psychic powers, and a ghost that is used for reconnaissance. It’s got everything! The characters’ powers are solidly researched and feel like they could be possible and the suspense plot will take your breath away.

If, after all this, you remain a skeptic—and skeptic, in its classical sense, is a noble term that any of us should gladly claim—scientist Radin sorts out the issues in a manner that reflects both his integrity as a researcher (something that most critics are not) and his humor and skills as a communicator. Radin is, in my estimation, the inheritor of JB Rhine and a tireless seeker after truth in a clinical setting. He is the generational voice of many contemporary parapsychologists and philosophers of consciousness. Radin has personally rescued me from more errors than I can enumerate and in this book he impeccably surveys some of parapsychology’s evidence-based insights—and the social reasons for resistance to them.