I read one of my well-loved favorites from my hippie days, to cleanse the palette, as it were. The memories were far better than the reality.

I first read this book in 1967 or ’68. It was a major influence on my life at the time…living as I was in the counter-culture among astrologers, tarot card readers, and reading Gurdieff, Timothy Leary, plus running my life with the Chinese divination book of the I-Ching. It was exciting stuff, promising power that we only dreamt of.

Now after 40 years of spiritual warfare and growth into Truth, as a teacher of the Bible I can see this has almost no tie to reality, good or bad. Ged, known as Sparrowhawk, is prideful, self-centered, rebellious, commonly rude, in many ways the worst of man. He is forcibly humbled and becomes the better for it. He’s just a kid without friends, family or guidance.

It’s a very sad book—masterfully written, intriguing, compelling, yet empty of reality. But yet I can never forget how wonderful I thought it was in my drugged stupor in the late 60s.

Spiritually, it had nothing of the Truth either good or bad
There nothing of the Christian truth, of course. But I was surprised to discover there is nothing of the true nature of evil either. Spiritually, it is basically non-existant. Of course, by definition that makes it tend toward evil. But there’s not enough reality here to make it serious in any form.

It makes magic the religion of the world, but there’s no creator and no understanding of spiritual reality of any kind. It’s fluff. Pretty close to intriguing but worthless drivel.