Mystical Dragon Magick: Teachings of the Five Rings
D.J. Conway
Llewellyn, 2007
264 pages
Note: This review was originally published in an issue of newWitch magazine.
I’d heard this book was better than Dancing With Dragons; I’m sorry to say the mediocrity continues.
While this volume is supposed to be advanced dragon magic, it follows the poor formula found in entirely too many pagan books of skimming over a number of topics that are only loosely related. There are countless pages of the same stone, herb, and element correspondences that are found in numerous other books, and there’s additional magic 101 material—all with a few words about dragons tossed in for relevance.
Through the training in this book, one supposedly is able to become an enchanter, a warrior, a shaman, and a mystic. Yet these roles are primarily supposed to be achieved through an increasingly dazzling array of shiny ritual tools and trappings, and overly scripted guided meditations that leave little room for personal experience and exploration. If this is supposed to be more than a 101 book, I’m not impressed.
Conway’s research is seriously lacking. She doesn’t employ critical thinking in her material on Atlantis, instead choosing to take as fact anything that supports her views, no matter how sketchy. Her explanations of dragons in various cultures are overly simplistic and show an incomplete picture of extant lore. And while she has a sizable bibliography, some of the books are of questionable quality, and there are no in-text citations for tracing individual pieces of information.
To top it off, Conway is quite dogmatic in her views. While I have no doubt that this is her reality in truth, she present her own subjective experiences of dragons and the otherworld as universal fact. She perpetuates the inaccurate classifications of white, black and gray magicians, and in my review copy she states “No member of the Five Inner Rings [Conway’s dragon magic tradition] is ever called a priest, priestess, guru, master, or any other nonsense name” (22). I wonder how pagan clergy feel having their titles summarily dismissed thusly?
Between the rehashing of material from Dancing With Dragons, and the additional shallow treatment of several magical paradigms—and dragons themselves—I can’t recommend this book to any reader.
One pawprint out of five.
Pagan Book Reviews 
Dana said,
February 20, 2010 at 7:51 am
I saw a lot of wishful thinking in Dancing With Dragons. It irked the shit out of me how she talks about dragons as if they’re all beings who exist to help us find our highest spiritual potential, even the “scary” ones. I cry bullshit. For that reason I couldn’t use the Celtic Dragon tarot no matter how pretty it was and how much I resonate with dragons.
Snork said,
September 7, 2010 at 8:53 am
I have this book. I could not read it no matter how hard I tried. I was known in certain circles as “Super Reader” able to read anything in a single glance. Well, I met a book that bested me…. I own a lot of Conway’s books. I use them as jumping off points for serious stuff that she just mentions. I have never been able to even get through one without wondering if she really understood how to write.