Review: “Pacts with the Devil” by S. Jason Black and Christopher S. Hyatt

My reactions to this book were extremely mixed. I’m glad I read it, but I have no idea how to review it.

This a book by two authors who sometimes seem to be contradicting each other. It’s also a book that’s trying to be too many things at once. To review it fairly, I’d pretty much have to treat the various sections as separate works. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of time. Sorry.

I’ll start with what I liked. I enjoyed a lot of the philosophical content in this book. Some of it was extremely validating—stuff I’ve been thinking for awhile but hadn’t seen anyone else say in print. So, that was cool. I also appreciated reading some of the personal experiences with evocation and pact making.

That said, I found some of the scholarship really sketchy. There’s some iffy soft polytheism, and some misinformation about witch hunts. Those are two of my least favorite things. Some of the social commentary content was just plain douchey— for instance, a random tangent bashing affirmative consent.

There was also some stuff about Voodoo, which seemed… pretty bad and racist. I don’t know enough about Voodoo to judge just how egregious it was, but it seemed pretty far off to me.

All the usual Western Esoteric Edgy Bro vices are on display here: soft polytheism, appropriation, spotty research and a weird right-libertarian streak.

The final section of the book contains adaptations of three classic grimoires, geared towards making them more user-friendly. I guess I see what they were trying to do there, but it still seemed a bit pointless. And it was odd to read the previous hundreds of pages critiquing Christianity, and then just be handed some hastily adapted rituals which still heavily depend on using Yahweh’s sacred names to compel and torture demons.

There was also an appendix which was just an excerpt from Crowley. Both authors are Thelemites and in the OTO, so, fair. But the Crowley bit was a completely different approach to evocation compared to the grimoires, and it felt pretty far out of left field. I could’ve used some more commentary on how the authors thought these different approaches could be synthesized or applied in different situations. If you aren’t going to give more context and commentary why include someone else’s work in your book at all?

This is a book that didn’t really feel like a book. It felt like a lot of random things thrown together. It’s not a complete waste of time, but it’s a frustrating and weird experience.

Based on what I’ve said so far you’d think I hated it. But there were actually segments I really loved. There were also a few parts I really hated, and a lot of “meh” and “wtf” in between. I’d give this a confused three stars out of five.